Preview Shelf by Janice Clauser

Library News and Notable New Books

"Readopoly" Roundup Time - Here's an "Alert"! The Adult Summer Reading Program at the Crawfordsville Library concludes August 31st. The Grand Prize for "Readopoly" will be drawn on September 1st and the winner will be notified by phone. This year 74 men and women signed up for the program to read fourteen books in eleven weeks. The south wall is full of their achievements.

An historical novel by Edward Cline called "Sparrowhawk: Jack Frake" is Book One of his American Revolution series. It establishes the war's first stage as rumblings of discontent in England lead certain noble smugglers to board ship for Virginia. Isabel Allende's new "Island Beneath the Sea" profiles African slaves in 1770 as a plantation owner's son purchases a young native for his bride, and finds himself dependent on the services of his teenaged slave. They later flee the land later called Haiti to New Orleans, so the book has rich and contrasting atmosphere. "A Visit from the Goon Squad" by Jennifer Egan is a spellbinding narrative about an aging former punk rocker and record executive, and the passionate troubled young woman he employs in an "undertow of self-destruction we must all master or succumb to". "The Pregnant Widow" comes from Martin Amis and tells about 1970, when the youth of Europe are in the chaotic, ecstatic throes of the sexual revolution. "Strip" by Thomas Perry starts out with gang warfare when an aging strip club owner has been robbed by a masked gunman while he's placing his cash receipts in a bank's night-deposit box. A contrast is "The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake" by Aimee Bender about a nine-year-old daughter who finds she can taste her mother's emotions in a slice of her baked goods, and as this "talent" grows she experiences the heartbreak of loving those whom she knows too much about. In "Backseat Saints" by Joshilyn Jackson the "perfect Texas housewife" finds out her husband will kill her unless she kills him first.

Nonfiction offers history too. "Revolutionaries" by Pulitzer Prize winner Jack Rakove is a new write up of the "invention of America" showing how ordinary men became extraordinary patriots with richly drawn portraits deepening our appreciation of that cast of heroes. In "The Ohio Frontier" Douglas Hurt shows the Old Northwest from 1720-1830, from the arrival of the first Native American settlers to the end of the frontier period, featuring the Indians' culture and adaption to white society, the military expeditions that determined who'd control the land north of the Ohio River, and the agricultural communities developing in the state. "The Icarus Syndrome" is Peter Beinart's history of American hubris, the seductions of success through three generations from progressives before World War I through post-cold war neoconservatives, quite a powerful review of "imperial temptations".

Four new books discuss the Middle East. "Quicksand" by Geoffrey Wawro tells about America's pursuit of power there; "War" by Sebastian Junger digs into soldiers' lives while fighting there; "Nomad" by Ayaanb Ali records her personal journey through the clash of civilizations; last, "Jihad in Saudi Arabia" is Thomas Hegghammer's document of violence and Pan-Islamism since 1979.

Last are biographies. "T. S. Eliot" by Craig Raine is sixth in the series Lives and Legacies from Oxford University Press. "Wolf" is James Haley's study of the life of writer and adventurer Jack London "a man bristling with ideas, whose passion for …social justice roared until the day he died." "The Men Who Would Be King" is "an almost epic tale of moguls, movies, and the company called Dreamworks" by Nicole LaPorte starring Steven Spielberg, David Geffen, and Jeffrey Katzenberg.

Preview Shelf by Janice Clauser

Library News and Notable New Books

Former Resident Donates His New Book - A new Young Readers fiction is a gift to the Crawfordsville District Public Library from author Rick French, a Montgomery County native, Southmont High School graduate, and 14-year member of the Crawfordsville Police Department, now living in Avon. The story follows two young school friends in a small Midwestern town. One is inherently humble and unselfish, the other full of ego who eventually appreciates that his buddy was behind him to succeed "All Along".

Today notes new adult novels. "Sidney Sheldon's After the Darkness" by Tilly Bagshawe finds the situation devastating when a terribly wealthy and respected financial wizard disappears from his yacht at sea. Janet Evanovich has issued a Stephanie Plum novel called "Sizzling Sixteen" that starts with the need to raise three quarters of a million dollars to settle a gambling debt owed by a bail bondsman.

Catherine Coulter's "Whiplash" is an FBI thriller that begins when a vital drug supply runs out and the manufacturer's foreign employee is found murdered behind the factory's U.S. headquarters. "The Lonely Polygamist" by Brady Udall is called An American Family Writ Large and features the husband of four wives and father to 28 children involved in an affair that threatens to destroy his family's future. In "The Girl Who Chased the Moon" by Sarah Allen two very different women discover how to find their place in the world, no matter how out of place they feel in a quirky little Southern town with a magical atmosphere.

