Library News and Notable New Books

With best wishes to all, the Crawfordsville District Public Library will be closed Friday, Dec. 24, Saturday, Dec. 25, and Sunday Dec.26.

Here are books to consider on Monday. Wes Gehring's "Carole Lombard: The Hoosier Tornado" is the inaugural volume in The Biography Series from the Indiana Historical Society Press. The third in the series "James Dean: Rebel with a Cause" by Gehring is also available.

John Le Carre's "Our Kind of Traitor" is a novel expressing understanding of the world we live in, and studying where power really lies, as a couple's casual new acquaintance involves them in a world-wide chase involving the British Secret Service. "American Vampire", a cartoon story, contains two intertwined tales about a new kind of vampire, a species born in the American West and powered by the sun, a monster more powerful and vicious than anything before; authors Scott Snyder and Stephen King join artist Rafael Albuquerque, colorist Dave McCaig, and letterer Steve Wands in this production. "Devil Dog" by David Talbot is the amazing true story of the man "who saved America", a "pulp history" "that leaps off the page" bringing the life of Smedley Butler forward with text-history and some pages of cartoons.

Two new books about World War II are "The Hitler I Knew" memoirs of the Third Reich's Press Chief Otto Dietrich, and "Deathride" - Hitler vs. Stalin: The Eastern Front, 1941-1945" by John Mosier; the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 began a war that lasted almost four years and created by far the bloodiest theater of that war.

"Successful Dog Breeding' is the complete handbook of canine midwifery by Chris Walkowicz and Bonnie Wilcox.

In Laura Lippman's "I'd Know You Anywhere" a convicted kidnapper/killer writes to his victim who feels she must respond because he's extra-dangerous when ignored. This tale is labeled a "psychological manipulation". "The Athena Project" by Brad Thor announces that the world's most elite counterterrorism unit has just been challenged at a new level as a Delta Force female quartet must hunt down a Venetian arms dealer who has explosives in Rome." The Spider's Web" by Margaret Coel combines history and mystery as an Arapaho attorney and a mission priest find themselves on opposite sides of an investigation. "Port Mortuary" by Patricia Cornwell begins when Kay Scarpetta finds herself ensnared in a gruesome case of hate crimes against two Americans in South Africa.

The cover of "Edge" by Jeffery Deaver shows a ripped rope. The CIA/FBI is challenged when a ruthless "lifter" seeking information by whatever means necessary faces a federal protection officer who is protecting the family he's chasing, and the officer must plan their meeting.

An autistic boy who's bullied is defended by a cheerleader in "Unlocked" by Karen Kingsbury. Two New Hampshire girls who share their birthday work to find their places in the world and learn who they are during the period from the 1950s to today in "The Good Daughters" by Joyce Maynard. Book III of Marta Perry's Pleasant Valley Series is "Anna's Return" in which an Amish girl returns home with a baby after three years in the English world. "Summer's Child" by Diane Chamberlain takes us to a North Carolina beach home challenged when an eleven-year-old's family adopts an abandoned newborn baby.