From This Moment On

Author: Shania Twain
Stars: 4
Review by: the reader
Destination: Canada

Review: It was extremely sad to hear about the life she had, however, on a positive note she turned her life around and became a country superstar.

Week #1 Update

After week #1, we have 65 club members, who have read 27 books already!  We've visited three countries, including 9 different states. Good job, everyone!

Congratulations to Tucker2011, our Week #1 Winner!!!

The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner

Author: Stephenie Meyer
Stars: 3
Review by: Fernanda L.
Destination: Washington

Review: This is a side story for the Twilight Saga.  It's a quick read and offers a different perspective from the other books in the series.  Twilight fans would enjoy.

Crossed Bones

Author: Carolyn Haines
Stars: 4
Review by: Saraswati
Destination: Mississippi

Review: 3rd book in the series.  Funny but serious murder mystery.  Twists and turns with ghosts and love lives make this an interesting read.

Silent Mercy

Author: Linda Fairstein
Stars: 4
Review by: Judy
Destination: New York

Review: Great mystery and plot, plus the novel provides lots of interesting historical facts about some of the religious institutions in New York City.

And the Pursuit of Happiness

Author: Maira Kalman
Stars: 5
Review by: Elaine
Destination:

Review: Great quick read with lots of historical facts. Graphic Novel genre. Great illustrations and cool typography.

a note about the "destinations"...

Just to clarify...  if your book takes place in the United States, please provide the name of the state, if possible.  If it takes place in Canada, please provide the name of the province.  For any other countries - just the country name is fine.  Thanks!  ~Terry

The Sight of the Stars

Author: Belva Plain
Stars: 4
Review by: Donna S
Destination: U.S.

Review: The Sight of the Stars was an interesting read about a main character, Adam, following his life from a child through a great-grandparent. 

Usually reading a novel with a female lead, it was interesting to have a different "twist".  Easy summer reading.  

New this Week

 Here are some new titles coming out this week. Check them out from the library and see where they take you…

Against All Enemies by Tom Clancy (Putnam)

After a vicious Mexican drug cartel joins forces with the Taliban, ex-Navy SEAL and current CIA operative Maxwell Moore and his team must spring into action to protect the United States from unprecedented terror and destruction.

Before I Go to Sleep by S.J. Watson (HarperCollins)

What would life be like if every morning when you woke up, the face before you in the mirror was a stranger and you could not recall anything about your life? This is what Christine, a victim of an automobile accident, faces every morning. At the advice of a neurologist, she keeps a journal each day to help keep her life in order, but she no longer knows who she can trust but knows she feels in danger and unsafe.

Folly Beach by Dorothea Benton Frank

Returning to Folly Beach, her childhood home, newly widowed Cate Cooper, whose late husband's financial exploits have left her homeless and broke, discovers that it is possible to go home again and discover the person she was meant to become. A Lowcounty tale that is Frank’s signature setting.

Carte Blanche: The New James Bond Novel by Jeffrey Deaver (Simon & Schuster)

A James Bond thriller set in the present day finds the iconic British spy engaging a horrific modern villain in a cat-and-mouse chase that takes him from the Balkans and London to the African Continent.

One Summer by David Baldacci

A departure for Baldacci who is know for his thrillers, Jack, terminally ill and preparing to say goodbye to his family, has a miraculous recovery after his wife is killed in a car accident and struggles to reunite his family at her childhood home on the South Carolina oceanfront.

 
Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan
 

Three generations of women converge on the family beach house in this wickedly funny, emotionally resonant story of love and dysfunction from the author of the best-selling debut novel Commencement .

Just Jennifer

Once Upon a River by Bonnie Jo Campbell (Norton, July 2011)



Sixteen-year-old Margo Crane’s mother left her with her father in their small town on the Stark River in Michigan. Margo has always been much of a tomboy and has been attracted by and mesmerized by the river for years. After her father dies a violent death, which Margo precipitated, she takes the boat her grandfather left her and heads up the river looking for her mother. With only her instincts, a few supplies and her beloved Annie Oakley biography, Margo leaves the rest of her extended family in search of her own family. Only thirty miles from her home, Margo makes the choices she thinks are best for her survival, but a love-starved teenager may not always make the best choices. Margo’s growing up is heart-breaking, and though at times the plot is frustrating as readers see Margo making the same mistakes over, there is something about Margo’s will to go on and her capacity to see beyond the outer person that will endear her to readers.

Dying for Chocolate

Author: Diane Mott Davidson
Stars: 3
Review by: Saraswati
Destination: Colorado


Review:  2nd book in the Goldy Bear Mystery series.  Light, funny murder mystery book.  This one has some twists in it just to take you a little off guard. Fun series to read.

A Catered Christmas

Author: Isis Crawford
Stars: 3
Review by: Saraswati
Destination: New York

Review: This is the third book in the Simmons Sister's Catering Mysteries. It's a typical woman sleuth, murder mystery. The interactions between the sisters is what sets this story apart from others like it.  Funny, light reading that's great for summer. Recipes are included.  Some are updated old fashion recipes and most look good.  The first 2 books were fun to read too.

Catering to Nobody

Author: Diane Mott Davidson
Stars: 3
Review by: Saraswati
Destination: Colorado

This is the first book in the Goldy Bear Catering Mysteries.  It's a typical woman sleuth, murder mystery.  Funny, light reading that's great for summer.  Recipes are included and look really good.

 

After the Golden Age

Author: Carrie Vaughn
Stars: 5
Review by: Saraswati
Destination: USA


This book is by the author of the Kitty Noville series. It is funny and different from that series. It covers a lot of territory from love, parent relations, betrayal to genetic testing. A nice fun read.

