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Labels: counterfeiters, history, Science Writing, Sir Isaac Newton, True Crime

Labels: Locus Awards, science fiction

Labels: Awards, Royal Society, Science Writing

Labels: crime novels, forensics, Mysteries, Ridley Pearson

Labels: My Next Good Book, Roman Empire - fiction, zoos - fiction

I read an author interview and profile of Carla Neggers this morning, June 24, in Fresh Fiction News, an online newsletter. It struck me that most of Carla's 50 plus books of romantic suspense would make great summer reads!
In her last book, The Angel, Carla tuned in to the current vogue for the paranormal by introducing ancient celtic myth and a stone angel said to come alive.
Find this book in our catalog.

Plot summary from our catalog: "On a remote stretch of the rugged coast of Ireland, folklorist and illustrator Keira Sullivan pursues the mysterious Irish legend of an ancient Celtic stone angel. As she searches an isolated ruin, she's certain she's discovered the mythic angel, but before she can examine her find, she senses a malevolent presence. Is someone in there with her? Then the ruin collapses, trapping her. Keira's uncle, a Boston homicide detective, enlists the help of Simon Cahill to find his missing niece. Simon, an expert with Fast Rescue, a rapid-response search-and-rescue organization, is trying to keep a low profile after secretly assisting in the takedown of a major criminal network, but he rushes to Ireland, pulling Keira out of the rubble just as she's about to free herself. Simon isn't interested in myths or magic, nor is he surprised when Keira can't find a trace of her stone angel. He doesn't believe it exists. But the gruesome evidence of a startling act of violence convinces him that whatever she found in the ruin, the danger she faces is real. When the violence follows them to Boston - and escalates - Simon and Keira realize that the long-forgotten story that has captivated her has also aroused a killer: a calculating predator who will certainly kill again.

The Mist, Carla Neggers latest book is to come out shortly. Find this book in our catalog Read more on Carla Neggers' website.

Labels: Angel, Carla Neggers, celtic myths - fiction, Paranormal Romance, romantic suspense, summer reading

This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life, by David Foster Wallace Find this book in our catalog

Author David Foster Wallace recently passed away tragically in 2008, but his commencement speech to the graduating students of Kenyon College in 2005 preserves something of his integrity and ideals and offers much to us, who were not there to hear his message ourselves. Wallace defines in just a few words the utter importance of a liberal arts education, explaining that such an education bestows upon a student not so much the capacity to think, as the ability to choose what to think about. The difference is keen and of the utmost importance. If we, wrapped up in our everyday world, choose to step outside of our own lives and consider others around us, if we in our day-to-day lives choose to experience not so much our own egocentricity as the possibility of another’s self, we just might understand the essence of compassion. He argues for the importance of freedom, but freedom of a special kind, one we may not have considered before – the freedom to be aware of, to pay attention to, and truly to care about those around us, especially those whom we do not know, the everyday, anonymous human beings, who pass us by without our ever really noticing them, much less caring about them. What makes all the difference is truly seeing them and in this way feeling compassion for them. Wallace’s message is clear and succinct. We are fortunate to have it preserved for us to carry with us from this day on.

Submitted by D. L. S.

Labels: about Living a Compassionate Life, compassion, David Foster Wallace, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, education, From Slavery to Freedom, This Is Water: Some Thoughts

Gerhard L. Weinberg has won the $100,000 Pritzker Military Library
Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing. Read more of the official announcement made June 22.

Labels: Gerhard L., military history, Weinberg, World At Arms, World War II - history

My Sister's Keeper, based on the novel by Jodi Picoult (Find this book in our catalog) opens this Friday, June 26. Shelf Awareness for today, Monday, June 22 had this to say about the movie: "A young girl (Abigail Breslin) who has never questioned her role as bone marrow donor for her older sister (Sofia Vassilieva), who has leukemia, starts to crave medical independence. Cameron Diaz and Jason Patric play the sisters' distraught parents; also includes Alec Baldwin and Joan Cusack."

Labels: books to movies, Cheri, Colette, Jodi Picoult, leukemia - fiction, My Sister's Keeper, sisters - fiction

I have been seeing lots of recommendations for summer reading in my e-mail newsletters, professional journals, pop culture magazines, on TV and radio, etc.

