Wildflower wonders : the 50 best wildflower sites in the world

 by Bob Gibbons.  Photographer and naturalist Gibbons has created a stunning guide to the best wildflower sites in the world. His criteria are spectacular beauty, diversity, and accessibility; infrequent and annual, desert, and alpine flowers are included, while difficult to visit, short-lived, and small sites and those with limited species are not featured. The greatest emphasis is on Europe (particularly Italy, France, and Greece), followed by the United States, Africa, Asia, and Australasia. Each location is accompanied by at least two photographs, a map, and at-a-glace highlights. Gibbons offers reasons to go (e.g., exceptionally colorful early spring flowers and quartz fields with "living stones"), timing recommendations, and information on protected statuses, and he concludes with useful contacts for each country, including tour companies that will help you get there (many locations are quite remote). There's also an excellent bibliography and a species list that gives both common and Latin names. VERDICT The superior photographs, in-depth information, and inclusive species list will be valuable to flower-loving travelers of every sort.  --Library Journal (Check Catalog)

Cat's claw

 by Susan Wittag Albert. China Bayles, the herbalist and amateur sleuth, is back, coming to the aid of her friend Sheila Dawson, the first female police chief in Pecan Springs, Texas. Larry Kirk, the local techie, is found dead in his kitchen. It may be suicide, since he was in the midst of a difficult divorce, but China tells Sheila that he had asked her for help dealing with a stalker. When other evidence casts doubt on suicide, Sheila and her staff have lots of work to do. Sheila is also dealing with sexism in her department and a high-profile case involving George Timms, a local bigwig who was caught burglarizing Kirk's computer stores. Could the cases be related? When George disappears, Sheila's investigation uncovers some shocking secrets that could be a motive for murder. She must solve both cases while worrying about her husband, a private investigator who is on his way to the dangerous town of Juarez, Mexico, to find a kidnapped child. Readers will enjoy the small-town atmosphere, the herbal lore and recipes, and the well-crafted puzzle in this mystery featuring two strong women. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Wild : from lost to found on the Pacific Crest trail

 by Cheryl Strayed. Echoing the ever-popular search for wilderness salvation by Chris McCandless (Back to the Wild, 2011) and every other modern-day disciple of Thoreau, Strayed tells the story of her emotional devastation after the death of her mother and the weeks she spent hiking the 1,100-mile Pacific Crest Trail. As her family, marriage, and sanity go to pieces, Strayed drifts into spontaneous encounters with other men, to the consternation of her confused husband, and eventually hits rock bottom while shooting up heroin with a new boyfriend. Convinced that nothing else can save her, she latches onto the unlikely idea of a long solo hike. Woefully unprepared (she fails to read about the trail, buy boots that fit, or pack practically), she relies on the kindness and assistance of those she meets along the way, much as McCandless did. Clinging to the books she lugs along Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Adrienne Rich Strayed labors along the demanding trail, documenting her bruises, blisters, and greater troubles. Hiker wannabes will likely be inspired. Experienced backpackers will roll their eyes. But this chronicle, perfect for book clubs, is certain to spark lively conversation. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Girlchild

 by Tupelo Hassman. In this inventive, exciting debut, Hassman writes a 1980s Reno trailer park into a neon, breathing world. Reno is just like Tahoe, only without anything beautiful. Narrator Rory Dawn, whose mother, simultaneously tripping on acid and giving birth, gave her a name that sounds like a screaming sunrise and calls her girlchild for short, is a grade-schooler when we meet her. Like the 1972 Nobility double-wide she lives in, trailer-park anthropologist Rory's own foundation is lacking, at best. She inventories her mother's alcoholism and mental illness with heartbreaking, childish normalcy. The abuse she suffers at the hands of her inept babysitters turns her into an introverted bookworm who wins spelling bees (until she worries her smarts will alienate her beloved mother) and finds solace in the library. Rory's name fills the circulation card of her school's Girl Scout Handbook, and she earns proficiency badges as a troop of one. Hassman's creatively titled, short, free-form chapters are helium-filled imagination fodder, and Hassman takes what could be trite or unbelievable in less talented hands and makes it entirely the opposite. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

