My LINKcat AccountHere it is, second week of March, and (knock wood) so far, not a snowflake to be seen. There’s nothing much in the 10-day forecast either. I read in a newsletter – either the International Crane Foundation or Aldo Leopold Newsletter – that this year there has been 18 days of winter. The sandhill cranes left the Baraboo area on January 12th and had returned by February 12th, The 18 days of winter included those couple of snows and the deep-freeze plunge with high winds. That’s been it so far (knock on wood). I keep reminding folks that even with fortuitous weather forecasts that get us to the middle of March, we are not truly out of the snow/blizzard season until we have gotten through the WIAA basketball tournaments (and possibly the NCAA ones as well). Every day gets us closer to Easter on March 31st (it is a fairly early Easter—the earliest possible is March 22nd) which gets us that much closer to April. [However, I do remember the Chicago Easter snow storm on March 29th, 1964 when 7.1 inches fell. We had to drive to our cousin’s for dinner and the snow kept coming down. We ate and left almost before dessert was served (My dad refused to go before he had his slice of coconut-covered-lamb-shaped cake festooned with jelly bean eggs. He was driving so he had his cake and got us home safely]. But I digress. Below you will find some of the new books which recently arrived at the library. Enjoy!
New Non-Fiction
“Bitter Crop: The Heartache and Triumph of Billie Holiday’s Last Year” by Paul Alexander. An acclaimed biographer examines the final tumultuous year of the legendary jazz singer’s life and her continued artistic brilliance despite drug abuse, relationships with violent men and run-ins with the law.
“What Have We Here?: Portraits of a Life” by Billy Dee Williams. Recalling his remarkable life of nearly eight decades, the film legend who has starred in 40 movies, seven Broadway plays and has made more than 40 TV shows and movies combined shows how he, as the first Black character in the “Star Wars” universe, became a true pop culture icon.
“Untangle Your Emotions: Naming What You Feel and Knowing What to Do About It” by Jennie Allen. A speaker, Bible teacher and “New York Times” best-selling author, drawing on scientific research, biblical insight and her own story, provides a transformational path to embracing a healthy relationship with your emotions, which leads to deeper relationships.
“The Deerfield Massacre: A Surprise Attack, A Forced March, and the Fight for Survival in Early America” by James Swanson. A popular historian brings to life a forgotten chapter in American history: the deadly confrontation between Native Americans and colonists in Massachusetts in 1704, which led to one of the greatest sagas of adventure, survival, sacrifice, family, honor and faith ever told in North America.
New Fiction
“Moon of the Turning Leaves” by Waubgeshig Rice. In a thriller set in the world of the award-winning post-apocalyptic novel Moon of the Crusted Snow, a scouting party led by Evan Whitesky ventures into unknown and dangerous territory to find a new home for their close-knit Northern Ontario Indigenous community more than a decade after a world-ending blackout.
“The Last Days of the Midnight Ramblers” by Sarah Tomlinson. A novel looks at three rock & roll icons, two explosive tell-all memoirs and one ghostwriter caught in the middle.
“Love and Chicken: Delicious Southern Novel” by Mary Liza Hartong. A spicy and humorous Tennessee story about family, friendship, fried chicken and two girls in love.
“Wandering Stars” by Tommy Orange. Traces the legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School through to the shattering aftermath of Orvil Red Feather’s shooting in “There There”.
“The American Daughters” by Maurice Carlos Ruffin. Enslaved to a businessman in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Ady, when she’s separated from her mother, meets Lenore, a free Black woman who invites her to join a clandestine society of spies called the Daughters, setting her on a journey toward liberation and imagining a new future.
“Leave No Trace, No.1 (National Parks Thrillers)” by A.J. Landau, Jon Land, & Jeff Ayers. After an explosion brings down the Statue of Liberty, Special Agent Michael Walker of the National Park Service is sent to New York to investigate where he finds a young survivor with an important piece of information.
“The Rumor Game” by Thomas Mullen. A determined reporter and a reluctant FBI agent face off against fascist elements in a historical thriller set in World War II-era Boston.
“Bad Animals” by Sarah Braunstein. A writer of “savage compassion” (Salvatore Scibona, author of The Volunteer), Sarah Braunstein constructs a shrewd, page-turning caper that explores one woman’s search for agency and ultimate reckoning with the kind of animal she is.
“The Hunter” by Tana French. From the New York Times bestselling author of The Searcher and “one of the greatest crime novelists writing today” (Vox), a spellbinding new novel set in the Irish countryside. It’s a blazing summer when two men arrive in a small village in the West of Ireland. One of them is coming home. Both of them are coming to get rich. One of them is coming to die.