The little stranger

by Sarah Waters. Few authors do dread as well as Waters (The Night Watch). Her latest novel is a ghost story with elements of both The Fall of the House of Usher and Brideshead Revisited. In post-World War II Britain, the financially struggling Dr. Faraday is called to Hundreds Hall, home of the upper-class Ayreses, now fallen on hard times. Ostensibly there to treat Roderick Ayres for a war injury, Faraday soon sees signs of mental decline—first in Roderick and later in his mother, Mrs. Ayres. Waters builds the suspense slowly, with the skeptical Faraday refusing to accept the explanations of Roderick or of the maid Betty, who believe that there is a supernatural presence in the house. Meanwhile, Faraday becomes enamored of Roderick's sister Caroline and begins to dream of building a family within the confines of the ruined Hundreds Hall. This spooky, satisfying read has the added pleasure of effectively detailing postwar village life, with its rationing, social strictures, and gossip, all on the edge of Britain's massive change to a social state. -Library Journal (Check catalog)

Leica M digital photography : M8/M8.2

by Brian Bower. Leica makes the world's premiere luxury rangefinder camera system--and here's the definitive guide to using the magnificent Leica M8 digital camera, as well as its brand-new complementary model, the M8.2. It's written specifically for the many Leica photographers who want to take full advantage of a digital Leica's potential and produce the very best pictures possible. As a rangefinder digital camera, the M8 offers unique advantages, but it also presents specific challenges, which author and Leica expert Brian Bower addresses at length and in depth, enhanced by his own gorgeous Leica photography. He discusses digital controls, lenses, and accessories; close-up techniques and flash photography; and options for firmware, software, and hardware. (Check catalog)

I do not come to you by chance

by Adaobi Nwaubani. In this highly entertaining novel about Nigerian Internet scammers, Kingsley Ibe is an engineering school graduate who can't find a job and still lives at home with his family. After his girlfriend rejects him and his father dies, Kingsley is taken on by his Uncle Boniface (aka Cash Daddy), who is in the business of Internet scams, otherwise known as 419s. Soon, Kingsley is writing e-mail solicitations to the gullible of cyberspace, and any qualms he may have had about ripping off innocent people evaporate as he steps into the good life with a big new house, a Lexus and a new love interest (who doesn't know how Kingsley earns his money). --Publisher's Weekly (Check catalog)

How to cheat at gardening and yard work : shameless tricks for growing radically simple flowers, veggies, lawns, landscaping, and more

by Jeff Bredenberg. Do you love the look of stunning flowerbeds or a nice expanse of lawn, but don't have time to spend the whole weekend in your backyard? It's time to cheat-in a smart way. In How to Cheat #174; at Gardening and Yard Work, you'll find hundreds of work-reducing, time-saving, cost-cutting gardening tips that will reward you with the best-looking garden you've ever had with less effort than ever before.Cheating on garden and yard tasks is about simple adjustments and shortcuts-with a healthy dose of creativity. You'll learn effective and efficient methods to complete just about every garden project, chore, cleanup, or predicament you'll face.Set aside your costly, old habits and discover:How the right tool can save you time-and save your backThat doing less for your lawn actually means better resultsWhy planting a diversion crop cuts down on your pest-patrol effortsThat groundcovers and foliage plants are no-hassle solutions for weedy flowerbeds (Check Catalog)

We never talk about my brother

by Peter S. Beagle. Hugo and Nebula award-winning Beagle, best known for his beloved fantasy The Last Unicorn, offers this collection of new and previously released stories with an introduction by Charles de Lint. Although different fantastical elements are explored—angels, dybbuks, ghosts, fairies—the stories remain rooted in rich, thoughtful prose set in real-world thinking. Characters are drawn with an economy of words into believable, multilayered, and compelling people. While each tale is a beautifully crafted gem, cut and polished to perfection, the title story is the standout. (Check catalog)

