Preview Shelf: New and Notable Books, by CDPL Volunteer Janice Clauser

This is the annual Christmas column listing the newest holiday books at the Crawfordsville Library. Children’s books are collected on the east wall of the main floor, while adult fiction and non-fiction are found on the upper level located on both sides of the second stack east of the elevator.

The newest children’s story is The Christmas Tugboat: How the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Came to New York City, a retelling of a true delivery by tug boat and the girl who was at the wheel in the Hudson River as police, fire boats, helicopters, and tourists welcomed the tree into New York Harbor. By George Matteson and Adele Ursone, with paintings by James Ransome, this charming book shows the Manhattan shoreline inside.

  

Naomi’s Gift, by Amy Clipston, is an Amish Christmas story set in Bird-in-Hand, Pennsylvania. 24-year-old Naomi has had her heart broken twice, and then her world turns upside-down. Cindy Woodsmall’s The Christmas Singing is a romance from the heart of Amish country; it is a story of second chances at love among young adults. A Lancaster County Christmas by Suzanne Fisher reflects her interest in the Anabaptist cultures of the Old Order German Baptist Brethren Church in Franklin County, Pennsylvania. 

Anne Perry’s A Christmas Homecoming is dedicated to those who face the unknown with courage.  This is another masterpiece of suspense set in Whitby, the Yorkshire fishing village where Count Dracula the vampire first touched English soil in the novel named for him. Log Cabin Christmas offers nine historical romances about pioneer holidays with its challenges and delights, penned by bestselling Christian authors. Unholy Night by Seth Grahame-Smith answers the question of who the three wise men were. How do we know they were three kings from the East? The author bends a little history, and weaves an epic tale. 

Debby Mayne and Trish Perry’s Love Finds You on Christmas Morning contains two stories named “‘Tis the Season” and “Deck the Halls”. In Shelley Gray’s Christmas in Sugarcreek, a secret from the past could ruin the Christmas that Judith and Ben should cherish for the rest of their lives.

Two books about food look helpful. First, The Food and Feasts of Jesus takes us inside the world of first-century fare, with menus and recipes by Douglas Neel and Joel Pugh. For example, always- appreciated fresh dates, when split with the stone removed and filled with cream cheese and an almond sliver, become very popular ”stuffed dates.”  The second kitchen book is Hunt, Gather, Cook:  Finding the Forgotten Feast by Hank Shaw. He doesn’t ask us to forgo the supermarket, but he does ask us to make more meals from basic ingredients, not pre-packaged foods, because “honest food need not be wild, but it must be made by hand and with love.”

Jim Cymbala offers Spirit Rising about tapping into the power of the Holy Spirit. Almost Amish by Nancy Sleeth is one woman’s quest for a slower, simpler, more sustainable life, making conscious choices to limit technology’s hold and get back to the basics, resulting in stronger, deeper relationships with family, friends, and God. 

Preview Shelf: New and Notable Books by CDPL Volunteer Janice Clauser

Elie Wiesel, Nobel laureate author of Night, offers a moving new novel, Hostage, about the legacy of the Holocaust in today’s troubled world and the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In 1975, a professional story teller is taken hostage, isolated, and told his life will be bartered for the freedom of three Palestinian prisoners. He tells his captors stories about his memories, especially World War II, illustrating the power of memory to connect us with the past and our shared need for resolution. 

Drawing from her career as a district attorney and TV judge, Jeanine Pirro’s debut novel Sly Fox is set in 1976 in New York City, where a young district attorney wants to bring domestic abusers to justice. Then there’s Sutton, by J. R. Moehringer, a story about the career of America’s most successful bank robber, rooted for by the public because he never fired a shot. 

A young daughter wants to escape from her parents’ ugly divorce and the cyberbullying of an ex-best friend, and her salvation comes when she loses herself in the diary of a 1920s Irish domestic writing about the same concerns in So Far Away, by Meg Moore.

Chris Bohjalian’s The Sandcastle Girls is a tale of Aleppo, Syria, in 1915 when a young nurse volunteers to help refugees from Armenian genocide; then the story switches to Bronxville, New York, in 2012 where a novelist searches his family history. Beggar’sFeast by Randy Boyagoda tells of the 100-year life of an abandoned youngster born in 1899 Ceylon, who after many adventures becomes the wealthy headman of his village. Brody, a western romance by Emma Lang, presents the year 1836 when surviving siblings are trying to put their lives back together in East Texas; their young brother disappears and the older sister follows a Texas Ranger across the state to find him.  

In Beijing in the 18^th century, the lives of three unforgettable women collide in the inner chambers of the Jia mansion; The Red Chamber is Pauline Chen’s re-imagining of the Chinese classic Dream of the Red Chamber.  In utter contrast is John Scalzi’s Redshirts, in which an Ensign has been assigned to Intrepid, flagship of the Universal Union since the year 2456. He soon finds that his mission involves lethal confrontation with alien forces. 

  

Benjamin Black’s mystery, Vengeance, starts with a very successful businessman in Ireland killing himself on his boat; the plot thickens when another, even more shocking, death occurs. In A Foreign Country, by Charles Cumming, a disgraced former MI6 officer is tasked with finding the disappeared first female Chief of the Agency; he uncovers a conspiracy which promises unimaginable repercussions for Britain and its allies.   

A woman takes part in an online study called “Marriage in the 21^st Century,” and the questions she answers anonymously force her to reconsider her whole life in Wife 22 by Melanie Gideon. Black Fridays, by Michael Sears, features a former Wall Street hotshot who made bad moves, had prison time, and is now asked to look into irregularities left by another trader who just died.   

Karen Kingsbury writes Christian stories with inspired results; her new one about the Baxter family is Coming Home. In Mitch Albom’s The Time Keeper, Father Time is banished to a cave for trying to measure God’s greatest gift; finally granted his freedom, he receives the mission to teach two earthly people the true meaning of time. 

Preview Shelf: New and Notable Books by CDPL Volunteer Janice Clauser

The One World School House: Education Reimagined comes from Salman Khan, founder of The Khan Academy, who has established free videos and software about every conceivable subject, offered free on the Internet. Khan is believed by many to be the chief innovator for successful learning in the future.   

A big new paperback available for borrowing is called World Heritage Sites, a complete guide to 936 UNESCO sites around the world.  There are 21 in the United States. Photographs capture the essence of the sites, chosen for their “outstanding universal value.” They’re part of the World Heritage Convention, adopted by the General Conference of UNESCO in Paris in 1972.

History books begin with The Course of Irish History, edited by T. W. Moody. Master of the Mountain:Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves is the result of archaeological work by Henry Wiencek. Ronald Coddington’s AfricanAmerican Faces of the Civil War is the third album in a series of previously unpublished photos of participants, many of whom won their freedom by enlisting in the Union army or navy. Munich 1972 by David Large provides the first comprehensive history of those Olympic Games when Israeli athletes died after a botched rescue mission by the German police. Bill O’Reilly’s Killing Kennedy not only tells details of the crime, but its effect on the nation. 

There are beautiful photos in Richard Sale’s A Complete Guide toArctic Wildlife and Ronald Orenstein’s Turtles,Tortoises and Terrapins: A Natural History.

Yes, China! is Clark Nielsen’s love-hate relationship as a teacher learning techniques of his profession; it’s also about life in modern China – the food, language, and customs.  In Route 66 Still Kicks, Rick Antonson drove America’s Main Street, 2,448 miles long originally, 90 percent drivable today. The author traced its history, discovering the vitality and American character still vibrant through our heartland. On the way, a truck driver told him “You’ll never understand America until you’ve driven Route 66 – that’s old Route 66 – all the way.”