The forest unseen : a year's watch in nature

 by David George Haskell. In the tradition of many fine backyard naturalists from Thoreau onward, biologist Haskell focuses on one square meter in the Tennessee forest near his home for a year of intense ecological study. He considers the subtle changes to his mandala (a term chosen for its representation of a universe within a small space) with careful attention, resisting the urge to focus on dramatic turns and instead patiently seeking out plants like the hepatica, noting its bud, flower, and fruit. Lured down to the ground in search of the most infinitesimal alterations, he observes caterpillars and katydids, earthworms and ants. Playful similes assert themselves: Hickories are sports cars; Maples are all-wheel-drive passenger cars. He sees triumph against great odds in the production of syrup and the evolution of taste buds in an insect's failure to thrive in a bed made of the New York Times. (Pulped balsam fir is the culprit.) With appreciation for both the forest and scientific study, Haskell demonstrates that this is how we learn, with patience and respect for all the earth has to teach. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Arcadia

 by Lauren Groff.  This beautifully crafted novel follows Bit Stone, the first child to be born in the late 1960s on an upstate New York commune called Arcadia, from childhood through the year 2018. An introspective youngster who can often go months without speaking, Bit watches life from a distance. He can see how hard his parents work to make Arcadia successful, but he can also see that the self-indulgent commune leader frequently fails to live up to his own ideals. As the backbreaking work, continual poverty, and near-constant hunger work to undermine the once-flourishing sense of community, Bit's family leaves the commune to make their way in the outside world. Bit becomes a photographer and teacher but is always anchored to the place of his childhood, even marrying the emotionally damaged daughter of Arcadia's guru, but happiness proves elusive, both for him and for the greater world, as a flu pandemic sweeps the globe. Groff's second novel, after the well-received The Monsters of Templeton (2008), gives full rein to her formidable descriptive powers, as she summons both the beauty of striving for perfection and the inevitable devastation of failing so miserably to achieve it. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Soldier dogs : the untold story of America's canine heroes

 by Maria Goodavage.  When news leaked in 2011 that Cairo, a Belgian Malinois, was a member of SEAL Team Six-the group credited with killing Osama bin Laden-interest in "soldier dogs" soared. Though they've been used on and off by the American military since WWI, the role of dogs in warfare has typically been something that only servicemen and women were familiar with. In this detailed account, former USA Today reporter Goodavage (The Dog Lover's Companion to California) takes readers behind the scenes to learn how these courageous canines are identified, trained, and cared for in the field. Tales of dogs searching for and identifying IEDs and other explosives that litter Afghanistan make up the bulk of her story, but Goodavage also spends a considerable amount of the book describing the relationships soldiers form with their canine companions . Stories of spooked pups aboard battle-bound Hueys and dogs in the line of fire reveal surprisingly human-like response to war, and posit these military mutts as admirable-and capable-soldiers.  --Publishers Weekly (Check catalog)

Another piece of my heart

 by Jane Green. An angry teen pushes her family to the breaking point in ever-popular Green's (Promises to Keep, 2010) new novel. Emily is enraged when her father, Ethan, decides to marry beautiful, sophisticated Andi. Even though Ethan has been divorced from her alcoholic mother, Janice, for years, Emily can't get over her anger, or her loathing of Andi. Andi makes every effort to befriend Emily, but the teen continues to find ways to blame Andi for her problems and come between Ethan and Andi. After five years with Ethan, Andi's patience is running thin, and she's beginning to wonder if sustaining the marriage is really best for her. When Emily's reckless actions come back to haunt her, Andi sees a chance to help her stepdaughter and give her marriage with Ethan a fresh start. When Ethan rejects her plan, however, Andi must make a choice: stay and feel resentful, or throw in the towel for good. Told with her trademark sensitivity and insight, Green's latest offers everything readers expect from her: a moving story peopled with nuanced, sympathetic characters. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: A 250,000 first print run, national tour, and major broadcast and online publicity will make this best-selling Green's most visible book yet. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

