Preview Shelf by Janice Clauser

Library News and Notable New Books

Bob Congleton offers two Bee Days - This Saturday, December 4, is the first-ever Bee Day at the Crawfordsville Library, featuring local owner of hives Bob Congleton, who will teach beekeeping skills. All are invited (8 to 17 year olds accompanied by parent, others to age 120 on their own). From 9 a.m. to noon, he'll also be teaching their history and the current problems of honeybees that he is working to solve. This sweet schedule is also offered Saturday, December 11th. What an opportunity for 4-H members, and those seeking a worthwhile new hobby!

Here we present newly requested books. The historical Tudor England novel "Wolf Hall" by Hilary Mantel takes us to the ruthless arena of King Henry VIII's court, where only one man dares to gamble his life to win the king's favor and ascend to the heights of political power. "The Fort" by Bernard Cornwell is a novel of the American Revolutionary War, recreating the little-known Penobscot Expedition, the worst naval disaster in early American history. "Fall of Giants" by Ken Follett follows the fates of five interrelated families, American, German, Russian, English, and Welsh, through the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for women's suffrage. Danielle Steel's "Legacy" is a centuries-spanning story weaving together the lives of two women, one a modern academic writer, and the other a daring young Sioux Indian of the 18th century. "The Man Who Ate His Boots" is Anthony Brandt's fictionalized version of the British Admiralty's search for the Northwest Passage.

Nicholas Sparks has issued "Safe Haven" presenting a mysterious young woman struggling with a dark secret, a past that sets her on a terrible journey across the country. Tracie Peterson's "Summer of the Midnight Sun" is Book One of her Alaskan Quest wherein an early "love" returning after many years brings about a crisis. "Eat, Pray, Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert is a book (now a movie) about a woman's sojourns in Italy, India, and Indonesia as she searches for everything. Fern Michaels' "Cross Roads" begins when the Sisterhood receives a presidential pardon. Now their private jet is hijacked leading to a hard choice of assignments. "Wicked Appetite" by Janet Evanovich features a man with great skill and a hunger for the forbidden feeling entitled to possess anything he might desire. Stuart Woods' "Santa Fe Edge" offers a successful New Mexican attorney whose longtime enemy wants to beat him at his game. Anne Tyler's "Noah's Compass" follows a schoolteacher forced to retire at 61 from his fifth-grade career seeking his future. "Freedom" by Jonathan Franzen shows us an environmentally-wise couple, surprised by family decisions and forced to learn how to live in our ever more confusing world.

"Naked Heat" by Richard Castle covers a gallery of suspects with motives for killing the most feared muckraker in Manhattan. Harlan Coben's "Back Spin" is a classic Myron Bolitar story: the sports agent and sometime sleuth studying a teenager's disappearance find a family whose secrets explode into murder. Carolyn Haines' "Bone Appetit" is a Sarah Booth Delaney story that finds Sarah at a spa for pampering, where the top contender in a competition is poisoned and the suspect hires Sarah to clear her name. "Feed" is a science fiction story by Mira Grant taking place in 2014 as a dark conspiracy behind a new infection is the result of curing previous plagues. "Brains" is "a zombie memoir" by Robin Becker and its description says, "College-professor-cum-zombie… is a different breed of undead - he can think. In fact, he can even write. And the story he has to tell is a truly disturbing, yet strangely heartwarming one."