New Titles Ready for Checkout

BOOKS
The Eighth Day by Thornton Wilder

This new edition of Thornton Wilder's renowned 1967 National Book Award–winning novel features a new foreword by John Updike and an afterword by Tappan Wilder, who draws on such unique sources as Wilder's unpublished letters, handwritten annotations in the margins of the book, and other illuminating documentary material.

In 1962 and 1963, Thornton Wilder spent twenty months in hibernation, away from family and friends, in the Rio Grande border town of Douglas, Arizona. While there, he launched The Eighth Day, a tale set in a mining town in southern Illinois about two families blasted apart by the apparent murder of one father by the other. The miraculous escape of the accused killer, John Ashley, on the eve of his execution and his flight to freedom triggers a powerful story tracing the fate of his and the victim's wife and children. At once a murder mystery and a philosophical story, The Eighth Day is a "suspenseful and deeply moving" (New York Times) work of classic stature that has been hailed as a great American epic.

The New Bedside, Bathtub, &Armchair Companion

The New Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to Agatha Christie is even juicier than the best-selling first edition. More than thirty pages of articles, photos and movie posters have been added to this popular celebration of "Christiana". Back by popular demand are witty synopses of all the novels, plays, and short story collections, (without revealing the whodunits), Christie's own comments of the stories, feature articles on themes in her work, a Christie mystery map, puzzles and poems.

 
The Postmistress
Those who carry the truth sometimes bear a terrible weight...

It is 1940. France has fallen. Bombs are dropping on London. And President Roosevelt is promising he won't send our boys to fight in "foreign wars."

 

But American radio gal Frankie Bard, the first woman to report from the Blitz in London, wants nothing more than to bring the war home. Frankie's radio dispatches crackle across the Atlantic ocean, imploring listeners to pay attention as the Nazis bomb London nightly, and Jewish refugees stream across Europe. Frankie is convinced that if she can just get the right story, it will wake Americans to action and they will join the fight.

Meanwhile, in Franklin, Massachusetts, a small town on Cape Cod, Iris James hears Frankie's broadcasts and knows that it is only a matter of time before the war arrives on Franklin's shores. In charge of the town's mail, Iris believes that her job is to deliver and keep people's secrets, passing along the news that...

AUDIO BOOKS

Angels and Deamos by Dan Brown

An ancient secret brotherhood. A devastating new weapon of destruction. An unthinkable target.

When world-renowned Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to a Swiss research facility to analyze a mysterious symbol -- seared into the chest of a murdered physicist -- he discovers evidence of the unimaginable: the resurgence of an ancient secret brotherhood known as the Illuminati...the most powerful underground organization ever to walk the earth. The Illuminati has now surfaced to carry out the final phase of its legendary vendetta against its most hated enemy -- the Catholic Church.

Langdon's worst fears are confirmed on the eve of the Vatican's holy conclave, when a messenger of the Illuminati announces they have hidden an unstoppable time bomb at the very heart of Vatican City. With the countdown under way, Langdon jets to Rome to join forces with Vittoria Vetra, a beautiful and mysterious Italian scientist, to assist the Vatican in a desperate bid for survival.

Embarking on a frantic hunt through sealed crypts, dangerous catacombs, deserted cathedrals, and even the most secretive vault on earth, Langdon and Vetra follow a 400-year-old trail of ancient symbols that snakes across Rome toward the long-forgotten Illuminati lair...a clandestine location that contains the only hope for Vatican salvation.

An explosive international thriller, Angels & Demons careens from enlightening epiphanies to dark truths as the battle between science and religion turns to war.

Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns

If the preacher's wife's petticoat showed, the ladies would make the talk last a week. But on July 5, 1906, things took a scandalous turn. That was the day E. Rucker Blakeslee, proprietor of the general store and barely three weeks a widower, eloped with Miss Love Simpson -- a woman half his age and, worse yet, a Yankee! On that day, fourteen-year-old Will Tweedy's adventures began and an unimpeachably pious, deliciously irreverent town came to life. Not since To Kill A Mockingbird has a novel so deftly captured the subtle crosscurrents of small-town Southern life. Olive Ann Burns classic bestseller brings to vivid life an era that will never exist again, exploring timeless issues of love, death, coming of age, and the ties that bind families and generations.

The Blind Assin by Margaret Atwood

The Blind Assassin opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge." They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental. But just as the reader expects to settle into Laura's story, Atwood introduces a novel-within-a-novel. Entitled The Blind Assassin, it is a science fiction story told by two unnamed lovers who meet in dingy backstreet rooms. When we return to Iris, it is through a 1947 newspaper article announcing the discovery of a sailboat carrying the dead body of her husband, a distinguished industrialist. Brilliantly weaving together such seemingly disparate elements, Atwood creates a world of astonishing vision and unforgettable impact.

DVDs

The Town

The Last Exorcism

Salt

Eat, Pray, Love

Paul Blart

Inception

Grown Ups

The Hannibal Lecter

The Hurt Locker

Love Happens

The Proposal

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Neil White Conducts Workshop

Author Neil White conducted a writiers workshop on the MDCC Moorhead Campus Wednesday, March 23. Later in the day he was honored at a reception where he read from his book and then answered questions.

White with some of the workshop participants:  Keangela Riley of Cleveland; Emily Riser, Creative Writing Instructor; White; Audrey Beach, Series Coordinator; Brand Head of Indianola; Kristen Cassidy of Indianola.

Neil White to Visit MDCC Campus

Author of In the Sanctuary of Outcast to hold writers’ workshop and honored at reception

The Stanny Sanders Library on the Moorhead Campus of Mississippi Delta Community College will host Mississippi writer Neil White on Wednesday, March 23. Each semester the Library hosts a writer, art exhibit, or musician as part of their Come to the Library Series.

Neil White has been a newspaper editor, magazine publisher, advertising executive and federal prisoner. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi, where he operates a small publishing company, writes plays and essays, and teaches memoir writing. White will conduct a writers’ workshop for MDCC creative writing students and English students selected by their instructors who show promise in writing. The emphasis of the workshop will be memoir writing. In the afternoon at 2:00 there will be a reception along with White reading from In the Sanctuary of Outcasts and a question and answer session. Campus personnel and the public is invited to the reception, which will be held in the Abrams Fine Art Gallery.

White’s memoir, In the Sanctuary of Outcasts (Morrow/HarperCollins 2009) tells the story of the year he lived in the last operating facility in the United States for patients diagnosed with leprosy. The facility in Louisiana is the backdrop for the poignant look at those affected by the disease along with his own redemptive story.

The book was described by Publisher’s Weekly as “Brisk, ironic, perceptive . . . White’s introspective memoir puts a magnifying glass to a flawed life, revealing that all of life is to be savored and respected.” Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler added, “At once surreal and grittily naturalistic, funny and poignant, White’s tale is fascinating and full of universal resonance.”

In the Sanctuary of Outcasts was an Indie NEXT Great Reads Selection. The book was a finalist in the “Books for a Better Life” Award. Sanctuary was a finalist for the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance “Book of the Year” award. Barnes & Noble selected White as one of the top three emerging writers in the country through their Discover Great New Writers Program. And White was selected by the Southeastern Library Association as the 2009 “Outstanding Author of the Year.” Foreign language translations have been published in Germany, Croatia and the Netherlands.

Neil is also editor and publisher of the best-selling coffee-table book, Mississippians.

White has family ties in Indianola and is married to Deborah Hodges Bell, a law professor at The University of Mississippi. They have three children — Lindsay Bell, Neil White IV, and Maggie White.