Ramsey County Library The Week of... December 7, 2009
Fiction
Alison Gray is driving home from a party celebrating the publication of new book of her old friend Claire when tragedy strikes; another car runs a stop sign and collides with Alison’s car, killing a little boy who was a passenger in the other car. Although Allison was not responsible for the crash, she feels a crippling sense of guilt and grief for the child’s death. Her husband, Charlie, is ambivalent and not particularly supportive of Alison; he blames her for having a couple of drinks at the party before the crash, and he is unhappy and restless in their marriage. Claire has her own problems; her husband Ben wants to settle down and have a family, but Claire isn’t ready to have kids, and considers leaving Ben. She and Charlie begin an affair, and this causes pain and complications that none of them could have predicted. This is a subtle and moving novel about love and loss, showing how the bonds holding a marriage together can fray and break over time, and how people can drift apart without realizing it. Fans of Jodi Picoult or Kristin Hannah will want to try this one.
The third entry in the Darcy Lott series finds the San Francisco based stuntwoman, Zen Buddhist, and amateur detective helping out her brother Gary, an attorney, by babysitting one of his clients named Karen Johnson. Darcy notices some odd things about Karen, who says she is divorcing her husband, a retired football star; why does her husband call her Alison? Why is Gary, a criminal attorney, handling a divorce case, and why does he insist that Darcy keep her involvement in the case secret from their older brother John, a police detective? When Karen apparently kills herself by jumping from a high rise building onto a busy road, Darcy is suspicious and starts investigating Karen’s past. She finds that Karen had lived under a number of different names, including Sonora Eades, who had been accused of a brutal murder 25 years ago. The situation becomes urgent when John becomes the main suspect in another murder; Darcy must uncover the connection between the deaths to save her brother and herself as well. This series keeps getting better and better; fans of Chelsea Cain’s Heartsick or the Deborah Knott series by Margaret Maron will want to read this.
Archeologist Page Brookstone has been working at Megiddo, the massive dig site near Jerusalem, for more than ten years, but she has become disenchanted with her job. She craves a chance to strike out on her own, away from the boss whose sexual advances she spurned, and to make a find of great historic and theological significance. When Palestinian couple Ibrahim and Aisha Barakat come to her to ask for help dealing with the spirits of two lovers they believe are haunting their home in the nearby town of Anatot, Page is intrigued, and agrees to investigate despite the scornful reaction of her colleagues. Upon arriving at the house, Page experiences a vision of the pair of lovers that leaves her shaken. Ibrahim has started to excavate under the house, and to her amazement, Page finds what appears to be the tomb of the prophet Jeremiah, his remains entwined with those of a woman, Anatiya, whose diary is also found in the tomb. The scrolls of the diary parallel the Book of Jeremiah, making them an explosive find with the potential to alter three of the world’s great religions. The Israeli government takes charge of the dig and the diary, but Page manages to capture a digital image of the scrolls, and takes them to a translator in the U.S. She wants to make sure that the truth of Anatiya’s message is not distorted by powerful forces with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, and there are shadowy enemies who want to prevent her from succeeding. This book is like a cross between The Da Vinci Code and The Red Tent, combining suspense and Biblical history into an exciting, absorbing and thought-provoking story.
This novel, based on the life of the prodigiously talented and equally troubled painter Vincent Van Gogh, is as vivid and colorful as one of the artist’s amazing works. The story begins with Rachel Corteau, a young prostitute who is avoiding her “duties” at the brothel by taking a catnap in one of the gardens of the Provencal city of Arles. She awakens to find herself being sketched by a rather intense red-haired man in a straw hat, and becomes intrigued by him and by his work. Their complicated relationship forms the core of the story, as Rachel falls in love with Vincent and hopes to marry him; he loves her, but his growing mental instability leads to several stays in a mental hospital, and his bourgeois family does not approve of the romance. Meanwhile Rachel is forced to stay at the brothel, longing to escape and join the man she loves, but in the end she must face the truth about Van Gogh and about her relationship with him. Vibrant and compelling, this novel will appeal to fans of The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton or Tracy Chevalier’s Girl with a Pearl Earring.
In 2003 when she was 40, the author was diagnosed with a carcinoid tumor, a rare, slow-growing, and usually deadly form of cancer. Host is the mother of three young children, the youngest of whom was only ten months old at the time, and this news was devastating. She describes the fear, pain, anger, and loneliness she felt, comparing her experience of living with cancer to being in an out-of-control boat on a raging river; she tells of the difficulty involved in finding the right diagnosis, the harrowing treatment involving surgery and chemotherapy, and the terrible toll of the disease on her family and friends. Host also beautifully describes the heartbreak of finding the balance between accepting her fate and the very real possibility that she would die from this illness, and staying hopeful and positive while undergoing the harsh treatment. This deeply affecting and lyrical memoir will resonate particularly with those who have gone through cancer diagnosis themselves, and with those who have had to watch a loved one endure this battle; it is also a very personal and fascinating memoir for readers who want to discover what it’s like to live through a serious illness. This would be a good choice for readers who liked Resilience by Elizabeth Edwards or Randy Pausch’s The Last Lecture.
This absorbing and highly entertaining hybrid of true crime expose and biography of one of New York City’s most notorious criminals reads like a cross between James Ellroy and the Page Six gossip column of the New York Post. Crazy Joey Gallo was the larger-than-life head of a Mafioso operation in the Red Hook area of Brooklyn. Joey and his brothers, Larry and Albert “Kid Blast” Gallo, were ambitious; along with such characters as Mondo the Dwarf and Ali Baba the Egyptian, they wanted to prove themselves to the higher-ups in New York’s world of organized crime, and they pulled all kinds of outrageous stunts trying to achieve their goal. Joey was fascinated by the counter culture movement, and had aspirations to be an artist; he painted and wrote poetry, and was friendly with actors, musicians, and artists from Greenwich Village. Bob Dylan and others hailed him as “King of the Streets.” Joey spent years in and out of jail and psychiatric wards as his plans became more and more grandiose, and in 1972 he was murdered while eating spaghetti in Little Italy. Crazy Joe Gallo was a true original, and his bloody war with the overlords of the mafia showed cracks in the façade of organized crime that would later lead to successful undercover operations against them, and to their loss of power. This is a fascinating study of the intersection of popular culture and the criminal underworld, and a terrific story as well. Readers who want the real story behind Jimmy Breslin’s fictionalized treatment of the Gallos, The Gang Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight, will want to read this.
At the twentieth anniversary of the events leading to the fall of the Soviet Union, this timely book explores how the corruption and inept governance of the Soviet satellites led to their peaceful demise. The leaders of these incompetent and increasingly isolated regimes were true believers in the superiority of socialism, but by the late 1980s it was becoming obvious that the Eastern bloc nations could not compete economically with the West. It began with the Polish leaders allowing a somewhat free election, in which they were promptly voted out; in East Germany, huge demonstrations and masses of tourists leaving for the West through Hungary and Czechoslovakia led the wavering government to lift restrictions on travel, and an unauthorized announcement of this change from a junior government official was quickly picked up by the news media and widely broadcast. On November 9, 1989, a huge crowd of East Berliners gathered at the Berlin Wall, demanding to be allowed to cross the birder, and the befuddled guards allowed them to leave, rather than using lethal force to stop them. In the following weeks the wall was dismantled. It was an amazingly peaceful end to a repressive regime; the authors argue that it was not the strength of the opposition to the Communist governments, but rather their own weakness that cause the collapse. This is a terrific and lively account of one of the most important political events of the twentieth century.
Mary Eleanor Bowes was only eleven years old when her father died in 1760, making her the wealthiest heiress in Britain, and a tempting target for many potential suitors. In 1767 at age eighteen, she married John Lyon, the 9th Earl of Strathmore, and they had five children together, although the marriage was not a happy one; Lyon was more interested in the restoration of Glamis Castle, his family’s ancestral home, than his wife. Mary was well educated and accomplished, a published poet and playwright and a well-regarded botanist, and thus pursued her own interests during their marriage. When Lyon died in 1776, Mary was pregnant by her lover George Gray, whom she had agreed to marry; but she was also pursuing a dalliance with Andrew Robinson Stoney, an Anglo-Irish soldier. When Stoney was wounded in a duel supposedly defending Mary’s honor, she agreed to marry him as ha lay on hid deathbed. After the marriage he made a miraculous recovery, and took control of Mary’s fortune, treating her cruelly and keeping her as a prisoner in her own home. Finally, Mary fought back, escaping from her captivity and shocking society by suing her husband for divorce; the scandal that ensued was the talk of the country. This book sheds light on the terrible inequities suffered by women of those times, and reads like a true-crime book. Readers who liked The Bolter by Frances Osborne or who enjoy the books of Antonia Fraser will want to read this.
August 24, 2009
Fiction
In 1997, London solicitor Reggie Heath rents an office that comes with an unusual provision in the lease agreement; because the office is at 221b Baker Street, the address of the legendary fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, Reggie must agree to answer the letters that still regularly arrive addressed to the Great Detective. Reggie’s brother Nigel, who works for him as a clerk, is handling the Holmes letters while awaiting a hearing to reinstate his solicitor’s license, which was suspended after he was accused of misconduct. When an old letter addressed to Holmes is found in the files, from eight-year-old Mara Ramirez in Los Angeles, begging for help in finding her missing father, Nigel drops everything and flies to Los Angeles to help. Reggie is annoyed with Nigel for blowing off his reinstatement hearing, but that’s nothing compared to his shock at finding a dead body on the floor of Nigel’s office. Going after his brother, Reggie gets dragged into another murder investigation in L.A., along with his on-and-off girlfriend, beautiful actress Laura Rankin; they discover that Nigel’s fears for Mara’s safety are not so crazy after all, and they may be next if they don’t figure out who’s behind the killings, and why. There is plenty of sly humor throughout, and the Holmes letters are a clever plot device; this looks like the start of a terrific new mystery series.
Di Linzer has lived with uncertainty all her life; when she was eleven, her mother kidnapped her from her American father and fled to Europe to raise Di on her own. They were constantly looking over their shoulders for Di’s father, who was devastated at her disappearance. Now grown up and the mother of a young son, Max, Di returns to the U.S. to try and find her father, and to create a normal life for herself and her son. Di moves to Pittsburgh to live with her cousin Alecia, a television reporter who is struggling with her own issues of career and relationships. She gets a job as a nanny for wealthy and handsome Augustus Catalano, who has just gone through a messy divorce, and meets Dave, the Catalano family’s good looking gardener; this causes a romantic dilemma, as she starts to have tentative romantic feelings for both men. Meanwhile, Alecia’s relationship with her fiancé Ben seems to be crumbling under the strain of work and family issues. Di and Alecia’s lives become even more intertwined when Alecia’s mother, who has been out of her life for years, shows up; she may hold the key to finding Di’s father, as well as the answers she has been seeking about her family history. This absorbing family story has well-rounded and sympathetic characters, and the complications and difficulties of family life will be recognizable to everyone. Readers who like novels by Elin Hilderbrand or Mary Alice Monroe will enjoy this.
Andy Altman has been in love with Paige Day since they were both just kids; his whole life, he has been trying to win her affection and persuade her to marry him. To this end, Andy drops out of his college pharmacy program and moves back home to the northern California town of Crockett, taking a job as a pharmacy assistant to Paige’s father, Gregory Day; Andy hopes to win his approval as Paige’s future husband. It is a daunting task; Gregory is an exacting boss, and he seems unimpressed with Andy as a future husband for his daughter. He scoffs at Andy’s wacky inventions and sees him as an aimless dreamer who has never amounted to much. When Andy discovers that the small-town pharmacy and its customers are hiding an explosive secret, things get even more complicated, and Andy’s future with Paige hangs in the balance. Wellen’s debut novel is a funny and charming story with appealing characters, and a mix of romance, mystery, and comedy, blended into a frothy and satisfying tale. Readers who liked Cathleen Schine’s The New Yorkers or Beginner’s Greek by James Collins will enjoy this.
The first in a great new series, this mystery features aspiring television journalist Aspen Wicklow, who recently graduated from the University of North Texas and is desperately seeking employment. She takes a job at Fort Worth’s television station WBFD as a reporter doing consumer watchdog stories, eager to learn her craft and get her big break. Her co-worker, investigative reporter Tig Welder, has his heart set on the coveted anchor slot, and he’ll do anything to keep Aspen from becoming real competition for him. Aspen’s boss J. Gordon Pfeiffer tries to mentor her, telling her to keep her private and professional lives separate, and warning her never to get personally involved in a story, but Aspen finds that challenging when she interviews handsome Johnson County Sheriff’s Deputy Spike Granger about her story on prison overcrowding. The situation gets even more complicated and dangerous when Candy Drummond, a college friend of Aspen, is found strangled; Aspen’s pursuit of the story may land her in danger as well. With sparkling humor and fast-paced action, this debut is a great start to a new series; fans of Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series or the Bubbles Yablonsky series by Sarah Strohmeyer will get a kick out of it.
From the time the first Americans arrived in China in 1784 on diplomatic missions and trade journeys, we have been both fascinated with and repelled by Chinese food. Those first American “tourists” were often disgusted by what they encountered in China, and usually tried to reproduce Western-style food instead of eating the native cuisine. However in the 19th century, the massive wave of Chinese immigrants coming to America to prospect for gold and work on the railroads brought their culinary traditions with them. Many of the restaurants that catered to Chinese immigrants attracted American customers as well, although often the recipes were altered to be more acceptable to the Western palate (hence the eponymous chop suey, a dish that blends the Chinese and American culinary traditions to create something new). There are currently more than 40,000 Chinese restaurants in the U.S., more than any other ethnic tradition, and the Chinese food that is available here has created its own culinary and cultural tradition, an amalgam of the two cultures that spawned it. This is a fascinating look at how one of the most basic parts of life-eating-illustrates the relationship between two very different cultures, and the people who traveled between them over the last two hundred years or so. Fans of Mark Kurlansky’s Salt: a World History or Iron and Silk by Mark Salzman will find this very interesting.
The meltdown in the real estate market has had a devastating effect on the American economy, but it has also been ruinous for individual families, neighborhoods, and cities around the country. Katz traces the roots of the crisis, using interviews and a wealth of research to bolster her thesis. In the early 1990s, affordable housing advocates pushed the Clinton administration to back policies that were designed to increase home ownership among low-income families, such as low-down-payment loans. These measures, as well as other factors like deregulation of the lending industry in the Reagan era, the laissez-faire policies of the Federal Reserve under Alan Greenspan, and the rise of new mortgage-backed securities from Wall Street, combined to create a cycle of selling (often at predatory interest rates), foreclosing, and reselling that kept spiraling higher as housing prices were artificially inflated, and more and more investors and tried to get in on the action. Katz asks the tough questions, and doesn’t shirk from providing difficult answers and assigning responsibility for the mess this created, leading to a global economic crisis caused by greed and wrong-headed public policy. Gripping and painstakingly documented, this book provides a sobering look at the current economic crisis.
