Monday, March 13, 2006

Preview Shelf -- Celebrate St. Patrick's Day at CDPL

From 3:30 to 4:30 on March 17, the Crawfordsville District Public Library youth services program room will welcome you for music, Celtic tales, and crafts. Kathy Fredrickson will tell stories, and traditional Irish foods and songs will be offered. All ages are invited and no registration is required for the drop-in celebration.

Here are books recently requested by patrons. P. D. James' The Lighthouse is her latest Adam Dalgliesh mystery. It takes place on Combe Island off the Cornish coast where tired high-achieving people can rest with complete protection. Naturally the plot contradicts this, and one distinguished visitor is found hanging from the landmark island's sign.

The Sisters Mortland by Sally Beauman is their friend's challenge to find them 20 years after their now-famous portrait was painted in rural Suffolk. Every Breath You Take by Judith McNaught, dubbed the Queen of Hearts by People magazine, visits Chicago high society to solve the disappearance of a rich philanthropist's grandson. Just Rewards by Barbara Bradford is the final adventure in a series that began with A Woman of Substance and brings the idea of strong women full circle.

There are three new Young Adult novels. Under the Jolly Roger by L. A. Meyer is a Bloody Jack adventure, the third in a series about Mary Jacky Faber, a young woman who goes to sea after running away from a Boston girls' school. The Faery Reel by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling is a new anthology of fantasy fiction that is edgy, provocative, and thoroughly magical, like…faeries themselves. Your Eyes in Stars by M. E. Kerr is about an inmate who plays Taps in prison every night, thrilling the local town, and about a rich prep school student who doesn't thrill the town.

Gregory Maguire's Son of a Witch is another tale of Oz, issued ten years after Wicked (also available at the library) when a young boy Liir must solve puzzles in his land being governed by a dangerous new management group. In The Cat Who Dropped a Bombshell by Lilian Braun, her 28th Cat Who mystery, the scene is the 150th anniversary of the founding of the town called Pickax.

The supernatural novel Shadowed: The Final Judgment by Jerry Jenkins (who writes the Left Behind series) takes place 37 years after the end of World War III. A double agent serves the underground of people of faith in an atheistic world, while sworn to prosecute them. He and his family try to elude capture in this conclusion to the series called Soon. A woman's friends are her greatest gift… says the cover of Fern Michaels' Vendetta. Six longtime friends unite to insure that the seemingly exempt playboy murderer of their seventh friend's daughter is punished.

New nonfiction requests are ready for borrowing. Jesus the One and Only is Beth Moore's up-close and personal portrait of the life of Jesus the Messiah. The same author's story of the apostle Paul is called To Live is Christ. Sharon Rocha's For Laci is a tribute to her well-known lost daughter, who was 27 years old when murdered by her husband, Scott Peterson. The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan is the story of the Great American Dust Bowl during the Depression, focusing on six families and their communities that survived. My Friend Leonard by James Frey is is devoted to his best friend who saved his life and who has more invested in their friendship than James could ever imagine.

President Jimmy Carter's assessment of our country today is called Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis. The Devil's Horn is the story of the saxophone by player and music lover Michael Segell. He writes that this instrument is inseparable from bebop and cool, yet its history has been anything but smooth. Rachael Ray's 365: No Repeats offers a year of 365 different dinners in a 30-minute meal cookbook.

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