On the shelves - Feb. 24

The following are available for checkout at:

Clovis-Carver Public Library

“About My Mother: True Stories of a Horse-Crazy Daughter and Her Baseball-Obsessed Mother” by Peggy Rowe paints a beautiful and funny memoir conveying the complexity of her mother Thelma. The ultimate tomboy, Peggy saw her mother as a benevolent, loving dictator. Then major league baseball came to town and Thelma turned into a wacky groupie who would throw her underwear at the TV while shouting insults at the umpires. Life between mother and daughter — very different, but very alike — became a series of compromises.

“Create Your Own Universe” by the Brothers McLeod is here to help jump-start anyone who ever wanted to create a comic, graphic novel, animation, film, television series or even a book. Beginning with fun ways to think about making up characters, the brothers teach how to pick your favorites and create worlds — maps of towns, illustrations of where your characters will live — using words, drawings or even scrapbooking. You’ll finally be able to combine this all together and start bringing your stories to life.

“It Happened in Rocky Mountain National Park” by Phyllis J. Perry depicts an array of intriguing people and events that shaped Colorado’s largest national park. From the attempt by two teens to scale the sheer granite face of Diamond; the life and untimely demise of Rocky Mountain Jim, an eccentric wilderness guide; an out-of-control wildfire that nearly destroyed a town; a tenacious girl who summited a 14,259 foot peak at the tender age of 8; to a serial spouse killer in Estes Park. These fascinating accounts are portrayed in spellbinding detail.

“Lady of a Thousand Treasures” by Sandra Byrd takes place in Victorian England where Eleanor Sheffield, a talented evaluator of antiquities, is appointed as trustee of a wealthy baron’s legendary collection. Eleanor must choose whether to donate the priceless treasures to a museum or allow them to pass to the baron’s son — the man who once broke her heart, yet claims to still love her. His mysterious comments and actions fuel her doubts, forcing Eleanor to decide whom she can trust and what is meant to be treasured.

“The Map of Salt and Stars” by Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar shadows young Nour and her family as they move back to Syria following the death of her father. To remember him, she recounts their favorite tale of Rawiya, a 12th century girl who disguised herself in order to apprentice to a mapmaker. But when war reaches Nour’s quiet neighborhood, the family flees for safety across the Middle East and North Africa, along the very route Rawiya and her mapmaker took 800 years before in their quest to chart the world.

“Money In the Morgue” by Ngaio Marsh and Stella Duffy continues the adventures of Inspector Alleyn who finds himself in a seedy WWII hospital in New Zealand’s hinterlands, a place swimming in convalescing soldiers who are noisy, often drunk and always over-interested in the nurses. After a storm kills the electrical power, everyone is stranded in the dark with a murderer and Alleyn must go to work to find the elusive killer.

— Summaries by library staff