The Poisonwood Bible

Author:  Barbara Kingsolver
Stars: 5
Review by: Lisa McD
Destination: Republic of Congo, Africa


I've been generally interested in Africa and its history for a long time, but this book made me want to find out even more. The story begins with the arrival of Baptist preacher Nathan Price in the Belgian Congo with his reluctant family. The family's story is told by Nathan's wife Orleanna and their 4 daughters - teen-age Rachel, twins Leah and Adah, and 5-year-old Ruth May. The voices of the characters feel authentic and believable.  The book has 2 major narratives. The first is Nathan's poorly considered attempts to fit Africa to his strict unyielding beliefs, and the family's attempts to survive in Africa. The second is the way a family tragedy and life in Africa alters the survivors.

Welcome Back!!!

Welcome back to our Adult Summer Reading Club!  Our theme this year is Novel Destinations, meaning that our reads can take us to many different places around the world.  Check out the "Where in the World?" link on the club's website (http://www.hclibrary.us/adultsrc/adultsrc.htm) to see where we have traveled in our reading.  The map will be updated once a week.

A new feature to the blog this year, as you may have already seen, is "New This Week."  This column will highlight some of the brand new books at the library.  Try some - you may be the first to discover this summer's blockbuster!

~Terry

New This Week

Here are some new titles coming out this week. Check them out from the library and see where they take you…

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett (HarperCollins)

A researcher at a pharmaceutical company, Marina Singh journeys into the heart of the Amazonian delta to check on a field team that has been silent for two years--a dangerous assignment that forces Marina to confront the ghosts of her past. By the author of Bel Canto.

Hit List by Laurell K. Hamilton (Berkley) 

The adventures of U.S. Marshal and vampire hunter Anita Blake continue in this follow-up to Bullet and Flirt when word is leaked to her that hit men are headed to St. Louis and that she, Jean-Claude and Richard are targets.

Summer Rental by Mary Kay Andrews (St. Martin’s Press)

Ellis questions everything she believed after losing an all-consuming job, while Julia struggles with insecurities that threaten a loving relationship and Dorie confronts a maelstrom of problems after a shocking betrayal. By the best-selling author of The Fixer Upper.

The Kingdom by Clive Cussler with Grant Blackwood (Putnam)

Searching for a missing investigator friend, treasure hunters Sam and Remi Fargo travel through Tibet, Italy and other countries only to find themselves embroiled in a black-market fossil operation with ties to a potentially history-altering skeleton.

Just Jennifer

Turn of Mind by Alice Laplante (Atlantic Monthly Press, July 2011)


Jennifer White is a respected orthopedic surgeon who specialized in hand surgery’s and at 64, is experiencing early onset Alzheimer’s presenting with severe dementia. Jennifer has a hard time getting through the day, even with the help of Magdelena. Her two children are fighting with each other over the care and financial control of her money and now the police are questioning her with connection to the murder of her best friend, Amanda, whose four fingers were surgically removed. Told in Jennifer’s voice, fragments of conversations she hears, and entries from the journal she and Magdelena keep to try and help her stay in the present. Slowly, heartbreakingly, Jennifer and Amanda’s story is revealed. Both literary fiction and thriller, Alice Laplante capably renders Jennifer’s frustration with herself and her family as she slips from reality and loses her grasp on all that she has known. Realistically written, anyone who has ever witnessed the ravages of this horrible disease will empathize with Jennifer, her caregiver and even her children as they witness her slow deterioration. As Jennifer’s past unfolds and the police slowly put the pieces together, a sad and horrible, but inevitable truth unfolds. A haunting tale told brilliantly and with compassion.

New This Week

Here are some new titles coming out this week. Check them out from the library and see where they take

you…

Lady Blue Eyes My Life with Frank by Barbara Sinatra (Harmony Books)

The widow of the Hollywood golden-era legend describes their courtship and more than two-decade marriage, offering insight into the highs and lows of their relationship as well as the intricacies of Sinatra's character, in a tribute complemented by family photographs.

Dreams of Joy by Lisa See (Random House) 

A continuation of the story that began in Shanghai Girls finds a devastated Joy fleeing to China to search for her real father while her mother, Pearl, desperately pursues her, a dual quest marked by their encounters with the nation's intolerant Communist culture.

Just Like Heaven by Julia Quinn (HarperCollins)

After they survive a deadly fever and the world's worst musical performance, Honoria Smythe-Smith, a really bad violinist, and Marcus Holroyd, her older brother's best friend, fall desperately in love.

To Be Sung Underwater by Tom McNeal (Little Brown & Co.)

Judith Whitman, in a marriage hazy with secrets, considers getting in touch with the love her life from 20 years ago, in this new novel from the author of Goodnight, Nebraska.

Just Jennifer

The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic by Dan Ariely (Harper Perennial)


Using interpersonal relationships at home and at work, Dan Ariely explores the what motivates us and how decisions and choices that we make that appear to be positive can really have a negative result and vice versa. He discusses the tipping point when large bonus can make CEOs less productive and how irrational behavior often results in the most rational of decisions. Using detailed case studies from the world of academia along with personal anecdotes from his life, including the life-threatening, life altering, accident he had Ariely brings a personal touch to this logic and it makes sense. He has an airy style and makes wry, witty comments that make this easy reading. At the end of each chapter, and the end of the book, he sums up his findings and how they can be applied so we all have a more productive, fulfilling life.

Just Jennifer

Witches of East End by Melissa de la Cruz (Hyperion Voice, June 2011)


Ingrid, quiet, reserved librarian, her wilder, more outgoing sister Freya and their mother Joanna Beauchamp are living at the tip of Long Island in North Hampton, a Brigadoon sort of place where things aren’t always as they seem. During the Salem witch trials, the three Beauchamps where released from the civil courts but they were ordered not to practice their witchcraft anymore by their council. Now, as Freya is on the verge of getting married, she is finding herself out of sorts and her malaise is spreading to the patrons of the bar she tends. Knowing that with a few simple love potions, Freya can make some of her friends happy, and that’s really not magic, is it? At the same time, Ingrid knows she can help fellow librarian Tabitha and her husband with their infertility issues, and since a lot of it involves positive and more relaxed thinking then that’s not really witchcraft either, is it? Little by little, the sisters begin to weave their magic around the town, all in the name of helping friends and neighbors. When a young woman goes missing after drinking one of Freya’s potions, some people in the town begin to cry “witch” and the Beauchamps find themselves accused of crimes they did not commit, nor cause to be committed. As Freya and Ingrid try to find the cause of all the evil that seems to be surrounding North Hampton, their past is slowly revealed, even secrets they kept from each other and some Joanna kept from them, all of which put together may help free the town from the forces that seem to have the town in its clutch. With an easy, breezy style (and some steamy sex scenes thrown in), Melissa de la Cruz, a popular author for young adults, brings Ingrid, Freya and Joanna to life with a touch of magic. The plot has some complicated twists and turns and a cliffhanger that is sure to have you waiting for the next installment.

