Preview Shelf -- Native American Place Names in Indiana

Native Michael McCafferty, graduate of Crawfordsville High School, has made a donation to the Crawfordsville District Public Library collection. His new book, "Native American Place Names in Indiana" focuses on "labels" created and used by local Native Americans in our own state, named for "the land of the Indians". Creatively organized to follow our major river systems so important to native people, it is praised both as a history book and a reference work. Some archival data is published here for the first time. The son of Margy and David McCafferty thinks the two Miami-Illinois Indian names for Sugar Creek could have been in use in the 1700s before its French labels. He recognizes that the Indians' use of their terms for Sugar (Maple Tree River) Creek honored the abundance of that plant (tree) in the area. McCafferty is an Algonquian and Uto-Aztecan linguist and faculty member at Indiana University. The mystery "The Lace Reader" by Brunonia Barry says that staring at a piece of lace blurs the vision into seeing (secrets?) between what's real and what's imagined. Faye Kellerman's Decker and Lazarus novel "The Mercedes Coffin", a cold case, turns hot as a years-later murder reflects an old one because "there it plenty of greed, lust, and evil to connect the dots." "Exit Music" by Jan Rankin finds an about-to-retire detective in Edinburgh reluctantly involved in the murder of a dissident Russian poet. Harlan Coben's "Fade Away" is a Myron Bolitar novel that unveils the strange, violent life of a sports hero gone wrong. In the novel "Silks" by Dick and Felix Francis a defense lawyer/amateur jockey finds a fellow racer murdered and a champion jockey is accused. "Sister's Choice" is Emilie Richards' Shenandoah Album novel full of emotions that finds one sister offering to design a house and be surrogate mother for the other's baby to atone for a past mistake. "Fractured" by Karin Slaughter begins when a teenager in the finest neighborhood of Atlanta is murdered in her bedroom and her mother kills the daughter's attacker with her bare hands. "It Only Takes a Moment" by Mary Clark grabs the reader when a news show's daughter is snatched from summer camp and the news team bands together to outwit the criminal who threatens to snuff out the little girl's life. "Stand the Storm" by Breena Clarks writes about a former slave family's work in Washington's Georgetown neighborhood producing uniforms for Union soldiers, and their daughters' risk of becoming the property of their former master. "The Manning Brides" by Debbie Macomber consists of two stories about two couples told as a sequel to her "The Manning Sisters". In the woods of Montana a sinister mass murderer is attacking victims in "Left to Die" by Lisa Jackson. Two new books about food are Lorna Sass' "Whole Grains Every Day Every Way" with 150 recipes for soups, salads, main courses, side dishes, and desserts and "Serving Up the Harvest" that celebrates the goodness of fresh vegetables in 175 recipes like baked egg rolls, soups, slaws, red-cooked, and "comfort food" haluska, all made using cabbage. Two authors are writing about the same nation in "The Man Who Loved China" (Joseph Needham) by Simon Winchester and "Lost on Planet China" frolicking through the huge cities and the hinterlands) by Maarten Troost. Here's some history. Joseph Ellis writes of the triumphs and tragedies at the founding of the United States in "American Creation". Sally McMillen offers "Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Women's Rights Movement".