Category Archives: Featured Materials
The Goldfinch / Donna Tartt
Call number: FIC TAR
The author of the classic bestsellers The Secret History and The Little Friend returns with a brilliant, highly anticipated new novel.
Composed with the skills of a master, The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present day America and a drama of enthralling force and acuity.
It begins with a boy. Theo Decker, a thirteen-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who don’t know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by his unbearable longing for his mother, he clings to one thing that reminds him of her: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the underworld of art.
As an adult, Theo moves silkily between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty labyrinth of an antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love-and at the center of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle.
The Goldfinch is a novel of shocking narrative energy and power. It combines unforgettably vivid characters, mesmerizing language, and breathtaking suspense, while plumbing with a philosopher’s calm the deepest mysteries of love, identity, and art. It is a beautiful, stay-up-all-night and tell-all-your-friends triumph, an old-fashioned story of loss and obsession, survival and self-invention, and the ruthless machinations of fate. (From Barnes & Noble)
Silent Night / Robert B. Parker, Helen Brann
Call number: FIC PAR
A special treat for the holiday season a rumination on Christmas, family, and the meaning of home as conceived by Robert B. Parker. It’s December in Boston, and Spenser is busy planning the menu for Christmas dinner when he’s confronted in his office by a young boy named Slide. Homeless and alone, Slide has found refuge with an organization named Street Business, which gives shelter and seeks job opportunities for the homeless and lost. Slide’s mentor, Jackie Alvarez, is being threatened, and Street Business is in danger of losing its tenuous foothold in the community, turning Slide and many others like him back on the street. But it’s not a simple case of intimidation Spenser, aided by Hawk, finds a trail that leads to a dangerous drug kingpin, whose hold on the at-risk community Street Business serves threatens not just the boys’ safety and security, but their lives as well.
Unfinished at the time of his death, Silent Night was completed by Parker’s longtime agent, whose decades-long association with Parker’s work gives her unique insight and perspective to his voice and storytelling style. Her contribution also speaks volumes about their enduring friendship. (From Barnes & Noble)
A Man of His Own / Susan Wilson
Call number: FIC WIL
Rick Stanton was a promising professional baseball player with dreams of playing in the major leagues and starting a family with his young wife, Francesca, when World War II changed everything. Rick returns from the war with his body broken and his dreams shattered. But it was not just body and spirit he sacrificed for the war. He and Francesca volunteered their beloved dog, Pax, for the Army’s K-9 Corp, not knowing if they’d ever see him again.
Keller Nicholson is the soldier who fought the war with Pax by his side, and the two have the kind of profound bond that can only be forged in war. Pax is the closest Keller has to a sense of family, and he can’t bear the thought of returning him to the Stantons. But Rick and Francesca refuse to give him up. Instead, an arrangement is made: Keller will work as Rick’s live-in aide. And thus an unlikely family is formed, with steadfast Pax at the center. As they try to build a new life out of the ashes, Keller and Francesca struggle to ignore their growing attraction to each other, and Rick, believing that he can no longer give Francesca what she needs and wants, quietly plans a way out.
All three of them need healing. All three of them are lost. And in Susan Wilson’s A Man of His Own, Pax, with his unconditional love and unwavering loyalty, may be the only one who can guide them home. (From Barnes & Noble)
Nemesis / Bill Pronzini
Call number: FIC PRO
Young, newly rich Verity Daniels claims to be receiving threatening demands for money from a mysterious caller. When Jake Runyon agrees to investigate, it seems a relatively simple matter to expose the extortionist by setting a trap for him. The case, however, is nowhere near as clear-cut as it first appears. And Verity Daniels is nowhere near the helpless victim she pretends to be.
A series of surprise revelations culminates in Runyon being falsely accused of a crime that never happened, and he and his employers then become the targets of a vicious legal vendetta. A sudden act of violence turns the case upside down, leading to a much more serious charge against Jake.
With the help of partner Tamara Corbin, Nameless (known as Bill to his associates) puts aside the difficult personal issue that has kept him sidelined at home and works to clear both Runyon’s and the agency’s good names. The task requires untangling Verity Daniels’s bizarre past and present relationships, and before Bill succeeds, he must overcome a deadly threat to his own safety.
Nemesis continues author Bill Pronzini’s acclaimed Nameless Detective Series.
(From Barnes & Noble)
Doing Hard Time / Stuart Woods
Call number: FIC WOO
When Stone Barrington embarks on a trip to Bel-Air to check in on some business and personal concerns, he expects a relaxing break from the fast pace and mean streets of New York. But trouble never takes a vacation, and it has a way of finding Stone. A case that had seemingly been resolved has returned in full force—with lethal results. And this deadly situation makes for strange bedfellows when Stone finds himself teamed with the least likely ally . . . a gentleman of unique abilities, who can fly below the radar and above the law.
From the high-stakes poker tables of Las Vegas to California’s lush beachside resorts, the trail of disguise, subterfuge, and murder leads to a shocking conclusion. (From Barnes & Noble)
New Popular Paperback Fiction for Fall
Performance automotive engine math / John Baechtel
Call number: TL210 .B284 2011
Multi-time author and well-regarded performance engine builder/designer John Baechtel has assembled the relevant mathematics and packaged it all together in a book designed for automotive enthusiasts. This book walks readers through the complete engine, showcasing the methodology required to define each specific parameter, and how to translate the engineering math to hard measurements reflected in various engine parts. Designing the engine to work as a system of related components is no small task, but the ease with which Baechtel escorts the reader through the process makes this book perfect for both the budding engine enthusiast and the professional builder (From Google Books).
Bridgeman Education is breathtaking!
Bridgeman Education is an interdisciplinary online database offering access to the Bridgeman Art Library, a collection of more than 500,000 JPEG images (with 500 more added each week) from 8,000-plus museums, galleries, contemporary artists, and private collections from around the world. Images date from prehistory to the present day and include a host of media and sources, such as fine art (representing more than 30,000 artists), anthropological artifacts, antiques, architecture, ceramics, design, engravings, furniture, glass, maps, photography, sculpture, and more. […]
“Bridgeman Education is breathtaking: a beautifully rendered product […], obviously a labor of love and enormous creativity. The high-quality and extensive content is made easily accessible through quick search and browsing in a wealth of categories and subcategories. Unreservedly recommended for all libraries serving anyone needing art and historic images.” (From the review of the Library Journal)
Bridgeman Education is available to Ivy Tech Library patrons through CREDO Reference Database.
Michael Symon’s 5 in 5 : 5 fresh ingredients + 5 minutes = 120 fantastic dinners / Michael Symon
Call number: TX833.5 .S98 2013
With his boisterous laugh and Midwestern charm, Michael Symon has become one of the most beloved cooking personalities on television. For ABC’s The Chew, he developed a brilliant, simple formula to help home cooks pull together fresh, from-scratch meals on weeknights: a maximum of five fresh ingredients that cook in five minutes. This cookbook ties into the segment, featuring dazzlingly quick, satisfying dinners that the whole family will love.
Michael first teaches readers how to set up their pantries with essentials that make whipping up dinner easy. Then he shares 120 recipes for pastas, skillet dinners, egg dishes, grilled mains, kebabs, foil packets, and sandwiches illustrated in 75 photographs. This is streamlined cooking for busy families and firmly solves the “what’s for dinner?” conundrum for home cooks everywhere. (From Google Books)
Fort Wayne & Warsaw Library Blogs 