Here is a selection of sites you can go to to find something good to read on the beach, or curled up in the air-conditioning on some non-sticky-making couch!

On Morning Edition on June 11, 3 booksellers explained their summer reading choices to Susan Stamberg.
On Morning Edition on NPR this morning (June 19), librarian Nancy Pearl picked her Summer's Best Books and told us why.
The New York Times Book Review for June 19 has The Girls of Summer, a survey of the season's women's fiction.
The Wall Street Journal for May 23 published its The Summer Booklist by Cynthia Crossen.
EW.com has a list 92 In the Shade: books for summer reading.

For summer reading suggestions from your own HCPL librarians, see Readers Place.

Labels: summer reading lists

Labels: literary thrillers, Shakespeare - fiction

The Little Stranger, by Sarah Waters
Find this book in our catalog
Hundreds Hall is a stately manor house, long occupied by the Ayres family. It is a presence and in a way an absence as well in the countryside surrounding it. While it has occupied the lush farmland in the Midlands of England for centuries, it remains inaccessible to the common folk of the surrounding countryside, unless, of course, one is a servant working there. And so it is that Dr. Faraday enters Hundreds, to wait on an ill servant. Faraday, a middle-aged bachelor physician of an only mildly successful practice, has longed to be part of Hundreds, to possess it, since he first saw it at the age of ten, as a guest during a fête. Then he was so taken with the then-beautiful house that he pried a decorative plaster acorn from the wall and secreted it away with him. He has not entered the hall since, until this day, thirty years later, in 1947.

On this first visit, he meets the Ayres family – Mrs. Ayres, her son, Roderick, injured in World War II, and her elder daughter, Caroline. This first encounter also acquaints him with Betty, the shy servant girl, who first hints that something is not right with the house. But what? The house is perfect to Dr. Faraday, who clearly loves the place, even in its now-shabby, run-down state, with overgrown gardens and sagging ceilings.

As he becomes more acquainted with the family, though, he finds that something indeed is wrong. Strange, dangerous things begin to happen. Gyp, the old, gentle family dog, attacks a child, unprovoked. Mysterious brown smudges appear on Roderick’s study walls. His room catches afire, nearly killing him. A speaking tube connecting the closed-off nursery above whistles inexplicably in the connecting kitchen. A knocking sound in the walls leads the residents from room to room on a kind of chase. Footsteps patter in the hallway outside the nursery. Are there natural, logical explanations for all of these odd events? Or is there something else amiss, perhaps emanating from the long departed sister, Susan, who has died years before of diphtheria. Mrs. Ayres seems to think that Susan has come back and whispers words of longing to her, but Faraday, in his scientific logic, sees only madness in these odd reports of unexplained manifestations. While he asserts his clear-headed thoughts, though, the family suffers slow destruction.

Around all of these eerie events and devastating sorrows swirls increasing uncertainty. With the Ayreses clearly out of place in this new world of Labor government and fading family fortunes, their future remains uncertain. But so too does Dr. Faraday feel uncertainty in his profession, as it moves towards the approaching National Health system; in his social position as he longs for that which he cannot have – Hundreds Hall; and finally in his assessment of the Ayres family itself: Are they mad, haunted, even cursed? Is there a force of evil present at Hundreds? Or is it all only the further shift of an old family of good standing to a blurred and faded future of destruction?

Submitted by D. L. S.

Labels: Little Stranger, Sarah Waters

The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the world's richest literary prize, was recently awarded from an international longlist of 147 titles, nominated by libraries around the world, to Man Gone Down by Michael Thomas.

