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New Fiction—March  2010    Too Much Money, by Dominick Dunne From Publishers Weekly--For every striver who claws his way to the top of the moneyed heap, another must fall from grace to make room; in the work of late novelist and journalist Dunne (1925-2009), those falls are usually preceded by a vigorous shove. In his final novel, the players include grande dame Lil Altemus, banking heiress (and suspected murderess) Perla Zacharias, and flight attendant-turned-jetsetter Ruby Renthal, alongside journalist Gus Bailey (Dunne's minimally-fictionalized surrogate). A sequel to 1988's People Like Us based on Dunne's real-life experiences as a society crime writer, Dunne brings an expected level of intimacy to his unflattering look at New York's wealthiest citizens, incorporating his own spectacular Hollywood fall from grace and subsequent comeback, as well as his legal standoff with a congressman whom Dunne implicated in the disappearance of intern Chandra Levy. A fitting cap to Dunne's notable career, this novel is more parody than satire-populated by jeer-worthy caricatures hard to sympathize with-but proves to be a compulsively readable diversion, showcasing Dunne's razor wit and furious disdain for those who believe that laws apply to everyone but themselves.  Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.  Call # F Dunn     Catalyst, by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough Pilot, navigator, engineer, doctor, scientist—ship's cat? All are essential to the well-staffed space vessel. Since the early days of interstellar travel, when Tuxedo Thomas, a Maine coon cat, showed what a cat could do for a ship and its crew, the so-called Barque Cats have become highly prized crew members. Thomas's carefully bred progeny, ably assisted by humans—Cat Persons—with whom they share a deep and loving bond, now travel the galaxy, responsible for keeping spacecraft free of vermin, for alerting human crews to potential environmental hazards, and for acting as morale officers. Even among Barque Cats, Chessie is something special. Her pedigree, skills, and intelligence, as well as the close rapport she has with her human, Janina, make her the most valuable crew member aboard the Molly Daise. And the litter of kittens in her belly only adds to her value. Then the unthinkable happens. Chessie is kidnapped—er, catnapped—from Dr. Jared Vlast's vet clinic at Hood Station by a grizzled spacer named Carl Poindexter. But Chessie's newborn kittens turn out to be even more extraordinary than their mother. For while Chessie's connection to Janina is close and intuitive, the bond that the kitten Chester forms with Carl's son, Jubal, is downright telepathic. And when Chester is sent into space to learn his trade, neither he nor Jubal will rest until they're reunited. But the announcement of a widespread epidemic affecting livestock on numerous planets throws their future into doubt. Suddenly the galactic government announces a plan to impound and possibly destroy all exposed animals. Not even the Barque Cats will be spared. With the clock racing against them, Janina, Jubal, Dr. Vlast, and a handful of very special kittens will join forces with the mysterious Pshaw-Ra—an alien-looking cat with a hidden agenda—to save the Barque Cats, other animals, and quite possibly the universe as they know it from total destruction.   Call # F NcCa   The Gin Closet, by Leslie Jamison From Publishers Weekly--Starred Review. Jamison's beautifully written debut follows independent young New Yorker Stella and her estranged aunt Tilly as they form some version of a family. Stella is disenchanted with her life and job as a journalist's personal assistant; Tilly is a professional lost soul, a former prostitute, and an unsuccessful recovering alcoholic. To all appearances, Stella is the savior, finding Tilly, who's been shunned by the family, to rescue her; but through alternating first-person accounts, the reader grows to view the two women as equals. Their experiences with men especially mirror one another's; Tilly has merely had worse luck. Stella describes wanting a man, any man, who could offer his face as a label for my loneliness; later, recalling men she's been with, Tilly says, most of them I didn't even like that much, but they seemed like the easiest way to change my own life. The relationship between Stella and Tilly is compelling, as are their relationships with auxiliary characters, like Stella's brother and Tilly's son, but what truly drives the novel is Jamison's gorgeous prose. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.  Call # F Jami     Dear Strangers, by Meg Mullins From Publishers Weekly--Mullins (The Rug Merchant) creates a thematically heavy but emotionally vacant web of connections in her second novel. For siblings Oliver and Mary, a series of tragedies defines their childhood. On the same day that a neighborhood girl dies, their pathologist father also dies suddenly, leaving their mother to abandon the adoption of what would be the family's third child. Twenty-one years later, Mary, a flight attendant, maintains a safe cruising altitude above the pain and loss that, to her, characterize life. Oliver, obsessed with finding his lost brother, helps grieving families memorialize loved ones by creating video tributes to their lives. Oliver's encounter with Miranda, a beautiful young photographer-artist, is the first of a series of interactions among strangers who might become something more. Mullins's novel is an extended exploration of similar connections made and missed, but the author is more focused on driving home her ideas than developing her characters, who come across as thematic functionaries. The emotional vacuum left in the wake of Mullins's dedication to her ideas makes this a difficult book to get into.  Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.  Call # F Mull      Letter to my Daughter, by George Bishop From Publishers Weekly--This slight and gauzy novel fails to find anything new in the familiar terrain of mothers and their volatile teenage daughters. After Elizabeth storms out of the house in the wake of an argument on her 15th birthday, her mother, Laura, writes her a letter, endeavoring to tell Liz the truth about how a girl grows up by recounting her own adolescence. Laura's high school romance with Tim, a poor Cajun boy, is an act of rebellion against her intolerant parents that resulted in her transfer to a Catholic girls' school. Though Laura's relationship is a source of cruel mirth for her classmates, her correspondence with Tim continues, even as Tim ships off to Vietnam and Laura questions her devotion to her long-distance lover. Bishop's debut may be an interesting exercise in writing from the opposite gender's point of view, but most of the novel's insights into the mother-daughter relationship, and into female adolescence, have been explored innumerable times—and in more compelling ways—in countless young adult novels. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.  Call # F Bish      Plain Promise, by Beth Wiseman When best-selling novelist Beth Wiseman was introduced to the Amish, she gained an appreciation for their simple way of life and began writing love stories featuring this beloved group of people. Her first novel was the best-selling Plain Perfect. Beth and her family live in Texas.   Call # F Wise      The Brightest Star in the Sky, by Marian Keyes From Publishers Weekly--Starred Review. Keyes delivers a dizzying vertical view of the mismatched, mixed-up tenants of Dublin's 66 Star Street, friends and lovers who grow up, grow old and give way to their heart currents with help from a puckish sprite. This multitiered saga of Dubliners searching for the brightest star in the sky... the planet of love straddles slapstick and sophistication in an engaging balancing act both giddy and grand. Here's Katie, publicist, freshly 40, and her workaholic, commitment-phobic fella, Conall; newlyweds Maeve and Matt, who hide a violent and crippling secret that binds them and drives them apart; madcap, sassy Lydia, a taxi driver who juggles worries about her aging mom and an over-the-top passion (mixed with equal parts lust and disdain) for her sexy flatmate; plucked from nowhere hunk Fionn, who hopes to begin a TV career, and his psychic foster mom and her mean-as-a-snake dog who improbably helps bring all the sweet mayhem to a satisfying close. Keyes (This Charming Man) is an expert at weaving dark threads into cozy material, and in this ambitious outing, she's in top form. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.  Call # F Keye      No Wind of Blame, by Georgette Heyer The superlatively analytical Inspector Hemingway is confronted by a murder that seems impossible—no one was near the murder weapon at the time the shot was fired. Everyone on the scene seems to have a motive, not to mention the wherewithal to commit murder, and alibis that simply don't hold up. The inspector is sorely tried by a wide variety of suspects, including the neglected widow, the neighbor who's in love with her, her resentful daughter, and a patently phony Russian prince preying on the widow's emotional vulnerability and social aspirations. And then there's the blackmail plot that may—or may not—be at the heart of the case…   Call # F Heye     The Big 5-Oh!, by Sandra D. Bricker Olivia Wallace has a birthday curse . . . or so she thinks. It was a broken heart on her 16th, a car accident on her 21st, pneumonia on her 30th, and a fall down a flight of stairs on her 35th. There were Ohio blizzards on her 38th, 39th, and 40th; and six days before her 45th, she lost the love of her life to a heart attack. Numbing grief stole that birthday and a couple more to follow and, on the morning of her 48th birthday, she received the call she’d dreaded ever since losing her mom so many years ago…she was diagnosed with stage-3 ovarian cancer. The doctors didn’t hold out a lot of hope, but Liv survived and maintained her faith. Months of surgeries and chemotherapy and radiation treatments followed.   But now, as her 50th birthday creeps up the icy Ohio path toward her, her hair has grown back, her energy level is up, and she is officially cancer free. It makes her nervous. After everything she’s gone through, Liv hates the idea of driving on icy roads and returning to work as an O.R. nurse in a local Cincinnati hospital.   Her best friend Hallie knows just the thing to break Liv out of the winter doldrums, while providing a safe haven of warmth, sunshine, and a time to regroup: a holiday in the Florida sunshine!   