"Reckless" by Andrew Gross shows three seemingly unrelated events that reveal a scary scheme stretching from New York to London to Central Europe. Andy Straka's "Kitty Hitter" is a Frank Pavlicek mystery; the ex-homicide detective and falconer is summoned to NYC to find a physician/animal rights activist's missing cat. "The Bride Collector" by Ted Dekker seeks a virtuoso killer carving a path of death across the West, killing beautiful women in the name of love.

"Let the Great World Spin" by Colum McCann is a National Book Award winner. Its cover quotes Dave Eggers; "There's so much passion and humor and pure life force on every page that you'll find yourself giddy, dizzy, overwhelmed." It profiles New York City in the 1970s. Nelson DeMille's "The Lion", a sequel to "The Lion's Game" from 2000, brings back a Special Agent to confront his sworn enemy, a Libyan terrorist known as The Lion. "The Passage" by Justin Cronin is sci fi about a security breach at a secret U.S. government facility. "It happened fast. Thirty-two minutes for one world to die, another to be born."

On to nonfiction, "Fifty Dresses That Changed the World" by the Design Museum displays fashions from the Coco Chanel 1926 flapper dress to Wallis Simpson's 1937 Mainbacher skinny wedding dress to Elizabeth II's 1953 coronation dress, Versace's 1994 safety-pin dress, and finally Hussein Chalayon's LED dress of 2007.

"The Complete Idiot's Guide to Staging Your Home to Sell" makes your residence irresistible to buyers, according to Julie Dana and Marcia Turner. "Every Landlord's Legal Guide" covers leases, deposits, repairs, rent, privacy, terminations, disclosures, state laws, and discrimination by authors Marcia Stewart, Ralph Warner, and Janet Portman. Diana Palmer, Kasey Michaels and Catherine Mann offer "More Than Words: Stories of Hope" about everyday women from all walks of life making their communities a better place through their commitments.

How rainbow trout beguiled America and overran the world fills "An Entirely Synthetic Fish" written by Anders Halverson. "Versailles" by Antony Spawforth is a "biography of a palace", perhaps the world's most famous "Grand House".

Preview Shelf by Janice Clauser

Library News and Notable New Books

Local Author Donates New Novel to Library - Local journalist Terry Franklin Phillips, Sr. has donated a copy of his new memoir-fiction to the Crawfordsville District Public Library. Its title is “Living in Victory: Finding Happiness in the Most Unlikely Places”. Phillips has caught the spirit of a rural Montgomery County town in 1955 and 1975 (and some of these special traits remain in small caring communities). The variety of characters and literary references bring alive the time setting. We follow a young man from being a college student/neophyte church pastor to becoming a professional photographer/reporter as he experiences true-to-life relationships with the town of Victory’s people. There’s respect for the era and the area. And there’s an added “special something” to ponder that begins and ends the story.

"The Common Good" by John Bower presents black and white photographs
in his seventh photo album showing Indiana sites representing "common efforts for the common good" in "common places where people from all walks of life can come together." He has driven 90,000 miles across the Hoosier state, and he wonders about the debates, sermons, and lectures that took place inside churches, libraries, schools and government buildings as these photos document our shared "history at the local level". The pictures honor decrepit, well-used places.

New novels abound for summer reading schedules. As bonny Prince Charlie and his rebel army ride into Edinburgh in 1745, Kerr family secrets begin to surface in a Scotland plot called "Here Burns My Candle" by Liz Higgs. "Stay a Little Longer" by Dorothy Garlock shows America's heartland at the end of World War I; a young woman has been changed by loss, is challenged by danger, and fights to claim her future. Elizabeth Berg's "The Last Time I Saw You" shows women and men reconnecting with one another and themselves at their 40th high school reunion. "Life in Defiance" is the final part of the Defiance Texas Trilogy by Mary DeMuth and addresses whether to reveal the truth (the name of a murderer) or live with the consequences of burying it forever. Anna Quindlen's "Every Last One" is a family story of an unexpected challenge needing team effort. Another family challenge comes to a single father's family written from three distinct points of view in "This Time Tomorrow" by Michael Jaime-Becerra. International adoption (an orphan in Mumbai cherished by an American doctor) is the theme of "Secret Daughter" by June Cross. "The Walk" by Richard Evans asks what you'd do if you lost everything at the same time. "The Hole We're In" by Gabrielle Zevin depicts an all-American family with little to admire but much to love about each member. In "Down to the Wire" by David Rosenfelt a journalist becomes a hero after an explosion, until he finds the event was a setup.