Just Jennifer

The Most Beautiful Walk in the World: A Pedestrian in Paris by John Baxter (Harper Perennial, May 2011)


Written in short chapters, native Australian writer John Baxter highlights many of his favorite walks in Paris, liberally sprinkling this historical, literary cultural, and shopping guide with his own reminiscences, lending a personal touch to an oft written about subject. Baxter includes his favorite things, the delicious food among them, and highlights things, such as a winter’s day after a snowstorm, that the normal traveler might not find beauty in. This is an easily accessible book that could be used as pocket guide as you stroll the Left Bank of the Seine, or it will transport armchair travelers to the City of Light. Baxter includes in his vignettes some of the seedier sections of Paris, but he describes them with an amused eye, making them seem like a wonderful adventure. His enthusiasm and love for the city comes through in his descriptions. Navigational and planning tips in the back will help travelers get the most out of their visit to Baxter’s beloved city.

Just Jennifer

Don’t Breathe a Word by Jennifer McMahon (Harper, May 2011)


As a young adult, Phoebe lived a rough and wild life, dating the wrong men, living on the edge. One evening, she sees a little boy through a window in his house. His sister Lisa has just gone missing in the woods of Vermont. Fifteen years later, that boy, Sam, and Phoebe, ten years his senior are in love and trying to escape their pasts. Sam is contacted by his cousin Evie, with whom he lost contact shortly after Lisa’s disappearance. Once Evie enters Sam and Phoebe’s lives, everything they believed to be true is torn apart and nothing is as it seems. Evie claims to have Lisa’s fairy book that was lost after her disappearance. As Phoebe learns more, she is not sure of everything she knows about Sam, or thought she knew about his family, and knows that the dark man who used to lurk about when she was a child has returned, but can’t place who he his or what he wants. The plot gets very complicated and woo-woo and hard to summarize without plot spoilers; it alternates between Sam and Phoebe’s present and the summer fifteen years ago when Lisa disappeared into the land of the fairies. Nothing is as it seems and Phoebe is beginning to think that nothing she knows is real. Slow in places, and awkward in transition between years at first, it takes a little bit to get into the book, but once things start happening, it will make you wonder what is going on. The ending is not quite as satisfying as it might be and leaves many questions unanswered, but all in all, a good choice for a quick, scary read on a warm summer’s day.

Just Jennifer

Seeds: One Man's Serendipitous Journey to Find the Trees That Inspired Famous American Writers from Faulkner to Kerouac, Welty to Wharton by Richard Horan (Harper Perennial, April 2011)

Richard Horan gets an idea one day:  he will visit the homes of historical and literary figures he greatly admired, collect seeds from important trees there, then plant the seeds, nurture the saplings, then what?  It’s the “then what”, the absence of a completely formed plan that keep this intriguing travelogue from being extraordinary.  Horan’s seed collection begins accidentally and without much rhyme or reason.  Horan visits homes such as Lincoln’s, Twains, Faulkner, Washington, Jefferson and Helen Keller.  Each chapter, some headed with illustrations done by Horan’s sister and nephew of leaves, recaps Horan’s trip to the famous local and gives Horan’s impression, often brief, of the former owner of the house and tree.  Some of the insights he offers are thoughtful and personal, others more banal.  The seeds are collected in no specific order, seemingly without a plan.  This is the type of book you really, really want to like if you are a nature lover, and will try to seek out some meaning from the pages.  Horan must have been passionate (or a bit crazy) to set out on his odyssey, but it doesn’t always come through in these pages.

Just Jennifer

Shut Your Eyes Tight by John Verdon (Crown, July 2011)


Retired NYPD detective Dave Gurney is trying to readjust to life in the quiet Catskills of New York State with his wife Madeleine after recently coming out of retirement to solve a murder and almost getting killed in the process. Dave is feeling restless, but Madeleine is insistent he learn to enjoy their new life. When he gets a call from a former crony, Jack Hardwick teases Dave with a case that captures his imagination and lures him back into a life of investigation. Young rich girl Jillian Perry was murdered, decapitated, on her wedding day to older Scott Ashton, a pop-media superstar psychiatrist and the Mexican gardener, Hector Flores, is the prime suspect. Four months later, however, no one has seen hide nor hair of Hector and the next door neighbor’s wife, who was rumored to have been having an affair with Hector, has also vanished. Gurney can’t investigate officially nor does he have a PI license, but when Jillian’s mother offers to hire him to look into her daughter’s murder as a private citizen, he is too intrigued not to say yes. The more Dave looks into the case, the stranger, and more impossible, it seems to get. Nothing is as it seems and someone who is very smart is pulling the strings, but Dave is clever and begins looking at things in new ways and as new patterns emerge, he can hardly believe what he is seeing. Shut Your Eyes Tight is a thinking thriller, full of “what-if’s” and subtleties that even the most careful reader may miss. Gurney wrestles with many demons and is an empathetic character as he struggles to find his new place in his & Madeleine’s world. Using a seminar Gurney is teaching at the police academy on undercover work, Verdon neatly weaves in reasons for Gurney making the leaps and suppositions he does. Jillian’s murder is disturbing, as is the motive and what Gurney uncovers, but there is little graphic violence described to overshadow the thoughtfulness required to follow Gurney’s investigation and consider what may happen next.