The bully society : school shootings and the crisis of bullying in America's schools

 by Jessie Klein.  In this thorough examination of the connection between bullying and three decades of school shootings in America, Adelphi University professor Klein pre-sents a compelling case that the strict gender rules by which American children and teenagers are unfairly forced to live are the driving factors in school violence. As Klein writes: "Although the forms of school violence may differ, the same patterns emerge. Boys (and, increasingly, girls) lash out to prove that they can fulfill their narrow gender prescriptions." Boys (and even girls) are increasingly required to show constant proof of their "masculinity" without the slightest hint of weakness, and those who don't succeed in impressing their peers are taunted and bullied, sometimes with extreme and disastrous results. Klein highlights the unfortunate intersections of masculinity, competitiveness, and American culture, demonstrating that these deeply ingrained social rules don't end when students move into adulthood; this isn't a problem just for kids, she argues, but for society at large. Klein's accessible research ranges from statistical analysis to interviews, all applied within a framework of sociological theory. However, Klein makes such a convincing argument that this overmasculinization is an American problem that it's hard (though tempting) to buy her final suggestion that perhaps kids just need to feel more connected at school to avoid the bullying and tragedies that can result. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. --Publishers Weekly (Check Catalog)

Gods without men

 by Haro Kunzu. In his assured and very entertaining fourth novel, Kunzru roams back and forth in time, homing in on disparate groups of seekers, all of whom converge on the formidable Three Pinnacles rocks in the Mojave Desert. The characters include a dissolute British rock musician seeking to escape a bad recording session in L.A. by ingesting hallucinogens, a small-town girl seduced by the bizarre beliefs of a UFO cult, a miner who mistakes the ill effects of mercury poisoning for a mystical experience, and a goth-girl refugee from Iraq. But at the center of the novel is a wealthy New York couple who become the focus of a media firestorm when their autistic four-year-old son vanishes in the desert. The hostile and accusatory e-mails and Internet posts directed at the couple in the wake of their son's disappearance are just one of a number of brilliant flourishes Kunzru employs here as he explores humans' desperate search for meaning whether it be through drugs, religion, computer programming, or UFOs within the chaos of life, both modern and ancient. Working a subject that might easily have invited a heavy hand, Kunzru instead delivers a lively and frequently thrilling version of the quest novel. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Dying to be me : my journey from cancer, to near death, to true healing

 by Anita Moorjani. Growing up in Hong Kong, Moorjani struggled to reconcile her traditional Hindu heritage with a Chinese culture largely under British influence. These divergent cultural expectations amplified a lifelong fear of disapproval and not being "good enough." In 2002 she was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma, and in 2006 she slipped into a coma as her vital organs began shutting down, although she remained aware of everything going on around her. Describing her ensuing near-death experience as a realm of clarity and expansiveness, "a state of being," Moorjani made the choice to return, and her rapid and remarkable recovery defies all medical understanding. "Realizing that I am love was the most important lesson I learned, allowing me to release all fear, and that's the key that saved my life," Moorjani recalls. Her psychospiritual healing, which continues to this day, was self-realization: of her own magnificence, of oneness with universal energy and with a universe comprising. This candid memoir is a cathartic testimony to the magnificence and healing capacity of every human being. (Mar. 1)e probability of success under various scenarios). With a research-driven approach and scholarly tone, this hefty text escapes the tediousness that characterizes some academic works through the use of anecdotes about real-life founders, each very different, whose stories are woven through the chapters. Also peppered throughout are observations of such well-known entrepreneurs as Apple's Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, and Microsoft's Paul Allen. Sure to be required reading in business school curricula, this illuminating and captivating read will also appeal to aspiring entrepreneurs or founders who want to make better decisions in existing ventures. --Publishers Weekly (Check Catalog)

