Books

Piercing the White House Bubble

Kenneth Walsh on how 10 modern-day presidents tried to keep in touch

For more than 25 years, Kenneth Walsh has covered the White House and its chief occupant for U.S. News & World Report, penning more than a dozen books in that time. His latest, Prisoners of the White House: The Isolation of America’s Presidents and the Crisis of Leadership, explores the irony that the most powerful man in the world, the president of the United States, is powerless against the confines of his very office.

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– by J. Alex Knoll – 5/16/13

Sing a Song for All Living Things

Bay Bard Tom Wisner’s legacy lives on

Crabs tumble from a wooden basket and, along with colorful musical notes, scuttle off into dark blue water and turquoise sky. The cover of Singing the Chesapeake welcomes nature lovers young and old into the world of the late Tom Wisner, environmental educator and musician. Everything about this collection of children’s songs from the Bard of the Chesapeake is bright, sunny and magical.

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– by Marilyn Lee Recknor – 4/25/13

The Bathroom Reader

Poopendous! author Artie Bennett turns bodily functions into kid-appropriate art

“Matt said the F-word!” tattled five-year old Maya as my sweet little kindergartners did their morning color, cut and paste. I was shocked, but not so much when I learned that the F-word in question ended in -art. Children are intrigued by smells, noises and products of the bathroom. This month the Key School welcomes a writer who turns references to bodily functions into kid-friendly and kid-appropriate art.

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– by Marilyn Lee Recknor – 4/4/13

Recycling Jesus, by Peter Abresch

Calvert County author Peter Abresch has a new mystery out just in time to add a touch more intrigue to the election of a new pope. Recycling Jesus, the author’s 10th novel, is a mystery wrapped in the Church’s most venerated relic, the Shroud of Turin. The crime might have gone undetected had not the Shroud’s guard been killed.

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– by Trudy Mihalcik – 3/14/13

The Reader

Librarians are our literary guides, anticipating our tastes and putting books to meet them in our hands, audio players and eReaders on demand. When you need a book, you ask a librarian. Here, in a special to Bay Weekly, Anne Arundel County Public Librarians review novels by local authors.

Deadrise by Robert Blake Whitehill Deadrise, the first book in the Ben Blackshaw series, will capture your attention and have you on the edge of your seat from page one when the title character finds a wealth of gold, a dirty bomb and the corpse of his father while diving for oysters in the Chesapeake Bay.

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– by – 3/7/13

Feathers or Love on the Wing

In the literary economy, poetry is an art more in supply than demand. Nearly everybody writes poetry, or so it seems. But who reads it? Little kids love its melody and meaning, but by high school it’s force-fed. Most of the rest of us take it, often in the form of Hallmark verse, to help us express emotions for which we seem to have no words of our own. It takes a clever poet to sneak in under our defenses.

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– by Sandra Olivetti Martin – 2/14/13

The Best of Times on the Chesapeake Bay: An Account of a Rock Hall Waterman

Lived by Capt. Lawrence William Simns; written by Robert L. Rich Jr.

If anyone should write a book about being a waterman on the Chesapeake Bay, it should be Capt. Larry Simns, who has worked the water for seven decades and has served as president of the Maryland Watermen’s Association for 40 years. His efforts on behalf of commercial watermen, Chesapeake Bay and the seafood industry are all but legendary.

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– by Mick Blackistone – 1/3/13

Kiddie Lit to Light the Holidays

Two books with local connections are treats to put under the tree for younger children.

Denise Blum’s Chesapeake Bay Crab Challenge is about Jay, a young boy who wakes up one morning to find his pet crab Clay missing from his aquarium. Where could Clay be? Will Jay find him? Blum takes readers on a hunt through Chesapeake Country’s Lusby, Oxford and Cambridge — to stores, restaurants and parks. Children will recognize some of the local landmarks; the story begs a field trip to the unfamiliar places. (I wanted to climb into my car and take off for Rock Hall and Chestertown.)

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– by Marilyn Recknor – 12/20/12

M.D. Johnson’s Midnight in Moscow

International intrigue with a local angle and author

Midnight in Moscow opens with a scene with immediate familiarity for local readers: a news story featuring a car set ablaze at a BWI parking lot. Then a young Russian American woman is found murdered along the C&O Canal. From there it’s a short hop to Annapolis and the main character, Emily Cowan, a sassy sleuth of a certain age who globetrots from western Maryland to Germany, Russia and the Near East.

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– by Jane C. Elkin – 11/29/12

Read Your Way onto the Water

SeaKayaker discovers the Patuxent Water Trail

Autumn is forecast spectacular for the Thanksgiving weekend, opening one of the year’s last doors to get out into Chesapeake Country. One way to accept the invitation is to follow the December issue of SeaKayaker onto the treasure in our own backyard, the Patuxent Water Trail.

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– by Sandra Olivetti Martin – 11/22/12