Getting to "got it!" : helping struggling students learn how to learn

by Betty K. Garner. The author's simple techniques stress reflective awareness and visualization. It's by helping students to be conscious of what their senses are telling them, encouraging them to visualize the information for processing, and then prompting them to ask questions and figure out solutions on their own that teachers can best help students develop the tools they need to: Gather, organize, and make sense of information, Become cognitively engaged and internally motivated to achieve, and, Experience learning as a dynamic process of creating and changing. Suggestions for using these techniques in daily classroom practice advice on lesson planning for cognitive engagement, and guidelines for conducting reflective research expand this book's practical applications. Use it not only to help struggling students break through hidden barriers but to empower all students with tools that will last a lifetime. (Check Catalog)

Shadow and light

by Jonathan Rabb. Set in 1927 Germany, Rabb's superb sequel to Rosa correlates the advent of talking movies with the rise of Nazism. When Kriminal-Oberkommisar Nikolai Hoffner investigates the apparent suicide of an Ufa film studio executive, the trail leads the Berlin policeman to the sex and drug trade as well as to the National Socialist German Workers Party's local leader, Joseph Goebbels. Working with Helen Coyle, an attractive American talent agent for MGM, Hoffner learns how cutthroat the picture business is. Rumors of films with sound threaten to change the industry. Without sound, all you have is shadow and light, an inventor tells Hoffner. With sound, movies can do a lot more than entertain, as soon to be shown by Nazi propaganda films and newsreels. Rabb's meticulous research brings to life a corrupt society vulnerable to extremism. --Publisher's Weekly. (Check Catalog)

Make your own living trust

by Denis Clifford. No other book covers living trusts better -- or more simply -- than this bestselling book.By creating a living trust, your property will bypass lengthy and expensive probate proceedings and go directly to the people you've designated, quickly and easily.Make Your Own Living Trust explains how to create a living trust, transfer property to the trust and amend or revoke the trust at any time. Specifically, it covers: • How living trusts work • Which kind of living trust to use • Naming beneficiaries for all trust property • How to create your document and make it legal • Amending or revoking a trust at any time • Provide for trust property management if you become incapacitated • retain absolute control over trust property while you live. --Publisher (Check Catalog)

The family man

by Elinor Lipman. With all the requisite elements, including sparkling dialog, a clash of personalities, and delightfully flawed characters—not to mention unusual family situations and overbearing matriarchs—this book offers readers hints of Lipman's previous books, from Then She Found Me to The Dearly Departed. When the comfortably wealthy and homosexual Henry Archer's recently widowed ex-wife, Denise Krouch, reappears after 24 years, his ordered life is turned upside down. The unwelcome reunion with the brash and socially inept Denise brings with it a silver lining: his reacquaintance with Denise's estranged daughter, Thalia, and a blind date with Todd.  (Check Catalog)

How women got their curves and other just-so stories : evolutionary enigmas

by David P. Barash. Barash (evolutionary biologist & psychology, Univ. of Washington) and his wife, Lipton, a clinical psychiatrist specializing in women's health, have written several books considering men and women in the light of evolution (The Myth of Monogamy; Making Sense of Sex); here, they concentrate on females. By examining the many explanations, which they call "just-so stories," for various female enigmas (menstruation, ovulation, breasts and hips, orgasm, and menopause) and putting forth the research that may or may not support those explanations, the authors present an intriguing exercise in how evolutionists think and develop their ideas. --Library Journal (Check Catalog)

All that I have : a novel

by Castle Freeman. Freeman's pleasantly wicked fourth novel (after Go with Me), set in smalltown rural Vermont, explores the moral choices of a good-hearted, meek sheriff. The laconic and gently self-deprecating sheriff, Lucian Wing, a middle-aged ex-navyman married to a prominent lawyer's daughter, has to decide whether to arrest a young ne'er do well who has broken into an opulent home owned by mysterious Russians and stolen a safe. The problem is that Wing feels for the young criminal, Sean Duke, who works as a laborer, has a winning way with the ladies and is known for his wild behavior. --Publisher's Weekly (Check Catalog)

