Preview Shelf: Notable New Books by CDPL Volunteer Janice Clauser

Three new novels ready to borrow begin with Diva by Jillian Larkin where joy and tragedy collide in the conclusion to her Flappers series, set in the Roaring Twenties. In Danielle Steel’s Friends Forever, five children meet on the first day of kindergarten, and in the years that follow they become more than friends; the three boys and two girls discover vital bonds that last a lifetime. S. M. Stirling’s Lord of Mountains is his new Novel of the Change: Artos the First, High King of Montival, and his allies have won several key battles, but still the war rages on, as he and his Queen Mathilda work to unite the realms into a single kingdom. In Diana Palmer’s western tale, Wyoming Tough a new cowgirl with a lot of spirit wonders if she can pull her own weight.

       Here are some varied nonfiction arrivals. Anthony Everitt’s The Rise of Rome: The Making of the World’s Greatest Empire presents history as a page-turner filled with lessons for our time: the clash between patricians and plebeians, the effects of offering citizenship to defeated subjects, and unimaginable wealth and power corrupting traditional virtues of the Republic. Revolt in Syria by Stephen Starr, eye-witness to the uprising, delves into the lives of those affected over the past five decades, showing why Syria has been so prone to violence and civil instability. Neil Tyson’s Space Chronicles is about how our space program, cut off until the 2020s, might destroy its access to space and perhaps be eclipsed by other countries’ projects. Ann Keating’s Rising up from Indian Country is about the battle of Fort Dearborn and the birth of Chicago, telling the story not only of military conquest, but of the lives of people on all sides of the conflict. Early Chicago was a place of cross-cultural reliance among the French, Americans, and Native Americans. Masters of the Planet is Ian Tattersall’s study to search for our human origins, and he explains how homo sapiens edged out its cousins to become the world’s only human species.

 
Protecting Your Internet Identity by Ted Claypoole is considered very important “for today’s plugged-in world where the lines of privacy are blurred and the wrong click could mean horrific, lifetime consequences.” eBay for Dummies by Marsha Collier teaches how to set up an account for buying and selling, how to list items for sale, communicate with bidders, and collect payment. If you think home schooling is crazy, The Year of Learning Dangerously by Quinn Cummings might change your mind with its hilarious and friendly approach. Teachers Matter is Marcus Winters’ latest research about how public schools identify reward and retain great educators.

 
The Voting Wars: From Florida 2000 to the Next Election Meltdown by Richard Hasen contains this quote from Trevor Potter: “Our election system is still precariously positioned, needing only one more bad series of events to create the next presidential election crisis.” 

         
 How Music Works by historian/anthropologist, raconteur, and social scientist David Byrne, shows that music-making is not just the act of a solitary composer in a studio, but rather a logical, populist, and beautiful result of cultural circumstance. He says that music is a liberating, life-affirming power.