Red plenty

 by Francis Spufford.  After making a splash in England, Spufford's newest novel is likely to do the same in the U.S. If you think that a novel about the planned economy of the USSR from the 1950s through the 1970s would be boring, think again. Loosely based on real events, each of the book's interconnected vignettes gives insight into the bureaucrats, economists, and scientists who created the Soviet economy and all that it represented. From the voice of Khrushchev in the upper echelon of the Communist Party, to the story of Zoya, a young female biologist sent to study at a lab in Siberia, Spufford's narrative offers penetrating looks at an era rarely examined in this kind of human detail. Although the historical element can be daunting, Spufford's explanatory notes and references help readers navigate the more difficult sections. By teetering delicately between history and fiction, the novel leaves readers with a sense of the period that could not have been achieved with a straight, factual approach. --Booklist (Check Catalog) 

How we do harm : a doctor breaks ranks about being sick in America

American medicine is infected. Greed, apathy, and ignorance are the pathogens. Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, has seen enough. In this no-holds-barred peek at the contemporary health scene, he relishes his role as a rabble-rouser. Drawing on true stories to make his points, Brawley, aided by coauthor Goldberg, illustrates how more care is not better care and that doctors are not necessarily right. Many of these clinical cases conjure frustration, heartache, and outrage. A middle-aged woman comes to the hospital because her breast has fallen off (an automastectomy). She has disregarded the presence of breast cancer for nine years. A 23-year-old man with congenital heart disease and cardiac arrhythmia shows up at the ER about every other month in need of electrical cardioversion. Without health insurance, he cannot obtain an implantable defibrillator. At his wife's urging, a healthy retired man goes for a free screening PSA blood test. He receives much more than he bargained for: a radical prostatectomy, incontinence, and a colostomy. The benefits of any medical treatment must always be balanced with the potential for harm. Brawley finds the right formula for mixing autobiography, the politics of modern medicine, controversies in cancer care, and wisdom. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Carry the one

 by Carol Anshaw.  Words used to praise Anshaw's earlier novels (Seven Moves, 1996; Lucky in the Corner, 2002) witty, warm, intimate, poignant apply equally well to her most compelling book yet, a wholly seductive tale of siblings, addiction, conviction, and genius. This tough and tender comedy of misplaced love and beguiling characters begins with a wedding. Pregnant Carmen, a tireless professional do-gooder, is marrying Matt, a volunteer at the suicide hotline she runs. Nick, her crazy astronomer brother, is wearing a wedding dress; his date, Olivia, is wearing a tux; and they've brought enough drugs to get all of Wisconsin stoned. Carmen's sister, Alice, an artist, falls for Matt's sister, Maude. Utterly wasted, Nick, Olivia, Alice, Maude, and a folksinger start driving back to Chicago and strike and kill a young girl. Forever after, they are subjected to the relentless mathematics of guilt: When you add us up, you always have to carry the one. As the years unspool, Alice, frustrated in love, attains fame, even though she hides her best work. Heroically generous Carmen's first marriage quickly fizzles, but her son and, eventually, stepdaughter, are hilarious and wonderful. Sweet, tortured, cosmically gifted Nick remains epically self-destructive. Masterful in her authenticity, quicksilver dialogue, wise humor, and receptivity to mystery, Anshaw has created a deft and transfixing novel of fallibility and quiet glory. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