Call # F Bric       Kitchen Chinese, by Ann Mah From Publishers Weekly--After her magazine career craters, Isabelle Lee, the narrator of Mah's super sharp debut, leaves New York to reconnect with her family roots in China. Her familiarity with the language and culture limited to kitchen Chinese, Isabelle lands a job at a magazine for the expatriate community in Beijing and finds a circle of friends. However, her relationship with her big-shot attorney sister, Claire, who's lived in China for a while, gets off to a rocky start, with the two not knowing quite what to make of each other. Isabelle's Beijing immersion, coupled with her chick lit arc, provides a refreshing and fun narrative, helped along by a fantastic heroine whose insights into modern China and the expatriate experience will intrigue readers. It's a great start for a writer with much promise. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.   Call # F Mah

New NonFiction—March  2010     Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Women’s Rights Movement, by Sally G. McMillen From Publishers Weekly--Starred Review. McMillen, who chairs the history department at Davidson College, presents a fine history of the 1848 Seneca Falls convention, which galvanized the women's movement through the remainder of the 19th century and also affected concurrent struggles for temperance, abolition and educational reform. Narrowing her focus to four suffragists—Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony and Lucy Stone—McMillen nimbly weaves their stories with the larger narrative of reform. After a splendid introductory chapter that outlines the legal injustices most women suffered (typically, they could not vote, hold property or receive equal pay for their work), McMillen describes the convention itself, about which we know relatively little (Stanton gave it just two sentences in her mammoth memoir) and then traces its unexpectedly weighty impact on reformers through the decades. She does an outstanding job of discussing how religion functioned as both an impetus and an obstacle to reform, and pays particular attention to how the women's movement broke apart during Reconstruction because of internal bickering, racism and class divisions. This is not a revisionist work or a substantial challenge to the conventional historiography of suffrage, but a well-written and cogent synthesis accessible to the general reader while remaining firmly grounded in primary sources. 20 b&w illus. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.  Call # 305.42 McMi      Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, by Tim Weiner From Publishers Weekly--Starred Review. Is the Central Intelligence Agency a bulwark of freedom against dangerous foes, or a malevolent conspiracy to spread American imperialism? A little of both, according to this absorbing study, but, the author concludes, it is mainly a reservoir of incompetence and delusions that serves no one's interests well. Pulitzer Prize–winning New York Times correspondent Weiner musters extensive archival research and interviews with top-ranking insiders, including former CIA chiefs Richard Helms and Stansfield Turner, to present the agency's saga as an exercise in trying to change the world without bothering to understand it. Hypnotized by covert action and pressured by presidents, the CIA, he claims, wasted its resources fomenting coups, assassinations and insurgencies, rigging foreign elections and bribing political leaders, while its rare successes inspired fiascoes like the Bay of Pigs and the Iran-Contra affair. Meanwhile, Weiner contends, its proper function of gathering accurate intelligence languished. With its operations easily penetrated by enemy spies, the CIA was blind to events in adversarial countries like Russia, Cuba and Iraq and tragically wrong about the crucial developments under its purview, from the Iranian revolution and the fall of communism to the absence of Iraqi WMDs. Many of the misadventures Weiner covers, at times sketchily, are familiar, but his comprehensive survey brings out the persistent problems that plague the agency. The result is a credible and damning indictment of American intelligence policy.  Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.   Call # 327.12 Wein     Succulent Container Gardens, by Debra Lee Baldwin With their colorful leaves, sculptural shapes, and simple care, succulents are beautiful yet forgiving plants for pots. If grown in containers, these dry-climate jewels-which include but are not limited to cacti-can be brought indoors in winter and so can thrive anywhere in the world. In this inspiring compendium, the popular author of Designing with Succulents provides everything beginners and experienced gardeners need to know to create stunning container displays of exceptionally waterwise plants. The extensive palette includes delicate sedums, frilly echeverias, cascading senecios, edgy agaves, and fat-trunked beaucarneas, to name just a few. Easy-to-follow, expert tips explain soil mixes, overwintering, propagation, and more. Define your individual style as you effectively combine patterns, colors, textures, and forms. Discover how top designers interpret the dramatic options, in ideas ranging from exquisite plant-and-pot combinations to extraordinary topiaries and bonsai. Expand your repertoire with plump-leaved plants that resemble pebbles, stars, and undersea creatures. Short on space? Create vertical gardens and hanging baskets, and use daisylike rosettes in wall displays. Each of the more than 300 photographs offers an inspiring idea. A-to-Z descriptions cover 350 of the best succulents, plus companion plants. Whether your goal is a gorgeous potted garden for a sunny windowsill or outdoor living area-or simply making great gifts-this is a comprehensive primer for creating vibrant, living works of art.   