FIRST-PERSON CORNELL by Carol Kammen (Cornell University Library). Cornell historian Carol Kammen calls students' experiences the "overlooked segment of institutional histories." In an effort to link the past with the present, she searched the Rare and Manuscript Collections in Kroch Library for student diaries, e-mails, notebooks, memoirs, and letters from 1868 to the present. We meet students arriving on campus, praising and criticizing their professors, worrying about the workload, searching for meaningful careers, and complaining about the weather. The individual entries show change over time and weave a pattern of the Cornell experience.

THE MORTICIAN'S DAUGHTER by Elizabeth Bloom (Mysterious Press). Contributing editor Beth Saulnier's seventh novel, written under the pseudonym Elizabeth Bloom, follows Ginny Lavoie, an NYPD detective suspended for corruption who returns to her small New England hometown to investigate the murder of her best friend's teenage son. The presence of a new modern art museum is causing upheaval in the mill town where she grew up, and Ginny must also face the man she left behind as well as the ghosts she's been running away from for years.

UNCENTERING THE EARTH by William T.Vollmann '81 (Norton). Copernicus's 1543 work On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres inspired a scientific revolution, dethroning the Ptolemaic earthcentered cosmos of classical antiquity and replacing it with a heliocentric universe. Admitting to a belief in heliocentrism was a bold move in Renaissance Europe, where the power of the Church held sway: Giordano Bruno was burned for heresy and Galileo was kept under house arrest. The book is part of the Great Discoveries Series, a series written by laymen about the history of science.

NIGHTLIFE by Thomas Perry '69 (Random House). Serial killer Charlene Buckner tries on a new identity and learns a new method of killing each time she commits murder. Sgt. Catherine Hobbes, a police detective in Portland, Oregon, hunts her quarry through San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver, and Arizona. But the hunter becomes the hunted when Buckner makes it personal and tries to kill Catherine. Novelist Perry is the Edgar Award-winning author of The Butcher's Boy.

A WONDERFUL LIFE edited by Cyrus M. Copeland, MBA '90 (Algonquin Books). A good eulogy delivers the essence of a life and "assures us that our loved ones will endure in our collective memories." Copeland, the editor of a previous collection of eulogies, Farewell, Godspeed, returns with a new volume that celebrates the lives of the famous and the humble, from Lenny Bruce to Gandhi, from Elisabeth Kübler-Ross to Wilt Chamberlain, from Pat Conroy's father to the heroes of 9/11.

Recently Published | Non-fiction

THIS IS NOT CHICK LIT edited by Elizabeth Merrick,MFA '00 (Random House). Featuring an impressive list of writers, including Dika Lam '94, Francine Prose, and Mary Gordon, this anthology places itself in opposition to formulaic writing for women. According to the editor, "Chick lit shuts down our consciousness. Literature expands our imaginations."

Recently Published | Non-fiction

THE PREGNANCY DECISION HANDBOOK FOR WOMEN WITH DEPRESSION by Stephanie S. Durruthy '76 (Mind Support). Dr. Durruthy, the former clinical director of the Johns Hopkins Bayview Psychiatric Day Hospital, dispels some of the myths about childbearing and mood disorders in this handbook, ForeWord magazine's 2005 Book of the Year.

GOD HATES FAGS: THE RHETORICS OF RELIGIOUS VIOLENCE by Michael Cobb, PhD '01 (New York University Press). In an attempt to come to grips with homophobic jeremiads following the murder of Matthew Shepard, an assistant professor of English at the University of Toronto examines the language of antihomosexual religious hate in cultural politics.

FULL METAL APACHE by Takayuki Tatsumi, PhD '87 (Duke University Press). Tatsumi, professor of English at Keio University in Tokyo, draws from the work of filmmakers, science fiction writers, artists, and playwrights to show the pervasiveness of cross-cultural interplay between Japan and America.

THE TROJAN WAR by Barry Strauss (Simon & Schuster). Twenty years ago, most historians believed that Troy was a small half-acre citadel, but recent excavations indicate that the city of Homeric legend was a much larger trading power. Cornell history professor Strauss examines the Trojan War in light of new evidence that he says is "little less than an archaeological revolution."

SOFT IN THE MIDDLE by David Andrews '94 (Ohio State University Press). Andrews, who has taught literature and film at the University of Illinois, Chicago, examines the nature of the softcore film genre.

THE WITCH IN THE WAITING ROOM by Robert S. Bobrow '65 (Thunder's Mouth Press). Using case studies and personal interviews, a clinical associate professor at SUNY Stony Brook investigates the links between modern medicine and the paranormal.

TABOO SUBJECTS by Gwen Bergner '85 (University of Minnesota Press). An associate professor of English at West Virginia University explores the acquisition of racial identity in American literary works through the lens of psychoanalytic theory.

CHALLENGING U.S.APARTHEID by Winston A. Grady-Willis, MPS '93 (Duke University Press). Drawing on interviews with black activists, an associate professor of African American studies at Syracuse University focuses on the struggle for civil rights in Atlanta from 1960 to 1977.