The last great Senate : courage and statesmanship in times of crisis

 by Ira S. Shapiro. The U.S. Congress wasn't always gridlocked. Members of the Senate weren't always hyperpartisan. Controversial issues like SALT II and the Panama Canal Treaty would probably be DOA in Congress today, but Shapiro, who was on the staff of several senators during that time, reminds readers that during the Carter administration, the Senate passed controversial landmark legislation with bipartisan support, facing issues on their merits. Shapiro identifies important legislation and treaties debated in the Senate from 1978 to 1980, explaining positions and senators who played important roles on each side. He describes the debate and amendment process used to create a bill that could pass. He also discusses domestic issues the Senate battled over, such as government-backed loans to save New York City from default and a bailout for the Chrysler Corporation. Senators Ted Kennedy, Henry "Scoop" Jackson, Robert Byrd, Howard Baker, and Ted Stevens, for example, found ways to compromise, allowing national interest to prevail over partisan and ideological rhetoric. VERDICT Shapiro's thorough analysis and background stories of these senators remind readers that the Senate once worked despite partisanship. Readers interested in political science and government history will enjoy the author's engaging style and historical perspective. --Library Journal (Check Catalog) 

Monday mornings : a novel

 by Sanjay Gupta.  In the high-stakes profession of neurosurgery, the bigger you are, the harder you fall. Or so it seems in the nifty first novel by CNN's chief medical correspondent Gupta, who is also a practicing neurosurgeon and nonfiction author. At the Chelsea General Hospital in Michigan, Dr. Ty Wilson is suffering from a serious crisis in confidence after a child dies during an operation. His medical colleagues include George Villanueva, a hulking former NFL player turned ER doctor, and Tina Ridgeway, a meticulous neurosurgeon whose home life is a mess. For quirkiness, there's a patient who undergoes surgery for bleeding cerebral aneurysms and develops an unusual postoperative mania for sketching human ears. For irony, the perfectionist head of surgery makes a jumbo mistake, and a middle-aged Korean neurosurgeon is afflicted with a deadly brain tumor. Despite their flaws, these fictional physicians possess extremely high empathy quotients. They make clinical and personal blunders, yet some attain redemption, and nearly all experience epiphanies. You don't have to be a brain surgeon to write a novel, but with Monday Mornings, readers will be glad one did. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Grace and grit : my fight for equal pay and fairness at Goodyear and beyond

 by Lilly M. Ledbetter. In 1998, after Ledbetter had spent 19 grueling years working at a Goodyear plant, an anonymous note showed her that she made 40% less than her male counterparts. So began her decade-long legal battle for equal pay, a story she tells movingly and frankly with coauthor Isom. After a hardscrabble childhood in a small Alabama community, Ledbetter knew a job at the nearby Goodyear plant meant lifelong financial stability. In 1979 as a manager there, Ledbetter found men reluctant to take orders from a woman, and faced blatant sexual harassment (a performance review ended with a solicitation). Ledbetter tried to take it in stride, but the stress took a mental and physical toll. Goodyear continually transferred her between departments, citing poor performance, but failed to produce evidence when Ledbetter requested it. After discovering the anonymous note, she filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission, leading to her landmark discrimination lawsuit under Title VII and the Equal Pay Act. While Ledbetter lost the case on appeal (a decision upheld by the Supreme Court), the experience prompted her to become a spokesperson for equal pay. In January 2009, President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act, a satisfying coda to this inspiring tale. --Library Journal (Check Catalog)

What we talk about when we talk about Anne Frank : stories

 by Nathan Englander. The sense comes easily that Englander, author of the celebrated short story collection For the Relief of Unbearable Urges (1999) and the absorbing novel The Ministry of Special Cases (2007), will always favor the short story form. In his new collection, the reader feels the musculature beneath the skin of his short fiction and keenly appreciates that this is where his supreme power lies. Englander is his own writer. One may think of, say, Bernard Malamud as a possible influence, but which masters, if any, guided him in the early stages of his career have been bid adieu, as Englander sails his own personally mapped seas. His plots are richly developed, and traditional short story techniques are used only when suitable. A case in point is the complex Sister Hills, which, fablelike in its deep resonance and applicability to human behavior beyond its particular circumstances, sees the growth of a Jewish settlement at various points in time, from 1973 to 2011. But in the drama unfolding in the foreground, one woman gives her child to another woman to protect the youngster from unidentified evil. The stresses between Jewish orthodoxy and a more secular practice of religious life are apparent in the title story, in which two school friends, grown now and with husbands and children, visit together 20 years after one couple moved to Israel and turned Hasidic. Their discussion of lifestyle choices, specifically within the context of a hypothetical second Holocaust, leads to uncomfortable realizations about one woman's spouse. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

