If you love reading fiction, Novelist is for you. Novelist is one of the databases available on the library's website. When people are introduced to Novelist and the things which can be done with it, comments range from "This is GREAT ! I wish I'd known about it sooner!" to "Oh I like this! This is FUN!" Novelist is Reader's Advisory in a database. If you have a series of books and want to read them in order, Novelist can organize them. If you have a plot or a character and don't know the author or the title of the book, Novelist can find it through the plot description. If you have read every book by a certain author, and are waiting for his next one, Novelist can suggest "read-alikes" to keep

Be sure to explore the database tabs. They link you to search possibilities, lists of books to read in various categories and read-alike suggestions. Book discussion guides are available for adults and young adults as well as book-talks for adult, young adult and children's books. In the future, I'll talk more in depth about some of these features, as well as introducing Novelist K-8 for kids.

Novelist provides many services, all of which are discussed in the Novelist Learning Center. You can access the Learning Center using the Training and Support link found on the sidebar on the left-hand side of the screen. The 1 Minute Novelist feature provides sample searches. Getting Around in Novelist gives a quick tour of the tabs at the top of the screen. Searching the Novelist Database provides step-by-step search instructions which can be printed out. The section on Using the Additional Content provides links to fiction awards lists, read-alikes and articles written by experts in reader's advisory. The five or ten minutes that you spend learning to navigate this database will be worth every second in successful searches.

Once you have the basics down, it is time to make Novelist your own. The last module in the Learning Center is Optimizing Your Use of Novelist. Spend a few minutes reading about what Novelist can do for you. On the sidebar, on the left-hand side of the screen,is a section called Tools. Under Tools, select Sign in to my Novelist. This will allow you to register as a new user. You can then create searches and save them in your own folder. You can also create alerts. If you are interested in a particular author or a particular genre, mysteries involving recipes and cooking perhaps, you can create a search for books of this type. Save the search and make it an alert. Novelist will run this search for you and alert you through email for a period of up to one year when any new titles are published which meet your search criteria. Happy Searching!

P.S. Don't forget to take a look at This Month's Tips and Tidbits which is featured monthly on the home page.

Okay, pop quiz: What do the following people have in common: (A) Nora Roberts; (B) Elizabeth Peters; (C) Susan Wittig Albert.

Certainly, all are successful authors. But more specifically, they all write under more than one name.

Nora Roberts, queen of the romance novel, also writes the highly successful "In Death" series as J.D. Robb.* Novelist calls the "In Death" books "futuristic romantic suspense." They follow the exploits of police detective Eve Dallas and her husband, Roarke. The combination of strong police storylines and the Dallas/Roarke relationship have made these a favorite with both men and women. They are found in our general fiction collection. A new J.D. Robb title, Creation in Death, is due out in November.

As "Nora Roberts," she has written dozens upon dozens of romance novels. We have a staggering 187 Nora Roberts entries in the library catalog. The latest is High Noon.

Elizabeth Peters's real name is Barbara Mertz, and she has a Ph.D. in Egyptology from the University of Chicago. She has written books on Egyptology under her real name, and as "Elizabeth Peters," she uses that knowledge as fodder for the popular Amelia Peabody Emerson mystery series. The series features the adventures of Victorian-era Egyptologists Amelia Peabody and Radcliffe Emerson. It begins with Crocodile on the Sandbank. Mertz has also written many modern romantic suspense novels as "Barbara Michaels."

Susan Wittig Albert writes the China Bayle mystery series, which started in 1992 with Thyme of Death. More recently, she has written a series of mysteries centered on Beatrix Potter. The first is The Tale of Hill Top Farm. The latest in the series, The Tale of Hawthorn House, is due out in September.

Beatrix Potter also appears in Death at Gallows Green, part of the series that Albert writes with her husband, Bill, under the pseudonym "Robin Paige." (Death at Gallows Green was published several years before The Tale of Hill Top Farm.) The Paige books are also mysteries, featuring Kate Ardleigh and Charles Sheridan as Victorian-Era sleuths. (They are shockingly modern in the equality of their partnership, and eventual marriage--something they have in common with Peters's Amelia Peabody and Radcliffe Emerson.) The Robin Paige books start with Death at Bishop's Keep.

In search of more authors' pseudonyms, I ran across an interesting list at the St. Charles, IL Public Library web site. Among the authors they featured were:

M.C. Beaton = Marion Chesney
Jayne Ann Krentz = Jayne Castle = Amanda Quick
Heather Graham = Shannon Drake
Ed McBain = Evan Hunter
Ruth Rendell = Barbara Vine
Donald Westlake = Richard Stark

There are countless others. Have a favorite? Drop us a comment!

* Nora Roberts's J.D. Robb is not to be confused with the J.D. (John Donald) Robb, born 1892, who wrote Hispanic folk songs of New Mexico.

Many of you may be pondering this very question if you've come to the library this past year and not been able to locate any books by the popular author Jodi Picoult. It seems as though everyday a customer will come to the reference desk and say "I can't find any books by Jodi Picoult in adult fiction, are they located somewhere else?" Aside from the adult fiction paperback area the answer in most cases is, "no, your looking in the right spot, she's just that popular!"

So the answer to the first question is yes, the library does have many of her books in our collection, they are just heavily used.