Like his older brother Robert Oppenheimer, known as “the father of the atomic bomb,” Frank Oppenheimer was a physicist who worked on the Manhattan project, developing atomic weapons for the United States during World War II. In the 1950s, he was blacklisted for his ties with Communist groups before the war, and fired from his job at the University of Minnesota. He moved to Colorado, where he raised cattle and taught high school physics; he turned out to be a wonderful teacher, and students from his small rural school won the state high school science fair with astonishing regularity. In 1969, he used his gift for teaching science to create an entirely new and different kind of museum, the Exploratorium in San Francisco. The Exploratorium was a radical departure from anything seen before; it encouraged patrons (especially children) to touch and play with the exhibits, to learn through doing, and perhaps most importantly, to have fun at a museum. This new model for the museum experience led to a transformation in museums around the world, making them much more accessible and a lot more fun. Cole, who knew Oppenheimer personally, tells the fascinating story of how the physicist’s life and work molded him and led to the creation of the Exploratorium, expanding the horizons of museums and science educators around the globe.
Logan tells the story of Brenda Paz, who was only twelve when she first began to hang out with members of the Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13. The gang evolved from a typical L.A. street gang into a sprawling criminal enterprise with thousands of members, involved with drugs, prostitution, extortion, and murder on a scale that led the FBI to declare them the most dangerous criminal organization in America. At fifteen, Brenda was “jumped-in” to the gang, enduring a brutal beating to mark her as a gang member. Her boyfriend Veto was the gang’s leader, and Brenda witnessed a constant stream of criminal activities, from armed robbery to murder. At age sixteen, Brenda was recruited as an informant after being arrested in connection with a murder, providing the FBI with their first real inside access to the gang’s activities. She entered the Witness Protection Program, but eventually ran away to return to her friends in the gang; they murdered her for informing on them. Logan tells a truly frightening story about the violent history of the gang, and how a young girl paid a terrible price for her involvement with them.
July 27, 2009
Fiction
Detective Inspector Peter Shaw and his new partner, Detective Sergeant George Valentine, already have some history together; Valentine was partnered with Shaw’s dead father, who left the force in disgrace after their failure to solve a case involving the death of a child years earlier. Shaw and Valentine have been called to the Norfolk coast to investigate a report of toxic waste; in the process, they find a body in an inflatable boat. While on their way back to the office, they get caught in a blizzard, and a mysterious detour leads them to a group of stranded cars with another body, this one with a screwdriver protruding from its eye. More deaths follow, and the facts are baffling; how could someone stab the victim without leaving a trace in the snow, and what happened to the passenger who as in the car with the victim? Who set up the illegal roadblock, and why? Is this murder connected to the body on the beach, and if so, how? These and other questions pile up as Shaw and Valentine try to unravel the twisted threads of the clues in this mystery. This excellent debut is exciting and tightly plotted; the reader will be on the edge of their seat until the end trying to figure it out ahead of Shaw and Valentine. This would be a good choice for fans of Michael Connelly or Peter Robinson.
Anna O’Shea is dealing with a lot of changes in her life; recently divorced, she has left her job as an attorney, and has just returned from a vacation to Ireland where she hoped to sort out her next move. Unfortunately the trip didn’t turn out as planned, and now that she is back home, Anna has to retrieve her nephew Joe from jail, as Joe’s father, her brother Patrick, has been severely injured in an accident. Joe’s curiosity about a mysterious piece of cloth that Anna found while in Ireland leads to an argument between them, and the next thing Anna knows, she is transported into the past, back more than 150 years to pre-famine Ireland. Waking up alone on the deserted Irish coast, Anna finds help from Tom, a blacksmith, and his wife Glennis, but she is frantic to discover what happened to Joe, who was not with her when she awakened. Meanwhile, Joe finds himself in the garden of a wealthy English landowner; he masquerades as a well-educated young man from the well-to-do class, finding the success and respect that has eluded him until now. Both Anna and Joe find challenges and the possibility of love in their new circumstances; they must search for a way to return to their own time, but more importantly, they must decide if they really want to return. This is a very enjoyable book with romance, magic, interesting historical detail, and dogs; what more could a reader want?
This intriguing novel, based on the life of an historical figure, represents a new phase for the author, who is best known for spy novels like Vicious Circle and The Company. In Moscow in 1934, celebrated poet Osip Mandelstam is struggling with both his livelihood and his conscience. Life in the Stalin regime is not easy. The forced collectivization of farms has caused massive famine and poverty, and the secret police are everywhere, watching for the slightest hint of rebellion against the brutal government repression; anyone can be arrested at any time for anything, whether they have actually committed a crime or not. Mendelstam had originally supported the Bolshevik Revolution enthusiastically, but he has become disillusioned with the repression and hypocrisy of the Soviet government. Disgusted with the cruelty and lies of Stalin’s regime, he writes an epigram in which he boldly calls Stalin a murderer; he believes that artists have an obligation to tell the truth, no matter what the personal cost. In Mandelstam’s case, the price is staggeringly high; he is immediately arrested, brutally interrogated and imprisoned as the secret police try to break him. Eventually he is sent to the Siberian Gulag to labor in the mines, where he meets circus strongman and former Soviet champion weightlifter Fikrit Shotman, another victim of the cruelly capricious regime. Littel has done an amazing job of recreating the fear and chaos in the early years of the Soviet Union, where no one was safe from persecution, imprisonment, and even execution. The characters are vividly brought to life, and the reader feels their fear and sorrow as they try to cope with living in an impossible situation, forced to choose between integrity and survival. This terrific novel is reminiscent of Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon; readers will be riveted by its portrayal of one man’s resistance to the tyranny and violence of the police state.
Anne Hammersmith is working on her doctorate in literature at Columbia University when she meets Howard Rosenbaum, a fellow Ph.D. candidate. Despite their very different backgrounds (Anne is the daughter of British diplomats, Howard is the son of an Orthodox Jewish family from Brooklyn) they fall in love and marry. The couple has their share of difficulties; Howard’s parents would rather he had married a nice Jewish girl, and they struggle with infertility, but things start to work themselves out as they have a son, Sam, and Howard finds his calling as a very successful movie producer in Los Angeles. At first Anne feels lost in Hollywood, where it seems no one ever actually reads a book, but a casual request from one of Howard’s colleagues for help in starting a book club leads to a whole new life; Anne becomes the book club guru to the Hollywood elite, all of whom are looking for the next big thing to turn into a movie, and she has a particular knack for finding books that resonate with her readers. In the meantime, their son Sam is struggling with his sexuality, and his trip to Israel leads to more conflict as Howard rediscovers the Orthodox religion of his childhood; Anne feels that Howard is putting his newly rediscovered faith ahead of their marriage. This is a fascinating look at how literature is important and relevant in our lives; the reader will enjoy Anne’s list of book club choices as much as they do the story of Anne and Howard’s life together. If you liked The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler, try this one.
Neil White seemed to have the perfect life in the early 1990s; he was a successful journalist and magazine publisher, he had a wife and two children, and he and his family lived a lifestyle of luxury and indulgence in Oxford, Mississippi. This carefully constructed façade came crashing down when White was caught orchestrating a check kiting scheme; he was convicted of bank fraud and sentenced to eighteen months in a federal prison. He was assigned to serve his prison term in the minimum-security prison at Carville, Louisiana, but when he arrived to begin his sentence, he was shocked to discover that the prison was also the site of the last remaining leper colony in the continental United States, housing more than 100 leprosy patients. The prison inmates and the patients were not supposed to mix, but White came into daily contact with the patients because of his prison work assignment; despite his initial apprehension about being exposed to the disease, he reached out to them, eventually becoming friends with some of the patients. He describes the denizens of Carville with humor and respect; we meet Miss Ella, a seventy-year-old black woman who has loved most of her life at Carville, and Anne, a patient whose child was taken away from her, as well as various prison inmates and staff. White discovers that these people, who have suffered far more in their lifetimes than he could have ever conceived before coming to Carville, have endured with strength, humor and wisdom, and their example has much to teach him about his own failures and the possibilities of redemption. This terrific memoir is enjoyable and thought-provoking; it is reminiscent of Southern memoirs like John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean.
The author, who was born and raised in Baghdad and later moved to London, began writing this book as a collection of family recipes for her daughters and other female relatives, many of whom had never lived in Iraq; she wanted to pass on her knowledge of her native country’s cuisine. The result is one of the first cookbooks of Iraqi recipes published in English, and it is worth the wait. Traditional Iraqi cooking is simple and healthful, and Ibrahim makes it seem easy, writing in a friendly, folksy tone. The book is divided into chapters for things like soups, bread and tashreeb (a dish made by pouring a broth or stew over dry bread), dairy, fish, poultry, etc.; there is even a whole chapter on pickles, as well as a large section of pastries and desserts. The author describes traditional Iraqi foods like kubba (a sort of crispy shell which can be filled various kinds of stuffing) or zarda (a type of pudding), and gives clear explanations for their preparation. Most of the ingredients are readily available to Western cooks, and Ibrahim offers good substitutes for those that are harder to find. There are color photographs of each dish, and each section of recipes begins with an explanation of the history of that type of food, how and when it is traditionally served, and other interesting details. For anyone who likes to sample different culinary traditions, this is an excellent new cookbook to try.
Allred is perhaps the most unlikely NBA player ever, but he has overcome a formidable number of obstacles to achieve his dream of playing professional basketball. Born in a polygamist Mormon sect living in a commune in Montana, Allred spent his early years there until infighting in the group forced Allred’s family to leave. Moving to Salt Lake City brought another round of challenges, including dealing with his deafness, asthma, and obsessive-compulsive disorder; he found salvation in basketball, which allowed him to channel his energies into something at which he could excel. Allred was a high school star and won a scholarship to the University of Utah, where he worked hard and polished his skills, but felt belittled and diminished by the abusive ways of the coach, Rick Majerus. He transferred to another school, but had difficulty finding a place in the pro basketball world; after playing for teams abroad he started at the bottom with the Idaho Stampede, an NBA farm team. This eventually led to a contract with the Cleveland Cavaliers, where he played in 2008. Allred’s story is interesting on several levels; his unusual upbringing and his struggle with his disabilities make for a compelling variation on the usual professional athlete’s memoir.
Allegra Huston’s life was marred by tragedy at a very young age; her mother, Ricki Soma Huston, a former ballerina who was married to the iconic film director John Huston, died in a car crash when Allegra was only four years old. She was sent to live with her father, who was seldom there for his children; however she did have her older sister Angelica and brother Tony, and they lived in a constellation of beautiful and mostly isolated houses and estates in Ireland, New York, California and Mexico. Allegra has occasional encounters with Hollywood greats like Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson, but her meetings with her father were sporadic and mostly unsatisfactory; she was an afterthought in a family of glamorous, talented and incredibly self-absorbed people. Then at age twelve, her life was turned inside out again when she was informed that her real father was the British aristocrat and historian John Julius Cooper, a situation that was fraught with jealousy and soured by lies from a long-ago infidelity. The author is not interested in spilling the juicy details of her famous family; instead she considers how enduring her rather difficult upbringing allowed her to forge a new life for herself, and find her own way to success. Moving, poignant and beautifully written, this is the story of the triumph of compassion and love over jealousy and selfishness, and the bringing together of the disparate members of a family.
July 6, 2009
Fiction
Set in a grim version of the near future when war and disease are rampant around the globe, this novel effectively combines science fiction with a police procedural to create a chilling new world. The U.S. is fighting wars on several fronts in the Middle East and in the Balkans, and vast areas of America are now plague zones, where chaos reigns and every man is a law unto himself; the city of New York is a ruin, destroyed by a nuclear bomb. Other regions of the world are faring no better; Europe has descended into ultranationalist factions, and Germany is once again rising to become the major power. Tom Wilner is a Florida police officer who is just trying to get himself and his family through the troubles and predicaments that comprise daily life. When Tom witnesses a deadly shooting in a roadhouse, he becomes involved in the investigation, which leads in several strange and disturbing directions; he discovers a terrorist plot to destroy Florida that may involve his wife, as well as a battle between two alien races for the future of Earth. This extremely entertaining sci fi thriller will keep readers on the edge of their seats.
Nick Carmody was friends with Danny Grogan when they were students at boarding school, despite their very different backgrounds; Nick was on scholarship, and Danny’s family was rich, but they both felt like outsiders. Now as grownups, their bond has frayed; Danny is a club owner and cokehead, and Nick is a reporter for a tabloid newspaper. When Danny crashes his car while speeding down a Sydney street after a drug binge, his wealthy father gives Nick a large sum of money to say that he was actually driving, since Danny has a record of drug and driving offenses and would have to do some serious jail time. Nick thinks it won’t be a big deal, until he shows up in court to discover that a man died in the accident. Not willing to spend years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, Nick goes on the run, stealing a car and taking on the identity of its owner. He starts building a new life for himself in Melbourne, acquiring a girlfriend and even a dog; but when several men with the same name as his newly assumed identity are murdered, Nick has to find out who is trying to kill him and why. This is a suspenseful thriller with an edge of humor; the fast pace and urban Australian setting keep the reader interested until the very end. If you liked Harlan Coben’s Tell No One or the Elvis Cole series by Robert Crais, this one is for you.
Sarah McConnell’s life is turned completely upside down when her 17-year marriage to her husband David is shattered when he drowns while on a kayaking trip. Sarah’s grief and loss weigh heavily on her, so when she sees her husband at the supermarket three months after his death, she doesn’t know what to think; has she gone crazy, or could it be that David isn’t really dead, since his body was never found? He appears at their house on Halloween night, to explain to Sarah what happened to him, but she still isn’t sure that he is real since no one else has seen him. Is Sarah simply seeing what she wants to see, imagining that her husband is still alive, or is there something more going on? Brodie has written a compelling novel about love, loss, and starting over that will keep the reader completely engrossed until the last paragraph. This would be a good choice for fans of Eileen Goudge or Karen White.
In 1844, iconic American poet and naturalist Henry David Thoreau was a young man living in Concord, Massachusetts, restless and at loose ends; he had not yet written his seminal work, Walden, and his future was uncertain. Thoreau and a friend were out for a day in the woods when he accidentally started a forest fire that roared through Walden Woods, destroying more than 300 acres of forest. Based on this true historical event, Pipkin has created a vivid novel that portrays how Thoreau’s guilt and sorrow over what he had done influenced his life and work. We meet others who were affected by the fire: Oddmund Hus, a Norwegian immigrant farm hand who is in love with his employer’s wife, and has his own reasons to fear the fire; Elliot Calvert, who is a successful bookseller and a disastrous (and hilarious) failure as a playwright; and Caleb Dowdy, a fiercely passionate preacher who sees the fire as a punishment for the town’s sins. As Thoreau interacts with each of these men and the other townspeople working to control the raging fire, he is affected by their lives, their fears, and their secrets, and his own life is forever changed. The author’s complex portrayal of the rapid changes in American society in the period between the colonial era and the civil war, as well as the lovely writing, makes this a wonderful historical novel; readers who liked Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland or March by Geraldine Brooks will enjoy this.