Call # 635.9525 Bald      Living a Charmed Life, by Victoria Moran Bestselling author Victoria Moran's Living a Charmed Life presents fifty action-inspiring essays that show us how to custom craft our very own blessed lives. Covering topics such as living richly, staying close to what makes you come alive, and being completely, utterly yourself, Moran emphasizes that this kind of happiness is possible for anyone of any age in any circumstance. Living a charmed life is your birthright, one that you can start to claim as soon as you take to heart—and put into action—the practical and spiritual tips you'll find here. These lucky charms, honed from Victoria's own life experiences, will elevate your attitude, change the way you see yourself, and help you to improve every aspect of your life including your health, relationships, finances, and peace of mind—even in challenging times. In this fresh, inspiring book, Victoria Moran gives you the tools and techniques you need to start living your own charmed life now.  Call # 158.1  Mora      Secrets of the Lost Symbol, by John Michael Greer Secrets of the Lost Symbol is an essential resource for Dan Brown fans who want to know the facts behind the fiction.   From Abramelin the Mage to the Zohar, this encyclopedic unofficial companion guide to The Lost Symbol uncovers the forgotten histories of arcane traditions that have shaped—and still inhabit—our modern world.    Discover the truth about Freemasonry—a major theme in Brown's best-selling novel—including its rituals, temples, and infamous members such as the legendary Albert Pike. Get the real story behind the Rosicrucians, the Temple of Solomon, and ancient occult rites.   Call # 813.54 Gree      At the Corner of Music Row and Memory Lane, by Stan Hitchcock This book is a real life adventure, written by Stan Hitchcock, with no ghostwriter, no co-writer just life of an entertainer as he lived it. Stan is known as a recording artist, songwriter, a television personality and Network TV founder and has traveled with the greats of country music performing worldwide and come out with great stories of the glory years from 1959 to 2009. Find out what life on the road is really like and get to know the heroes of country music as you've never known it before. In this journey you will hear the stories of Mel Tillis, Tammy Wynette, Red Foley, Roy Acuff, Little Jimmy Dickens and other legends as they forged a business out of their music. You'll travel the back roads to gigs in the early years with Loretta Lynn, Ernest Tubb, Stringbean, Lefty Frizzell, Bobby Bare and more. The stories will make you laugh out loud and then cry just as easily. You will have an insight into the bare beginnings of country music...and travel to the height of it on a crooked road that has never been documented with such insight and delightful description. Stan was there when it happened! There are few people in the country music industry who have the perspective of being actively involved in it's history from 1959 through 2009. For 50 years Stan Hitchcock has been the young kid with the greats, a buddy of the superstars and the media mogul shaping the careers of the up and coming kids who needed to be presented to the video generation. His personal talent includes a list of chart records from 1964 to 1982, then his entry into television with The Stan Hitchcock Show series from 1966 to 1972. Afterwards the start-up of CMT, Americana Television Network (ATN) and BlueHighways TV all through the 80's, 90's and to the present day round out most of a lifetime spent in the pursuit of adventures in music. This book is a personal backstage pass into that adventure. You're invited to pick up your guitar and play along.   Call # 781.642 Hitc      How God Changes Your Brain, by Andrew Newberg From Publishers Weekly--Over the past decade or so, numerous studies have suggested that prayer and meditation can enhance physical health and healing from illness. In this stimulating and provocative book, two academics at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Spirituality and the Mind contend that contemplating God actually reduces stress, which in turn prevents the deterioration of the brain's dendrites and increases neuroplasticity. The authors conclude that meditation and other spiritual practices permanently strengthen neural functioning in specific parts of the brain that aid in lowering anxiety and depression, enhancing social awareness and empathy, and improving cognitive functioning. The book's middle section draws on the authors' research on how people experience God and where in the brain that experience might be located. Finally, the authors offer exercises for enhancing physical, mental and spiritual health. Their suggestions are commonsensical and common to other kinds of health regimens: smile, stay intellectually active, consciously relax, yawn, meditate, exercise aerobically, dialogue with others and trust in your beliefs. Although the book's title is a bit misleading, since it is not God but spiritual practice that changes the brain, this forceful study could stir controversy among scientists and philosophers. Illus.   Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.  Call # 612.8 Newb      The Wanderer: The Last American Slave Ship and the Conspiracy that Set Its Sails, by Erik Calonius From Publishers Weekly--The slave trade became illegal in the U.S. in 1808, but for half a century after that, a black market in chattel slavery thrived. In his first book, former Newsweek correspondent Calonius tells the fascinating, heartbreaking story of the last slave ship to dock on these shores, in 1858, the Wanderer. Originally built as a sugar baron's racing yacht, it was outfitted, as the New York Times reported, for "comfort and luxury." But a trio of greedy proslavery radicals, known as "fire-eaters," transformed her from plaything to slaver: deck planks and inner framing were removed and iron tanks inserted. Then the ship headed to Africa, and eventually returned to Georgia's Jekyll Island with its human cargo. (En route, 80 Africans died.) Calonius charts the subsequent media outcry and trials, and follows the Wanderer's history through the Civil War, when, in a delectably just turn of events, the U.S. government seized the ship and turned it into a Union gunboat. This is fast-paced narrative history, and Calonius has a terrific eye for atmospheric details. Still, one wishes he had provided more analysis of the larger themes in Southern, American and Atlantic history that this tragic episode illumines.  Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.  Call # 973.711 Calo      More Than a Game:  The Glorious Present and the Uncertain Future of the NFL, by Brian Billick with Michael MacCambridge From Publishers Weekly--Billick, the former longtime coach of the Baltimore Ravens, presents what at first appears to be a gloomy treatise on the future of the NFL. He argues that the organization's unresolved collective-bargaining agreement is threatening to alter pro football as we know it in 2011, and Billick sees the time before then as a pitched battle for the soul of football. Thankfully, the book mostly eschews this potentially preachy stance, as Billick details the workings of professional football, both on and off the field. Among the more interesting tidbits: free agency is a crapshoot for teams because football is much more interdependent than other sports, while despite all of the analysis and preparation for the NFL draft, many teams essentially go with their gut feelings when choosing players. Billick also examines the difficulties of being a head coach, who has to find a rhythm that fits his personality. He even breaks down the increasing complexity of offensive and defensive schemes in the NFL. Billick, with the help of numerous interviews and humorous anecdotes, emerges as an authoritative, affable guide. The book may lack focus (is it investigative, a treatise on the future of football or a collection of Billick's professional memories?), but the Super Bowl–winning coach's keen observations and informed opinions will engage any football fan. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.   Call #  976.332 Bill      Why My Third Husband will be a Dog, by Lisa Scottoline From Publishers Weekly--Brief, punchy slices of daily life originally published in her Philadelphia Inquirer column allow novelist Scottoline (Everywhere That Mary Went) to dish on men, mothers, panty lines and, especially, dogs. Somewhere in her mid-50s, twice divorced (from men she calls Thing One and Thing Two) and living happily in the burbs with her recent college-graduate daughter and a passel of pets, Scottoline maintains a frothy repartee with the reader as she discusses ways she would redecorate the White House (Cupholders for all!), relies on her built-in Guilt-O-Meter to get dreaded tasks done (a broken garbage disposal rates only a 1, while accumulating late fees at the library rates a 7) and contemplates, while making a will, who will get her cellulite. For some quick gags, Scottoline brings in various family members: mother Mary, a whippersnapper at 4'11 who lives in South Beach with her gay son, Scottoline's brother Frank, and possesses a coveted back-scratcher; and her Harvard-educated daughter, Francesca. Plunging into home improvement frenzy, constructing a chicken coop, figuring out mystifying insurance policies and how not to die at the gym are some of the conundrums this ordinary woman faces with verve and wicked humor, especially how her beloved dogs have contentedly replaced the romance in her life.    Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.  Call # 814.54 Scot   Best Sellers (Top 150 Bestsellers, USA Today) Bookclub at KET Book Browser List of Bests- Books, Films, Music Top of Page

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