What a difference a week makes this time of year! Last Wednesday into Thursday we had a major winter storm and a week later we are expecting highs in the 60s. Sandhill cranes are back in the area and literally flying over the street where I live and really yakking away – just in case you didn’t notice them overhead. Last Thursday, after the snow let up, the poor robins were standing in the street. I could see a loose flock of maybe a dozen or so, when I looked out my window. They appeared to be wandering aimlessly around Ethun Place, pecking disgustedly at grit or salt. The slant of their tiny little shoulders seemed to ask the question “What gives? “Isn’t spring supposed to have arrived?” And “Where are the worms?” Our Children’s Librarian, Louise, reported seeing forty-five robins near where she lives. These robins too were walking around in the street looking lost and hungry. I opined that perhaps they were all getting salt on their feet so they could get a good grip on the ice-encased branches of the trees. The ice on the trees sure was pretty the next day in the sunlight with the clear blue skies acting as a back drop. All that beauty was gone by noon. It had all melted in a matter of hours, proving “Nothing gold can stay”. Below you will find a selection of the new books at your library. These books, some of which are literary gold I’m sure, can stay—at least for the loan period. Enjoy!
New Non-Fiction
- Burn math class : and reinvent mathematics for yourself / by Jason Wilkes. Burning the traditional approach to mathematics to the ground, an unconventional book, focusing on how mathematics is created rather than mathematical facts, turns everything that seems difficult about mathematics upside down and sideways, showing how easy math can be and changing the way we think about it.
- How to eat in the woods : a complete guide to foraging, trapping, fishing, and finding sustenance in the wild / by Bradford Angier. One of the world’s most respected wilderness survivalists presents a portable, comprehensive, practical and reliable guide to staying alive in the woods and living off the land.
- Finding your roots, season 2 : the official companion to the PBS series / by Henry Gates. A companion to the hit PBS documentary series explores how cutting-edge genomics and deep genealogical research are enabling unprecedented understandings of human heritage, tracing the histories of such notables as Ken Burns, Stephen King and Derek Jeter.
New Fiction
- The storm sister : Ally's story / by Lucinda Riley. An Olympic yachting hopeful traces her heritage to Norway, following an intriguing clue left by her deceased father, which leads her to uncover the story of a woman linked 100 years ago to the composer of “Peer Gynt,” Edvard Grieg.
- Summer at Little Beach Street Bakery / by Jenny Colgan. A latest recipe-complemented tale by the best-selling author of Christmas at the Cupcake Café finds bakery owner Polly juggling a business-threatening rivalry, her boyfriend's secrets, a bereft widow and a pet puffin that force her to reconsider her life choices.
- Jane Steele. by Lyndsay Faye. Suffering at the hands of cruel family members and brutal school administrators, sensitive orphan Jane Steele murderously retaliates against her abusers and takes a job as a governess working with mysterious servants while falling in love with her employer, in a serial-killer reimagining of Jane Eyre.
- The summer before the war : a novel / by Helen Simonson. Arriving in the 1914 village of Rye, England, Beatrice Nash, a young woman of good family, becomes a first female teacher of Latin at the local school and falls in love with her sponsor's nephew. By the best-selling author of “Major Pettigrew's Last Stand”.
- Fool me once / by Harlan Coben. Horrified when she spots the husband who was reported dead weeks earlier playing with their toddler on her nanny cam, former special ops pilot Maya confronts deep secrets and deceit in her own past in order to discern the truth. By the #1 New York Times best-selling author of “The Stranger”.
- Predator : a crossbow adventure / by Wilbur Smith. Ex-SAS warrior and former private security consultant Major Hector Cross is forced to take the law into his own hands to stop old and new enemies intent on global domination. By the best-selling author of Desert God.
- Desperate Detroit : and stories of other dire places / by Loren Estleman. Previously published in a host of magazines and anthologies—with a new preface and introductions to the stories written especially for this collection—these 18 tales feature gangsters, private eyes, psychotic killers, hit men, feuding families, prostitutes, prizefighters, bodyguards, corrupt cops and ordinary people driven by desperation to commit acts of violence.