Luxenberg’s mother Beth had always told him that she was an only child, so he was perplexed when, as an elderly woman dealing with a serious illness, she told her doctor that she had a disabled sister who was institutionalized when Beth was a small child. He wondered why his mother had never told him about this sister; why was her existence kept secret, and what happened to her? After the death of his mother, he decided to find out the answers to these questions and decipher his true family history. Using his skills as an investigative reporter, Luxenberg followed the clues to discover that his mother’s sister, Annie, was actually sent to a state hospital in Michigan when both she and Beth were in their twenties, not a young child as his mother claimed. As more secrets are uncovered, he realizes that Annie suffered from mental illness, as well as a leg deformity, and her illness conferred a kind of stigma on his mother’s family at a time when mental illness was little understood. This is a poignant, personal and riveting story of one man’s search for the truth about his mother’s life, and his attempt to reconcile this knowledge with his mother’s legacy of love for him. Reminiscent of Daniel Mendelsohn’s excellent book The Lost, this is a powerful book about families, secrets, and truth.
In this follow-up to the author’s excellent memoir of his surgical training, Hot Lights, Cold Steel, Collins tells us about his earlier life, before he decided to become a doctor. He was making good money as a construction worker in Chicago when he realized that he felt no strong sense of purpose in life; his decision to go back to school to be a doctor meant two years of college classes in science, and a lot of ribbing from his brothers, who thought he was crazy. At age 26 (older than most of the other students), Collins entered Loyola Medical School, where he spent his first year memorizing facts until he felt his head must explode; later he became involved in actual patient care, which he found very satisfying. He worked hard, experiencing success and some setbacks as he became an intern, and finally decided that he wanted to become an orthopedic surgeon. Collins has a terrific writing style; he is by turns breezy and funny, warm and sentimental, and very moving in his descriptions of his family life, his training, and his patients. This is a fascinating look inside the life of a medical professional; readers who enjoyed the books of Oliver Sacks or Perri Klass will find this of interest.
Each year in June, the best college baseball teams from around the country come together in Omaha, Nebraska for the College World series, the NCAA Baseball Championship. Past competitions have featured players like Dave Winfield and Barry Bonds who have gone on to greatness in the majors, but for many of the players this is their last moment of athletic glory. The series is also a tradition for many fans, who come year after year to watch the games and enjoy the atmosphere, which has a low-key Midwestern charm very different from the intensity of the NCAA basketball tournament. McGee describes the action on the field as well as the surrounding fans and locals during the 2008 series, which featured underdog team Fresno State vs. favorite Georgia in the final. He also includes some great stories about the fans, like the couple who celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary with a trip to Omaha for the championship, and the local people from grounds crews to shopkeepers who work so hard to make this a memorable event. If you are a baseball fan, this book is almost like sitting out in the stadium on a warm summer evening, watching the teams go at it and enjoying the national pastime; it will make you want to head down to Omaha for the Series yourself.
For eight years from 1971 to 1979, Idi Amin ruled the African nation of Uganda with an iron fist, deposing his predecessor and ruthlessly eliminating anyone who dared to question him; no one will ever know for certain how many were killed, but estimates range from 100,000 to half a million dead. In 1972, near the beginning of the Amin years, a mid-level government official named Eliphaz Laki, who had connections with the opposition to Amin, disappeared; thirty years later, long after Amin was deposed, his son discovered the grave of Eliphaz, and the identities of his murderers. When the terror of the Amin era ended, Ugandans were torn between seeking justice for the victims of violence, and burying the past in an attempt to move forward; the initial response of the new government was to give amnesty to those who participated in the violence, hoping to heal the wounds left by the repressive regime. Years later the new leader of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni, became convinced that the country had to face its violent past in order to find peace, and that these crimes could no longer be forgotten. The Laki family pursued justice for their murdered father, and their quest for justice is the story of Uganda itself; the trial of his killers illuminated how searching for the truth, and holding the perpetrators of violence accountable for their crimes, could help heal one family and begin the heeling of the nation. This powerful story is absorbing and moving; it is compelling like the best thrillers, but every word is true.
June 22, 2009
Fiction
Nwaubani’s droll debut novel takes the reader inside the world of the notorious Nigerian e-mail scammers. Kingsley Ibe has graduated from engineering school, but cannot find a job in his chosen profession; to add insult to injury, his fiancée dumps him. When Kingsley’s father dies, leaving his family with no means of support, he turns in desperation to his Uncle Boniface, the king of internet conmen, whose nickname “Cash Daddy” describes him perfectly. Cash Daddy sets him up with his own “419” scam business (named after the section of the Nigerian penal code that the scammers flout with impunity), and Kingsley tells himself it’s just until he makes some money and gets the family back on their feet. However the huge amounts of money and luxurious lifestyle the e-mail scams can buy is a potent motivator to continue in the “family business.” Cash Daddy wants to parlay his ill-gotten gains into real political power, but he has made enemies building his internet empire, and they will do everything they can to bring him down. Kingsley must resolve his moral dilemma; he could continue amassing wealth with these scams, or go straight and try to build a life on his own. Kingsley makes those annoying Nigerian scam e-mails seem almost sympathetic, and Cash Daddy is a hoot; beneath all the levity, the author has some serious things to say about poverty in Nigeria and the complicity of Western nations in creating and maintaining the status quo. Readers who liked Election by Tom Perrotta or Nick Hornby’s How to be Good will enjoy reading this.
Peggy Adams has had it with the dithering of Brock, her boyfriend of seven years; she figures it’s time for him to make a commitment to marriage, but he isn’t buying. After a shouting match, Peggy flees to Las Vegas for a night of carousing at friend’s bachelorette party; the next morning she wakes up in a stranger’s bed. When she returns to New York, Luke Sedgwick, the man from her Las Vegas adventure, tracks her down to inform her that they are actually married. Since this puts a crimp in her plans to make Brock pop the question, she hightails it to Luke’s home in Connecticut, a mansion he shares with his elderly Great Aunt Abigail, to get an annulment. Abigail is thrilled that her nephew has finally settled down, and rewrites her will to leave the family mansion to Luke and Peggy; however they must stay married for one year to claim it. Peggy decides to go through with it, because her soap boutique could really use the cash infusion. She figures she can handle the arrangement for a year, spending the week in New York and the weekends in Connecticut while pushing Brock to marry her; however she didn’t count on developing feelings for Luke. Peggy, Luke and Abigail are fun and endearing characters, and there is a lot of humor in this very enjoyable chick lit outing. This book is recommended for fans of Sarah Strohmeyer or Claire Cook.
The author is primarily known as the author of the Moomin series of children’s books, but this slender novel will appeal to grown-ups. It consists of twenty-two vignettes, scenes from the lives of six-year-old Sophia and her elderly grandmother, who are spending the summer on an island in the Gulf of Finland. Sophia’s mother has died, and her father is mysteriously absent; the young girl and the old woman spend their days wandering the island, observing the constantly changing sea and sky, the migration of the birds, and the beauty of the natural world surrounding them. The two are almost ideally suited to each other; they are both at a place in their lives where they care little about what others think of them, and are happy with simple pleasures, like building small boats that they set out on the sea, or studying the lives of insects. A subtle undercurrent of sadness runs through the story at the loss of Sophia’s mother and at the grandmother’s declining health, but mostly it is a funny, wise and lovely meditation on the simple pleasures of life, and how important it is to take joy in each day, as we never know when it will be our last. Readers who enjoyed Alexander McCall Smith’s 44 Scotland Street series or the novels of Jon Hassler will want to try this.
Written in 1963 but not published until now, five years after the author’s death, this sensitive and sometimes almost uncomfortably honest novel tells the story of Grace Cleave, an author who is suffering from writer’s block. Grace has left New Zealand to live in London; she is hoping to achieve success as a writer by getting closer to the epicenter of the literary world, but she is unhappy there. She misses her lush and beautiful homeland, and she finds social and professional interactions challenging and fraught with hidden meanings. When Grace receives an invitation for a weekend at a friend’s country house, she accepts, hoping that a change of scene will help her overcome her problems with finishing her current novel. However when she arrives at her friend Philip’s house, she feels overwhelmed by anxiety; she isn’t sure what to do or say around Philip and his wife Anne and their children, and she fears she is making social gaffes. Her apprehension brings back memories of a childhood spent constantly moving with her family, and never feeling as though she fit in. Frame has written a nuanced and revealing portrait of an artist dealing with fears of failure, and of the personal cost of success; it will appeal strongly to readers who liked Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kittredge or Brooklyn by Colm Toibin.
Many feminists dismiss Helen Gurley Brown, author of Sex and the Single Girl and editor of Cosmopolitan, as a lightweight at best, and a champion of the repression of women at worst. Scanlon argues that Brown was actually a feminist pioneer, speaking for women who felt left out of the rhetoric used by women like Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem. Cosmopolitan focused on what Brown saw as the “second wave” of feminists, i.e. single and working women who had different priorities than the housewives whose plight was addressed by Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. In the magazine and in her book, Brown advocated working within the system to succeed by playing up your feminine assets (looks and charm) to compete with men at their own game. She championed sexual freedom for women, such as making contraceptives easily available to all (including single women, a radical concept in the early sixties) and the right to abortion; she also believed that men should not be seen as oppressors but enlisted as supporters. Brown has lived a fascinating life, and this biography demonstrates that she had an important role in expanding and redefining the concept of feminism to include a much more diverse group of women, and she has had a huge impact on the careers and lives of American women.
Wright started his career as a writer for Hustler magazine, and the rough and raw perspective he developed there is particularly well-suited to the subjects of the essays in this book, which appeared between 1997 and 2007 in such publications as Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone. All of the people here are outsiders in American society; they include sex workers, anarchists, white supremacists, skateboarding teens, and more. There is a piece on Delta Company, an Army unit assigned to pursue the Taliban in southeastern Afghanistan, and another on ex Hollywood agent Pat Dollard, who offers to take the author on a trip to Vegas to find “hookers and blow.” Wright presents the seamy underbelly of American life as it really is, allowing these “rejectionists’ of American society to speak for themselves; what they have to say is often disconcerting and unpleasant, but it is important that their stories are told. This chronicle of those who choose, or who are forced, to live their lives in the margins of society will keep readers engrossed from the first page to the last.
This collection of essays from the author of Perfect Husbands (and Other Fairy Tales) tackles a number of serious (and some trivial) subjects regarding the experiences of women in today’s society with humor and insight. Barreca gets down to brass tacks on such burning issues as the difficulties of trying on swimsuits in the store, dealing with bad hair days, and why it’s so disheartening that Anne Bancroft was only thirty-six when she played Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate. She writes with brio about the glass ceiling, the disturbing emphasis on Hilary Clinton’s hair and clothing during the 2008 presidential campaign, and why many women allow themselves to be distracted with trivia like holiday decorating or psychic readings instead of fighting for better pay and more job opportunities for women, and other pressing economic and social concerns. However, Barreca doesn’t deliver a sermon; it’s much more like a standup routine with bonus social commentary. If you like Chelsea Handler, David Sedaris, or Stephen Colbert, give this a try.
The author is a now a doctor in an L.A. trauma center, but during his second year as a medical student in 2003, he grew interested in learning about Lassa fever, a disease endemic to West Africa. Lassa fever is responsible for thousands of deaths each year in Sierra Leone and Liberia alone, and patients with severe cases often suffer terribly. Donaldson went to the town of Kenema in Sierra Leone to work in a clinic under Dr. Aniru Conteh, an expert in Lassa fever; surrounded by poverty and the strife of civil war, Donaldson worked to treat the often desperately ill people who came to the Lassa ward for help. He was sometimes exhilarated at the challenge, sometimes appalled by the suffering and poverty all around him, and sometimes fearful of contracting the disease himself. The workers on the ward experienced some successes in treating their patients, but were constantly hampered by lack of supplies, equipment and medical staff. When Dr. Conteh left the author in charge of the ward for a week while he went to supervise public health training, it was a baptism by fire; an inexperienced medical student was forced to make critical decisions that could mean life or death to the patients. The book reads like an adventure thriller, but the author has some important points to make about the status of health care in the third world, and why it matters even beyond the toll of human suffering. Readers who liked Candice Millard’s River of Doubt will be riveted by this one.
June 15, 2009
Fiction
This intriguing sequel to The Rossetti Letter moves back and forth in time, between England in the seventeenth century and in the present day. In the past, the Restoration of King Charles II to the throne has led to great changes; the plague of 1665 and Great Fire of London in 1666 caused great social upheaval, and the Puritan restrictions on the arts were lifted, resulting in a new flowering of theater, painting, and literature. In this new atmosphere women had a lot more freedom, but they were still forbidden to practice medicine; this restriction was ignored by Hannah Devlin, who got around the ban by treating the poor patients no one else wanted to help. When the Secretary of State Lord Arlington summons Hannah to the court, she unwillingly becomes involved in the complex and dangerous machinations of the court’s factions. In the present, Cambridge lecturer Claire Donovan is enjoying her new position and her relationship with fellow academic Andrew Kent when one of their colleagues is found dead, a page of Hannah Devlin’s diary in his hand. Claire and Andrew investigate the murder, trying to discover what a seventeenth century physician has to do with the killing; they discover that events of three hundred years ago may still be causing turmoil in the present day. This exciting and fast paced tale has beautifully drawn period detail, and the suspense will keep readers engaged until the very end. Fans of Kate Morton or Matthew Pearl will want to read this.
In this follow-up to Padura’s excellent Havana Quartet, we return to the character of Mario Conde fifteen years after his retirement from the Havana Police. He now makes his living working for an antique books dealer, using his detection skills, contacts, and love of literature to find and evaluate book collections for sale on the island. His most recent discovery is a remarkable private library left behind decades ago when its owner fled Cuba during the Revolution. While looking through the collection, he finds a magazine article from 1960 about singer Violeta del Rio, who mysteriously disappeared in the 1950s. The photograph of the beautiful singer, who may have been involved with Conde’s father, arouses his curiosity; he feels compelled to try and find out what really happened to her, following the few leads he has back into the pre-Revolutionary period of casinos and gangsters. However, even after fifty years, there are those in the shadows who do not want their secrets uncovered, and the investigation puts Conde in danger. This evocative novel recreates both Cuba’s present atmosphere of deprivation, decay, and political repression, and the thrilling and dangerous heyday of Havana as a hedonistic paradise for rich Americans; Conde’s friends and associates are realistic and three-dimensional, and the reader can almost small and taste the air of Havana in the author’s descriptions. This would be an excellent choice for readers who liked Andrea Camilleri’s inspector Montalbano series, or the Guido Brunetti series by Donna Leon.
