Check out these new arrivals at the Astoria Public Library:

The author of “Big Fish,” Daniel Wallace, brings readers a tale of the town of Ashland, Ala. In “The Watermelon King,” Thomas Rider travels to Ashland to find out about his parents. There, he interviews the townspeople, only to find out that his mother is credited with destroying the town’s primary festival.

David Cay Johnston investigated the IRS and the widening gap between the super rich and the rest of the nation regarding taxation. The stories he tells in “Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign To Rig Our Tax System To Benefit the Super Rich – and Cheat Everybody Else” are not for the faint hearted. Johnston attributes the twisting of these laws to both Democrats and Republicans.

Stanley Stewart set off on a journey that earned him the Thomas Cook Travel Book of the Year Award. Stewart recorded his travels, which include a 1,000-mile trip on horseback through the ancient empire of Genghis Khan, in a book titled “In the Empire of Genghis Khan: An Amazing Odyssey through the Lands of the Most Feared Conquerors in History.”

Author Tracy Chevalier explains a set of beautiful medieval tapestries with a fiction work, “The Lady and the Unicorn.” The scene is Paris in 1490. A French nobleman commissions six tapestries to honor his flourishing career. But master weaver Georges de la Chapelle and his family pay a high price to weave these treasures.

“Property,” by Valerie Martin, recreates a slave plantation of the antebellum South. Manon Gaudet’s marriage brings her to the sugar plantation, but it is Manon who brings a most valuable piece of property – a slave named Sarah. Soon Sarah is her new husband’s mistress, bearing him a child. The novel is written from Manon’s perspective and in her voice.

Many are searching for a ship canal through Central America. France and England are only days behind the Americans. “The Darkest Jungle,” by Todd Balf, tells the story of the Darien Expedition in its disastrous try to connect two seas. The crew followed their leader, Isaac Swain, in the belief that they would find the Pacific. They became lost in the Darien, finding hunger and medical nightmares instead.

“Going to Bend,” by Diane Hammond, describes the lives of two women in a small Northwestern coastal town. Rose and Petie have been best friends for life. When a restaurant is opened by newly emigrated Californians Nadine and Gordon, their success is due in part to Rose and Petie’s soup recipes. But the grind of daily life soons intercedes and both women have to adjust.

Novelist and naturalist Peter Matthiessen takes readers to Antarctica in “End of the Earth: Voyages to Antarctica.” Matthiessen has taken two voyages to the frozen continent that contains 90 percent of the world’s fresh water. The continent is also home to a number of bird and wildlife species. Birders will be particularly delighted by this volume.

Annabelle was delighted to become the Flower Poet Z’s apprentice. She was sure she would learn so much from her celebrated mentor. But what she does manage to learn does not come from the tyrannical Z. “Apprentice to the Flower Poet Z,” by Debra Weinstein, is a novel about the world of the arts and the artists within.

Photograher Marion Ettlinger captured the images of many of the world’s most famous authors throughout her career. Gathered in “Author Photo” are portraits shot between 1983 and 2002. All photos are in black and white and were shot in natural light. Among the authors represented are Ken Kesey, Raymond Carver, John Irving and Gore Vidal.