Just Jennifer

 

Long Gone by Alafair Burke (Harper, July 2011)

What would you do if you walked into work one day and found everything gone and your boss dead on the floor? What if you then find yourself the suspect in this man’s death and then realize you have been part of a bigger scam, something that makes you question everything you’ve ever known in your life.  This is what happens to Alice Humphrey, daughter of Oscar winning movie director Frank Humphrey.  After Alice was laid of from her job at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, she spent many long months trying to find a new job.  When she meets Drew Campbell at a gallery opening and he offers her the chance to manage a gallery, essentially as her own, she thinks the offer is too good to be true, but decides she has nothing to lose.  Nothing but her entire life, she quickly learns.  After the first show is on the walls, the gallery becomes the focus of a zealous church leader who accuses the gallery of peddling child porn.  The next day when Alice shows up at work, the gallery has been stripped clean of everything, Drew is dead on the floor and all evidence points to Alice.  She is thrust into a vortex of lies and misperceptions as she learns that the gallery was set up as if she were the owner that a character named Drew Campbell has been created, but it looks like, and uses all of Alice’s personal information.  Not sure where to turn or who to trust, Alice begins to unravel a web of deceit and follows a trail that leads further back in her life than she could ever imagine.  Long Gone is full of suspense and Alafair Burke slowly builds the tension as Alice searches for the truth.  The plotting is very clever and there are “what-if’s” that cannot be imagined. This stand-alone is a compulsive must read.

:

Just Jennifer

Before I Go To Sleep by S.J. Watson (Harper, June 2011)

We’ve all had days we would like to forget, but what if every morning when you woke up, you had no memory of your life before that moment? Each morning when Christine wakes up she doesn’t know the man sleeping beside her (her husband), doesn’t recognize the forty-seven year old woman staring back at her from the mirror and has no memory of the house she is living in although the man, Ben says it is their house and they are very much in love. Ben patiently takes Christine on a tour of their house each morning and leaves her notes and pictures identifying things and a list of things she might want to do during the day. Christine receives a phone call each morning from a doctor who says they are working together on Christine’s memory loss and directs her to her closet where she finds a journal she has been keeping. As readers read the journal along with Christine, they learn more about her condition and the memories she is beginning to recover during the day that disappear in the night. Through the journal, Christine is getting closer to the truth of what occurred that made her lose her memory and the truth about the life she is currently living and who is lying to her and who she can trust. This book takes psychological thrillers to a whole new level. It is fast-paced, believable and has an element of “what if something like this every happened to me?” Readers will unravel Christine’s life with her and are sure to be as surprised as Christine when the final page is turned.

Just Jennifer

There is No Year by Blake Butler (Harper Perennial, April 2011)


What begins as a deceptively simple novel turns into an allegory for the banality of everyday life. A family without names has moved into a house that often turns into a house of horrors with holes in the walls and a room filled with hair, and a copy family that torments father, mother and son. Everyday occurrences are brought down to their most basic and visceral elements in this novel and will be recognizable by all of us, even though we may not want to see them. Butler brings to life the secrets we hid from each other and ourselves and the mindlessness and inattentiveness we give to our daily tasks. The novel explores the things we discover about ourselves and others when we remember to stop and pay attention to the details, the things from our past that keep a hold on us, our longings and our hopes and how we recognize the best and worst in each other and ourselves.

The physical format of the book, pages in varied shades of grey remind us that nothing is black and white; the sparseness of words on the pages reminds us how we need others to fill our lives. Stark but elegant prose conveys the lack of connectivity we all feel from time to time, from our environment, families and from to ourselves. Blake is a clever writer and it often feels that he is playing a trick on the readers in this dystopic novel.

Just Jennifer

Devotion: a Memoir by Dani Shapiro (Harper Perennial, February 2011)


When her young son asks Dani questions about God, she realizes that in her early forties, she has no good answers for him. As a teenager, Dani rebelled against her father’s Orthodox Judaism, a religion her cantankerous mother lived, but never really believed; Dani has always called herself Jewish, but never really practiced. Now, as she grows older, tries to raise an emotionally, morally and physically healthy child she finds herself searching for something, though just what she is not sure. As an infant, her son faced a life-threatening illness that had possibly devastating lifelong effects if he survived it. Jacob lived through his seizures and shows no ill effects, but Dani still suffers from panic attacks and high anxiety levels. She finds comfort and peace from a combination of three unlikely sources: a yogi, a Buddhist and a rabbi. She reconnects with her large family and finds, and recognizes, grace in unusual places. This is a joyful journey that readers will gladly undertake, finding a certain amount of peace and contentment for themselves in Dani’s revelations.

Just Jennifer

Sister by Rosamund Lupton (Crown, 2011)


When Beatrice (Bee) gets the news that her younger sister Tess, a bohemian artist living has killed herself, she cannot believe it and returns home to he UK where she moves into Tess’s apartment to live Tess’s life, trying to find who murdered Tess and convince the police to continue investigating Tess’s death. Told in the form of a letter to Tess, the narrative shifts back and forth between the present, an interview Bee is giving to the magistrate and Tess’s last few weeks. Bee knows Tess was pregnant and very excited to be; what she learns upon arrival in the UK is that Tess’s baby was likely to be born with cystic fibrosis, the disease that killed their younger brother as a child. Bee learns that Tess actually gave birth to a stillborn son a few days before her disappearance and that she had been involved in a clinical trial involving the cystic fibrosis, a trial Bee now finds questionable. Tense and moodily written, readers will see Bee go through several stages from grief, to anger, to helplessness as she wonders what she could have done to save Tess. Rosamund Lupton’s prose is very eloquent, as evidenced by phrases such as “grief is love turned into an eternal missing." Not only a suspenseful mystery, but a beautifully written psychological profile of two sisters.

