Oak Ridge Public Library

Recovered physically but not emotionally from her most recent misadventure in 13 ½, Anna Pigeon decides to visit her friend Geneva who is a singer at the New Orleans Jazz Historic Park. Yet even here, in the heart of a city energized with re-building after the devastation of Katrina, magic and death lurk. Within days of her arrival, Anna finds evidence that a voodoo curse has been placed on her. Finding out who did it and why proves to be very dangerous. Burn (M) is the latest from Nevada Barr.

As a follow-up to his popular series which delved into the family trees of several prominent African-Americans, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., now looks into the genetic pasts of 12 more celebrities and artists. Among the notable folks lending their genealogy and DNA to Faces of America (929.100) are Louise Erdrich, Meryl Streep, and Stephen Colbert.

What should be a joyous day for the Tetherly and Copaken families turns to unbearable tragedy when their children, John and Becca, are killed in a car accident an hour after their wedding. In Red Hook Road, Ayelet Waldman follows the course of these people over the next four summers, as blue-collar Jane Tetherly and wealthy Iris Copqken work through their animosity and grief. Complicating the situation is the growing attraction between their surviving son and daughter.

After the death of Agatha Christie’s daughter in 2004, 73 notebooks handwritten by the prolific author were discovered in Greenway, the family home. This treasure trove shows just how Christie was able to work out the plots to her 66 crime novels, 20 plays, more than 150 short stories, as well as the six romance novels she wrote under another name. John Curran, long time literary advisor to the author’s estate, reveals the details in Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks (823.000 Christie).

While the ruins at Machu Picchu were well known to the Peruvians, it was an American explorer and history professor from Yale who brought them to the attention of the world in 1911. Christopher Heaney chronicles “the story of Hiram Bingham, a real-life Indiana Jones, and the search for Machu Picchu” in Cradle of Gold (985.370). Heaney also illuminates the controversy that is still going on today between Yale and Peru over the ownership of Incan artifacts.

At the turn of the 20^th Century, Peter and Erika von Kessler are one of Boston’s most prominent and attractive couples, but even their wealth and social stature cannot give them what they want. Peter wants a child. Erika wants one, too, but her gift for singing also makes her long for a career in opera. In a desperate attempt to conceive, the von Kesslers make an appointment with Dr. Ravell, a young obstetrician who is gaining a reputation as a fertility expert. Adrienne McDonnell makes an impressive fiction debut with The Doctor and the Diva.

Other new titles:

Fiction –

Dead Line, by Stella Rimmington;

Faithful Place, by Tana French;

Work Song, by Ivan Doig;

Queen of the Night (M), by J. A. Jance;

Corduroy Mansions, by Alexander McCall Smith.

Non-fiction –

Raymond Carver: a Writer’s Life (921.000), by Carol Sklenicka;

Dogscaping: Creating the Perfect Backyard & Garden for You and Your Dog (635.048), by Tom Barthel.

Back to top

August 20, 2010

Seven young women have been murdered in Jefferson Davis Parish – six of them prostitutes, one of them an honor student at the local high school. While Dave Robicheaux looks for the common thread that will lead to the killer, he is sidetracked by concerns for his daughter. Alafair, a Stanford law student and budding novelist, has become involved with local writer Kermit Abelard. His dysfunctional family is worrisome enough, but Abelard has taken on another protégé – an ex-convict turned novelist named Robert Weingart. The brooding Robicheaux makes his 18^th appearance in The Glass Rainbow, by James Lee Burke.

Fifty years ago, a band of renegade housewives led by a straight-talking woman from Missouri, broke with tradition. These women, who also had jobs, began sharing recipes that cut preparation and cooking time, yet still tasted great. Now The I Hate to Cook Book (641.500) has been updated and revised for today’s shoppers and cooks. The late Peg Bracken’s commentary is even funnier in retrospect, and her daughter’s Forward is delightful.