How sex works : why we look, smell, taste, feel, and act the way we do

by Sharon Moalem. Birds do it, bees do it, but why do humans do it? In this wide-ranging look at the evolutionary reasons for sex, physiologist and evolutionary biologist Moalem says that it's all about shuffling the gene pool and getting rid of any unwelcome guests, such as viruses, that may have latched onto human DNA. But why is one particular person attracted to another? Moalem relays the latest research showing that smell plays a very important role in attraction, and that even our genes may influence one's smell, and thus a person's desirability, to others. Scientists have found that women tend to be attracted to different types of men at different points in their ovulation cycles (dark and handsome hunks at their height; sensitive, care-giving types at other times). Moalem (Survival of the Sickest) whizzes through his discussion of homosexuality, neglecting angles that would have added to the book, but readers will find thought-provoking material in his chapter on differences in sexual anatomy and on how chromosomes and body parts aren't always what we expect them to be. Moalem writes fluidly for the general reader, and when he necessarily goes into graphic detail, he does it gracefully. --Publisher's Weekly  (Check Catalog)

The Stalin epigram

by Robert Littell. Littell's forte has been novels portraying the ambiguous and treacherous world of espionage (e.g., The Company). In a genre-busting switch, he slips into the skin of Osip Mandelstam, Russia's premier poet of the early 20th century. Mandelstam's verses first supported the Bolshevik Revolution but then turned in disgust from its bloodthirstiness. Mandelstam paid a high price for his poem of conscience, "The Stalin Epigram," which eviscerated Stalin with lines like "His cockroach whiskers leer." Using Mandelstam's widow, Nadezhda, herself a famous chronicler of the Soviet era, as a narrator, along with the voices of fellow writers Boris Pasternak and Anna Akhmatova, Littell re-creates the five crucial months that saw Mandelstam's creation emerge only to condemn its maker to a wretched death en route to the Gulag in 1938. (Check Catalog)

Travels with watercolour

by Lucy Willis. With the practical advice in these colorful pages, you’ll be able to paint exquisite pictures wherever you wander. See how to travel light by using a limited palette, making good use of a sketchbook, and packing watercolor paper well. There are tips on dealing with weather conditions, respecting other cultures, and completing a painting in the studio from sketches and photos. (Check the Catalog)

Devil's garden

by Ace Atkins. In September 1921, silent film star Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle was tried for the murder of budding actress Virginia Rappe after a wild, boozy bash at a San Francisco hotel. The case was particularly notorious because William Randolph Hearst unleashed the full force of his media empire on it, allegedly tainting evidence and claiming Arbuckle crushed Rappe under his immense weight. A key private investigator for Arbuckle was none other than a young Pinkerton agent named Sam Dashiell Hammett, who turned up much more than a botched police investigation and an unethical autopsy. Sure to appeal to Hollywood buffs and mystery readers alike, this is recommended for popular fiction collections.--Library Journal (Check Catalog)

The accidental guerrilla : fighting small wars in the midst of a big one

by David Kilcullen. Kilcullen, adviser on counterinsurgency to General Petraeus, defines accidental guerrillas as locals fighting primarily because outsiders (often Westerners) are intruding into their physical and cultural space, but they may also be galvanized by high-tech, internationally oriented ideologues. This interaction of two kinds of nonstate opponents renders both traditional counterterrorism and counterinsurgency inadequate. Kilcullen uses Afghanistan and Iraq as primary case studies for a new kind of war that relies on an ability to provoke Western powers into protracted, exhausting, expensive interventions. Kilcullen presents two possible responses. Strategic disruption keeps existing terrorists off balance. Military assistance attacks the conditions producing accidental guerrillas. That may mean full-spectrum assistance, involving an entire society. --Publisher's Weekly (Check Catalog)