Just Jennifer

What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarity (Amy Einhorn, June 2011)


Alice passes out one day in the gym and wakes up thinking she’s 29 and pregnant. In reality, she is 39, has three children and is in the middle of an ugly divorce with her soon-to-be-ex-husband Nick. She also wakes up a lot more relaxed than she was before the fall off the exercise bicycle and can’t imagine what caused her to become so driven and appearance conscious. She learns she hasn’t spoke to her sister in years, something she can’t ever imagine, her mother has married Nick’s father and the once shy wallflower is now salsa dancing. Alice must deal with the loss of her memory, her fractured relationships, Elisabeth’s infertility and the discovery that she witnesses her best friend Gina’s death in a freak car accident. Alice’s journey to rediscover herself will appeal to anyone who has ever wished for the chance to reinvent themselves. Alice faces her challenges with grace and good humor and Liane Moriarity writes with a light touch that has readers never giving up hope that all will work out well for Alice in the end.

Just Jennifer

The Gospel of Anarchy by Justin Taylor (Harper Perennial, February 2011)


David is as landlocked in his current job as a telemarketer as is Gainesville, Florida. He is a college dropout and spends his spare time sifting through the porn of a fledging 1999 Internet. It is summer, Florida is hot and David is listless, making him susceptible to a new kind of life. Fishgut is a dilapidated house where a group of unlikely roommates live, social dropouts, anarchists and generally lost souls, creating a religious cult of sorts, waiting for a new Messiah, in the form of a hobo, who will save this motley group from the world, each other and themselves.

A dark and visceral novel, The Gospel of Anarchy explores the overdevelopment of a university town, the isolationism the world of computers, and the exploding internet, can encourage, corporate and government corruption and oppression and the zealousness of anarchists as they search for something, anything to believe in, to hold on to. As distasteful as David found his sterile cubicle, he finds he can thrive, or at least think, amidst his new friends dirt and garbage, until he is able to immerge refresh and renewed. This first novel will not grab everyone, but you will find yourself considering it from time to time and thinking about some of the contradictions and dichotomies Justin Taylor explores.

Just Jennifer

Never Knowing by Chevy Stevens (Minotaur, July 2011)


Sara thought it was important to know who her birth parents were, especially for her daughter and their medical histories and begins a search for the woman who gave birth to her, a search that reveals a terrible secret about her birth father, plunging her and her family into a downward spiral more horrible than her worse dream. Sara learns her birth was the result of a rape, her mother the only survivor of a campground serial killer who has never been caught. A leak catapults Sara’s story to the forefront and she is contacted by her father, John who begins a slow cat and mouse game with her, telling her he needs contact with her to stay calm…so he won’t kill again. FBI agents want to catch the campground killer and now have the perfect bait: Sara. Wanting to do the right thing, and not wanting any more blood on her hands than she feels she already has, Sara agrees and is drawn deeper and deeper into a web of deceit and terror, not knowing who she can trust and who will keep her safe. Just when she thinks it is over, there is one last piece that no one will guess or see coming, keeping the suspense and tension high until the very end. This is a psychological thriller of the finest kind. The pace is rapid and taut, keeping readers on the edge until the very end.

Just Jennifer

The Bird Sisters by Rebecca Rasmussen (Crown, April 2011)
Milly and Twiss are spinsters living a quiet life in rural Wisconsin. When a bird enters their house, they know they will receive visitors. A visit from an injured goldfinch brings a minivan with a mother and her children, a careless, thoughtless comment from Milly, and the dredging up of a sad story from another time that Milly remembers every day, yet hasn’t though about in years. Remembering the summer her elder cousin Bret spent with the sisters and their parents, Milly recalls her father, a man with dreams of the good life and a natural aptitude for golf, her mother, from a well-to-do family, trying to make the best life she can for her family, quietly putting up with her husband’s failed dreams. She retells the events that occurred that summer and decisions she made to try and hold her family together, events and decisions that will shape the rest of her life.

The Bird Sisters, a first novel, has an ethereal quality to it, alternating between the present and Milly and Twiss wonder through their lives, and the past, where adult decisions were made by children who would have to live with their decisions, and their effects on others, as adults. Rasmussen’s language is beautiful, her metaphors subtle, creating the private world of Milly and Twiss, inviting the reader in, but never allowing them to get too close.

Just Jennifer

The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie  by Wendy McClure (Riverhead, April 2011)


Generations of little girls have grown up with Laura Ingalls Wilder; first with the books than during the seventies and eighties with the television show, but where does the myth end and reality begin? Wendy McClure becomes re-obsessed with one of her favorite childhood books Little House on the Prairie and sets out on a quest to find the real world of Laura, or the real world as she perceives it, and along the way finds that the Laura she thought she knew did not have the carefree, everything will work out life as portrayed in the books and later the television series. McClure learns that the producer of the television show had filed a lawsuit against the museum where the original Kansas homestead to stop them from using the name Little House on the Prairie---uh, isn’t that what it is? McClure also learns of the various prejudices the Ingalls had, especially toward the Native American Indians, and she finds evidence that Pa skipped out of Iowa once to avoid paying rent. In addition to visiting as many of the preserved sights as she was able to, McClure churns butter, makes vanity cakes and spends the night on a farm where she encounters a group of survivalists hoping to learn skills that will see them through the end of the world. McClure also reads many of the more scholarly works written about Laura Ingalls Wilder as well as the manuscript of Pioneer Girl an unpublished memoir among Rose Wilder Lane’s papers at the Herbert Hoover Library. More than just the story of trying to recreate Half-Pint’s adventures, The Wilder Life explores the concept of memoir as fiction and the social mores and conditions of an earlier time. Told with hope, wit, wisdom and even a big of self-deprecation, this book is an adventure that anyone who spent time in Walnut Grove or DeSmet will not want to miss.

Just Jennifer

Outside Wonderland by Lorna Jane Cook (St. Martin’s Press, March 2011)


Librarian and Readers’ Advisor extraordinaire Nancy Perl (author of the Book Lust series) recommends you give a book a fifty-page chance before giving up on it, which is exactly what I intended to do with Outside Wonderland. Several hours later, I was still reading. Outside Wonderland is the story of three siblings, Alice, Griffin and Dinah (all named after characters from Alice in Wonderland), whose mother died when they were seven, four and one, and whose father died six years later while they were in Greece. Raised by their grandmother Joan, the trio has issues, individually and as a group, but in spite of having very few redeeming qualities, there is something about this trio that makes you keep rooting for them. The plotting is often predictable: Alice is an actress who has taken many casual lovers over the years and now may have found Mr. Right… and his son; Griffin and his partner Theo are at odds over trying to adopt a child that Theo desperately wants and Griffin is uncertain about when Dinah shows up pregnant from an uncharacteristic fling she had while on a cruise.