Scott Turow's "Innocent" the sequel to "Presumed Innocent" takes place twenty years after the first novel; and now the chief judge of an appellate court finds his wife dead, and his opponent from the past accuses him of murder for the second time, leading to a "courtroom at its most taut and explosive". The mystery "Fever Dream" has two authors, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child telling how a special agent mourning the loss of his wife by accident in Africa twelve years ago discovers she was murdered. In Victorian London a botanist realizes that a poison from her own conservatory caused a death, so she hires a fellow Arcane Society member to investigate in Amanda Quick's "The Perfect Poison". The fourth of the Enzo Files is "Freeze Frame" by Peter May telling of the long-ago promise made to a dying man that forensics ace Enzo Macleod must study twenty-years later..

Upstairs/ Downstairs August, 2010

This is a listing of the books that have moved Upstairs from the Downstairs 7-day shelf and can now be checked out for 28 days.

As of August 13, you can find the following new books in the Adult Fiction section of the library.

Sister Pelagia and the Red Cockerel by Boris Akunin
The White Garden by Stephanie Barron
Rainwater by Sandra Brown
Crossers by Philip Caputo
Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon
Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child
Eggs Benedict Arnold and The Silver Needle Murder by Laura Childs
Dying For Mercy by Mary Jane Clark
The Disciple by Stephen Coonts
Scarpetta by Patricia Cornwell
The First Rule by Robert Crais
Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichton
The Wrecker by Clive Cussler
Not My Daughter by Barbara Delinsky
Spooner by Pete Dexter
Storm of Visions by Christina Dodd
Too Much Money by Dominick Dunne
Burning Wild by Christine Fee
The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris
Sizzle by Julie Garwood
Last Night in Twisted River by John Irving
Divine Misdemeanors and Skin Trade by Laurell K. Hamilton
The Hidden by Tobias Hill
Beach Trip by Cathy Holton
Fire and Ice by J. A. Jance
Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
Breathless by Dean Koontz
Envy the Night by Michael Koryta
Fired Up by Jayne Ann Krentz
Temptation and Surrender and The Untamed Bride by Stephanie Laurens
The Secret by Beverly Lewis
A Bump in the Road by Maureen Lipinski
The Whiskey Rebels by David Liss
Jacob's Ladder: A Story of Virginia During the War by Donald McCaig
Too Many Murders by Colleen McCullough
Midnight Sons Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 by Debbie Macomber
The Killing Hands by P. D. Martin
The Confessions of Edward Day by Valerie Martin
Bone Song by John Meaney
Any Minute by Joyce Meyer
The Appointment and The Land of Green Plums by Herta Muller
The Elephant Keeper by Christopher Nicholson
The Body in the Sleigh by Katherine Hall Page
Watch Over Me by Christa Parrish
Kindred in Death by J. D. Robb
One D. O. A. by Mary Robinson
The Humbling by Philip Roth
New York: The Novel by Edward Rutherfurd
The Suicide Run by William Styron
Commencement by J. Courtney Sullivan
Dark Tiger by William G. Tapply
A Pale Horse by Charles Todd
The Road Home by Rose Tremain
Black Out by Lisa Unger
The Christmas Secret by Donna VanLiere
Lakeshore Christmas by Susan Wiggs
Devil's Backbone by Larry Williams

Upstairs/ Downstairs August, 2010

This is a listing of the books that have moved Upstairs from the Downstairs 7-day shelf and can now be checked out for 28 days.

As of August 7, you can find the following new books in the Adult Fiction section of the library.

Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan
Hell's Aquarium by Steve Alten
The Thousandfold Thought by R. Scott Bakker
Transition by Ian Banks
Royal Flush by Rhys Bowen
Below Zero by C. J. Box
Cutting Edge by Allison Brennan
Strangers by Anita Brookner
The Lost Symbol: a novel by Dan Brown
Smash Cut by Sandra Brown
Rain Gods by James Lee Burke
Hard Rain Falling by Don Carpenter
Amigoland by Oscar Casares
Secrets She Left Behind by Diane Chamberlain
A Quilter's Holiday by Jennifer Chiaverini
Cry in the Night by Colleen Coble
South of Broad by Pat Conroy
The Bordeaux Betrayal by Ellen Crosby
Atlantis Unleashed and Atlantis Unmasked by Alyssa Day
Blood's a Rover by James Ellroy
Finger Lickin' Fifteen by Janet Evanovich
Return to Sullivan's Island by Dorothea Benton Frank
Ford County by John Grisham
The Weight of Silence by Heather Gudenkauf
A Separate Country by Robert Hicks
Knit the Season by Kate Jacobs
Blood Game by Iris Johansen
A Time to Gather by Sally John
Dark Lover by Brenda Joyce
Pilgrims: A Wobegon Romance by Garrison Keillor
Evidence: An Alex Delaware Novel by Jonathan Kellerman
The Calligrapher's Daughter by Eugenia Kim
Under the Dome by Stephen King
Shades of Blue and This Side of Heaven by Karen Kingsbury
A Passion Denied by Julie Lessman
Best Intentions by Emily Listfield
The Naked Baron by Sally MacKenzie
92 Pacific Boulevard and Wyoming Brides by Debbie Macomber
Censoring an Iranian Love Story by Shahriar Mandanipour
Fugitive by Phillip Margolin
Rhino Ranch by Larry McMurtry
Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It by Maile Meloy
Under the Radar by Fern Michaels
Bridegroom by Linda Lael Miller
Faefever by Karen Marie Moning
A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore
The Fire by Katherine Neville
Show No Fear by Perri O’Shaughnessy
Stranger in the Night by Catherine Palmer
Heartless by Diana Palmer
Desire Untamed by Pamela Palmer
The Professional by Robert B. Parker
Alex Cross's Trial by James Patterson
Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing by Lydia Peelle
Generosity: An Enhancement by Richard Powers
Devil of the Highlands by Lynsay Sands
Time of My Life: A Novel by Allison Scotch
A Change in Altitude by Anita Shreve
Drood by Dan Simmons
The Last Song by Nicholas Sparks
The Unquiet Bones by Melvin Starr
Dracula by Dacre Stoker
Dayspring by Harry Sylvester
Tenth Stone by Bodie and Brock Thoene
The Strain by Gillermo del Toro
This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper
Half Broke Horses: A True Life Novel by Jeannette Walls
The Summer Kitchen by Karen Weinreb
Plain Promise by Beth Wiseman
Hothouse Orchid by Stuart Woods
Dark Origins: Level 26 by Anthony Zuiker

Preview Shelf by Janice Clauser

Library News and Notable New Books

Next Tuesday at 6:30 p.m, the Youth Department at the Crawfordsville District Public Library will present the final treat ending its "Readopoly" summer reading schedule that attracted 707 pre-schoolers and kindergartners through high school-age students. The Bubble Truck from southern Indiana (that had to be postponed) will be the entertainment in the new parking lot to celebrate the successful six-week program. The Youth Services staff oversaw crafts, story times, and games and helped the young patrons and their families register their reading for rewards that included books, 14 different game puzzles, special tic-tac-toe commemorative T shirts, even four bicycles. Financial underwriting came from the Friends of the Library's proceeds from its monthly Second Saturday Bookstore donations. The staff thanks the Crawfordsville Masonic Lodge, Dairy Queen, Kiwanis, Krogers, McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Random House, and Walmart for their generous support. Karen says, "Many parents have complimented this year's program that encouraged their children to read a variety of topics and challenged them."

Lots of new history books look interesting. Victor Hanson's "The Father of Us All" uses "deep knowledge of military history to shed light on present-day controversies". "Sacred Violence" by Jill Claster explains the European Crusades to the Middle East in the years 1305-1396. "The Roads to Modernity" by Gertrude Himmelfarb covers the British, French, and American Enlightenments, which she says, created a "social ethic-humane, compassionate, and realistic-that still resonates today especially in America". Gary Hart's "James Monroe" is a new volume in The American Presidents series. "Henry Clay, The Essential American" is David Heidler's biography of the "greatest U. S. Senator", serving under ten Presidents and campaigning unsuccessfully for President five times. "Russia Against Napoleon" by Dominic Lieven tells the story of the 1812 attack on Russia with material from Russian archives.

In "The Last Stand" Nathaniel Philbrick recognizes the Battle of the Little Bighorn as one of the most potent and embattled episodes in American history involving George Custer and Sitting Bull. "Wild Romance" by Chloe Schama is a Victorian story of Scotland, Yosemite, and Hong Kong, centering on a self-made woman. "Elsie & Mairi Go to War" by Diane Atkinson tells about two extraordinary women on the Western Front in World War I. John Samples' "The Struggle to Limit Government" is modern political history and a guide to the political battles of today and tomorrow.

Mireille Guiliano's first cookbook, "The French Women Don't Get Fat Cookbook" includes a secret family recipe from her aunt for a delicious breakfast that melts away pounds effortlessly. Laura Bush tells her story in the memoir "Spoken from the Heart".

Guidebooks are available on almost any subject. "How to Get Out of Debt, Stay Out of Debt, and Live Prosperously" by Jerrold Mundis is based on principles and techniques of Debtors Anonymous. "The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need" by Andrew Tobias is "so full of tips and angles that only a booby or a billionaire could not benefit" (quoted in The New York Times). Jonathan Pond offers "Grow your Money" with 101 tips to plan, save, and invest. Stephen Covey includes a DVD bonus in his new book "The 8th Habit" leading readers from effectiveness to greatness. His classic fifteen years ago was "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People".