Gypsy boy : my life in the secret world of the Romany Gypsies

 by Mikey Walsh.  A runaway number-one best-seller in the UK following its 2009 release, this controversial memoir is being made into a feature film and has already spawned a sequel. Having written the book under a pseudonym to protect himself and his family, Walsh has ongoing concerns for his safety after leaving the highly secretive Romany Gypsy community 15 years ago, and his true identity has not been publicly revealed. He claims his ultraviolent father once put a contract out on his life. He was born into a roving caravan of outsiders, brutally abused as a child (both physically by his father and sexually by an uncle), and never received any formal education growing up. He is also gay. This kind of harrowing life story is a publisher's dream and, in our post-James Frey world, skeptical detractors have made accusations regarding the book's authenticity. But none of that would make a lick of difference if this wasn't a gripping and heartfelt page-turner. Calling it enjoyable, however, is a big stretch. There are gasp-worthy moments on almost every page, and, if every word is true, it's a miracle Walsh survived at all, let alone found happiness and success. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

The darlings

 by Cristina Alger.  Probably the most compulsively readable fiction to come out of the Wall Street financial scandal so far, this debut novel by a former Goldman Sachs analyst offers readers plenty of schadenfreude, if only of the imaginary variety. Paul Ross, married to the daughter of billionaire investment manager Carter Darling, has lost his job. The pressure to maintain a Manhattan lifestyle trumps his unease about working for his father-in-law, and he is hired as general counsel. Two months into Carter's new post, one of his closest friends, who also runs the fund in which the firm is most heavily invested, takes a header off the Tappan Zee Bridge. Turns out the feds were closing in. Now Paul has to answer for the millions of dollars that have vanished from the fund, which turns out to have been nothing more than a Ponzi scheme. Alger knows the ins and outs of both Wall Street and an upscale NYC lifestyle, nailing all the details, from the plush, hushed atmosphere of high-end law firms to the right tennis togs for a casual weekend in the Hamptons. Delicious reading. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

The power of habit : why we do what we do in life and business

 by Charles Duhigg.  According to Duhigg (investigative reporter, New York Times), if people can understand how behaviors became habits, they can restructure those patterns in more constructive ways. He presents information on habit formation and change from academic studies, interviews with scientists and executives, and research conducted in dozens of companies. Three sections deal with the neurology of habit formation in individuals, the habits of successful companies and organizations, and the habits of societies and tough ethical issues. Duhigg offers a fascinating analysis for the college-educated reader. --Library journal (Check Catalog)

The shadow of your smile : a Deep Haven novel

 by Susan May Warren.  Quiet yet powerful, like a blizzard in Deep Haven, Minnesota, Warren's latest inspirational novel is a story of hidden pain. When daughter Kelsey is murdered, the Hueston family breaks. Suffering is all they know until an accident causes Noelle to lose her memory. As her husband, Eli, and sons Kirby and Kyle help her rebuild her life, she gets reacquainted with her family and reclaims her past passions and youthful joy. Eli soon confronts his own coping methods, which involve another woman, Lee Nelson, whose husband was killed the same day as Kelsey. Emma Nelson was Kelsey's best friend. They dreamed of making music together, but Emma's songs now feel incomplete. A chance encounter with Kyle spurs Emma and him to believe their fates might not already be sealed. Like the spring thaw, Warren's novel is cold and hard at the outset, but as the story unfolds, characters with frozen hearts begin to revive. At the end, hope is in full bloom. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