In this tale of New York’s glamorous, filthy rich, we meet Marcy Emerson, whose husband John is recruited from Chicago by a big Wall Street firm. When they arrive at their new super luxurious digs and start living the high life of designer clothes, expensive restaurants and fancy vacations, everything seems great, although Marcy is not as thrilled with the snobbery and shallowness of the women in this new world. Midwestern girl Marcy has some trouble fitting in with the upper crust, and makes a couple of faux pas involving drunkenness and not wearing underwear. Meanwhile, her husband John seems to be growing more and more distant, becoming preoccupied with their new lifestyle and his job and neglecting Marcy; or is there more to the story? When another woman enters the picture, Marcy must decide what-and who-is really important to her, and make an effort to stand on her own. The perfect combination of frothy, decadent fun, an appealing heroine, and a gossipy, funny writing style, this would be a perfect summer read for fans of Jennifer Weiner or Lauren Weisberger’s The Devil Wears Prada.
Claire Conover is an idealistic social worker in Birmingham, Alabama. She knows that her clients have serious problems, but she believes that she is helping them and making a difference in the world. Her confidence is shaken when two-year-old Michael Hennessey, the son of recovering drug addict Ashley, one of Claire’s clients, dies of a drug overdose. Claire can’t believe that Ashley is responsible for Michael’s death; she had been doing very well, getting sober and finding a job to support herself and her son. Besides, there were other people in their lives who raise Claire’s suspicions, like Ashley’s ne’re-do-well boyfriend, her alcoholic stepfather with the gambling problem, and Michael’s rather sinister birth father. Aided by computer whiz Grant Summerville, Claire digs deeper into the case, finding connections to the highest levels of Birmingham’s elite, and putting both of them in danger as they search for the truth of what happened to Michael. This terrific debut mystery is reminiscent of the Deborah Knott series by Margaret Maron or the excellent Maisie Dobbs series by Jacqueline Winspear.
The year 1848 was as momentous in European history as the year 1776 was for the United States of America; the events of that time had a long-ranging impact on the Continent, the effects of which would be felt until the end of the twentieth century. All over Europe, economic misery in the form of bad harvests, the growing pains of the Industrial Revolution, and rapidly increasing population was making life increasingly difficult for the majority of Europeans who were not part of the wealthy ruling class. Political and social oppression was widespread and onerous; many people still lived in serfdom, and vast numbers of people in both the cities and the countryside lived in poverty, with little hope for any real change. The widespread discontent and anger was like dry tinder waiting for the spark that touched off the conflagration of revolution; it began in January with a peasant revolt in Sicily, and then the spirit of insurrection spread to Naples and France, and then on to Denmark, Holland, Germany, and England. The series of revolts seriously threatened the existing social order, and the demonstrations and riots in Paris, Berlin and Vienna were often quelled with brute force and bloodshed. The revolts did win some reforms, but mostly ended in failure as the various governments reasserted themselves by the end of the summer. However, Rapport argues that these uprisings laid the groundwork for later liberal democracies that arose in post World War II Europe, eventually leading to the end of the Soviet Union in 1989. The author untangles the complex narrative of the events of that eventful year, providing the reader with a rousing story of the tide of revolution sweeping across Europe, and its importance for us now in the present day.
The history of the arrival of humans in the New World is a long and complex one, and deciphering it is made all the more difficult because the only way to uncover this story is by examining the archeological, geological, linguistic, and genetic evidence they left behind. The current generally accepted theory is that the first humans in the Americas, the Clovis people of the American Southwest, came from Asia across a land bridge that existed thousands of years ago in what is now the Bering Strait; however Meltzer, a professor of anthropology at Southern Methodist University, believes that the evidence indicates that some humans arrived earlier, and may not have originated in Asia. Using the latest discoveries and theories, the author explores how humans might have come to the Americas in the prehistoric era, how they survived the brutal Ice Age climate, and how they migrated across this newly discovered continent to establish themselves from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. The debate has sometimes been very heated, but Meltzer lays it all out in a clear and concise manner, making it understandable for the lay person. The story of our distant ancestors is fascinating, and the narrative of how we are learning about them is just as compelling. This is a great choice for armchair archeologists, geologists, and historians, or anyone interested in the story of humanity.
The globalization movement, with its emphasis on removing trade barriers between nations, has been touted by its proponents at the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and other such groups as the path to economic success-and indeed, economic survival-in the modern world. Jeter, the former Washington Post bureau chief for southern Africa, argues that in fact globalization has enriched the elite at the expense of the vast majority of workers around the world, ordinary people who make their living as taxi drivers, factory workers, farmers, etc. Jeter spent seven years traveling to such far flung destinations as Zambia, Argentina and Chicago to interview people at many different economic and social levels to see how the rising tide of globalization has affected them; many of the stories are disturbing and moving, such as the experiences of an African woman who spends twelve hours each day selling tomatoes in the market in Zambia, barely earning enough to feed her children, or the plight of women in Buenos Aires forced into prostitution. Jeter argues that the free trade and privatization favored by groups like the IMF and WTO have in fact created a “transnational underclass” and increased poverty while benefiting the favored few; he offers some hope in the example of Chile, which has resisted pressure to allow globalization, instead investing in infrastructure and social programs to help their own people prosper. Whatever your beliefs about the ongoing trend of globalization, this is a sobering, deeply affecting and thought-provoking work, and will be of interest to anyone who is concerned about the world economy.
Tapas are one of the quintessential delights of Spanish cooking. Known as “small plates,” they are snacks, similar to American appetizers, usually served in bars along with drinks and wine. Tapas can consist of anything from cold plates of olives, tomatoes, and cheese, to deviled eggs, savory stews, or fried squid, or dishes with tuna, sausage, or meat; there is a wide variety of foods used for tapas, and there are many recipes for creating them. Goldstein, who has authored several books on Mediterranean cooking, has sorted out the best recipes for several different categories of tapas (vegetable, meat, seafood, spicy, salty, sweet, etc.) along with recipes for the five basic sauces used with these dishes. She also includes ideas for pairing these treats with wine, including suggestions for Spanish wines as well as wines of other countries. The “Shop-and-serve tapas” section includes a number of recipes that require almost no preparation, and all of the book’s recipes have easy to follow instructions with clear and colorful photographs. This cookbook offers a great opportunity to create tapas for entertaining with friends and family; the varied dishes are a great way to try out Spanish cuisine without a huge investment of time or effort. Try these for your next party.
June 8, 2009
Fiction
Sarah Jeffrey is at loose ends, having just broken up with her boyfriend and feeling bored with her job as a teacher in England; looking for something new and different, she gets a job as an aid worker in Bangladesh, where she meets Ed Salisbury, the charismatic leader of Schools for Change, a charity that plans to build a school in a small seaside village. Sarah falls in love with Ed, and everything seems to be going wonderfully until they run up against Oxan, the multinational oil conglomerate that is buying up the land around the village; the two are unpleasantly surprised when the villagers show mistrust in Ed’s motives. Things come to a head when a giant tropical storm hits and Ed disappears; the last time she sees him, he is running toward the ocean in the midst of the cyclone. Sarah can’t believe her lover is dead, but she returns to London at the request of a senior official in the aid organization; there she is shocked to discover that Ed had many secrets, and his work in Bangladesh was far different than she ever knew. This is an absorbing novel about love and betrayal, with an interesting and complex take on Western attempts to do good in the Third World; fans of Robert Goolrick’s A Reliable Wife or In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O’Brien will want to try this one.
McKinty’s latest terrific thriller introduces us to a young Havana cop, Detective Mercado, who discovers that her father, Alberto Suarez, has been killed in a hit-and-run in Fairview, Colorado, where he had been living after defecting to the U.S. Mercado feels it is her duty to investigate, and if possible, take revenge on his killers; she doesn’t believe that his death was an accident. However the Cuban government has little sympathy for her loss, so Mercado smuggles herself into the U.S., posing as a maid; she appears to be just another one of the many undocumented Mexican workers in town. During her investigation, she discovers many troubling things about the town, like the debauched retinues of Hollywood types who have taken over the town, the corrupt and bullying local sheriff, and the many secrets kept by her own father; what was a former intellectual and political refugee doing working as an exterminator in a town like Fairview, and why did someone want him dead? The tension coils tighter and tighter as Mercado pursues her answers, and he vengeance. Suspenseful and gritty, this book would be a good choice for fans of Ken Bruen or George Pelecanos.
In Winona, Minnesota in 1907, women did not have a great many career options besides wife and mother; certainly it was unusual, and perhaps somewhat questionable, for a woman to want to become a photographer, a dangerous profession due to all of the toxic and explosive chemicals used. Fifteen-year-old Jessie Ann Gaebele starts to live her dream of becoming a professional photographer when she is hired as an assistant by F.J. Bauer, learning how to create poses for portraits, develop photographs, and the business end of running a photography studio. In turn, her employer learns about the possibilities of photography as an art form from Jessie Ann, who loves the complexity of light and shadows all around her in the rural Minnesota landscape. The two of them become friends, and eventually develop a mutual attraction; this is a problem for both of them, since Bauer is married, albeit unhappily so. All of the characters are exquisitely rendered, creating an almost photographically detailed sense of time and place, and drawing the reader in to the story; the story’s themes of the difficulties faced by a woman artist in a repressive society, and the dilemma of dealing with an attraction to someone who is unavailable, are sensitively handled. This book is highly recommended for readers who like Tracie Peterson or Lynn Austin, or for anyone who wants a beautifully written historical novel.
The third outing of this fun mystery series finds former hotel manager and amateur detective Trevor Lambert unemployed; his previous job went up in smoke when the hotel he was running burned to the ground. Now Trevor decides that running his own bed & breakfast in beautiful Graverly Manor, located on a lake near Vancouver, is just the thing to get him out of the doldrums. The stories that the picturesque inn is haunted by the ghost of Lord Andrew Graverly, and the chambermaid with whom he was having a fling, only make the place more interesting to Trevor, so when Lord Andrew’s elderly widow, Lady Elinor, hires him for a one month trial run to see if he can really handle the place, it seems like his troubles are over. In short order Trevor starts encountering unusual phenomena like strange noises, terrible odors, and disappearing chambermaids; Trevor must investigate to discover what is behind these disturbances, and what Lady Elinor is hiding. Clarissa, one of the hotel’s guests who is also looking into the mansion’s shadowy past, joins forces with Trevor to ferret out the truth before anything even more sinister happens. The ghostly manifestations and the author’s sly humor make this one a lot of fun; fans of K.K. Beck’s Jane da Silva mysteries or the Pennyfoot Hotel series by Kate Kingsbury will like this.
Finding a book about the evolution of language this is as funny and as informative as this one is a real treat. Keyes discusses what he terms “verbal artifacts,” i.e. references to events or things that happened a long time ago, but have entered the lexicon; examples are everywhere, and include such expressions as "Put your John Hancock there," "The buck stops here," and "You're not in Kansas anymore." Most Americans know perfectly well what these expressions mean, but have no idea where they came from; for foreign speakers of English, or for generations born long after the event or thing that inspired the expression (like “drinking the Kool Aid”), they can be bewildering. Keyes has come to the rescue with this compendium of “retrotalk,” or allusions to past events, old slang that is still in use, and references to once-famous and now otherwise forgotten people (Ponzi schemes, Judge Crater, etc.). Reading this is like a trip through American pop culture of the last century or so with a very witty and erudite friend, who also appreciates that use of language is constantly evolving, and trying to bridge the language gap is important to endure that everyone understands the discourse. Readers who enjoy books by Malcolm Gladwell or Christopher Buckley will get a kick out of this one.
This companion volume to the Discovery Channel documentary Nature’s Most Amazing Events is full of absolutely beautiful photographs of some of the most astonishing moments in the lives of animals from Alaska to South Africa. The book includes the annual flood of Botswana’s Okavango River delta, which allows plant life in the Kalahari Desert to flourish and creates habitat for elephants as well as many other species of animals and birds; the melting of the Arctic ice caps; the great annual migration of wildebeests across the vast Serengeti plain; the salmon run in British Columbia; the great feeding frenzy in Alaska’s coastal waters; and the annual sardine migration off the coast of South Africa, which is a feast for marine species from dolphins to sharks. The breathtaking color photographs are accompanied by commentary from the photographers who recorded these events, and a great deal of information about each ecosystem and the various animals that dwell there. If you have ever wanted to see the awe-inspiring beauty of nature first hand, this book is the next best thing to going there yourself and witnessing these moments in person; it makes us aware of the fragility of life on earth.
In 1769, two different ships set sail on voyages of exploration in the South Seas; one was the British ship Endeavour, commanded by Lieutenant James Cook, which left New Zealand on a voyage of scientific discovery; the other was the French ship St. Jean-Baptiste, commanded by Jean de Surville, which left Pondicherry, India, which was at that time a French possession. Both of the vessels were on missions of exploration, sent to map the previously uncharted area of the South Pacific; both were also looking for the mythical Jewish continent thought to be located in the ocean between New Zealand and South America, as well as protecting the interests of their respective countries in the Pacific. Cook mapped the area, while he and his crew endured extreme privation, illness and danger from the Great Barrier Reef. De Surville charted an area of the Pacific that was unknown before is arrival. While trying to find a shorter route back home, Cook discovered Australia, landing at what is now known as Botany Bay and making tentative overtures to the Australian natives. The author uses the diaries of the expeditions’ members, including Cook, de Surville, and naturalist Joseph Banks, to create a vivid and detailed narrative of their extraordinary journeys; their encounters with natural phenomena, new species, and new peoples were fascinating, and helped set the stage for the future of the region. This book is a treat for anyone who likes history, sea stories, or natural history.
Conniff is a naturalist and travel writer who has written for Smithsonian and National Geographic, and has traveled extensively around the world to examine and document species from spiders to chimpanzees, in locations from the inner city to the African veldt. This entertaining collection of stories follows his adventures with animals, from tracking tigers in the Himalayas to trying to get close to wild dogs in Africa, and of course the piranhas of the title; although many of these encounters have a strong element of danger, somehow Conniff always manages to emerge unscathed to share his experiences with the rest of us. There are a number of colorful people depicted, like Justin Schmidt, and entomologist who is developing a detailed Pain Index of Insect Stings by allowing insects of all kinds to bite him and comparing the results. This is an excellent book for the naturalist or armchair traveler who finds this kind of thing fascinating, but really doesn’t want to jump into a pool of feeding piranhas or hunt leopards in Namibia; fans of Bill Bryson or John Grogan will enjoy it.
