December 13, 2019 | kasarak
New holiday titles, gripping non-fiction, and works by popular fiction authors were released in large print in December. Check out a few of the new titles below.
A CBA bestselling author Krista Galloway is not a fan of Christmas, due to bad memories of the holiday season during her childhood in multiple foster homes. But when she accepts a job as a city manager in the town of Winter Hill, Washington, Christmas is part of the deal. The small town is famous for its Christmasville celebration, which is coordinated by the city manager. As Krista tries to make her tiny new apartment feel like home for her and her eight-year-old daughter, Emily, she wonders if this move was a mistake. She doesn't always feel welcomed in the close-knit town. Can a friendly stranger and his family help restore Krista's Christmas spirit before the big day?
As revelatory as Atul Gawande's Being Mortal, physician and award-winning author Louise Aronson's Elderhood is an essential, empathetic look at a vital but often disparaged stage of life. For more than 5,000 years, "old" has been defined as beginning between the ages of 60 and 70. That means most people alive today will spend more years in elderhood than in childhood, and many will be elders for 40 years or more. Yet at the very moment that humans are living longer than ever before, we've made old age into a disease, a condition to be dreaded, denigrated, neglected, and denied. Reminiscent of Oliver Sacks, noted Harvard-trained geriatrician Louise Aronson uses stories from her quarter century of caring for patients, and draws from history, science, literature, popular culture, and her own life to weave a vision of old age that's neither nightmare nor utopian fantasy--a vision full of joy, wonder, frustration, outrage, and hope about aging, medicine, and humanity itself. Elderhood is for anyone who is, inthe author's own words, "an aging, i.e., still-breathing human being."
Amaryllis Fox was in her last year as an undergraduate at Oxford studying theology and international law when her writing mentor Daniel Pearl was captured and beheaded. Galvanized by this brutality, Fox applied to a master's program in conflict and terrorism at Georgetown's School of Foreign Service, where she created an algorithm that predicted, with uncanny certainty, the likelihood of a terrorist cell arising in any village around the world. At twenty-one, she was recruited by the CIA. Her first assignment was reading and analyzing hundreds of classified cables a day from foreign governments and synthesizing them into daily briefs for the president. Her next assignment was at the Iraq desk in the Counterterrorism center. At twenty-two, she was fast-tracked into advanced operations training, sent from Langley to "the Farm," where she lived for six months in a simulated world learning how to use a Glock, how to get out of flexicuffs while locked in the trunk of a car, how to withstand torture, and the best ways to commit suicide in case of captivity. At the end of this training she was deployed as a spy under non-official cover--the most difficult and coveted job in the field as an art dealer specializing in tribal and indigenous art and sent to infiltrate terrorist networks in remote areas of the Middle East and Asia.
FBI Agent Atlee Pine's life was never the same after her twin sister Mercy was kidnapped--and likely killed--thirty years ago. After a lifetime of torturous uncertainty, Atlee's unresolved anger finally gets the better of her on the job, and she finds she has to deal with the demons of her past if she wants to remain with the FBI. Atlee and her assistant Carol Blum head back to Atlee's rural hometown in Georgia to see what they can uncover about the traumatic night Mercy was taken and Pine was almost killed. But soon after Atlee begins her investigation, a local woman is found ritualistically murdered, her face covered with a wedding veil--and the first killing is quickly followed by a second bizarre murder. Atlee is determined to continue her search for answers, but now she must also set her sights on finding a potential serial killer before another victim is claimed. But in a small town full of secrets--some of which could answer the questions that have plagued Atlee her entire life--digging deeper into the past could be more dangerous than she realizes . . .
In this celebration of skilled craftsmen, Eric Gorges, a corporate-refugee-turned-metal-shaper, taps into a hunger to get back to what's real. Visiting with fellow artisans --potters, stone carvers, glassblowers, engravers, woodworkers, and more, Gorges identifies values that are useful for all of us: taking time to slow down and enjoy the process, embracing failure, knowing when to stop and when to push through, and accepting that perfection is an illusion. A Craftsman's Legacy shows how all of us can embrace a more creative and authentic life and focus on doing what we love.
In this celebration of skilled craftsmen, Eric Gorges, a corporate-refugee-turned-metal-shaper, taps into a hunger to get back to what's real. Visiting with fellow artisans --potters, stone carvers, glassblowers, engravers, woodworkers, and more, Gorges identifies values that are useful for all of us: taking time to slow down and enjoy the process, embracing failure, knowing when to stop and when to push through, and accepting that perfection is an illusion. A Craftsman's Legacy shows how all of us can embrace a more creative and authentic life and focus on doing what we love.
New York Times bestselling author Donna Andrews returns with another Meg Langslow mystery written "firmly in the grand tradition of Agatha Christie's Christmas books" (Toronto Globe and Mail). The 26th book and the sixth Christmas mystery in the Meg Lansglow series, Owl Be Home for Christmas is yet another wonderfully merry and funny book from New York Times bestselling author Donna Andrews. It's a few days before Christmas, and Meg's grandfather is hosting a scientific conference on owls at the Caerphilly Inn. Most of the family are there, helping out in one capacity or another, including Meg's grandmother, Cordelia--invited by Grandfather in rare gesture of peace-making, to share her expertise on rehabilitating large birds, including owls. An unexpectedly severe snow storm traps the conference-goers in the hotel, and one of the visiting ornithologists is murdered. Even if Caerphilly is able to clear the roads in time, Chief Burke doesn't want the various suspects to scatter to half a dozen continents before he identifies the killer, so there's a very real possibility that none of them will make it home for Christmas . . . at least not unless Meg comes to the rescue. Full of intrigue and snow, this Christmas mystery will take readers home to Caerphilly for Christmas"