On the shelves - Dec. 31

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.

“Faking Christmas” by Kerry Winfrey. Laurel Grant works as the social media manager for an Ohio tourism magazine and website. She most definitely does not run a farm, but one tiny misunderstanding leads her boss, Gilbert, to think she owns her twin sister Holly’s farm. Gilbert invites himself over for the farm’s big Christmas Eve dinner, so Laurel and Holly come up with the perfect plan. But Laurel shows up at the farm to find an unwelcome guest is waiting: Max Beckett, her nemesis since Holly’s wedding. The annoyingly attractive man she hates will be posing as Laurel’s husband just for the evening, but when a snowstorm traps them all for the entire weekend, Laurel is going to have to figure out how to survive with her job and dignity intact.

“The Watchmaker’s Hand” by Jeffery Deaver. When a New York City construction crane mysteriously collapses, causing mass destruction and injury, Rhyme and Sachs are on the case. A political group claims responsibility for the sabotage and threatens another attack in twenty-four hours, unless its demands are met. Then a clue reveals to Rhyme that his nemesis, known as the Watchmaker, has come to town to fulfill his promise of murdering the criminalist. Now Rhyme and Sachs have to dodge his brilliant scheme to destroy them both, while racing against time to stop the construction site terrorists.

“Absolution” by Alice McDermott. Tricia is a shy newlywed, married to a rising attorney on loan to navy intelligence. Charlene is a practiced corporate spouse and mother of three. In Saigon in 1963, the two women form a wary alliance as they balance the era’s mandate to be “helpmeets” to their ambitious husbands. Sixty years later, Charlene’s daughter, spurred by an encounter with an aging Vietnam vet, reaches out to Tricia. Together, they look back at their time in Saigon, taking wry account of that pivotal year and of Charlene’s altruistic machinations, and discovering how their own lives as women on the periphery have been shaped and burdened by the same sort of unintended consequences that followed America’s tragic interference in Southeast Asia.

“Mountains of Fire” by Clive Oppenheimer. Clive Oppenheimer invites readers to stand with him in the shadow of an active volcano. Whether he is scaling majestic summits, listening to hissing lava at the crater’s edge, or hunting for the far-flung ashes from Earth’s greatest eruptions, Oppenheimer is an ideal guide, offering readers the chance to tag along on the daring, seemingly-impossible journeys of a volcanologist

“The World in a Wineglass” by Ray Isle. So much of today’s wine is mass-produced, industrially farmed, corporate-owned, and essentially, ordinary. Isle explains that the way a wine is made, and who made it, can make a huge difference when you drink it. Drawing on his deep knowledge and genuine appreciation of winemaking, Isle takes us on a tour of several hundred independently owned wineries around the world, bringing the local vintners to life and describing the different wines they produce in vivid detail.

“Teddy and Booker T.” by Brian Kilmeade. When President Theodore Roosevelt welcomed the country’s most visible Black man, Booker T. Washington, into his circle of counselors in 1901, the two confronted a shocking and violent wave of racist outrage. Lynching was on the rise, and Black Americans faced new barriers to voting. Slavery had been abolished, but if newly freed citizens were condemned to lives as sharecroppers, how much improvement would their lives really see?

— Summaries provided by library staff