Watching over them in a Greek Chorus sort of way are their parents from Here, commenting on their children’s lives and trying to give them a push in the right direction. These scenes are a bit precious, but they do give more background and another perspective at times.

Do not be tempted to read ahead. The first sentence of the epilogue may well be the best sentence of the book as it startles, saddens and then relieves all at once, but it will be a spoiler if read too early. This book will not hold everyone’s interest, but give it fifty pages and you might just be surprised to find yourself unexpectedly down the rabbit hole as well.

Just Jennifer

Say Her Name by Francisco Goldman (Grove, April 2011)


In a fictionalized memoir, author Goldman details his meeting, courtship and marriage to the much younger author Aura Estrada. In spite of their age differences, the two had were kindred spirits and had a successful marriage. Just before their second anniversary, Aura is killed in a surfing accident while in Mexico and Goldman must rebuild his life without the woman whom he had grown to love so fiercely in such a short period of time, with such passion he often feels he will never heal. Told in the form of a novel to protect the couple’s friends and family, and to preserve some of the intimacy the couple shared, you will quickly forget that you are not reading the biography of a great love story. Goldman’s language is beautiful, story told with an elegant gentleness, that slowly reveals a poignant and heartbreaking tale.

Just Jennifer

Learning to Swim by Sara J. Henry (Crown, February 2011)


While Troy Chance is returning to Lake Placid on a Lake Champlain ferry she sees a bundle being thrown in the frigid lake from a ferry going in the opposite direction. Almost instinctively she realizes the bundle is a child and she dives in after it even though she is not a strong swimmer. She rescues a little boy of about five or six years old from the frigid water and finds herself fiercely attached to the boy and determined to allow no further harm to come to him. As a freelance writer she is able to make a trip to Canada where she finds the boy’s father, a wealthy businessman. Satisfied that Philippe had nothing to do with Paul’s abduction, Troy brings Paul back to his father’s house; his father has moved during the time that Paul and his mother were abducted (his mother is presumed dead) and asks Troy to stay and help Paul get acclimated to his new home as he seems as attached to Troy as she is to him. The longer Troy stays with Philippe and Paul, the more attached she grows to both of them and the deeper she gets into the mystery of what happened to Paul and his mother; before long she finds herself chasing kidnappers and murderers back to Vermont, all the while missing what is write before her. Though the plot is interesting, the pacing is a little slow and the tension never quite builds, the story lacking the suspense it could have in a more seasoned writer’s hands.

Just Jennifer

Drinking Closer to Home by Jessica Anya Blau (Harper Perennial, January 2011)


Thre is a fine line between dysfunctional and eccentric and the Steins are carefully balanced, taking turns dipping from one side to the other. When Louise has a heart attack, Buzzy calls their three children against her wishes and Anna, Portia and Emery, with boyfriend Alejandro in tow, descend on the Santa Barbara hospital room where they sort out their adult lives and reminisce, perhaps looking for answers, in their childhood. The scene shifts effortlessly between the present day, Anna unhappy in her marriage having many affairs, Portia’s marriage on the brink of divorce, and Emery and Alejandro deliriously happy, on the brink of fatherhood if one of the girls will donate their eggs to their progeny, and the trio’s childhood which was anything but traditional. Each character, the children especially, are drawn with a clarity that will allow you to see how each arrived at their current place in life and where they can go from there. Many difficult subjects are touched on, anorexia, sex addiction, homosexuality and drug and alcohol use, but each is handled with such aplomb that it seems perfectly natural for this family as they work their way through these issues. The writing is honest and poignant, unforgiving and tender creating an unforgettable family that you will never wish is your own, but that you will be glad to visit over and over.

Just Jennifer

Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love by Andrew Shaffer (Harper Perennial, December 2010)


A short, entertaining book Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love briefly outlines the love lives of some of the world’s greatest thinkers, ancient and modern, proving that great thinkers definitely do not make the best loves. From Diogenes to Augustine of Hippo to Abelard, Nietzsche and Ayn Rand, Shaffer discusses the successes, and more often failures, of each philosopher. Many of the love affairs ended in the death of one of the partners, several resulted in illegitimate children and some, in the case of Simone de Beauvier and Jean Paul Satre, lovers for 51 years, the adoption of their younger lovers, in Beauvier’s case, her lesbian lovers. Fact is often stranger than fiction as illustrated in these short vignettes. Each section ends with “in his [her] own words” and provides an appropriate quote. The sections are heavily, and often humorously, footnoted. The entries are arranged alphabetically rather than chronologically adding to the lighthearted feel of the entire affair.

Just Jennifer

A Cup of Friendship by Deborah Rodriguez (Ballantine, January 25, 2011)


Expat Sunny is an American running a coffee shop in Kabul that caterers to other Americans living in Afghanistan. When she finds Yazmina seeking refuge at a local shelter, Sunny takes the young woman under her wing and sets out to learn the secrets that keep Yazmina’s eyes from smiling when the her mouth smiles. As other Western women, including Candace, a wealthy American who is not sure what to do with her new found freedom and all her money, and Isabel, a British journalist who has secrets of her own. Also in Sunny’s life is Halajan, an older, local woman who has lived a traditional life, but who has an independent side to her and also has a long-kept secret that she fears would bring shame to her son who is the security guard for Sunny’s restaurant. As all of these women converge on Sunny’s oasis, amidst the threats, bombing and destruction of Kabul, they turn to each other and inside themselves to find the strength to continue and to make their lives better. Sunny, out of all the characters, is the least developed; she often seems as she is putting up a false, sunny front for those around her. It is when things at the café get their worst that Sunny’s true colors begin to shine and we begin to see what she is truly capable of. A Cup of Friendship will be the jumping off point for many to learn more about modern day Kabul and women’s roles in Afghanistan, both women native to the country, those working in it temporarily and those born elsewhere who are making it their home. Sunny’s coffee shop is welcoming and inviting, the kind of place you will want to tuck into and visit often.

