Preview Shelf by Janice Clauser

Library News and Notable New Books

Here is a group of miscellaneous new books. All kinds of interests are covered.
First comes “The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Glass” by Mark Pickvet. The illustrations are black and white, but it is designed for every glass enthusiast, collector, researcher, and historian. “Beautiful No-Mow Yards” shows 50 lawn alternatives found by Evelyn Hadden. Rachel Devine’s ”Beyond Snapshots” illustrates how to take a DSLR camera off “Auto” and photograph your life like a pro. “Textiles: The Whole Story” by Beverly Gordon, says “There are few aspects of our lives, physical, emotional, spiritual, in which thread and fabrics do not play a notable part.”

Edwin Black’s “British Petroleum and the Redline Agreement” tells about the West’s secret pact to get Middle Eastern oil. “The Barefoot Bandit” by Bob Friel is the true tale of Colton Harris-Moore, young American outlaw, who as a neglected teenager relished crime sprees, crashed three planes, and was finally killed in the Bahamas. Jeanette Winterson’s “Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?” is her search to find happiness during her life in an English industrial town in the 1960s and 70s; through endless troubles she found literature, her guide to life. “Frommer’s Alaska” is the latest guide to travel there including 241 photographs. Remember Jaycee Lee Dugard’s abduction? “Lost and Found” tells of her 18 years in captivity from 1999-2009, written by John Glatt. “Cruising Attitude” by Heather Poole reflects fifteen years as an airline flight attendant and “she’s seen it all”.

“The English Is Coming!” by Leslie Dunton-Downer tells how one language is sweeping the world. “Weeknights with Giada” by Giada De Laurentiis, holds her quick and simple recipes to revamp dinner.

Faraway places are studied in two new books. One is Katherine Boo’s “Behind the Beautiful Forevers” and depicts “life, death, and hope in a Mumbai undercity”. James Hershberg’s “Marigold” tells about the lost chance for peace in Vietnam, the secret Polish-Italian initiative that sought to end the war, or at least to open direct talks between Washington and Hanoi in 1966. It failed.

“Woodworking FAQ: The Workshop Companion” handles all kinds of projects step by step. “Barron’s ASVAB” the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery” contains the most up-to-date review and practice tests currently available.

Les Savage, Jr.’s “Outlaws of the Brasada” combines a short story with a novel, the latter reflecting Reconstruction imposed by the Union Occupation force after the Civil War. A spirited young woman survives the sinking of the Titanic only to be embroiled in the aftermath of that tragedy in “The Dressmaker” by Kate Alcott. Robert Ludlum’s “The Bourne Dominion” is a new Jason Bourne novel by Eric Van Lustbader, as Jason searches for an elusive cadre of terrorists planning to destroy America’s most strategic natural resources. He and the head of Russia’s most feared spy agency must work together regardless of the Russian’s desire to kill him. “Vonnegut” collects the writer’s novels and stories written between 1963 and 1973. As he idolized Mark Twain, “Vonnegut is a satirist with a heart, a moralist with a whoopee cushion, a cynic who wants to believe.”