Lt. Peter Decker of the LAPD and his wife, Rina Lazarus, are entangled in yet another whirlpool of murder and missing persons in Faye Kellerman’s latest, Hangman (M). Peter agrees to help his old friend Terry McLaughlin when she sets up a meeting with her abusive husband, Chris. When both Terry and Chris disappear, Peter brings home their son Gate and unwittingly puts his own family in danger. Meanwhile, a murdered nurse with a questionable private life and a missing boyfriend has Decker’s team working overtime.

The Civil War is recognized as a defining moment for this country and its people. It certainly was for the young Sam Clemens, who went west in 1861 and returned east six years later as Mark Twain. Civil War historian Roy Morris, Jr., who lives in Chattanooga, tells what happened to Clemens during those colorful years in Lighting Out for the Territory (921.000).

Madeline Gurney and her husband, Dave, relocate to upstate New York after he retires from the NYPD homicide division. Her hopes for his undivided attention, however, soon wither when their friend Mark shows Dave the mysterious letters he has been receiving. Whoever has been sending them has Mark believing he or she can read his mind and has threatened to accuse him of crimes he didn’t commit. It soon becomes clear, too, that Mark isn’t the only one receiving these letters – and the other recipients are being methodically murdered. Former advertising executive John Verdon makes his fiction debut with a well-crafted thriller, Think of a Number.

Despite our best efforts, there are still areas in the U. S. that are unsettled – no houses, no malls, no roads, no people. Freelance writer Peter Stark set out to explore these tracts after viewing a nighttime photo of the U.S. taken by satellite. He chose four: northern Maine, central Pennsylvania, New Mexico’s Gila Wilderness, and southwest Oregon. Join him on his exploration of The Last Empty Places: a Past and Present Journey through the Blank Spots on the American Map (973.000).

New DVD titles:

Feature -

Dear John, starring Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried;

Nine, with Daniel Day-Lewis and Penelope Cruz;

Leap Year, starring Amy Adams and Matthew Goode;

Shutter Island, featuring Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo.

Information/Instruction –

America’s Last H Bomb;

Mars Rising, narrated by William Shatner.

Back to top

August 13, 2010

Using the periodic table as his roadmap, Sam Kean delves into the history of the 118 elements and includes fun details about the scientists who discovered them. The Disappearing Spoon (546.000) of the title refers to a practical joke among scientists who shaped spoons out of gallium (Ga,31), which melts at 84 degrees Fahrenheit, for unsuspecting friends to use in their hot tea. In this entertaining read, Kean includes many more “true tales of madness, love, and the history of the world from the periodic table of the elements”.

Sisters Emily and Jessamine Bach are as different as chalk and cheese. Practical and astute, Emily is the CEO of a data-storage start-up in Silicon Valley. She is engaged to Jonathan Tilghman, the CEO of a data-storage start-up in Boston. Emotional and free-spirited, Jess works at an antiquarian bookstore owned by rumpled, grumpy George, a Microsoft millionaire. Can these four people find love and happiness? Allegra Goodman channels Jane Austen for a charming story of our times, The Cookbook Collector.

The Rebellion of Jane Clarke is Sally Gunning’s third historical novel set in pre-Revolutionary Massachusetts. Content with her life on Cape Cod, Jane Clarke refuses to marry the man her father has chosen for her and is promptly banished to Boston to care for her elderly aunt. There she finds a city simmering with hatred, for the Loyalists’ resentment against the ruling British is about to boil over into an act of violence Jane unwittingly witnesses: the killing of five colonists at the hands of the Redcoats – an event soon to be known as the Boston Massacre.

By 1863, prisoner exchanges between the Union and the Confederacy had ceased. While captured enlisted troops from the North were held, among other places, on Belle Isle in the James River, their officers were imprisoned in a tobacco warehouse in Richmond. Fed up with the squalor and filth, 109 officers began to dig their way out – 52 of them eventually made it to safety behind Union lines. Joseph Wheelan brings this riveting tale to light in Libby Prison Breakout: the Daring Escape from the Notorious Civil War Prison (973.772).