Labels: African-American fiction, IMPAC Award, Man Gone Down, Michael Thomas

I saw this morning, both in the Baltimore Sun and in Shelf Awarenes, an e-mail book trade newsletter I subscribe to, that Season 2 of HBO's "True Blood" series debuts this Sunday. According to USA Today, "Series 2 roughly follows Harris's second novel, Living Dead in Dallas," and is "about vampires gingerly entering society after the discovery of synthetic blood eliminates the need--if not always the desire--to feed on humans." Find this book in our catalog

Labels: Vampires-fiction series

Labels: Africa-mysteries, India-Mysteries, Most Private Investigators Ltd, No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, Precious Ramotswe, Vish Puri

The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times, by Jennifer Worth Find this book in our catalog

Jennifer Worth practiced midwifery in some of the poorest sections of London in the 1950s, providing services to women, many of whom could not or would not otherwise seek medical care in a hospital. Deliveries were done at home, often in a questionable environment, made safer and cleaner through the work of the sturdy, tenacious midwife. Worth examines not just the history of the practice of midwifery in the 20th century, but also the social conditions that made this such a necessary medical service for women in order to spare their health and ensure the safe delivery of their children. Along the way, she reveals something of life in Nonnatus House, with the Midwives of St. Raymund Nonnatus, a mixture of nuns and laywomen, whose professionalism and dedication added a stabilizing force to the lives of the women in the surrounding London neighborhoods.
She opens the door to some very colorful and memorable characters – both pregnant women using the services of the midwives and the women practicing midwifery, making this a book that is at once entertaining and sometimes harrowing.

Submitted by D. L. S.

Labels: Jennifer Worth, London - 1950s, Midwife, midwifery, social conditions - London

The National Book Festival is due back in September. Click here for the official site listing events, supporters, sponsors and authors engaged so far.

This 9th annual festival put on by The Library of Congress on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. will again feature over 70 American authors, illustrators and poets making presentations throughout the day in Children, Teens & Children, Fiction & Mystery, History & Biography, Home & Family, and Poetry pavilions.

Mark your calendars for Saturday, September 26, 2009.

Labels: National Book Festival

A book about human waste doesn't sound too interesting, but Rose George's examination of the subject is a real eye-opener. She travels to many countries and interviews those in the waste disposal/sanitation business, as well as villagers, politicians and more. She talks to experts and users and illustrates the plight of many third world countries where the need for clean water cannot be separated from the need for adequate sanitation. Her chapters on American sewage treatment and the use of biosolids on American farmers' fields will certainly make you sit up & take notice. This is a well written, interesting and informative book. It is both entertaining and thought provoking.

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. With irreverence and pungent detail, George (A Life Removed) breaks the embarrassed silence over the economic, political, social and environmental problems of human waste disposal. Full of fascinating facts about the evolution of material culture as influenced by changing mores of disgust and decency (the popularity of high-heeled shoes dates back to the time when chamber pots were emptied into the streets)—the book shows how even advanced technology doesn't always meet basic needs: using toilet paper is shockingly unhygienic and millions of government-built latrines in developing countries have been turned into goat sheds and spare rooms due to poor design, a lack of regular water supply or simply because the subsidized (and expensive) cement and stone structures are often more appealing than the village huts. George explores how discussions on the importance of clean drinking water and the eradication of infectious diseases euphemistically address how to handle human waste. From the depths of the world's oldest surviving urban sewers in to Japan's robo-toilet revolution, George leads an intrepid, erudite and entertaining journey through the public consequences of this most private behavior. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Read about Ms. George on her website at:
http://rosegeorge.com/site/about/

If this subject interests you, another book to read is one that is lighter in tone and often funny.

Flushed: How the Plumber Saved Civilization by W. Hodding Carter.

From Publishers Weekly
Though it's a pretty safe bet that the only people who pick up this book will be those who are interested in sewage, the author's easy humor, average homeowner's point-of-view, and excitement for his subject should ensnare the casual browser. The book's also extensive: Carter, a history and nature author, discusses water-delivery and sewage systems from the height of Rome to the sewers of London to present-day Boston. Anecdotes and interviews pair well with thorough history and technical explanation, and Carter reserves a chapter to discuss the plumber himself: his profession, his training, and why, in the case of a nuclear holocaust, plumbers "will be our knights in droopy jeans." Though he can be a little too loose with the toilet-humor (chapter 12 is called "The Power of Poop"), his populist, live-and-in-color approach could make this a crossover hit.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
"Witty, enlightening, and just plain fun to read."
-- Minneapolis Star Tribune

Labels: disease, Flushed: How the Plumber Saved Civilization, plumbing, Rose George, sanitation, The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why it Matters, toilets, W. Hodding Carter

Home by Marilynne Robinson (Find this book in our catalog) was the judges' unanimous choice for this year's £30,000 (US$48,893) Orange Prize for best novel written by a woman, which was recently announced in a ceremony at London's Royal Festival Hall.

