Preview Shelf by Janice Clauser

Library News and Notable New Books

Michelle Homsher is a “winter term intern” at the Crawfordsville Library. A graduate of Southmont and a junior at Franklin College, she has been working in circulation and reference, now helps youth services, and will finish the project in tech services and the Carnegie Museum. Two years ago her first “winter” assignment at Franklin was a four-week course in comic books as part of her work for the English major. Michelle hopes to spend the next fall semester in Ireland. Go Grizzlies!

Specific settings of novels offer special advantages in many stories. Brad Meltzer's novel "The Inner Circle" centers on a young worker in the National Archives who, with a friend, finds a 200-year-old dictionary which once belonged to George Washington, and a puzzle leads them onward. "You Know When the Men are Gone" by Siobhan Fallon explores the insular and scary world of an American army base, Fort Hood, Texas, in the time of war. Suspense comes in New York City, fifty years in the future, when a detective and her partner- in-law overhear a scheme by officers that involves murder; J. D. Robb titles it "Treachery in Death". Julie Orringer calls her grand love story set against the backdrop of Budapest and Paris, involving three brothers whose lives are ravaged by war, "The Invisible Bridge". In Tom Franklin’s "Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter" two boys share a special bond in an atmospheric drama set in rural Mississippi in the late 1970s; later, they find themselves on opposite sides of a criminal investigation. Vintage clothing offers "a piece of someone's past" as well as fabric and thread in Isabel Wolff's "A Vintage Affair", set around a London shop of wearable art clothing making both setting and plot attractive and beguiling.

“Now You See Her" by Joy Fielding joins tension and heroics as a mother thinks she sees her long-lost daughter in Ireland when she’s there healing from divorce. In Karen Moning's "Shadowfever" two young children were given up for adoption and banished from Ireland; two decades later one is dead and the other has returned to hunt her sister's murderer, finding she descends from a gifted and cursed bloodline, and the plot turns fantasy. "Toys" by James Patterson shows a perfect couple thrown into opposite social scenes to survive (in fast-moving short chapters). Jennifer Chiaverini's latest Elm Creek Quilts novel is "The Union Quilters", a tale of love and sacrifice during the American Civil War. The women help the Cause in their ways, while the men suffer as they fight.

Three books about Mexico hit both the best and the saddest. "Fresh Mexico" by recipe editor/tester Marcela Valladolid includes 100 simple recipes for true Mexican flavor. ”El Narco” by Ioan Grillo takes the reader inside Mexico’s criminal insurgency. The new Carlos Fuentes novel, "Destiny and Desire", combines passion and magic in modern day Mexico where freewill fights with the wishes of the gods; two young best friends with unusual jobs meet different kinds of characters, creating a collision of ancient myths and 21st century mores. Off the coast of Argentina, "Aruba" is the newest travel guide in the library's Fodor's inFocus series. "Radio Shangri-La" by Lisa Napoli tells her adventure in Bhutan, which she calls the Happiest Kingdom on Earth. "Voyager" is Stephen Pyne's history of exploration as Magellan, Cortes, Columbus, Cook, Lewis and Clark, Byrd and Stanley kept active about our earth, and finally we're up to date as Voyager is moving to the edge of the solar winds. "Moby-Duck" by Donovan Hohn is a narrative of whimsy and curiosity as many bath toys, lost at sea, are sought, involving the causes of beachcombers, oceanographers, and environmentalists to trace and collect them. (Read more in CDPL catalog).