May 18, 2009
Fiction
Asta Hewitt is a seven-year-old girl living in rural Maine with her widowed mother and her nine-year-old brother, Orion. Asta and Orion’s lives are very circumscribed; their mentally ill mother has told them that the rest of the world was ravaged by a plague, and she has kept them isolated indoors for years, away from other people. As a result, the two very bright and imaginative children have created a richly textured world for themselves, and they have an extremely close bond. Their mother acts capriciously, sometimes loving, sometimes cruel, but always unpredictable; then one day she doesn’t come home, and the children decide they must go out into the world to search for her. Meeting people for the first time is frightening and unsettling; as Asta and her brother interact with adults and other children, she begins to realize that her mother has lied to them. The children react differently to their new situation; Orion is overwhelmed and stops speaking, but Asta tries to learn everything she can about this strange new world, so she can adjust to their new reality and help her brother, who has been separated from her by well-meaning but misguided adults. Asta is an intelligent, resourceful and creative child with a unique and captivating voice, and the author intelligently examines themes of a mother’s love for a child, the importance of family, and how children can be at the mercy of uncomprehending adults. This book is reminiscent of Lisa Tucker’s Once Upon a Day or Monkeys by Susan Minot.
Zaki Khalil left his native Pakistan years ago and immigrated to London, hoping for a better life. He became a shop owner, achieving financial success and an affluent lifestyle for his family, but he doesn’t enjoy his life very much; he fears that he is getting old, and wants to break away and do what makes him happy, which is gambling, traveling, and having affairs with women. Zaki’s serious-minded son Jinan, an attorney, is married to Frenchwoman Delphine, who loves the luxuries her husband’s income provides but feels unsatisfied and empty. Their teenage son Lucky dreams of playing on England’s World Cup soccer team, and is in love with Portia, the clerk at his grandfather’s shop. When Delphine succumbs to Zaki’s entreaties to resume the affair they were involved in years before she married Jinan, the consequences for the entire family are life-changing. This novel treats familiar themes, such as the difficulties of assimilation, and the weight of responsibility taking precedence over one’s own desires, in a fresh way; the author writes with candor and humor, making the reader care about these characters and their plight despite their flaws and bad choices. If you enjoyed Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake or Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, this book would be a good choice.
In this intriguing new novel, we meet August Rose, a man who has struggled all his life with issues of identity, love, and loyalty. When we first encounter August, he is a prisoner at the Guantanamo detention facility, where he is being interrogated by Harper, a pitiless American agent dedicated to getting information he believes August posseses regarding the activities of a terrorist group. August withdraws into his memories to escape Harper’s brutal torture; he thinks about the most important women in his life, remembering his childhood and adolesence in Harlem in the fifties and sixties. August’s mother Juliet was a loving but insecure Italian woman, whose family disowned her after she gave birth to a multiracial child; she loved and accepted him, but he felt alienated from both the white and black communities. As a young man, he met Elise Merkete, a troubled young woman who recruited him to a shadowy movement dedicated to “vigilante democracy;” his involvement with them led to his current imprisonment and torture. Finally, he remembers Selina, a beautiful white woman and the great love of his life; although their affair brought August more heartbreak than happiness, he has many wonderful memories of their years together until Selina’s death in a terrorist bombing in Spain. Duncan unflinchingly depicts the reality of torture and the physical and psychological scars it leaves on its victims; he also creates a complex and believable world in which no one is entirely to blame, and no one is without guilt. This novel is would be a good choice for readers who enjoy the works of Richard Price or Kate Atkinson.
A debut mystery with an interesting twist, this one is set in the time of King Arthur, but the characters of Arthurian legend are the secondary characters; the protagonist is soldier-turned-scribe Malgwyn ap Cuneglas, who lost his right arm in battle against
The tale of Antony and Cleopatra is one of the most famous love stories in history, and the author argues that much of what we believe about the tragic lovers is due to Roman propaganda put forth after they both committed suicide in the year 30 B.C.E.
The author spent seven years researching her family’s history from the late 19th century to the present day, and considering how her family’s saga intersected with larger historical events and trends in the vast migration of Indian people around the globe. Hajratwala’s family roots were in the Gujarat region of northeastern India; they were descended from a dynasty of kings who has long ago lost their power. Many members of the family became weavers, and they spread out over five villages in the area. For many years the family was happy in their peaceful village life, but then the famine of 1899 compelled the author’s great-grandfather, Motiram, to leave his family and sail to Fiji, where he learned to be a tailor. Motiram was very successful, building his business from a tailor shop into one of the largest retail chains in the South Pacific. Other members of the family immigrated to such places as Durban, South Africa, and the United States, where they too found success as business owners and as professionals in a variety of fields. A number of common threads that run through the family’s experiences, such as the problems of dealing with racism and prejudice, living with economic hardship as brand new immigrants, handling the alienation and loneliness of assimilation into a new culture, and the importance of family and community ties. This is an absolutely compelling story of one family’s far-flung history, made even more riveting by the author’s depiction of the broader context of the Indian diaspora.
The author trained as a midwife in the 1950s, learning her profession from the nuns of a convent of nurses and midwives located in the poorest East London slums. The nuns dedicated themselves to providing medical care for the poorest people at a time when there were no other options; without their help, many more women and babies would have suffered. Worth tells the story of her training and work delivering thousands of babies in squalid conditions, with little in the way of equipment and drugs, dealing with patients who were often malnourished and ignorant about their own bodies and the process of childbirth. Worth saw many sad stories of poverty and neglect, but also many stories of loving families doing their best to get by and provide for their children. Many of her colleagues were interesting personalities as well, including the upper-class woman who gave up her life as a socialite to become a nurse, the nun who loved cake, the long suffering handyman, and many more. Worth doesn’t romanticize the poverty and suffering she saw, but she does paint a vivid and often charming picture of how a new life enters the world. Readers who enjoyed the James Herriot books or Mildred Kalish’s Little Heathens will like this one.
It sometimes seems that current scientific knowledge has progressed so far beyond an average person’s level of understanding that it is impossible to understand without an advanced degree, but in the last few years several authors, like Neil Shubin and Brian Greene, have quite successfully taken on the challenge of making modern science comprehensible to the lay reader; Christopher Potter can be added to that list with this new book. The author takes us on a journey from a single human cell all the way out to clusters of galaxies drifting in the vastness of space, vividly illustrating the scale of the universe in a way that makes the mind boggle while presenting a clear picture of Earth’s place in the cosmos. He discusses concepts of measurement, and explains why this idea is so central to the scientific method (that is, being able to reproduce measurable results in an experiment). He considers the history of scientific inquiry from antiquity to the present, showing how models of the universe were created, modified, and sometimes discarded as human knowledge grew over time, and discussing Einstein’s work, quantum theory, and the theory of evolution. Potter explains these very complex topics clearly and effectively without simplifying too much, and creates an extremely entertaining and interesting book in the process. Anyone who likes science will want to read this.
May 11, 2009
Fiction
This is an exciting fantasy novel that effectively weaves together stories from three very different times in the history of Britain. In the sixth century town of Londinium, a young knight called Galaad experiences a vision that compels him to go to the court of King Artor, where he convinces the king to follow him on a quest for the Holy Grail. Centuries later, during Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee of 1897, the London Metropolitan Police fear that a series of brutal murders may be the work of Jack the Ripper, whose killing spree a decade earlier threw the city in a panic; however private detective Sandford Blank and his assistant Roxanne Bonaventure believe that a new killer, with a sinister motive involving the Grail, is responsible. One hundred years later, runaway American teen Alice Fell is in London trying to discover the meaning of her own mysterious visions, which seem to be showing her future; pursued by strange menacing creatures, she is assisted by the enigmatic Stillman Waters. The malevolent forces behind all of these incidents cause the breakdown of barriers of time and space, bringing all of the various characters together to fight an evil so great that it could lead to the end of everything. The author has blended fantasy, mystery and science fiction into a gripping story that will enthrall readers until the very end of the book. Readers who enjoyed Neal Stephenson’s excellent Anathem or American Gods by Neil Gaiman should definitely try this one.
This is the exciting sequel to 2007’s excellent City of Fire, which introduced LAPD Robbery-Homicide Detective Lena Gamble. She is assigned to investigate the gruesome murder of an unidentified young woman whose dismembered remains were found in a dumpster in Hollywood. Her supervisor warns her that the brass may be trying to set her up for failure; Gamble has been persona to them non grata since her last case exposed police corruption. The case seems pretty cold, as the victim is unidentified and there are few clues and no apparent witnesses, but Gamble has a mysterious ally in her pursuit of the killer; someone mails her the victim’s drivers license and a video of her being kidnapped from a restaurant parking lot. Lena doggedly follows the evidence, which points toward the wealthy owner of a drug company, as well as various higher-ups in the LAPD and other movers and shakers. Several other murders occur that may be related, and Gamble must find the missing witness before the killers do; in the process, she puts herself in danger as well. The story is full of twists and turns, the suspense will keep readers on the edge of their seat, and the LA setting is depicted in all its glamour and squalor. Fans of Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch series or the Prey books by John Sandford will definitely want to try this series.
Leila al-Ghani is a young woman living in the war-torn city of Mosul in Iraq. Her dream has always been to become a doctor, and she has begun working toward her dream by getting a degree from Cairo University. Leila’s parents had always encouraged her to pursue her career goals and to think of herself as a modern woman, but since the beginning of the war, they have become increasingly conservative, and they now wish her to follow the traditional path of an arranged marriage. Unable to go to medical school in her current circumstances, Leila gets a job as a translator at the U.S. Combat Support Hospital on the nearby American military base; part of her job includes working with torture victims being treated at the hospital. She hides her job from her family, trying to pursue her goals on her own despite their disapproval. When Leila meets handsome Special Forces Major James Cartwright, they fall in love. James has been emotionally disconnected because of the terrible things he has witnessed during the war, but his feelings for Leila reawaken his conscience. When Leila’s father Tamir discovers his daughter’s betrayal, he is furious, and Leila must make difficult choices between her family’s demands and her own dreams and desires. The author skillfully depicts the terror and violence of war, and the profound psychological effects of living in a war zone; the romance is captivating, and the suspense will keep readers riveted. This book would be a good choice for fans of The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar or Laura Fitzgerald’s Veil of Roses.
Gina Tait is a high-powered career woman, and every minute of her day is filled with obligations. Her to-do list is never ending, so when she is trapped in a malfunctioning elevator for an hour and a half with laid-back artist Brad Harding, it seems like the worst thing that could happen. When Brad sees Gina, he sees the polar opposite to his own lifestyle as a single parent living in a small country town, and believes they have nothing in common. But Gina is surprised by how much she is attracted to him, and how well they get on together; Brad finds his interest piqued as well, and after they escape their confinement in the elevator, they decide to try and be friends. When Brad’s daughters meet Gina, they are convinced that the two are perfect for each other, and put a plan in motion to get them together. The author creates very believable and appealing characters, and shows us how two very different people can come together and find not only common ground, but happiness. This is a charming and fun romance that will please fans of Jane Green, or C.A. Belmond’s Penny Nichols books.
In 1796, George Washington proposed that a national botanic garden be established in Washington for the benefit of the American people. His idea came to fruition when the United States Botanic Garden was established by Congress in 1820. The Botanic Garden’s mission is to collect, preserve and disseminate plant species for the benefit of the American people. Although the garden languished for a time in the 1830s, it was substantially enlarged in 1842, when Charles Wilkes returned from the United States Exploring Expedition, a four-year voyage of exploration in the Pacific Ocean that gathered thousands of plant and animal specimens, including more than 250 plants that were added to the Botanic Garden. Other later scientific expeditions gathered more plant specimens and seeds for the Garden, and it grew and prospered into the twentieth century. The garden moved to a new larger site in 1920, and was completely renovated in the 1990s, reopening in 2001 larger and better than ever. This beautiful book is filled with lush color illustrations, including many historical images and photographs, as well as gorgeous contemporary photographs. Paging through the book is like taking a trip to a peaceful and calm oasis of vegetation; it is a special treat for gardeners.
In 2003, Williams was living in a tiny rented apartment in Brooklyn with her husband and young child; they loved their neighborhood, but were longing to buy a house with more space, and take on all the benefits (and even the disadvantages) that come with home ownership. It was their misfortune that they began looking for a home at the height of the real estate frenzy in New York City, perhaps the priciest and most overheated real estate market in the country. Everything they could afford on their $400,000.00 budget was dismayingly awful; terrible unsafe neighborhoods, falling-down and squalid hovels resembling the tenements of the early 1900s, and houses built on the expressway or infested with termites were the only kinds of properties they could find anywhere near their target areas. The search dragged on for three years, and they were forced to make many compromises before finally finding a suitable home in Inwood, a neighborhood much farther away from the city than they had originally wanted. As she tells her own story, the author periodically checks in with others trying to find suitable housing in different regions of the country, finding that the same problems (too little house for too much money) were happening to some extent all around the country. The author’s story is both hilarious and heartbreaking, and it will ring true for anyone who endured house hunting in the last few years. In addition to offering a cogent explanation for the madness of the housing bubble, she vividly illustrates the effect of the real estate crunch on average middle class Americans.
Wolff examines the American educational system by exploring the experiences of some of our most celebrated achievers, including Abigail Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Helen Keller, Henry Ford and Elvis Presley. This cross-section of people from a wide variety of backgrounds, all of whom went on to achieve greatness in their chosen fields, had very different educational experiences; some were taught at home, some had a bit of formal schooling, some more than a bit, and some stayed in the formal educational system all the way through university. The most interesting thing about all of these narratives is the thread that runs throughout, a love of learning and a curiosity about the world that led each of these people to seek out knowledge and experience that helped them in their chosen pursuits. It’s fascinating to see how they all overcame challenges and barriers placed in their way, and went on to achieve their goals. Wolff is obviously knowledgeable about the subject, and his writing style is lively and engaging, never pedantic; the stories he tells about these celebrated people are appealing, and the narrative of success against the odds is a truly American story. The ways in which these individuals fostered their success by seeking out all kinds of educational opportunities, including real life experience in business, industry, politics and other fields, has implications for the current educational system in this country. This book is highly recommended for readers who enjoy history or biography, or who are interested in education issues.
For many people, mentioning exorcism brings visions of horror movies that show victims of demonic possession writhing, levitating furniture, and disgorging strange body fluids; however this ancient rite of the Catholic Church is usually experienced quite differently in real life. The author follows the Rev. Gary Thomas, a priest from San Jose, California, as he takes a Vatican-approved course on exorcism at a university in Rome, and then goes through an apprenticeship with an experienced Italian exorcist. Thomas was asked to take this training by his bishop, and was somewhat reluctant in the beginning, feeling that exorcism was a somewhat of a relic from a less enlightened time in Church history. However as he studied the rite his perspective changed, and Thomas experienced a spiritual reawakening, opening himself to new possibilities; the experiences he witnessed also caused the author to reexamine his own faith. Baglio includes fascinating stories from practicing exorcists and from people who have undergone the ritual, and he explores the history and rituals of exorcism, the teachings of the Catholic Church on demonic possession; he also considers how the Church reconciles the practice with modern medical ideas on mental illness. This is a balanced, well-researched and compelling work on an intriguing topic.
