Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Popular True Crime




The following are 5 of the most popular True Crime reads at the Wellesley Free Library.

 


A Murder in Wellesley takes the reader far beyond the headlines and national news coverage and tells the untold story of the meticulous investigation led by Marty Foley, the lead State Police detective on the case, from the morning of the murder through Dirk Greineder's ultimate conviction. 




This true-crime thriller presents readers with a rare and unique portrait of the last days of colonial Peking.  The mutilated body of Pamela Werner was found at the base of the Fox Tower, which, according to local superstition, is home to the maliciously seductive fox spirits. As British detective Dennis and Chinese detective Han investigate, the mystery only deepens and, in a city on the verge of invasion, rumor and superstition run rampant. 



The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the
Fair That Changed America
     by Erik Larson

Devil in the White City is the story of the master builder, the killer, and the great fair that obsessed them both. This rich narrative draws the reader into a time of magic and majesty, made all the more appealing by a supporting cast of real-life characters, including Buffalo Bill, Theodore Dreiser, Susan B. Anthony, Thomas Edison, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and others. In this book the smoke, romance, and mystery of the Gilded Age come alive as never before. 
 


 In this book, Foley, a cop s cop, honestly recounts how his wide-eyed admiration for the nation s top law enforcement agency was gradually transformed by dark realities he didn’t’ want to believe. His investigative efforts resulted in criminal convictions of a half-dozen of Boston s most notorious thugs and also led to the conviction of John Connolly, one of the FBI agents who abetted Bulger; Connolly is now serving a forty-year prison sentence.



One late spring evening in 2010, Shannan Gilbert went missing. No one who had heard of her disappearance thought much about what had happened to the twenty-four-year-old, a Craigslist prostitute. Until seven months later, when an unexpected discovery in a bramble alongside a nearby highway turned up four bodies, all evenly spaced, all wrapped in burlap. Like Shannan, all four women were petite and in their twenties, they all came from out of town to work as escorts, and they all advertised on Craigslist and its competitor, Backpage. Lost Girls is a portrait not just of five women, but of unsolved murder in an idyllic part of America, of the underside of the Internet, and of the secrets we keep without admitting to ourselves that we keep them.

Tyson

Thursday, October 10, 2013

Literature Resource Center is for everyone!

Whether you are a student, belong to book group, or just want to know more about a book or the author of a book you have just read, try out the Literature Resource Center, our Online Resource for October.

This database includes biographies of 130,000+ writers and full-text reviews and critical analyses of their works.
 
The Magill's Literary Annual is another literature online resource to visit for information on books written after 1976.  You may use both databases in the library or use your library card to search them remotely.  Try them out today!  SH

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Perhaps you've heard of the Google?


Googling your time away
If you added up all the time you've spent wading through useless results from a Google search, you'd find it would add up to hours (days?, weeks?) you'd rather be doing other things. Think of all the beach time, reading time, golf time or loafing time you've given up! There's no magic wand here--experience does lead to efficiency. But so does a little effort to learn some Google tricks. (Try googling Google search tips, or at least use the Advanced Search regularly.)
One interesting tip that I think I will incorporate into my intermediate and advanced searching classes at the Library, is paying attention to the order of the search words. Google gives preference to web sites with your search words in the same order as you've typed them. I tried a few test cases and sure enough there was only about 60-70% overlap when I switched the order. Try a search of your own with four or more words...
--RL