So if you are one of the unfortunate ones who has come to the library in hopes of checking out one of Picoult's books and found the shelf empty, then I have a few suggestions for you.

First, check our Hot Copies collection near the front doors and you may be lucky enough to find one of her new releases waiting to be read. These books can only be checked out for 1 week with no renewals and have a steeper late fee.

Second, you can place any of her titles on reserve by using the "My Account" feature located on the library's homepage or in the library's catalog. If you choose this option, you will be notified by phone or email when a copy has become available for you and it will be held at the front desk for 3 days.

Finally, try out the "author read-alike" feature in the Novelist database. Once you get to the homepage of Novelist you want to click on the "For Readers" tab. From there click on "Author Read-alikes" and locate Jodi Picoult and you are good to go.

Tonight is the culmination of weeks of hype, orange squash, and horror movie mania. Whew!

Okay, I confess: I'm a horror wimp. This time of year, I try to avoid television so as not to be inundated by the Halloween horror glut--anything creepier than the X-Files and I'm out the door. But magic and sorcery (and Halloween candy) are a different story. I'm not talking about Harry Houdini's illusionist magic--though it is rather interesting that he died on Halloween!--but about the mystical, fictional magic of Harry Potter, Eragon, and others like them.

Stories about magic have been around for much longer than J.K. Rowling. I grew up loving the Oz stories, for while the Wizard was a fake, the land of Oz itself was magical. Edward Eager's books told of ordinary children encountering magic--a particular favorite was "Half Magic". These were written ages ago, though. To find something more up-to-date, the Novelist database is a great place to look for ideas. There are actually two Novelist databases--one for adults and another for the kindergarten to Grade 8 kids.

Novelist K-8 has a nice set of book lists to choose from. Click the tab along the top of the page where it says "Browse Lists". You can then choose to browse through award-winners or go to a "Grab and Go Topical Book List". These "grab and go" lists are helpfully listed in a grid: grade range across the top, then topics in alphabetical order under each grade range. Luckily for me, they have a list of fantasy books for grades 6-8. (Keep in mind, these are just guidelines. Nowhere does it say that you have to stop reading these books once you hit 9th grade.) The list includes old favorites like Anne McCaffrey's "Dragonsinger" and Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", alongside newer titles such as Cornelia Funke's Inkheart and Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl.

Another way to find books about magic and sorcery is to search the Novelist database for books with a particular plot. If you click the banner tab that says "Search Our Database," you'll see an option to "Describe a Plot, Topic, or Unit." Click the link and it will allow you to search for whatever you're looking for. I plugged in the term "sorcery" and got a list of 77 books to choose from. This is also a wonderful tool when you've heard about a book but don't know the title. You can type in the plot and character details you know about, and Novelist will bring up a list of books that match your search.

Once you've located a book that looks good to you within Novelist, you can search for similar titles. For example, if you like the looks of Derek Landy's "Skulduggery Pleasant," click on the title to find out more about it. You'll see reviews of the book, plus a list of subject headings that apply to the book. Next to each subject is a checkbox. Click on the box next to each theme you're interested in, and when you hit "Subject Search," you'll get a list of other books with that combination of subjects. So, if I want other books that are about "heirs and heiresses" and "child wizards," I'll click the box next to those two subjects, click "Subject Search," and discover that there's also a book called "Snow-walker," by Catherine Fisher, with the same two subjects. (The Nashua Public Library doesn't have a copy, but we might be able to borrow it from another library through interlibrary loan.)

So, go explore! You never know what thrills await!

I like to read mysteries. And many mysteries are part of a series. One thing I’ve noticed is the way books let readers know that it is part of a series varies greatly. One very popular series is the Stephanie Plum mysteries by Janet Evanovich. These titles are very conveniently titled with the corresponding number, i.e., One for the Money, Two for the Dough, etc. Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone Mysteries are also an obvious progression, A is for Alibi, B is for Burglar, and so on. Other books, will give you the series number somewhere on the book. Sometimes the number is on the book spine, on the cover, and sometimes on the books cover page. The cover page is in the beginning of the book, and supplies information like title, author and publisher. On the cover of the book Sunrise by Karen Kingsbury, we are told that this is the first book in the Sunrise Series. Another example is Gilbert Morris’s Singing River Series. One the cover page, we see that the book ‘The Dream’ is Book II of the series. In other cases, the name of the series the book belongs to is written on the cover. For example Have ‘Your Cake and Kill Him Too’ by Nancy Martin is A Blackbird Sisters Mystery.

You can see from these different examples that there is no standard way to display information about book series. If you’re like me, I generally like to double check the order of the series, especially if there is no series number on the book. (And I know you are out there because I’ve had these questions at the Reference Desk before!) The database Novelist is the best source to double check series information. You can access the Novelist database from the Nashua Library database webpage. If you are in the library, sign on to one of our computers to access the database. If you are at home, you will need to enter the last 5 digits of your barcode. Once you are in Novelist, you can type in the author, book title or series title. Along with the search results, you will see what series a particular book belongs in and the order in which to read them in. (Check out these blog entries for more great Novelist features: Want to Know What to Read Next?, Novelist - Make it your own, and For Fun Try Novelist). If you like to use Amazon, you can also search titles and authors, and they will sometimes list, next to the title, series information.

Leave a comment about a series you are reading.