April 27, 2009
Fiction
This excellent debut mystery features Detective Emmanuel Cooper, an Englishman living in South Africa in 1952, just a few years after the establishment of apartheid as official government policy. Cooper is still recovering from terrible experiences he suffered in World War II. When Afrikaner police captain Willem Pretorius is murdered in the small town of Jacob’s Rest, near the Mozambique border, Cooper’s investigation points to whites as the main suspects; the government’s Security Branch refuses to accept this theory of the crime, accusing black radical activists and pressuring Cooper to go along with their version. When he refuses, he is taken off the case, but decides to continue investigating in secret. Cooper discovers that Pretorius’s family has a great deal of power and influence in the community, as well as a number of closely held secrets that they will do anything to protect. To find the killer, Cooper risks his career, and perhaps his life. The author writes convincingly about the oppression and violence of apartheid, and brings South Africa of the mid-twentieth century vividly to life. Readers who enjoy the Alan Banks series by Peter Robinson or T. Jefferson Parker’s Charlie hood series will like this one.
Mira Braverman is a successful London psychotherapist in the late 1990s; she spends her days listening to her patients talk about their troubles, but she remains emotionally distant from them. Her patients include Howard, an irascible divorced man who makes nasty remarks about Mira’s Serbian heritage, as well as Jess and Caroline, who are both struggling with infertility, and Kate, a woman devastated by the loss of her child. Motherhood and the desire to have children are recurring themes among Mira’s patients, and she is good at her work, despite her own childlessness. Mira’s marriage is happy, but she is very concerned about the family she left behind in war-torn Serbia. When her husband Peter is diagnosed with terminal cancer, Mira’s orderly world and professional detachment are shattered; she finally connects emotionally with the grief and pain her patients are suffering. Her life is dramatically changed as she struggles to care for Peter and to deal with her own sorrow; her relationship with Peter’s grown son Graham is perhaps the most changed, in ways Mira didn’t expect. This is a keenly observed study of human tragedies and foibles; the characters are written with great understanding and sympathy, but with real human failings and virtues. The writing is lovely, drawing the reader deeply into the lives of these people, with a strong element of humor. Fans of The Whole World Over by Julia Glass or Kristin Hannah’s True Colors will enjoy it.
Originally published in Albania in 1970, this is a new English translation of one of Kadare’s most important works. The novel tells the story of the siege of an Albanian Christian city by the Ottoman Turks, early in the 15th century. The Ottomans send an emissary to the Albanians, demanding immediate and total surrender, but the Albanians refuse to comply. The far superior Turkish forces set up camp on the plains below the city’s mountain fortress, believing they will achieve victory quickly; but they find conquest of the citadel more difficult than they thought. The story is told from the point of view of several different Ottoman characters, including the pasha who commands the military forces, the man designated to keep a chronicle of the campaign, an astrologer whose predictions help guide the pasha’s strategy, and several others; the point of view of the Christians besieged in the citadel is also heard. Blending history, fantasy and folklore, Kadare creates a gripping and suspenseful narrative of war and its consequences. This book would be a good choice for readers who liked Barry Unsworth’s Land of Marvels or The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga.
In this fast-paced follow up to 2007's In the Shadow of the Glacier, the author continues the adventures of Probationary Constable Molly Smith and her partner, Sergeant John Winters, police officers in the small British Columbia village of Trafalgar. Molly is still recovering from a personal tragedy, and Winters has his own family difficulties, but these concerns must be put aside when Molly’s social worker mother, Lucky, finds the body of a young woman in the woods near the Trafalgar Women’s Support Center, a three-month-old baby boy beside her. It appears that she died of a drug overdose, but she has injuries apparently caused by restraints. Molly and John find few clues about her life other than her name, Ashley, her son’s name, Miller, and the fact that she had a rather public argument with the man responsible for a controversial resort development being built just outside the village. The detectives must discover how the baby fits into the mystery, as well as probing into the bitterness between the aging hippie faction who want the town to remain unspoiled, and the pro-development faction who want the economic benefits of increasing tourism in the area. Delany does a terrific job of recreating the small town setting, exploring how a seemingly tranquil village can have conflict seething beneath the surface. This series would be a good choice for readers who liked Rhys Bowen’s Molly Murphy series, or the Anna Pigeon mysteries by Nevada Barr.
In recent years there has been a resurgence of books exploring various aspects of the American Revolution, mostly concentrating on the Founding Fathers; this book considers the role of blacks in the struggle for independence, and their hopes for the future of the brand new republic. Although the revolution championed the idea of liberty and equality in the Declaration of Independence (“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”) it soon became evident that many of the Founders did not see these rights as applying to anyone but white land owners like themselves, and they did not see the terrible institution of slavery, nor the racism of the existing social order, as being in conflict with their belief in liberty and equality. Tracing the evolution of the independence movement and the development of slavery as an economic force using the individual stories of black patriots like William Lee, Olaudah Equiano, Absalom Jones, and slave rebellion leaders Denmark Vesey and Gabriel of Virginia, the reader sees the tragic human cost of the failure to extend liberty and equality to all Americans. This book is an excellent adjunct to such works as Founding Brothers by Joseph Ellis or David McCullough’s 1776; it presents another part of the story, too little discussed until now.
Most children go through a period in which they are fascinated by dinosaurs, some of the largest reptiles ever to exist on the planet, and most are also interested in creatures such as frogs, salamanders, and other amphibians. This book is the grown-up version of all those dinosaur books you loved as a kid, filled with gorgeous and vividly colored illustrations of many of the different species of reptiles and amphibians. Not only are these animals exotic and beautiful, they are often the first to be affected by environmental problems like pollution and climate change; many of these species are threatened by loss of habitat as well. This beautiful book celebrates their amazing adaptability and diversity, while reminding us of their tremendous importance in ecosystems all over the world, and sounding a warning bell about the precarious future.
The words of Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce Tribe at the final battle between his people and the forces of the U.S. Government are well known; “I will fight no more forever.” In 1877, the American army pursued them for weeks across 1700 miles, through difficult mountain terrain in Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana, as they attempted to flee the incursion of white settlers into their homeland and the broken promises of treaties that forced them onto ever-shrinking reservations. Finally, less than 50 miles from the Canadian border, after suffering through a brutal five-day siege, Chief Joseph surrendered, trying to save his people. The author traces the history of the American government’s dealings with the Nez Perce, from the first treaties in the 1850s, when the U.S. tried to force the tribe to allow whites to live on their land, up to the present day. The historical accounts are interspersed with chapters on how the region has fared since then, with particular attention paid to the daunting environmental and economic issues faced by the remaining members of the tribe and other area residents. This is a sobering look at a disgraceful period of American history.
Mae West was an icon of the early days of American cinema, known for her racy movie roles and fabulous Hollywood lifestyle, but she was also a pioneering woman in the film industry as a writer, actress and comedienne. Born in Brooklyn in 1893, Mae West started out as a performer at age five, appearing in a church social, and quickly graduated to amateur talent shows, where she almost always won prizes. At fourteen, she began appearing in Vaudeville, moving to progressively bigger and better parts and shows, until she began writing her own material. In 1926 her Broadway play Sex caused a scandal; she went to jail for ten days for obscenity, but the resulting publicity made her a star, and her next role, Diamond Lil, was a huge hit. In 1932, Hollywood came calling; West was under contract to Paramount, and made several classic films, including She Done Him Wrong, I’m No Angel, and many others, working with such stars as George Raft, Cary Grant, and W.C. Fields and becoming Paramount’s most bankable star of the 1930s. West always championed the sexual equality and economic freedom of women, and continued to make films into her seventies. The author conducted extensive interviews with West just before her death in 1980 at age 87, and it is chock full of terrific anecdotes about her life and career, all related in her own words. This is a fascinating look at an important artist, and an inside peek at the glamorous-and not so glamorous-aspects of the film industry in its early years. Anyone who likes the movies will enjoy it.
April 20, 2009
Fiction
This short novel was originally published in England in 1962, and the American edition was worth the wait for those who enjoy seafaring adventure. The story begins in the winter of 1950, when a cargo vessel struggles to survive a North Atlantic gale off the Irish coast, dangerously close to foundering; the desperate crew sends out an S.O.S, which is picked up by a passenger liner in the area. John Driscoll, one of the officers of the rescue ship, is put in charge of the rescue effort; when they arrive in the vicinity of the Achilles, the endangered ship, they discover that she has already broken up, and the survivors of her crew are barely hanging on to the wreckage. This forces Driscoll and the rescuers to come up with a daring plan to save the crew, and to risk their own lives to achieve it. The intensity of the storm, the desperation of the Achilles crew, and Driscoll’s own fears and insecurities about his ability to save them are rendered in taut, fast-paced prose, making the terrible storm and the plight of the sailors vividly compelling to the reader. If you enjoyed Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm or you like the novels of Clive Cussler, try this one.
The follow up to last year’s A Reason to Kill, the first book in Adams’ new Rina Martin series, is a worthy successor. Rina is a retired actress who runs a boarding house; she has also helped investigate murders in the past, due to her innate curiosity and her friendship with Detective Inspector Sebastian MacGregor. When a body washes up on the nearby beach, Rina and Mac believe it may be Edward Parker, the father of their 13-year-old friend George, who has been missing for several weeks. However the dead body turns out to be Pat Duggan, the son of local crime lord Jimmy Duggan; they discover Pat was kidnapped several days previously, but the crime was never reported to the police. His father refused to meet the kidnapper’s ransom demands, and they killed him. This leads to the discovery of a series of previously unknown kidnappings in the area, all unreported out of fear of the kidnappers, and the terrifying knowledge that other children are still at risk from the kidnappers. Rina and Mac are wonderful protagonists, and the book’s other characters are all nicely fleshed out as well; the story draws the reader in and holds their interest until the very end, using suspense and flashes of humor. This series is highly recommended for fans of Anthea Fraser or M.C. Beaton.
When Elena Miranda encounters a couple of Canadian tourists in her suburban Havana neighborhood, she has no idea a chain of events has been set in motion that will result in murder and espionage. Sean and Marina ask Elena for a glass of water while out jogging, and she lets them into her apartment; her brother Pablo is suspicious of them, but nevertheless agrees to accompany them for a night in the town, which ends in his shocking murder. When Sean and Marina disappear, it becomes evident that they were not who they claimed to be as Captain Felix Trujillo investigates Pablo’s death; why did they want so badly to get into Elena’s apartment, and how does Pablo’s father, a former hero of the revolution with many enemies and now imprisoned for murder, fit into the puzzle? While Trujillo unravels the threads of the mystery, others are determined to conceal the truth, and greed and betrayal make it almost impossible to trust anyone, or to take anything at face value. The Cuban setting is terrific; the reader can feel the tropical heat and see the decay and corruption of Havana, and the plot twists will keep them guessing until the very end. If you liked the Inspector Montalbano series by Andrea Camilleri or Colin Cotterill’s Dr. Siri Paiboun mysteries, you’ll love this one.
For his entire career in medicine, Doctor Eli Branch has been pursuing the goal of becoming one of the pre-eminent surgeons and researchers on the subject of aneurysms, and his new position at Gates Memorial Hospital in Memphis appears to be the final step in that process. It is also a sort of homecoming, as Eli’s father was a professor of anatomy at the affiliated medical school, Mid-South Medical College. Everything seems to be going well until one of Eli’s patients dies mysteriously during surgery; he is unfairly blamed for the death by the hospital’s chief vascular surgeon. After some probing, Eli discovers evidence that a medical manufacturing corporation may be trying to conceal their part in these deaths, and that his father may have been involved as well. The investigation turns deadly when more strange patient deaths occur, and Eli enlists the help of pathologist Meg Daily to save his patients, his career, and even his life. This is an exciting and fast-paced medical thriller, with just enough medical detail to hold the reader’s interest without being overwhelming, plenty of action, and an engaging pair of medical detectives. Fans of Michael Crichton or Robin Cook will definitely want to give this one a try.
What can one do after having had the most powerful and most scrutinized job in the world, President of the United States? The answers to that question make up this fascinating book, which reveals the often surprising careers and causes former Presidents have taken up after leaving office. Until 1958, the former President received no pension, and so unless they had personal wealth and could retire and take it easy, most of our former Chief Executives had to find a way to provide for themselves and their families. Some, like George Washington, were successful; others, like James Monroe, died penniless and in debt. However most of them chose to go on and do something useful, like a career in business, politics or the law, or even devote themselves to a charitable or humanitarian cause. From George Washington through Bill Clinton, this book tells us how these men who were at the pinnacle of power and achievement coped with having to give it up, and went on to (for the most part) live productive lives; sometimes their second careers outshone their time in office. Full of interesting and entertaining anecdotes, this is a must-read for American history buffs.
Books about World War II and the people who fought it have become rather a booming industry in the last few years, and not all of them were created equal; so it’s refreshing to come across one that tells a great story in a compelling way. Torpedo Squadron Eight, the most decorated naval air unit ever (and also the unit with the highest casualties) was a pivotal element in the U.S. victories at Midway and Guadalcanal, both key battles in the Pacific theater. In the Battle of Midway, Squadron Eight was sent in to attack the approaching Japanese carrier fleet, with no fighter escort; every one of those planes was shot down by Japanese fighters, but they occupied the enemy while American dive bombers arrived far overhead, bombing and sinking most of the Japanese carriers and ensuring an Allied victory. At Guadalcanal Island, the squadron’s survivors fought in the long and bloody battle to prevent the Japanese from establishing a base there; this battle was considered a turning point in the Pacific war, after which the Allies had gained the upper hand. The story of both battles is told in a gripping, journalistic-style narrative, including personal information about the aviators, and stories of the survivors’ lives after the war ended. This book would be an excellent choice for readers who are interested in the War in the Pacific, or anyone who likes a thrilling tale.