Labels: clergy - fiction, domestic fiction, Marilynne Robinson, Orange Prize

Grace After Midnight: A Memoir, by Felicia “Snoop� Pearson and David Ritz. Find this book in our catalog

If you like celebrity memoirs, you may still want to approach this one with a degree of trepidation. Felicia Pearson played Snoop in The Wire, and in real life she was pretty much the same as on screen, even down to her nickname “Snoop.� Born a crack baby in Baltimore City, Pearson was raised by a loving foster family, but her neighborhood was too great an influence to keep her safe from drugs and violence. Becoming a dealer herself, she felt she was prospering in her own distorted way, but when she killed a woman, she landed in prison for several years. Serving time in prison and the death of some of those close to her led Snoop to an epiphany about her life and the direction she was headed. That and one break would make all the difference. Grace after Midnight reveals a life of hardship and bad choices but also what can come, when finally that left-for-lost person gets the opportunity she needs, that one break that leads a lost person to a far better life.

Submitted by D. L. S.

Labels: David Ritz, Felicia “Snoop� Pearson, Grace After Midnight, Memoirs, street life, The Wire

The independent publisher, Midnight Ink has developed somewhat of a reputation for the high number of cozy mystery writers it features in its catalog. Diehard cozy fans might enjoy visiting the Inkspot blog, where several Midnight Ink authors regularly post about writing, their books, and topics of general interest to book lovers.

The hallmark of a cozy is that it's fun. From the novels of Agatha Christie to Murder, She Wrote, cozy mysteries have won over generations of readers with their amateur sleuths, humor, and enjoyable plots. A cozy is a light mystery without significant blood or gore. A body is found but we don't witness the actual murder. The sleuth is often an amateur caught up by circumstances into solving the crime. The important thing is that at the end justice should be seen to be done and balance is returned to the world. Readers often take pleasure in the puzzle to be solved and the intriguing or eccentric characters and setting.

Despite their name, cozy mysteries do not need to be read in front of a roaring fire, but also make great beach reads.

Here are some recent cozies in Harford County Public Library for you this summer:
Handbags and homicide / Dorothy Howell
The anteater of death : a Gunn Zoo mystery / Betty Webb
Paper, scissors, death : a Kiki Lowenstein scrap-n-craft mystery / Joanna Campbell Slan
Murder walks the plank : a death on demand mystery / Carolyn Hart

Labels: cozy mysteries, Inkspot, murder

The Soul of Medicine: Tales from the Bedside, by Sherwin B. Nuland Find this book in our catalog

Sherwin Nuland, a clinical professor of surgery, has years of experience as a physician and as a professor. Over that time, he has collected stories from other physicians about their experiences in and insights into the profession of medicine and the treatment of patients. He gathers here a selection of stories in which colleagues relate their more memorable experiences, as he puts it, in a kind of Canterbury Tales of medicine. Each story reveals some poignancy and great insight. Not all the tales reveal physician heroism; in fact, some show the reader uncomfortable revelations about the not so impressive character of some physicians. Most, however, are tales of thoughtful, careful, caring physicians, who interact with their patients in the best, most noble of ways of doing all they can to serve their patients, heal them, and even save their lives.

Submitted by D. L. S.

Labels: medicine, physicians - personal narratives, Sherwin B. Nuland, Soul of Medicine

May 27th, 2009 it was announced that Alice Munro had won the 2009 Man Booker International Prize for fiction. The Canadian short story writer was the third writer to win the prize. See the official announcement for more details.

The prize is awarded every two years. Unlike the annual Booker, which recognizes a single work of fiction in English, the International Prize is awarded for an entire body of work and is open to writers from around the world. The first International Prize was went to Albanian writer Ismail Kadare in 2005; Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe won it in 2007.

