On the shelves - Jan. 26

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.

“I Think I Was Murdered” by Colleen Coble & Rick Acker. Just a year ago, Katrina Berg was at the pinnacle of her career. She was a rising star in the AI chatbot start-up everyone was talking about and married with an adoring husband. Then her world combusted. Her husband, Jason, was killed in a fiery car crash. Her most prized possession is the beta prototype for an ultra-sophisticated chatbot loaded onto her phone. The contents of Jason’s email, social media backups, and every bit of data she could find were loaded into the bot, and Katrina has “talked” to him every day. Sometimes, she imagines he isn’t really dead and is right there beside her. On a particularly bad day, she taps out: Tell me something I don’t know. The cursor blinks for several moments before the reply flashes quickly onto the screen: I think I was murdered. Distraught, Katrina returns to her cozy hometown in the Northern California redwoods and enlists the help of Seb Wallace, longtime acquaintance, to try to parse out the truth of what happened.

“The Secret War of Julia Child” by Diana R. Chambers. Single, 6 foot 2, and thirty years old, Julia McWilliams took a job working for America’s first espionage agency, years before cooking or Paris entered the picture. The Secret War of Julia Child traces Julia’s transformation from ambitious Pasadena blue blood to Washington, DC file clerk, to head of General “Wild Bill” Donovan’s secret File Registry as part of the Office of Strategic Services. The wartime journey takes her to South Asia’s remote front lines of then-Ceylon, India, and China, where she finds purpose, adventure, self-knowledge – and love with mapmaker Paul Child.

“How to End a Love Story” by Yulin Kuang. Helen Zhang hasn’t seen Grant Shepard once in the thirteen years since the tragic accident that bound their lives together forever. Now a bestselling author, Helen pours everything into her career. She’s even scored a coveted spot in the writers’ room of the TV adaptation of her popular young adult novels. LA is the fresh start she needs. After all, no one knows her there. Except Grant has done everything in his power to move on from the past, including building a life across the country. And while the panic attacks have never quite gone away, he’s well liked around town as a screenwriter. He knows he shouldn’t have taken the job on Helen’s show, but it will open doors to developing his own projects that he just can’t pass up. Grant’s exactly as Helen remembers him. And Helen’s exactly as Grant remembers too. But working together is messy. When secrets come to light, they must reckon with the fact that theirs was never meant to be any kind of love story. And yet the key to making peace with their past might just lie in holding on to each other in the present.

“Sacred Places of a Lifetime” by National Geographic. With eloquent text, hundreds of gorgeous full-color images, and practical visitor information, Sacred Places of a Lifetime: 500 of the World’s Most Peaceful and Powerful Destinations highlights fascinating icons of many religions around the world and offers an intriguing window into the cultures that created them.

“Back To the Land” by Pieter Estersohn. This inspirational survey presents a broad cross section of individuals who are flocking to this bucolic region and providing their considerable newfound knowledge on such topics as vegetable farming, tending a fruit orchard, canning and pickling, foraging, harvesting biodynamic honey, baking bread from local grains, and much more.

“Giant Love” by Julie Gilbert. In Giant Love, Julie Gilbert writes of the internationally best-selling Edna Ferber, one of the most widely read writers in the first half of the 20th Century – her evolution from mid-west maverick girl-reporter to Pulitzer Prize winning, beloved American novelist, from her want-to-be actress days to becoming Broadway’s acclaimed prize-winning playwright whose were the most successful playwrights of their time.

— Summaries provided by library staff