New Books

The Oxford Book of American Short Stories

Joyce Carol Oates (Editor)

In The Oxford Book of American Short Stories, Joyce Carol Oates offers a sweeping survey of American short fiction, in a collection of fifty-six tales that combines classic works with many "different, unexpected" gems, and that invites readers to explore a wealth of important pieces by women and minority writers. Oates provides fascinating introductions to each writer, blending biographical information with her own trenchant observations about their work, plus a long introductory essay, in which she offers the fruit of years of reflection on a genre in which she herself is a master. (From publisher)

Launching the Right Career

Kate Wendleton

This book teaches how to find internships that will lead to great networking contacts and the perfect career after graduation, write a resume accurately, answer job-postings and how to turn interviews into offers and how to negotiate the salary. (From publisher)

College Reading 1

Cheryl Benz ,Myra M. Medina

This book incorporates intellectually stimulating reading material and language exercises to help low-intermediate level college bound ESL Students begin bridging the gap in preparing for academic study. Six chapters of readings in psychology, sociology, art, technology and science present concepts and language that many students will encounter in future courses. (From Publisher)

Book of the Month

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

Erik Larson

Before the turn of the 20th century, a city emerged seemingly out of the ash of then dangerous Chicago, a dirty, grimy, teeming place ravaged by urban problems. Daniel Burnham, the main innovator of the White City of the 1892 World's Fair, made certain that it became the antithesis of its parent city, born to glow and gleam with all that the new century would soon offer. While the great city of the future was hastily being planned and built, the specially equipped apartment building of one Herman Webster Mudgett was also being constructed. Living in a nearby suburb and walking among the hundreds of thousands of visitors who would eventually attend the fair, Mudgett, a doctor by profession more commonly known as H.H. Holmes, was really an early serial killer who preyed on the young female fair goers pouring into Chicago. Using the fair as a means of attracting guests to a sparsely furnished "castle" where they ultimately met their end, Holmes committed murder, fraud, and numerous other crimes seemingly without detection until his arrest in 1894. Both intimate and engrossing, Larson's (Isaac's Storm) elegant historical account unfolds with the painstaking calm of a Holmes murder. Although both subjects have been treated before, paralleling them here is unique. (From-Rachel Collins, "Library Journal")