My LINKcat AccountA bit of a cold snap followed by a bit of a warm-up followed by a bit of a cold snap and suddenly we are heading into the 3rd week of February. After Presidents’ Day on Monday, February 21st, we shall be done February holidays. We will also, probably, be past the time when sub-zero daylight high temperatures are possible. The days are getting noticeably longer. Since those darkest days of the year – way back in the middle of December when sunset was at 4:22 and sunrise at 7:18 we have leaped forward to sunrise at 6:51 and sunset at 5:33. We’re gaining a minute at sunrise and sunset everyday as we march forward to March and edge closer and closer to the astronomical first day of spring, also known as the spring equinox. We recently passed St. Valentine’s Day which is a time that some birds start seriously dating. The Great Horned Owl and Rock Pigeons have not only started dating, they have started picking out apartments and china patterns. The rest of the owls that hang around Wisconsin will join the Great Horned Owls in the last couple of weeks of March as will the mourning doves. Signs of spring are starting to pop up if you know where to look. Soon, it won’t matter where you look. For now, I’m sure we have a few more snow storms (or the threat of them) to get through. Until then, we have basketball and books to get us through. Below are some of the new books which recently arrived at the library. Enjoy!
New Non-Fiction
The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn From Love and Loss by Mary-Frances O’Connor. A renowned grief expert and neuroscientist shares groundbreaking discoveries about what happens in our brain when we grieve, providing a new paradigm for understanding love, loss and learning.
A History of the Index: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age by Dennis Duncan. A witty look at the history of the book index and its vast role in our evolving literary and intellectual culture from the monasteries and universities of 13th-century Europe to today’s high-tech world.
Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America’s a Public Monuments by Erin Thompson. In light of the recent debate over public statues, the country’s leading expert in tangled aesthetic, legal and social issues traces the turbulent history of American monuments and its abundant ironies.
Watergate: A New History by Garrett Graff. Explores the full scope of the Watergate scandal through the politicians, investigators, journalists and informants who made it the most influential political event of our modern era.
New Fiction
Mermaid Confidential (Serge Storms) by Tim Dorsey. Dropping anchor in the Florida Keys, Serge A. Storms and his permanently baked sidekick, Coleman, become local favorites as they take a stand against investors who are trying to destroy their paradise while dealing with drug smugglers who have arrived in a hail of bullets.
The Mirror Man (Killer Instinct) by Lars Kepler. When the body of a girl is found in the park, Detective Joona Linna discovers a connection between this murder and a death declared a suicide years before, and, with a serial killer on the loose, must race against time to save another girl who has gone missing.
One Step Too Far, No. 2 (A Frankie Elkin Novel) by Lisa Gardner. Searching for a young man who disappeared without a trace, missing persons expert and recovering alcoholic Frankie Elkin, with her very life on the line, goes up against something very dark to find what she is looking for.
The Overnight Guest by Heather Gudenkauf. True crime writer Wylie Lark, snowed in at an isolated farmhouse where she’s retreated to write her new book, finds a small child in the snow outside and, bringing him inside for warmth and safety, learns that the farmhouse isn’t as isolated as she thought.
Black Girls Must Be Magic (Black Girls Must Die Exhausted) by Jayne Allen. Tabitha Walker copes with more of life’s challenges and a happy surprise—a baby—with a little help and lots of love from friends old and new.
Free Love by Tessa Hadley. From the best-selling author of Late in the Day comes a novel that portrays the dissolution of a family in 1960s England.
The Great Mrs. Elias: A Novel Based on a True Story by Barbara Chase-Riboud. The author of the award-winning Sally Hemings now brings to life Hannah Elias, one of the richest black women in America in the early 1900s, in a novel swirling with atmosphere and steeped in history.
What the Fireflies Knew by Kai Harris. Told from the perspective of almost 11-year-old Kenyatta Bernice (KB), this coming-of-age novel follows KB as she is sent to live with her estranged grandfather where she, as everything and everyone changes around her, is forced to carve out a different identity for herself and find her own voice.
The Christie Affair by Nina De Gramont. Brilliantly reimagining the unexpected 11-day disappearance of Agatha Christie that captivated the world, this novel is told from the point of Miss Nan O’Dea, who infiltrated the Christies’ wealthy, rarified world to destroy their marriage.
City of the Dead, No.37 (Alex Deleware) by Jonathan Kellerman. Court-consulting child psychologist Alex Delaware and homicide detective Milo Sturgis unravel a baffling mystery after a naked corpse in the street leads to the discovery of another murder, in the latest novel of the long-running series following Serpentine.