Sutherland Shire Libraries Staff News

Ref Rap: New Reference Books

New Desk at Engadine

Who? How? Why?

Here’s a clue about what genre we are reading this month. The books involve a crime (often a murder), a puzzle to be solved, (often by a detective) and a solution. Have you guessed yet? Yes, it’s mysteries! Mysteries can be divided into subgenres, depending on how gruesome you like your books…so here are some subgenres you may like to try:

Cozy- Think of English villages and country houses, cats, cottages and culinary delights. Often lots of village gossip, and little, if any violence (apart from the murder of course!). All loose ends are tied up neatly at the end. These books are usually written in a series and are great to snuggle up in bed with.

Try:
Kerry Greenwood: Corinna Chapman series set in Melbourne.
Or for an amusing or “Caper” mystery try: Marianne Delacourt: Tara Sharp series.

Hardboiled/ Noir - The complete opposite of cozy, these gritty books can be dark, often set in a violent and corrupt world. They are realistic, and often feature a hard-bitten, tough investigator. Try:

Peter Temple: Jack Irish series.
Michael Robotham: noir psychological thrillers.

Police procedural - Do you like to know the workings of the police during an investigation, and the processes and tools they use to solve crimes? Or do you like a focus on forensics?

Try one of these authors:
Tara Moss.
P.D. Martin.
Gabrielle Lord.
Jon Cleary.

Detective-Amateur or private eye? -You can read about the amateur detective who keeps stumbling across mysteries to solve, or the professional private eye (or ex-cop) who is called upon to solve the mystery. Try:

Private Eye:
Colleen McCullough: series featuring Detective Carmine Delmonico.
Katherine Howell: series featuring Detective Ella Marconi.
Peter Corris: series featuring Private investigator Cliff Hardy.

Amateur detectives:
Tara Moss: new paranormal mystery series featuring Pandora English.
Jennifer Rowe: Tessa Vance series (she also writes childrens books under the pseudonym Emily Rodda). Her latest title is "Love honour and O'Brien"(June 2011).

Whodunit- For those who like the most traditional of mysteries, these books contain a trail of clues so the reader can try to guess from a field of suspects, who is the real killer, before the end of the book. Agatha Christie is the queen of this subgenre. Similar authors can be found in the online database "Who else writes like".


Here's a mystery to solve in this blog. Just answer this question: Who's the odd one out, (and why?). The first person to post the correct answer in the comments gets chocolate!

Don't forget to post a book review about your favourite mystery!

Coming Soon To All Branches…

In the next few days all branches should receive two IELTS posters, one in English and one in Chinese. The posters are quite large and colourful which makes them very eye catching, and are a fantastic way to promote Road to IELTS. The posters offer five tips for success and also direct patrons to where they can access Road to IELTS on our library website.

Australian Poetry Library

The Australian Poetry Library contains over 42,000 poems, representing the work of more than 200 Australian poets. The poems on the site are fully searchable by poem text and title, poet, theme and form. Each poet is introduced with a biographical article and a complete list of their published books.

Visitors to the site can read poems online for free. However, readers wishing to download and print poems may do so for a small fee, part of which is returned to the poets via CAL, the Copyright Agency Limited. You can also compile a personalised anthology and, again for a fee, print copies.

Australian Poetry Library is a joint initiative of the University of Sydney and CAL, making this site not only a reliable source of poetry, but one which endeavours to give a fair return to working poets. If you notice a well-known poet is missing, it may be because they have not given permission for their poems to be put on the site, as explained on the site's FAQ.

Most of my favourite poems are here, including A. D. Hope's Death of a Bird and Les Murrays' An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow. What's your favourite?

This site has been added to our delicious links under Literature.

Find Legal Answers - update

The Law Handbook has been withdrawn as so many of the chapters are now out of date. This is a temporary measure as a new edition is due later this year. In the meantime 16 of the chapters which are current are available on the Find Legal Answers website.

The NSW Mental Health Rights Manual - 3rd edition is available on the Find Legal Answers website. You can find it under the subject heading: Health - Mental health.
"A consumer guide to the legal and human rights of people with mental illness. This online resource covers mental health laws and processes, health care and treatment, substitute decision making, criminal justice system, accessing medical records, discrimination, carers' and family rights, and complaints."

New Ebooks Added to the Gale Virtual Reference Library

Please take the time over the next few weeks to explore the following two titles added to the Gale Virtual Reference Library. Like all GVRL titles, they can be accessed from the web site within our libraries or remotely from home. And you can search our entire GVRL collection with one search query.

The Gale Encyclopedia of Genetic Disorders is the latest edition of a title we currently hold in print at Sutherland Reference. Like the Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine (another ebook we will be getting soon), this is a reliable and easy to understand resource. A major advantage over the print version is that many of the further resources cited at the end of each article have hotlinks to journal and/or organisation websites.

The Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography is a 27 volume work covering the world's major scientists from antiquity to modern times. This ebook brings together the original 16 volume Dictionary of Scientific Biography (1980), 2 supplements (1990) and the 9 volume New Dictionary of Scientific Biography (2007).

Despite an editorial limitation of including only deceased subjects, the entries on the scientists included are excellent. Marie Curie, for example, gets a generous 4584 word essay (cf. World Book Online 391 words), Galilieo 5189 words (cf. World Book 1375 words). Australian scientist Frank McFarlane Burnet comes in at 4261 words. The Topical Essays in Vol. 15 are worth looking at also.