Just Jennifer

Crossing the Heart of Africa: an Odyssey of Love and Adventure by Julian Smith (Harper Perennial, December 2010)


In 1898, British adventurer Ewart Grogan began his quest to navigate the length of Africa from Cape Town to Cairo for the love of a woman. The step-father of Ewart’s beloved Gertrude would not allow them to marry as he considered Ewart an unsuitable husband for his step-daughter. Ewart decided to prove his worthiness by making this cross-continental trip. Over one hundred years later, travel writer Julian Smith is about to marry Laura, who he knows is the best woman for him, but he has doubts about himself and the concept of forever. Neatly weaving the narrative of his modern day (or as modern as possible through the jungles of Africa) with Grogan’s larger than life adventure, Julian Smith explores the wilderness, people and politics of Africa and its small, ever-changing nations at the dawn of the 20th century and just past the turn of the 21st century. These two stories are engaging enough on their own, but Smith adds an even more personal touch as he recounts, often in great detail, the life of his relationship with his soon to be wife. He writes of this journey with uncanny honesty, taking responsibility for his missteps and candidly expressing his self doubt. Crossing the Heart of Africa will appeal to the adventurer and romantic in all of us.

Just Jennifer

Little Princes: One Man’s Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal by Conor Grennan (Greenwillow, January 2011)


After college, Conor Grennan got a job grew bored of and decided to ditch everything for an around the world adventure. Lest his odyssey make him seem too self absorbed and frivolous, Conor’s first leg of his journey is a three-month volunteer stint at an orphanage in Nepal---surely the Civil War the brochure cautions about can’t be all that bad. Conor quickly learns that conditions are much worse in Nepal than he imagined: there is abject poverty throughout the country; many people live in regions of the country that are for the most part unreachable; the Maoist rebels control much of the country and have many people living in fear for their lives and what little freedoms they have. What greets Conor at the orphanage is the innocence and hope that only young children can offer. He learns that most of the children are not orphaned but have been rescued from traffickers. Conor plans on putting in his three months at the orphanage and moving on, but the children affect him in ways that surprise him. After he completes his originally planned trip, he finds himself returning to Nepal, finding more children that need his help. He sets up a non-profit organization, Next Generation Nepal that not only provides the funding to help reunite children with their families, but runs a home in Nepal for these displaced children. As Conor risks his safety as he treks into the most remote regions of the country to find these children’s families, he learns a great deal about himself, but he also learns that many of these parents truly believed that these children would have a better life when they paid the trafficker to take them, and that they may not be able to care for them and offer them what Conor’s orphanage, and others like it, can offer the children Conor’s grace and humor and willingness to admit his shortcomings offer brief respites to the otherwise grave conditions described in this book. This book will be an eye-opening experience to readers who are unfamiliar with Nepal or know it only as the country where Mount Everest can be found or as a spiritual retreat. Readers will be touched by the children and the way they changed Conor’s life as much as he has changed theirs. Fans of Three Cups of Tea will want to put this at the top of their New Year’s “to be read” list.

Just Jennifer

The Lake of Dreams by Kim Edwards (Viking, January 4, 2011)


Lucy, at a pivotal moment in her young life returns to her home town in upstate New York when her mother fractures her wrist in a car accident. Leaving The Lake of Dreams shortly after her father’s death ten years earlier, Lucy has a lot of loose ends and ghosts awaiting her return and quickly sees that life has continued in her absence, leaving her many things to grapple with. Lucy must face the unresolved relationships she left: with her mother, her brother Blake and Keegan Falls, the one that might have been, but now never can be. Lucy has not put down roots in the past ten years, though she has been living in Japan with Yoshi whom she met while doing humanitarian work in Jakarta. In spite of her wanderlust and unwillingness to face past ghosts, Lucy begins a quest to learn about her family’s past when she finds a cache of letters and suffragette documents in an old window seat along with a small blanket with a very unusual border. This motif is also found in stained glass windows in a local chapel that may be torn down if the local wetlands are developed and not preserved. Lucy searches for clues to her family using the stained glass windows and their creator, certain her long-lost great aunt was involved with the artist. There is a lot going on in this book, a mysterious ancestors, a grieving family, lost loves and land preservation (even that has two sides, the Native Americans who claim it and the environmentalists who want to save the local flora and fauna) but Kim Edwards ties all the sub-plots together neatly, if a little too sweetly at times. Fans of The Memory Keeper’s Daughter have been waiting a long time for Edwards’s next book and most will not be disappointed.

Another novel, completely different in its tone, released this month also has stained glass and women’s rights at the turn of the twentieth century at its forefront.

Clara and Mr. Tiffany by Susan Vreeland (Random House, January 11, 2011) takes us to the Gilded Age and explores the life of Clara Driscoll who worked for Louis Comfort Tiffany in his factory and is said to have come up with the idea for the now ubiquitous Tiffany lamp shade that is so familiar. Carefully researched, this book not only explores the lives of working women at the dawn of the new century, but also discusses other social issues, such as the living and working conditions of the poorest of the poor. Larger than life characters and descriptions of neighborhoods of Manhattan from the Upper West Side to the Fifth Avenue Mansions to the early Bohemians add to a rich atmosphere. Clara is fully realized as she deals with being a widow and learns to fit into a man’s world, leading her life as she wishes and a life that will make her happy and fulfilled.

