2/25: New at the library this week

DVDs:

• Windtalkers

Books:

• The year of magical thinking / Joan Didion — Didion's journalistic skills are displayed as never before in this story of a year in her life that began with her daughter in a medically induced coma and her husband unexpectedly dead due to a heart attack. This powerful and moving work is Didion's "attempt to make sense of the weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness . . . about marriage and children and memory . . . about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself." Winner of the 2005 National Book Award for Nonfiction
• Symptoms of withdrawal : a memoir of snapshots and redemption / Christopher Kennedy Lawford — Born into enormous privilege as well as burdened by gut-wrenching family tragedy, Christopher Kennedy Lawford now shares his life story, offering a rare glimpse into the private worlds of the rich and famous of both Washington politics and the Hollywood elite.
• Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything / Steven D. Levitt — Steven D. Levitt and co-author Stephen J. Dubner show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives - how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. In Freakonomics, they set out to explore the hidden side of...well, everything. The inner workings of a crack gang. The truth about real-estate agents. The myths of campaign finance. The telltale marks of a cheating schoolteacher. The secrets of the Ku Klux Klan. (home website; further discussion)
• Teacher man : a memoir / Frank McCourt — In Teacher Man Frank turns his attention to the subject that he most often talks about in his lectures-teaching: why it's so important, why it's so undervalued. He describes his own coming of age-as a teacher, a storyteller, and, ultimately, a writer.
• Heart of war / Lucian K. Truscott — The brutal murder of Lieutenant Sheila Worthy has sent shock waves of fear throughout Fort Benning, Georgia, and the task of finding her killer has fallen to Major Kara Guidry. As the top lawyer in the judge advocate general's office, Kara has to tread lightly, for news of the death of Lieutenant Sheila Worthy has spread from the base to the most powerful corridors in Washington.
• Killer market : a Deborah Knott mystery / Margaret Maron — A chilling misadventure begins when Deborah, hunting high and lowboy for lodging, is befriended by an eccentric old lady calling herself Mrs. Jernigan. Deborah follows the chiffon-clad Good Samaritan through rooms of French provincial and high-tech modern when the lady suddenly vanishes, leaving a sexy hunk of manhood dead and motionless on a pricey piece of "motion" furniture.
• Patty Jane's House of Curl / Lorna Landvik — Patty Jane's House of Curl is an easy-to-read, joyous and funny story of a family of women, the tragedies in their lives, the strengths they find within themselves, and their ultimate victories. It follows the lives of two wacky Minnesota sisters, Patty Jane and Harriet, in a female Lake Wobegon where humor and hope overcome life's trials.
• Your Oasis on Flame Lake / Lorna Landvik — Best friends fast approaching forty, Devera and BiDi were recently voted "Least Changed" at their twentieth high school reunion. Once overjoyed, Devera now finds the label insulting. Then there's Devera's husband, Dick Lindstrom, an ace car and appliance salesman with cabaret in his heart. He dreams of opening a night club in his basement. A violent, unexpected crisis will throw both families into chaos - and force them to take stock of their lives.
• Unlucky in law / Perri O'Shaughnessy — With her client's blood DNA found in the dead woman's apartment, Nina faces an uphill battle. Suspecting that her hapless client has been set up, Nina brings in a brilliant forensic pathologist who comes up with a startling theory about the case that could rewrite a crucial page of European history.
• Outlaw mountain : a Joanna Brady mystery / J.A. Jance — Alice Rogers, an elderly widow, is dead, found murdered in the Arizona desert. It's easy enough to pin the killing on the teens caught driving her car across the Mexican border, but Sheriff Brady isn't about to let it go at that.
• The fortunate pilgrim / Mario Puzo — Puzo's classic story about the loves, crimes and struggles confronted by one family of New York City immigrants living in Hell's Kitchen.
• The last don / Mario Puzo — The last don is Domenico Clericuzio, a ferocious old man who is determined to secure his family's future in an era of legalized gambling, motion picture investments, and the threat of government informers. The Don is close to achieving his vision when secrets buried in his family's past threaten to undermine his plan and spark a war between two blood cousins.
• The voyage of the Narwhal / Andrea Barrett — Part adventure narrative, part love story, this extraordinary chronicle captures a crucial moment in the history of exploration, the mid-19th-century romance with the mystery of the Arctic. Combining fact and fiction, Andrea Barrett focuses on Erasmus Darwin Wells, a scholar-naturalist accompanying the expedition of the Narwhal.
• Murder at the quilt show / Aliske Webb —
• The savage country / Lewis B. Patten (large print edition) —