The treatment accorded to Native Americans by the U.S. government is a long and deplorable chapter in American history. This book covers one part of that litany of shame, the forced relocation of the Ponca tribe from Nebraska to Oklahoma in 1877, and its unintended outcome, a landmark Supreme Court decision that established the rights of Native Americans to be considered persons under the Constitution. The Ponca tribe was forced to leave their land in the Niobara River valley in northern Nebraska after the U.S. government mistakenly included their land in the Sioux Reservation created by the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868. The journey was long and difficult, and when the Ponca arrived in Oklahoma, they found the land unsuited to agriculture, which was their principle source of food. When Chief Standing Bear’s son died the following winter, he led a party back to the Niobara; they wanted to bury him in their traditional burial ground, and to try to return the Ponca people to their own land. Standing Bear was arrested, and with the help of some surprising allies, including Nebraska newspaper editor Thomas Tibbles and former Indian fighter Gen. George Crook, he mounted a legal challenge questioning the right of the government to remove the Poncas from their land. The case received massive attention in the press, and forced the government to admit that Indians were people, entitled to equal protection under the law. The case was also one of the key steps in removing control of relations with Indians from the military and passing it to the civilian government. This is an important book that also tells a riveting story; readers will be engrossed in the Poncas saga from the first page to the last.
In 1949, A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold was published; in this classic work, Leopold discusses his ideas on conservation and his “Land Ethic.” The author is an ecologist who has spent the last thirty years following Leopold’s ideas on his own land, Stone Prairie Farm, in southwestern Wisconsin. When he first began, the land had been used to grow corn for many years; there was little trace of the prairie, woods and wetlands that had once flourished there. Little by little, doing much of the work himself and forging ties in the surrounding community as he went along, Apfelbaum restored the land to its original state, bringing back native plants and encouraging the wildlife that had once lived there to return to newly restored habitats. It is now a living, breathing illustration of Leopold’s ideas. The author owns Applied Ecological Services, a consulting firm that provides ecosystem restoration, and he does an excellent job of explaining the long and delicate process of landscape restoration, as well as making it why we should be interested in doing so; he makes the journey so intriguing that readers will begin thinking about how they can apply his ideas to their own land. Reading this book is like taking a long walk in the country on a summer day with a learned friend as a guide to the natural world.
April 13, 2009
Fiction
Really more a collection of four novellas than of short stories, this excellent book traces the life-altering experiences of the narrator, a man now middle-aged recalling his childhood and young adulthood in Sri Lanka in the 1940s and 1950s. In the title story, he is a ten-year-old boy, devastated at having to leave his dog Tony behind when his family is forced to move due to financial problems; when he makes the long journey back to their old home to rescue his pet, the outcome is not what he expected. “Poor Young Man” deals with the narrator’s realization that his parents are actually human beings, and have their strengths and their human failings, and how he came to terms with this knowledge. In "Elsewhere: Something Like a Love Story," he recounts his first real love, which was doomed from the start, although he could not understand why at the time. Finally, in the story “Hark, the Moaning Pond: A Grandmother's Tale” the narrator speaks of his relationship with his grandmother, leading to a stunning meditation on the history and mythology of Sri Lanka. The writing is gorgeous and lyrical, and the stories’ themes of the importance of love, the complications of leaving childhood behind and becoming an adult, the sadness and inevitability of loss, and the mutable quality of memory translate beautifully across cultures and timelines. Readers who enjoyed David Wroblewski’s The Story of Edgar Sawtelle or The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini will want to read this.
The summer of 1898 finds the city of Vienna in turmoil as a terrifying killer stalks the streets, his victims stabbed viciously and dumped in public places, their noses sliced off. When the latest victim, a model for scandalous painter Gustav Klimt, is found in the Prater Amusement Park, the artist falls under suspicion; after all, anyone who could produce such shocking pictures must surely be capable of such horrific violence; or at least that is the reasoning of Police Inspektor Meindl, who is investigating the murders. Frustrated by their failure to catch the killer, the police arrest Klimt on flimsy evidence found in his studio, and so his lawyer, Karl Werthen, turns to his friend Doktor Hanns Gross, a pioneer in the nascent field of criminology, for help in solving the crimes. Vienna was a fertile ground for social, political, and cultural change, with many famous scientists and artists residing or visiting there, from Sigmund Freud to Mark Twain; there was a great deal of social upheaval as Viennese society struggled with these rapid changes. Jones seamlessly integrates real historical figures into the story, and recreates the fascinating era of the fin-de-siecle without drowning the reader in historical detail; he has also written a terrific thriller that will grip the reader to the very end. Readers who liked Caleb Carr’s The Alienist or the Guido Brunetti series by Donna Leon will love this one.
The author has written a realistic, and sometimes harrowing, portrayal of four members of the National Guard who are sent to Afghanistan. They include Justin, a California surfer whose life until now has been all about catching the perfect wave; Jimmy Ray, a mechanic from the South who has a lot of problems with deep-seated anger; Luis, a Hispanic immigrant who believes strongly in the American dream; and Cindy, a high school teacher and mom from Iowa who is dismayed and apprehensive to find herself getting sent into a war zone. All of them will find themselves tested in ways they could never have imagined, and the things they experience will change their lives profoundly. Yenne doesn’t pull any punches describing scenes of battle or other aspects of living in a war zone. He also effectively shows how people in extreme situations can quickly develop extremely close relationships, and either rise to the challenges they face, or become unglued. Readers who want to know what being in combat is really like will definitely get a taste of it from this novel. If you liked Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried or you enjoy the Civil War novels of Michael and Jeff Shaara, this one will interest you.
Rosie Caballero feels her life is rather dreary; she scrapes by on a small income, working at a job she hates, and her love life consists of a series of dates with total losers. The only bright spots are her grandmother, her cousin Cheeto, and her dog Tootie, all of whom give her the love and support she finds little of elsewhere. Then one day Rosie’s life changes completely when she wins $600 million in the lottery, and suddenly everyone who treated her like dirt wants to be her best friend. At first it’s a fantasy come true; Rosie and her family go wild, buying whatever they want and traveling to exotic vacation spots. The icing on the cake is Rosie’s new boyfriend Brad Merritt, the current Hollywood It-boy and the actor Rosie has had a crush on for years. However, dealing with tsunami of publicity, complete with hounding paparazzi and a huge crowd of people lined up for handouts, soon starts to seem more like a burden than a blessing, and the worst thing for Rosie is not being certain who she can trust. Rosie is a terrific heroine; the reader will be rooting for her and her family as she struggles to find her way. This book is terrific pure entertainment, perfect for a beach read or plane ride, or just for fun. If you enjoyed Bergdorf Blondes by Plum Sykes or the Shopaholic series by Sophie Kinsella, try this one.
A revised and expanded version of the earlier works Antarctica and the Arctic: The Complete Encyclopedia and Antarctica: The Blue Continent, this terrific book is a thorough and authoritative compendium of knowledge of Antarctica, with contributions from a team of experts that includes scientists, historians and explorers. Every aspect of the continent is covered, from prehistory and geology, to climate, the ice, and wildlife; there are also sections on current scientific research, the impact of climate change, the need for conservation, and the political arguments about sovereignty, use of resources, and scientific expeditions, tourism, and many other issues. The entire volume is profusely illustrated with photographs, maps, and other illustrations; they appear on nearly every one of the 400 pages of this book. Antarctica is perhaps the last mostly wild and unspoiled place on earth, and it serves as a bellwether for climate change and political wrangling that affects the rest of the planet; it is also a unique and beautiful place worthy of study and preservation, and this book is the perfect illustration of that need.
From 1961 to 1966, McGeorge Bundy was the Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (the equivalent to today’s position of National Security Advisor) during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations; along with Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and a few others, he was the one of the key people who charted America’s course during the Vietnam conflict. Bundy was considered one of “the best and the brightest;” he was a scion of a wealthy and politically connected Boston family, a Yale graduate, and a professor at Harvard. When McNamara published his memoir In Retrospect in 1995, in which he stated his belief that America’s war in Vietnam was a tragic mistake, Bundy decided to revisit his own memories of that time, and worked with Goldstein to write his own memoir. However Bundy died in 1996, before it was finished, and so Goldstein used his research and conversations with Bundy to write this history of Bundy’s role in the Vietnam conflict. Goldstein asserts that Bundy was a rather fanatic hawk who strongly believed in the rightness, and the potential for success, in using U.S. military might to defeat the Viet Cong; he continued to believe in the “Domino Theory” and the need for America to avoid embarrassment by pulling out of Viet Nam until years later, near the end of his life. This fascinating book investigates how such a bright and talented person could have been so wrong, and stubbornly continued to believe he was right for so long, despite strong evidence to the contrary; and how we can learn from the mistakes of the past. Readers interested in history and foreign relations will find this a compelling read.
Sand is one of the most plentiful substances on earth; it can be found nearly everywhere on every continent, at the bottom of the sea, even on other planets, like Mars. It is so omnipresent that we scarcely notice it until it blows into our eyes or gets in our shoes, but sand is much more embedded into everyday life than most of us realize. The author, a geologist, follows the journey of a single grain of sand from its creation and movement along the Susquehanna River, to its resting place on the sea bed; along the way he includes fascinating digressions on the creation and composition of sand, an analysis of the fluid dynamics of deserts, the historical and cultural significance of sand, and the many ways sand is used in many products, from concrete to toothpaste. The book is a lively and creative look at a thing both humble and majestic, both a nuisance and a vital element of human endeavors; readers who enjoyed Mark Kurlansky’s Salt: a World History or the books of Henry Petroski will be intrigued by this book.
Baker spent more than thirty years researching the history of his family over two centuries, using records of former slave owners now housed in the Tennessee State Library and Archives, interviews with family members, letters and diaries, and newspapers and Census records to create a complex and riveting portrait of life under slavery and in the post Civil War era. He became interested in the topic while looking at some photographs of former slaves in his seventh-grade social studies textbook; he later discovered that two of the people depicted in the photos were his great-grandparents. Baker traces the origins of his family from their enslavement in West Africa to their arrival at Wessyngton Plantation in Tennessee, founded in 1796 by Joseph Washington, a distant cousin of our first President. The slaves’ labor built Wessyngton, the largest tobacco plantation in America, and kept the plantation profitable until the Civil War and Emancipation. After the war, the era of sharecropping and Jim Crow laws made life extremely difficult for the former slaves, but they persevered, and eventually many of them (and their descendents) moved north to find work and to better their lives. The story of the slaves of Wessyngton Plantation is a very significant part of the history of our nation; Baker provides the personal context of individual stories that makes it even more powerful. This is an essential book for anyone interested in American history.
April 6, 2009
Fiction
The second entry in the Kim Reynolds series finds Kim, a college librarian in suburban New Jersey, and her boyfriend, Detective Mike Gardner, investigating the suspicious death of Rick Bradshaw, who was found dead in the swimming pool at Kim’s apartment complex. The victim was not a nice guy, and the suspects are legion: his fiancée; his current and former mistresses; his numerous ex-girlfriends, most of whom hated him; and assorted husbands of those numerous ex-girlfriends and mistresses. They are assisted by Mike’s new partner, Bert St. Croix, formerly of the NYPD and the first black woman in the Webster Township PD, and by Kim’s psychic talents (she can see ghosts). While they work on tracking down the killer, Mike tries to persuade Kim to accept his proposal of marriage, and Bert experiences a rocky start with her colleagues in the department. This is an entertaining mystery with very likable characters, and Kim’s psychic abilities are interesting without being too off-the-wall. Readers who liked James Patterson’s Women’s Murder Club series or the Reagan Reilly books by Carol Higgins Clark will get a kick out of this one.
In the maybe-not-that-far-from reality near future, the world is on the verge of collapse; wars, ecological disasters, economic meltdown, and pandemics have become the new reality. Retired marine Sargent “Sarge” Whitmore figures out a way to benefit from the chaos around him; he creates the Clothos Academy, a school for the children of the super-rich, and gets the wealthy to pay dearly for the privilege of sending their precious children somewhere they believe is safe. The school is located in an abandoned monastery on a small island in the Mediterranean, impenetrable and remote from the rest of humanity. When the students arrive, problems begin to surface. The students, despite their privileged status, are not exactly the cream of the crop; they are afflicted with everything from eating disorders to serious trouble with the law. The faculty is not much better; the school doctor is an alcoholic, and Sarge is maintaining order and encouraging his students’ fear by broadcasting daily videos about the horrors going on in the outside world. Then there is the mystery of what really happened to the monks who once lived there; will the same fate befall the Clothos students? Reed has created a frightening and believable dystopian future that will grip the reader until the final page. If you liked The Terror by Dan Simmons or Scott Smith’s A Simple Plan, give this a try.
This is an engaging historical romance featuring Gaddon Maddox, the 4th Earl of Camberley, who is flat broke and running out of family heirlooms to sell to keep his family’s estate going. He believes the solution to his financial problem is to marry a rich American heiress. To this end, he travels to Newport, Rhode Island, the exclusive summer retreat of the fabulously wealthy, where flocks of young American heiresses are eager to meet the titled and good-looking Englishman; however he is put off by the crassness of this marriage market, and flees to the less posh but more congenial seashore. There he meets Audrey St. Clair, who is also trying to escape Newport, where her formidable mother wants to marry her off to the highest bidder. The two of them concoct a plan to avoid an unwanted betrothal; Audrey will pretend to be engaged to Gaddon, while helping him rebuild his family fortune with profitable investments, and also pacifying Audrey’s persistent mother. When the summer is over, they will each be free to pursue their own lives; however they both find it more difficult than they thought to stick to the plan, and they may in fact be falling in love. The book is frothy and charming, offering an intriguing glimpse of the caste system of the very wealthy in late 19th century America, as well as an engaging pair of lovers that readers will want to see live happily ever after. If you liked An Agreeable Arrangement by Shirley Marks or Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford, this book will please you.
Set in Havana in 1994, this powerful novel tells the story of Usnavys, a man in his fifties who is barely hanging on in the grim world of post-revolutionary Cuba. When the Castro regime began in 1959, Usnavys was a young man with high hopes for the future, and he has managed to hang on to his optimism all this time, despite terrible poverty and the constant hemorrhage of people escaping to the U.S. by boat. But now his wife has lost her job, and they and their daughter must often go hungry, as there is little money for food or anything else. Their home is in terrible disrepair, with crumbling walls and leaking roof; most of the city has become ruins, where people stay only because they have nowhere else to go. The only thing of value they possess is a stained-glass lamp, inherited from Usnavys’ mother; curious about its origins, he begins tracing its history, which leads him to discover some unexpected truths about his past. Obejas deals with themes of political and religious conflict and freedom, the disillusionment that comes to all at some point in life, and the lengths to which people will go to survive. Evocative prose, strong characters and deft depiction of the complicated and sad history of Cuba make this a standout novel; it is highly recommended for anyone who liked The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos or The Konkans by Tony D’Souza.
This book of amazing animal photographs has an almost indescribable beauty. Zuckerman has photographed the animals against a stark white background, showing their exquisiteness without any distraction, and picturing them in stunning detail. The 175 different animals depicted run the gamut from honeybees to mandrills, including just about every kind of animal you can think of, all in glorious color; the lack of accompanying text allows the images to speak for themselves. This is the kind of book that you can get lost in for hours, and it will make you marvel at the astonishing beauty and diversity of the animal world.