How to buy and maintain a carpet : avoid losing a fortune when buying a carpet

 by Robert Selby. Endorsed by the present and past president of the California Carpet Cleaning Institute and Ralph Nader's Cal-Perg organization, this resource explains how carpets are made, how to avoid making big purchasing mistakes, and how to care for carpet. --Summary (Check Catalog)

Celebrity in death

 by J. D. Robb. NYPD lieutenant Eve Dallas doesn't do glitz or glam, but she has no choice when Hollywood director Mason Roundtree and his wife, Connie Burkette, issue an invitation to dine with the cast of The Icove Agenda. Based on one of Eve's earlier cases, the movie is just wrapping up production, and everyone wants face time with the real Lieutenant Dallas. Everyone except actress K. T. Harris, who plays the part of Eve's partner, Delia Peabody, onscreen but in real life is just as bitchy to Eve as she is to everyone else. So when K. T.'s body is found floating in the Roundtree and Burkette's penthouse lap pool, it really isn't that big of a surprise. The real challenge for Eve will be narrowing down her list of suspects since practically everyone at the dinner party had at least one motive for murder. Readers count on Robb to deliver the goods, and her thirty-fourth (!) Eve Dallas book will not disappoint. The plot is cleverly conceived, cinematically riveting, and sexily charming, and Eve is her usual no-nonsense self. --Boooklist (Check Catalog)

Below stairs : the classic kitchen maid's memoir that inspired "Upstairs, downstairs" and "Downton Abbey"

 by Margaret Powell.  The popularity of Sunday school among the working classes had less to do with religion than parents' much-needed private time, according to Margaret Powell. Such revelations are rampant in Below Stairs, a fascinating and feisty memoir of Powell's life as a kitchen maid and cook in 1920s England. Originally published in the UK in 1968, it's again a best-seller there after the debut of the Emmy Award-winning series, Downton Abbey, which, along with Upstairs Downstairs, took inspiration from the book. Powell writes conversationally, offering cutting and humorous insights. She piles on the details of a domestic servant's day up at 5:30, work enough for six people, and don't forget to iron the bootlaces but stops before she falls into self-pity. Running through it all is the divide between the servants and Them, manifesting itself in everything from the sad parade of practical Christmas gifts to the employer's order that nothing be served from a servant's bare hands. Powell reminds readers that these things shouldn't be forgotten, and she is an honest, saucy, and skilled storyteller. --Booklist (Check Catalog)

The angel Esmeralda : nine stories

 by Don DeLillo After 15 reverberating novels, DeLillo, winner of the National Book Award and the PEN/Saul Bellow Prize, to name but two of his honors, assembles his first short story collection. In tales dating from 1979 to 2011, DeLillo is prescient and timeless, commanding and sensitive. A recurring motif involves individuals ensnared in mysterious dialectics. Two students at an isolated college become obsessed with a stranger. Two men orbit the earth in Human Moments in World War III. gazing down at a planet besieged by desertification, violent storms, and war. A man in a prison for white-collar felons watches his young daughters on television delivering edgy stock-market reports in a brilliantly topsy-turvy take on global financial crises. An elegant tale about an earthquake raises urgent questions about how one lives gracefully on shifting ground. The title story is a masterpiece. Set in the graffiti-covered ruins of the South Bronx, it tells the wrenching tale of two nuns, a feral girl, a murder, and the profound hunger for a miracle. In each trenchant tale, DeLillo shows us that we are made of stories and that our quest for anchorage in safe harbors is a grand illusion. This towering collection builds in the mind like a mighty cumulonimbus lit by lightning flashes and scored with thunder. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: A signal writer, DeLillo always makes news, and this prophetic first will be of unique interest. --Booklist (Check catalog)