An auditor with Pfluger Klaxon, a pharmaceutical company, Sam Keller is assigned to keep tabs on his companion Charlie Hatcher on their business trip to Dubai. The ordinarily buttoned-down Sam decides to enjoy himself – and ends up being accused of Hatcher’s murder. Now on the run in this strangely cosmopolitan yet traditional city, Sam has one ally – Dubai police officer Anwar Sharaf who believes he is innocent despite all the evidence against him. Layover in Dubai is the latest from Dan Fesperman, author of The Arms Maker of Berlin.

So you followed Robert J. Ray’s sound advice in The Weekend Novelist, and you have a completed first draft. Now what? Well, as Ray points out, it is time to re-work and fine-tune that draft into something publishable. He helps you do that with the seventeen revision exercises he offers in The Weekend Novelist Re-Writes the Novel (808.300).

Other new Fiction titles:

Robert Ludlum’s the Bourne Objective, by Eric Van Lustbader;

Foreign Influence, by Brad Thor;

Betrayal, by Robert K. Tanenbaum;

The Search, by Nora Roberts;

It All Began in Monte Carlo, by Elizabeth Adler;

The Island, by Elin Hilderbrand.

Back to top

August 6, 2010

Thirty years ago, Frances Moore Lappe gave us a new way to look at world hunger in her classic book, Diet for a Small Planet. Now her daughter, Anna Lappe, takes us one step further. In Diet for a Hot Planet (338.190), the younger Lappe reveals how the food industry contributes to global warming, showing that the food choices we make today will ultimately effect the environment.

Art restorer and reluctant Israeli intelligence agent Gabriel Allon and his wife Chiara have taken up residence in a seaside cottage in Cornwell, hoping to establish a normal life away from the espionage work that nearly got them both killed in The Defector. Yet the murder of a fellow art restorer and the theft of the painting he was working on compel Gabriel to begin his own investigation and leads him right back into the dangerous world of international terrorism. The Rembrandt Affair is the latest in Daniel Silva’s topnotch series.

The Congo is no longer a safe place for scientists studying various animal species when civil war breaks out. Primatologist Jenny Lowe barely makes it to the camp of one of her colleagues only to find everyone dead except for her friend’s daughter. The two escape and head back to the states, where Jenny adopts the young girl and finds work in Chicago. The teenager displays some unusual quirks – she has incredibly good hearing and finds solace in trees. Jenny attributes it all to growing up in the jungle – until a simple DNA test reveals that the charming girl is half bonobo chimpanzee and half human. Lucy, by Laurence Gonzales, is one of the most talked about books this publishing season.

A man of words and prize-winning novels, Herman Wouk is also a man of faith who takes great joy in learning about science. He combines all three in a small yet pithy book that bridges the supposed chasm between science and religion. The Language God Talks (215.000) is the title.

When her 10-year-old daughter Julia became increasingly unhappy at school, English professor and author Laura Brodie decided to let her take a year off for some short-term homeschooling. Brodie’s hopes that she and Julia would happily rediscover the world together were soon tempered with the reality of teaching a child who didn’t like to be told what to do. Even so, the experience proved immeasurably valuable for both of them. Brodie tells how in Love in a Time of Homeschooling: a Mother and Daughter’s Uncommon Year (371.042).

Becca Burke and Buckley Pitank have a lot in common – only they don’t know it. Becca has been hit by lightning twice – the first time when she was eight. Buckley’s much loved mother was struck and killed by lightning just when their lives were set to turn around for the better. So, when Becca, a budding artist, and Buckley, the author of a survival guide for people who have been struck by lightning, finally meet, sparks fly. The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors is the intriguing fiction debut of Michelle Young-Stone.

Other new titles:

Fiction –

The Summer we Read Gatsby, by Danielle Ganek;

The Unbearable Lightness of Scones: the New 44 Scotland Street Novel, by Alexander McCall Smith;

Ice Cold, by Tess Gerritsen;

Seven Year Switch, by Claire Cook;

Whiplash: an FBI Thriller, by Catherine Coulter.

Non-fiction –

Fallout: a Historian Reflects on America’s Half-Century Encounter with Nuclear Weapons (973.920), by Paul Boyer;

Silk Parachute (814.000), by John McPhee.

Back to top