The following items are available at Hancock County Public Library, 900 W. McKenzie Road. For more information on the library’s collection or to reserve a title, visit hcplibrary.org.
Adult Fiction
“The Hourglass Factory” by Lucy Ribchester
The women’s suffrage movement is reaching a fever pitch in London, and Inspector Frederick Primrose is hunting a murderer on his beat. Across town, Fleet Street reporter Frances “Frankie” George is chasing an interview with trapeze artist Ebony Diamond. Frankie finds herself fascinated by the tightly-laced acrobat and follows her to a Bond Street corset shop that seems to be hiding secrets of its own. When Ebony Diamond mysteriously disappears in the middle of a performance, Frankie and Primrose are both drawn into the shadowy world of a secret society with ties to both London’s criminal underworld and high society. How did Ebony vanish, who was she afraid of and what goes on behind the doors of the mysterious Hourglass Factory? From newsrooms to the drawing rooms of the elite, the investigation leads Frankie and Primrose to chase a murderous villain.
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Adult Nonfiction
“The Genius Checklist: Nine Paradoxical Tips on How You Can Become a Creative Genius,” by Dean Keith Simonton
What does it take to be a genius? A high score on an IQ test? (Brilliant physicist Richard Feynman’s IQ was too low for membership in Mensa.) Be a child prodigy like Mozart, or a later bloomer like Beethoven? Die tragically young, like Keats, or live to a ripe old age, like Goethe? In “The Genius Checklist,” Dean Keith Simonton examines the key factors in creative genius and finds they are more than a little contradictory. Simonton, who has studied creativity and genius for more than four decades, draws on scientific research and stories from the lives of famous creative geniuses from Isaac Newton to Vincent van Gogh to Virginia Woolf. He explains the origin of IQ tests and draws a distinction between artistic and scientific genius. He rules out birth order as a determining factor, considers Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000-hour rule and describes how the “lone” genius gets enmeshed in social networks. Genius, Simonton explains, operates in ways so subtle they seem contradictory.