Munro has a new collection of stories coming out in November in the US: Too Much Happiness: Stories.

These are some of Munro's works available in Harford County Public Library:
Runaway
The View from Castle Rock
Hateship, friendship, courtship, loveship, marriage
The Love of a Good Woman

See also Readers Place for a list of short story collections by other writers.

Labels: Alice Munro, Man Booker International Prize, Short Stories

One of the benefits of being a librarian is that you sometimes come across a book you would never have looked for & it turns out to be really good. Public radio reporter Algeo has written an excellent book that takes the reader back to the 1950s & the end of the Truman presidency. In June of 1953, a few months after he left office, Harry & Bess set off on a road trip that took them from Missouri to Washington, New York & Pennsylvania, & back to Missouri. They had no secret service detail & they were trying to travel anonymously. As Algeo follows their route he regales us with entertaining, interesting & informative facts, from politics, local culture, history & much much more. This is definitely a story about people though, not dry facts, & the reader learns such a lot - Harry did not even have a president's pension when he set out on his trip, he and Bess had returned to the same house they had lived in before his presidency, in Independence, Missouri, he loved cars & liked to speed & often took walks. Whatever your political affiliation this is a book about a time past, when a farmer could become a president & when the role of ex-president was a lot different than it is today. It is not a history book but a reflection of two lives, of their stories, of those they meet, & of the time & place of a past era.
As Algeo says "The story of their trip, then, is the story of life in America in 1953, a time of unbridled optimism and unmitigated cold war fear. It is also the story of the monumental changes that have occurred since then."

Matthew Algeo's book website
http://www.trumanroadtrip.com/page/page/6814760.htm

"While presidential biographies by David McCullough and Edmund Morris might be likened to Beethoven symphonies in their magisterial sweep, 'Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure' resonates Aaron Copeland's 'Fanfare for the Common Man' - brassy, bright, energetic, brief and declaratively American."
Washington Times

Labels: 1950s, Bess Truman, Harry Truman, Harry Truman's Excellent Adventure, road trip

Scribbling the Cat: Travels with an African Soldier by Alexandra Fuller (Find this book in our catalog)

Alexandra Fuller, best known for her memoir of a childhood in Africa during the Chimurenga War in Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight (Find this book in our catalog), returns to Africa after a sojourn of several years in Wyoming with her American husband and their children. While visiting her parents in Zambia, she meets K., a white former Rhodesian/Zimbabwean. K. is a seasoned soldier from what might have been one of the most brutal wars in modern history, the Mozambican Civil War, lasting from 1977 until 1992. K. is a damaged man, a brute haunted by his own brutality. When Fuller meets him, he is the owner of a banana plantation near her parents’ fish farm. Despite his new profession as a farmer, he is still very much dogged by the ghosts of his past crimes and mortal sins. Even his conversion to evangelical Christianity has not soothed his tortured soul. Perhaps God has forgiven him his sins, but K. has not done so for himself, and for good reason, since it might be difficult to forgive oneself for such great evils done in the past.

When Fuller suggests that K. travel back to Mozambique, with her as company, he hesitates for only a brief time. While he revisits the country where he had committed his greatest sins, the journey could serve as a way of releasing him from the lingering guilt that consumes him. For K.’s part, he sees the possibility of Fuller’s staying with him, since he suspects God has sent her to him as a life partner. Delusion abounds.

The journey to and within Mozambique takes them not only through a land of lush beauty but also through the memories of a tortured man. As Fuller and K. get farther into Mozambique, K. reveals more and more of his actions in the war, actions that make it hard to like him or even to have sympathy for him. Yet Fuller has far more compassion for her fellow human beings, seeing the victims of war to be not just civilians or those fighting for independence or for the integrity of their new country, but also those who fought the war on the other side.

The outcome of the journey is not surprising: no real resolution follows. What is surprising is what and who Fuller and K. meet on the way, and how despite great evil, a land can still provided breathtaking beauty and serenity, while a people can still find room for forgiveness, even if that forgiveness remains hard to find.

Submitted by D. L. Sebly, staff

Labels: Africa, Alexandra Fuller, mercenaries Scribbling the Cat, Mozambique