Books in the News - 1/13/13

Here are the books being reviewed and discussed in our local papers this Sunday:

At the Pioneer Press are a variety of offerings for winter reading, including:

• The Dirty Days: A Young Girl's Journey to and from the Oklahoma Dust Bowl by Norma Welty - a debut novel 
• A Murder of Crows by Jan Dunlap - the fifth installment of the Bob White Birder Murder Mysteries
• And Then You Dye by Monica Ferris - the sixteenth adventure about Betsy Devonshire and her Crewel World needlework shop
• Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox: The Great Pancake Adventure by Matt Luckhurst - an illustrated tall tale for young readers

The Star Tribune Book Section's featured titles this week include:

• The Illicit Happiness of Other People by Manu Joseph - a novel about a father solving the mystery of his son's death in modern-day India
• Scenes from Early Life by Philip Hensher - a fictionalized memoir about a Bengali family during the formation of Bangladesh
• Here, There, Elsewhere by William Least Heat-Moon - a collection of travel essays by the author of Blue Highways
• Habits of the House by Fay Weldon - a novel about life below and above stairs in a London townhouse, sure to appeal to Downton Abbey fans

• Close is Fine by Eliot Treichel - Short stories about small town life in northern Wisconsin
• Farewell, Fred Voodoo by Amy Wilentz - nonfiction about today's Haiti
• David by Ray Robertson - a novel inspired by a community of free black families in the 1850s

Happy reading!