Just Jennifer

666 Park Avenue by Gabriella Pierce (Avon, February 2011)

Jane Boyle is leading quiet but satisfactory life in Paris until Malcolm Doran, New York’s most eligible bachelor, sweeps her off of her feet and carries her back to New York as his fiancé where she meets her future mother-in-law who she learns is an honest-to-goodness witch, and not the good kind. The more Jane learns about her fiancé and his family, and her own past, the more she realizes the dangerous course she has set herself on. Without putting her New York friends in more danger than necessary she slowly puts the pieces together and soon doesn’t realize who she can trust; before she knows it, it’s too late and she is Mrs. Malcolm Doran and in a lot of danger. A fun mix of romance, the supernatural and Manhattan socialites, this is ripe for a sequel.

Just Jennifer

Hating Olivia by Mark SaFranko (Harper Perennial, 2010)

Max Zajack’s life as a struggling writer and musician is pretty much a disaster; he lives in cheap, roach-infested rooms & he can’t ever keep his dead end jobs long enough to make ends meet, but when he meets Olivia at a club one night, he thinks his life is taking a change for the better, when in reality, Max’s life begins a downward slide, about to spiral completely out of control. Max is completely obsessed with Olivia, and she with him. Olivia becomes domineering, controlling and emotionally manipulative leaving Max no way out. There is frequent, rough sex, volatile arguments, threats of leaving and then rough sex again, to prove, each to the other, that they can’t live without the other. As these two lost souls navigate life together, there is violence and unhappiness, but there is also a strange kind of love that you feel you will die without, if you don’t die in the living it. Not angry in its telling, Max relates an intense and visceral tale, exploring a love so obsessed it is ultimately destructive. The writing is edgy, the language raw, though there are carefully constructed, gentle sentences “…late summer passed like a lilac-scented dream…autumn had tossed its longer nights over the world like a soft blanket…” remind you that this is a love story after all.

Just Jennifer

 

Brooklyn Story by Suzanne Corso (Gallery, December 2010)

Set in 1978 Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, Brooklyn Story is a coming-of-age tale about Samantha Bonti who is half-Jewish, half-Italian living in an Italian neighborhood, longing to be on the other side of the fabled bridge.  Samantha lives with her Jewish grandmother and her converted-to-Catholicism mother who has a substance abuse problem and is on welfare, to the embarrassment of Samantha.  Her best friend Janice sets fifteen-year-old Samantha up with Tony, half-Dutch, half-Italian, all twenty-years old, the best friend of Janice’s boyfriend Richie.  Tony is very good looking, and always has money he’s willing to spend on Samantha, and Samantha is quickly drawn into his world, a world that is not all glitz and glamour as it first appears.  Samantha accepts Tony’s overbearing ways as proof of his affection for her, but when he turns violent, she realizes she is in over her head and looks to the adults in her life, including an English teacher and a nurturing priest, for guidance. 

The story becomes engaging, but Samantha’s strength of character and determination is hard to believe at times, especially given her young age.  Certain things in life can make you grow up quickly, but I didn’t see that growth in Samantha, though she is an admirable young woman.  The setting is very authentic and anyone who remembers 1978, especially the city, will remember the same sights and sounds Samantha describes.  Brooklyn Story ends with hope for Samantha, leaving readers wondering what she will do next; a sequel is in the works according to the author’s website, which includes questions for discussion.

Just Jennifer

The Fates Will Find Their Way by Hannah Pittard (Ecco, January 2011)


Nora Lindell disappeared the Halloween she was sixteen, leaving in her wake a neighborhood unsure of what happened, and a group of boys on whom she had a very lasting effect. This sparse, thoughtful novel is told in the first person plural, as the boys who were Nora’s playmates and classmates work through this event that haunts them, even into adulthood. Nora disappeared without a trace, and her true fate is never learned, but as each boy, or man, reflects on her disappearance, conjectures are made, some based on unconfirmed “Nora sightings” over the years. The enclave which has kept the boys safe for the first part of their lives now has a chink in its armor and everyone is left wondering what happened, how could it have been prevented and who will be next? With an economy of words, none wasted, the family life of each boy as a child and as an adult is revealed, as is the boy’s relationship with Nora. The boys become very protective of the other girls in their life after this incident, but the focus on the story is the boys and how Nora affected them before and after her disappearance. Nora becomes a symbol for what the boys have left behind as they grow into adulthood and for the part of each of us that will stay sixteen forever in our minds.

Just Jennifer

 

You Know When the Men are Gone by Siobhan Fallon (Amy Einhorn Books, January 2011)

In eight short stories, connected through families at Fort Hood, Texas, Siobhan Fallon explores soldiers being deployed, deployed and returning home from deployment in Iraq or Afghanistan and the effects it has on the soldiers and the families they leave behind.  Trying to fit in as a military wife, suspected infidelity, home and at war, cancer, relationships, children and the death of a spouse are all explored with sensitivity and grace, making the reader part of the story, not left feeling as if they were looking in on something.  Fallon doesn’t leave any emotion out:  loneliness, sadness, frustration, anger or despair; she writes with such intimacy that the reader becomes a part of Meg, David Mogeson or Carla’s world for a short time.  Life in the military, especially for civilian wives, is largely unknown to the rest of us.  New fiction author Siobhan Fallon gives us a glimpse into this unknown world and we leave a bit in awe of these men and women.

Just Jennifer

The Poison Tree by Erin Kelly (Pamela Dorman Books, January 2011)


Karen Clarke has lived a predictable, if somewhat boring, life until the summer she is twenty. Karen is just finishing up her degree as a multi-language linguist and meets Biba who seems exotic by comparison. Karen becomes totally absorbed with Biba’s seemingly carefree, bohemian lifestyle and allows herself to become immersed in that life which includes Biba’s older brother Rex. Rex and Biba’s casual lifestyle belies the underlying emotions surrounding their parents and lives growing up. Told ten years after the fateful summer, as Rex is being released from jail, the story seamlessly moves between Rex’s reassimilation into Karen, and their nine-year-old daughter’s life, and the summer when events spiraled out of control, ultimately causing Rex to go to jail and Biba to disappear from Karen’s life.  The plot begins quietly, and quickly creeps up; before you realize it, you are totally immersed in Biba and Karen’s worlds. The pacing of the ending is a bit too fast and is over before you know it, but under the circumstances, that it probably all for the best.