Preview Shelf by Janice Clauser

Library News and Notable New Books

Saturday at the Crawfordsville Library, 84 children and 78 adults enjoyed a two-hour program given by three-time 1,150-mile trans-Alaska Iditerod participant Karen Land and her 11-year old sled dog Borage (named after the herb). It was supposed to have been a 45-minute program but the enthusiastic audience kept wanting more and more time at their "icy adventure in the comfort of the library", sponsored by the Youth Services Department and the Friends of the Library.

Think of all the ways novels begin. "Ready Player One" by Ernest Cline takes us forward to the year 2044. That world is an ugly place where people escape grim surroundings by spending time in a virtual utopia living a fantasy life. Another adventure, Russell Banks' "Lost Memory of Skin" finds a prisoner shackled to a GPS monitoring device, and he chooses to reside under a Florida causeway with other convicted offenders.

Stuart Woods' mystery called "Son of Stone" finds Stone back in New York planning to navigate both its shadowy world and its chic high society. J. D. Robb's "New York to Dallas" is a new case for Eve Dallas where she’s the victim being sought. "The Cut" by George Pelecanos "marries art to truth" when an Iraq War veteran and investigator must help a high crime boss find who's stealing from him. "Turn of Mind" by Alice LaPlante is a literary thriller where the accused, entering the world of dementia, doesn't know if she's guilty or not.

In Diana Palmer's "Merciless" a confirmed bachelor, with an assistant to defend him against aggressive women, finds the assistant herself attractive. "A Wild Surge of Guilty Passion" by Ron Hansen presents the Jazz Age in New York, when a wife is looking for a man to murder her husband. "The Submission" by Amy Waldman celebrates the 10th anniversary of 9/11 by presenting an emergency that erupts when a group of jurors select an architect for its memorial, and learn the winner is Muslim. "There But For The" (yes, that's the title) by Ali Smith gives four points of view of a dinner guest who locks himself in a room, leading to the theme about how much others know about us when we're in a dilemma.

Sandra Brown's "Lethal" finds a mother and young daughter helping an ill neighbor, only to find out he's a murder suspect. In "King of the Badgers" by Philip Hensher an English town youngster goes missing, and investigators unearth information never known before about the place. "The Sacred Stone" by Medieval Murderers (that’s how the authors are labeled) is a historical mystery which starts in Greenland in 1067 when a band of hunters stumbles across an object fallen from the sky, to be fought over by everyone below for six hundred years. "The Body in the Thames" by Susanna Gregory is a Thomas Chaloner adventure set in London in the summer of 1664 featuring Westminster's mortuary, where the charnel house keeper collects his takings. Other new novels are Elizabeth Bert's "Once Upon a Time, There Was You" which focuses in on a man and woman, long divorced, who rediscover the power of love in the midst of an unthinkable crisis. "Gone" by Mo Hayder is a thriller investigating a brilliant and twisted carjacker involved in a disturbing game of hide and seek.

New manuals are "Microsoft Office 2010 Plain & Simple" by Katherine Murray, "HTML5 for Dummies" by Andrew Harris, "ASVAB for Dummies" by Rod Powers,
"Military Flight Aptitude Tests" 3rd edition from Learning Express, and "Top 100 Careers Without a Four-Year Degree" by Laurence Shatkin.