Preview Shelf by Janice Clauser

Library News and Notable New Books

The Library Appreciates Donations - The Crawfordsville Library staff appreciates book donations placed on the bench just inside the entrance. When they're given into the outside book collection slot, please attach a statement that the book is being donated; unlabeled books found in the drop box must be saved for two months in case they were inadvertently placed there.

Requested fiction begins with "State Fair" a Benni Harper mystery by Earlene Fowler in which a champion quilt is stolen at the San Celina Mid-State celebration. Robert Parker's "Blue-Eyed Devil" tells about a chief of police with so much ambition he begins shaking down local merchants for protection money, and then..." Jennifer Weiner's "Best Friends Forever" is billed as "hilarious, edge-of-your-seat adventure" showing two close-knit girls at nine, hit by betrayal as teenagers, and otherwise separated as adults until one desperately needs the other. Jane Smiley's "Private Life" traverses one woman's “intimate landscape from post-Civil War to the World War II" period. "Executive Intent" by Dale Brown imagines America's ultimate weapon leading to world crises.

Other new novels just arrived. Jeffery Deaver's "The Burning Wire" is a Lincoln Rhyme story, and this time he's on the trail of a killer whose weapon of choice cripples New York City with fear. "The Telling" by Beverly Lewis combines an Amish daughter searching for her mother in Ohio and the mother looking for the missing piece of her life, torn between her family and an old yearning. "Mornings in Jenin" captures the Palestinian experience when one of its families was driven from its ancestral village by the newly formed state of Israel in 1948; its author Susan Abulhawa helps build playgrounds for children in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. "Wrecked" by Carol Higgins Clark is a Regan Reilly mystery taking place in April on Cape Cod during a storm. "Broken" by Karin Slaughter tells of the deaths of a prisoner and a police chief with secrets inside the police department. "Death Echo" has a main character by Elizabeth Lowell whose work investigating yacht thefts is as scary as a previous job at the CIA, and the new work has just seven days until "a major American city will be lost." In "Family Ties" by Danielle Steel an adoptive mother successfully raising three children faces plots in Manhattan, Paris, and Tehran that complicate family bonds.

Non fiction offers variety too. "Keepers of the Trees" by Ann Linnea is a guide to re-greening North America. It includes true stories of a tree doctor, a big tree hunter, an L. A. tree planter, a Plant Amnesty pruner, and a 98-year-old logger. "Facebook for Dummies", "Horses for Dummies", and "Horseback Riding for Dummies" are the latest in that series. "Logicomix" is a biography of Bertrand Russell, cleverly designed as a comic book (graphic novel) created by Apostolos Doxiades. "An Uncommon History of Common Things" by Bethanne Patrick explains the meanings of many words and phrases like sandwich, salute, cologne, and hot dog. "Running Through the Ages" by Edward Sears begins with the necessity to move for survival and follows the history to today's sport meant for enjoyment.

Books about the arts this week begin with "Mr. Langshaw's Square Piano" by Madeline Goold. The author shares research about the first pianos, which revolutionized music and culture; taken up by high society and then popularized for people in Europe and North America, they were small and charming and their sound was new, depending on hammers instead of the previous quills in harpsichords. "The Necessity of Theater" by Paul Woodruff preaches that the art of theater is as necessary and as powerful as language itself. He separates theater into the twin arts of watching and being watched.