On the shelves - May 22

The books listed below are now available for checkout at the Clovis-Carver Public Library. The library is open to the public, but patrons can still visit the online catalog at cloviscarverpl.booksys.net/opac/ccpl or call 575-769-7840 to request a specific item for curbside pickup.

“Little Bookshop of Murder” by Maggie Blackburn. Academic life at her Virginia university is a viper’s pit, so Summer Merriweather spends her summer in England, researching a scholarly paper that will finally get her published, impress the dean, and save her job. But her English idyll ends when her mother, Hildy, dies from an apparent heart attack.Returning to Brigid’s Island, North Carolina, for the funeral, Summer is impatient to settle the estate, sell Beach Reads—her mom’s embarrassingly romance-themed bookstore—and go home. But as she drops by Beach Reads, Summer finds threatening notes addressed to Hildy. The police insist there’s not enough evidence to launch a murder investigation. Instead, Summer and her Aunt Agatha start sleuthing. But there are more suspects on Brigid’s Island than are dreamt of in the Bard’s darkest philosophizing. And if Summer can’t find the villain, the town will be littered with a Shakespearean tragedy’s worth of corpses—including her own.

“Pay Dirt Road” by Samantha Jayne Allen. Annie McIntyre has a love/hate relationship with Garnett, Texas. Recently graduated from college and home waitressing, Annie is lured into the family business—a private investigation firm—by her supposed-to-be-retired grandfather, Leroy. When a waitress at the café goes missing, Annie and Leroy begin an investigation that leads them down rural routes and haunted byways. As Annie works to uncover the truth she finds herself identifying with the victim in increasing, unsettling ways, and realizes she must confront her own past if she wants to survive this homecoming.

“The Children on the Hill” by Jennifer McMahon. 1978: At her renowned treatment center in picturesque Vermont, the brilliant psychiatrist, Dr. Helen Hildreth, is acclaimed for her compassionate work with the mentally ill. But when she’s home with her cherished grandchildren, Vi and Eric, she’s just Gran. Then one day Gran brings home a child to stay with the family. Iris—silent, hollow-eyed, skittish, and feral—does not behave like a normal girl. Vi and Eric invite Iris to join their Monster Club, where they catalogue all kinds of monsters and dream up ways to defeat them. Because, as Vi explains, monsters are everywhere. 2019: Lizzy Shelley, the host of the popular podcast Monsters Among Us, is traveling to Vermont, where a young girl has been abducted, and a monster sighting has the town in an uproar. She’s determined to hunt it down, because Lizzy knows better than anyone that monsters are real—and one of them is her very own sister.

“Bound for Glory” by Paul Hendrickson. Between the years 1935 and 1942, a vast number of images of America were taken by photographers hired by the Farm Security Administration (FSA). The charge of the photographers was to document the people and places the FSA had set out to help. Today, this collection of photographs consists of about 108,000 images, among them some of the most famous black-and-white documentary images from the first half of the 20th century.

“Woman in the Wild” by Susan Joy Paul. Few experiences rival a grand outdoor adventure. Hiking into the wilderness, camping under the stars, and exploring the backcountry offer new challenges that awaken a woman’s spirit and test her soul.

“The Bomber Mafia” by Malcolm Gladwell. Most military thinkers in the years leading up to World War II saw the airplane as an afterthought. But a small band of idealistic strategists had a different view. This “Bomber Mafia” asked: What if precision bombing could, just by taking out critical choke points - industrial or transportation hubs - cripple the enemy and make war far less lethal?

— Summaries provided by library staff