Preview Shelf by Janice Clauser

Library News and Notable New Books

A Special Exhibit (Except on the 23rd and 24th when the Library is Closed) - Except on the 23rd and 24th of November when the building is closed, take the stairs or the elevator to the second floor of the Crawfordsville Library and turn left for a wonderful local history adventure, Bill Helling's "Trip Through Crawfordsville, Then and Now". See how many notable figures you can recognize among 19 pictures of local personalities (including five glamorous ladies) dated 1770 to today. See Maurice Thompson posing with his huge bow (he was the father of modern archery). See favorite sites like the Wabash College Pioneer Chapel in 1925 with no treescape, Lane Place in its Italian period, and shots of the Carnegie building throughout its history. Then check the displays of new nonfiction.

"Robert O'Connell's "The Ghosts of Cannae" tells the saga of Hannibal's invasion in 216 B.C. with 48,000 deaths at the Roman Republic's darkest hour that led to its resurgence and the creation of its empire.

"The Mountain Lion" by Jean Stafford is a Classic from New York Review of Books. It explores adolescence with authentic sights, smells, emotions, and the values of childhood and youth. Tana French offers "Faithful Place" a novel of a young couple in Dublin's inner city in 1985, with a plan to run away to London for a better life; he can't find her that night and assumes she's changed her mind. The novel deals with what really happened.

Two linked stories are next. In St. Louis, The Mother of All Darkness vampire wants to control all the vampires in America by possessing the body of her enemy, a legal vampire executioner-U.S. Marshal, according to "Bullet" by author Laurell Hamilton, whose other new book, "Flirt" shows the marshal Anita Blake being sought by a man desperate to have her re-animate his recently deceased wife. Are you tempted?

"Married with Zombies" by Jesse Petersen reports that a zombie apocalypse takes over, but that doesn't mean your other problems go away. Terry Brooks' fantasy "Bearers of the Black Staff" is the first episode in his new series "Legends of Shannara"; in the future, protective magic that surrounded man for five centuries has vanished and unknown predators stalk the area, which has divided loyalties among surviving villages.

In J. A. Jance's "Queen of the Night" two murders threaten to tear apart three separate families of the Tohono O'odham Nation in Arizona. Another thriller is Ridley Pearson's "In Harm's Way" set in Sun Valley; a young woman is convinced she has seen her former captor in person, even though the sheriff watched the captor die. "Body Work" is Sara Paretsky's 17th novel uncovering a chain of ugly truths that stretches all the way from Iraq to Chicago's South Side. When a just-married couple perishes in an automobile wreck, time's healing powers prove elusive in Ayelet Waldman's "Red Hook Road".

"Star Island" is Carl Hiaasen's hilarious spin on life in the celebrity fast lane. An undercover girl who doubles for a pop star attempting a comeback is kidnapped and the challenge is to rescue the double without telling the pop star.

Josh McDowell offers "The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict" answering questions about the Bible's reliability, with archaeological evidence and added chapters confirming the historical Jesus.
Happy Thanksgiving.