The author, a journalist who has written about the developing world for such publications as Time, Fortune, The Atlantic Monthly, and Salon, traveled around the globe to look for evidence of climate change, and to discover how these changes have affected the political, social, and economic landscape, as well as the ecology of places from Sudan to Northern California. It is somewhat alarming to learn that the effects of climate change can already be seen clearly on such things as the changing geographical ranges of plant and animal species due to warming temperatures, the growing incidence of desertification, and the increasing number of violent storms. What is even more disturbing is the author’s contention that political and social instability like the genocide in Darfur, the diaspora of survivors of Hurricane Katrina and other natural disasters, and the potential for global pandemics, will only get worse as climate change continues. Whatever your beliefs about climate change may be, this book is a sobering wakeup call to take a closer look at the potential ramifications of climate change.
The author tells the frightening true story of what it is like to be the target of a stalker. When Brennan (a pseudonym, used to protect her privacy and her family) first meets Paul, the man who became her worst nightmare, he seems like a normal guy, very charming and charismatic; he works hard to win Brennan, who is initially wary after being involved in several unhappy romantic relationships. When she finally gives in to his attentions, their relationship progresses quickly and they start living together; it is only then that she finds out about some of the more unsavory aspects of his character, including infidelity, bullying behavior, and hints of illegal activities. When Brennan has had enough, she tries to leave, but Paul is obsessed with her, and resorts to some very scary tactics to track her down and make her life miserable, such as hiring people to break into her home, causing problems in her professional life, and even getting he phone cut off. Without solid proof of Paul’s harassment, the police can’t do much to help her, and her life becomes an exercise in anxiety, punctuated with moments of sheer terror. Perhaps the scariest thing about this book is seeing how a normal person like Brennan, a well-educated professional woman, goes from being a self-assured woman to a terrorized victim. This book will keep you up late at night racing to finish it; fans of Ann Rule will be riveted by this one.
In 1846, the tiny settlement of Yerba Buena, located on the shores of San Francisco Bay, had fewer than 1000 inhabitants; after the Mexican-American War ended in 1848 and California became part of the United States, the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill near Coloma in January of that year changed everything completely. News of this find spread quickly, spurring thousands of people from all over the world to come to California seeking to make a fortune mining for gold, rapidly increasing the population of the town to 25,000 people by the end of 1849. The “forty-niners” brought a host of others who came to sell them supplies and provide all manner of other goods and services, from livery stables to brothels. In less than two years the city grew from a sleepy hamlet to a booming, cosmopolitan town, and was well on its way to becoming the financial, economic and cultural center of the region. Richards has written a colorful and engaging history of a tumultuous time in San Francisco’s history.
March 30, 2009
Fiction
Russell Harmon has two great obsessions: Dart Night at the 321 Club in Garnet Lake, Idaho, and his cocaine addiction. On Dart Night, Russell is special, he is someone important, and he is in control. The rest of the time he is kind of a loser; he lives with his mother and has a series of dead-end jobs. Russell owes money to Vince Thompson, his drug dealer, who is angry and unstable; there is also Brice Halberstam, a new player whose skill threatens Russell’s standing in the dart league. The other characters are Russell’s friends Tristan, a good-looking former school star who seems to be having a nervous breakdown, and Kelly, a single mother trying to find a way out of this small dead-end town. All of these people have their flaws, and their secrets; the intersection of their lives will mean danger for some, and big changes for all of them. The author does a great job of incorporating information about the game of darts into the story without making it seem artificial, and the small town setting is colorfully depicted. This novel will be enjoyed by readers who liked Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity or Steve Almond’s memoir Candyfreak.
Benjamin Purdue has been in prison for twenty years, serving time for a murder he did not commit. Benjamin’s his mother was a prostitute, and their hardscrabble life in the remote Blue Ride Mountain hamlet of Shady Hollow, Virginia, didn’t offer much in the way of future prospects. Ben was in love with the prettiest girl in town, Amanda Lynn Jennings, and had hopes that they could build a life together, but those hopes were shattered when he was forced to shoot another man in self-defense and went to prison for it. Now he has served his time and is being released back into the world; he journeys back to Shady Hollow, trying to find out what happened to his family and to his old life, but he no longer recognizes the town, which has been razed and replaced with a housing development; all that is left is the old cemetery, where he finds the graves of his family. Searching for answers and for a better life, Ben decides to try and find Amanda; what he doesn’t know is that his search will lead him to answers about his past, and a way forward to his future. Ben is a compelling character who holds our interest throughout the book, and his need to truly understand his past will resonate with readers. If you liked The Sweet In-Between by Sheri Reynolds or Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay, try this one.
August is a young college student when he first encounters Papa, the leader of a religious cult called True Mind Heart Center. August has lost his way, becoming mired in a dead-end lifestyle of drugs and cynicism; but something about Papa and his teaching appeals to him very strongly, and he joins the group, becoming one of their most loyal disciples. August carries out Papa’s orders without question until a series of events shakes his faith; Papa decides to marry Melody, a ten-year-old girl whose mother is a friend of August, and when some members of the group protest this, they are brutally “redirected” to obey. August begins to question his own involvement in the cult, and decides to leave, getting as far away from the cult’s desolate Arizona headquarters as possible. However, August finds that it is not easy leaving this way of life behind, and he struggles to find his way back to the world. This is a deeply affecting story, filled with powerful imagery, and dealing with important themes of religious belief, personal freedom, and responsibility, both to oneself and to the community. Readers who liked Yann Martel’s Life of Pi or Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates will appreciate this novel.
In this excellent follow-up to Die with Me, Detective Inspector Mark Tartaglia and his partner, Detective Sergeant Sam Donovan, are assigned to the case of a murdered woman found in London’s Holland Park in the dead of winter. Art dealer Rachel Tenison was left bound in a highly ritualistic pose that seems to indicate a connection with an unsolved murder that happened a year ago. The members of the team are all struggling with their own problems-family pressures, infidelity, unrequited love-as well as the lack of clues in the case. Tartaglia becomes somewhat obsessed with the victim, who was a beautiful blonde with some rather dark secrets of her own, while Sam tries to sort out her relationship with a married colleague who has shown interest in her. The detectives painstakingly assemble information and accounts from witness, trying to piece the story together, and their investigation takes them from the world of politics to London’s rather sordid S&M scene; when the truth finally becomes clear, they may be in greater danger than they thought possible. This mystery would be a great choice for readers who enjoyed Ruth Rendell’s Inspector Wexford series, or In the Woods by Tana French.
The Atlantic Ocean has been an important source of wealth, an avenue for trade and the exchange of ideas and technology, and both a source and an arena of conflict from the earliest days of human history to the present time. This book is a wonderful overview of the Atlantic’s history and its importance; from the very first ocean voyagers before the birth of Christ, to the Vikings, to the European explorers who “discovered” the New World, to the Age of Sail and the World Wars, the author covers the vast history of the Atlantic in a very thorough and entertaining manner. Hundreds of beautiful color illustrations, including images of manuscripts, maps, paintings, and photographs are included throughout the text, providing a visual feast for browsers. This book is highly recommended for history buffs and armchair explorers alike.
Desmond and Moore are generally considered the pre-eminent biographers of Charles Darwin, an impressive feat considering the staggering amount of information that has been produced by and about the man. In this book, the authors eloquently argue that the roots of Darwin’s obsession with the origins of humanity lay in his repugnance for the practice of slavery. Josiah Wedgwood and Erasmus Darwin, the scientist’s maternal and paternal grandfathers, were both ardent supporters of England’s anti-slavery movement, as were other members of the family and many of their friends; Darwin also abhorred the terrible brutality toward slaves that he saw during his time on the Beagle. In this new interpretation, Darwin’s work is seen as having a moral imperative; he wanted to use scientific evidence to prove that all human beings are descended from common origins, thus demonstrating that forcing humans into slavery is immoral and evil. Interestingly enough, this argument against slavery did not necessarily mean that blacks were to be accepted as intellectual or social equals in nineteenth-century society. This book is a fascinating reinterpretation of Darwin’s life and work, and is of particular interest in light of the recent debate on the teaching of evolution, as well as the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth.
The author, who has spent nearly thirty years working in the American criminal justice system, did not have an easy childhood herself; she grew up in a tough Chicago neighborhood where few of the adults in her life expected that she would ever amount to anything. She defied the odds, becoming an attorney and advocate for prison inmates. Schwartz became convinced that the current penal system is ineffective; in 1997, she founded RSVP, the Resolve to Stop Violence Project, focusing on teaching inmates ways to avoid reoffending and to take responsibility for their crimes, and to atone for them. She very frankly addresses the pressing central issue of the prison system: “What do we do with the people who get out of jail and come back to communities?" Schwartz provides some very thoughtful ideas about how to address this issue in this sobering and absorbing book.
Every day it seems that we are bombarded by statistics on everything from high school kids’ participation in sports, to the risk of dying from secondhand smoke, as well as just about anything else you can imagine. There are statistics on crime rates, health issues, business, education, government, and many other topics constantly published in every medium, from newspapers and television to the internet, and much of what is out there is misleading, misinterpreted, or simply wrong. The author, a professor of Sociology and Criminal Justice at the University of Delaware, offers help in making your way through this confusing morass of information. This book will help you sort out the good, the bad, and the ugly of statistical information in your daily life.
March 23, 2009
Fiction
The manuscript of the title is the fabled holy text of Islam, lost for many years, and now the goal of an international archeological expedition to Wadi Hassoun, a remote Egyptian village. As the group moves from the busy modern city of Cairo to the slower-paced rural area, time seems to slow down; in the modern era, the expedition searches for clues to the whereabouts of the manuscript, and these scenes are interspersed with moments from the history of its creation, and showing its impact on Islamic culture and society. All of these events are joined to form a kind of narrative mosaic of the manuscript’s history and meaning, which becomes clearer as the pieces are fitted together. The expedition is being bankrolled by a consortium of wealthy Londoners, and there is some uneasiness among the group’s members about the ethics of this; can such an important cultural and religious treasure really belong to those who can afford to spend the most to obtain it, or is there a greater duty to ensure that it belongs to everyone? How do we interpret the often mysterious and ambiguous and clues left from the past, and uncover the truth? These and many other questions are beautifully incorporated into a story that layers suspense, wonderful historical detail, exquisite writing, and a profound understanding of human strengths and frailties. This gorgeous novel is highly recommended for anyone who enjoyed Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead or The Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri.
In this exciting debut mystery, we meet newly minted Detective Constable Gary Goodhew, age twenty-five, who has been assigned to help solve the murder of a young woman in Cambridge. Eager to prove himself to his colleagues and his superiors, Goodhew-who is somewhat of a workaholic with not much of a personal life-goes beyond his role as an assistant, working on his own without his partner, going back to review the crime scene, and interviewing witnesses. This refusal to follow police protocol annoys his supervisor, Detective Inspector Marks; however he must admit that Goodhew is very intelligent and has good instincts, as the young investigator turns up clues that have eluded the other members of the team. The investigation has other complications for Goodhew; evidence that casts suspicion on a friend has come to light, and he is torn, trying to decide what to do about it. Fast-paced and exciting, this accomplished debut would be an excellent choice for fans of Peter Robinson’s Alan Banks series, or the Inspector Rebus books by Ian Rankin.
This darkly hilarious novel is kind of like a cross between the movie “This is Spinal Tap” and James Frey’s fictional memoir A Million Little Pieces. The LA rock band Blood Orphans seemed to be on their way to superstardom; they signed a contract with a major record label, they had a cadre of devoted fans coming to their concerts, and they landed a gig opening on tour for Aerosmith. Disaster struck when a rock journalist accused them of writing a racist song; the fallout from this debacle saw them being cut from the Aerosmith tour and dropped by their label. A couple of years later, stranded in Amsterdam at the end of a not very successful European tour, the group’s manager, coke fiend and fashionista Joey Fredericks, and the messed-up members of the band tell their stories in alternating chapters, as the group implodes, collapsing under the weight of the backlash and their own egos. The author knows the music scene intimately, having done a stint in a band in Seattle during the grunge era, and this knowledge shines through in the book, making you feel like you are watching one of those “Behind the scenes” shows about troubled bands, only with all of the juicy bits left in. If you liked Elmore Leonard’s Chili Palmer books or Blast from the Past by Kinky Friedman, this would be a good choice.
Willett is one of the most dependable authors around for a really enjoyable reading experience. This time, we have the story of Tessa Rainbird, Will Rainbird, and Beatrice Holmes, three distant cousins who were previously unknown to each other and who have inherited a beautiful coastal estate in Devon from their recently deceased eighty-four-year-old cousin Mathilda Rainbird. Tessa is twenty-two, and still recovering from the tragic death of her parents and younger brother a few years earlier; Will is a widowed diplomat who has been living abroad, and Beatrice is a recently retired matron at a boys’ boarding school. Along with Mathilda’s former housekeeper Isobel Stangate, the three of them move into the estate, and to their surprise find that sharing the property leads to deepening relationships with each other and with the community, allowing them all to heal and eventually thrive in ways they never expected. This is a lovely family drama reminiscent of the novels of Rosamunde Pilcher or Maeve Binchy.
It seems like we are constantly barraged with information about “good” foods and “bad” foods, and the latest research on what foods cause or prevent diseases, as well as a constant stream of fad diets, from “cleansing” to the Atkins diet; how can anyone make sense of the overwhelming tide of information? Fortunately for us, the author has written this timely and accessible book to help those of us who do not possess advanced degrees in nutrition science make sense of it all. He helps us understand and evaluate the confusing and often contradictory claims of various scientific studies, diet plans, advertising, as well as persistent myths about food. Chapters cover such highly touted foods and nutrients as tomatoes, acai berries, soy, and omega-3 fatty acids, as well as the reviled trans fats, pesticides, antibiotics, hormones, and other chemicals in food. He explains how digestion works and how these various foods affect our bodies, all in a clear and easily understandable way, and gives recommendations on eating sensibly while avoiding fads and hand-wringing about contaminants and “bad” additives in food. Anyone concerned about what they eat will want to read this.
Lately there has been a great deal of talk about the need to find alternative energy sources and reduce American dependence on foreign oil, but nowhere has the idea of using alternative fuels been so hilariously explored as it is in this book. Melville, a freelance journalist who has written for a variety of publications from The Wall Street Journal to Outside magazine, decided to see if a car using alternative fuel could work well in real-life situations; what could be more real than a cross-country road trip? Recruiting his college pal Iggy as technical support (since he knows something about engines, whereas Melville is mechanically inept), they convert an old diesel-fueled Mercedes sedan to run on used french fry oil, which they usually get for free from restaurant dumpsters. Along the way, they visit such eco-friendly destinations as Google headquarters (which is solar-powered), a wind farm in southern Minnesota, and Al Gore’s Tennessee mansion. Melville achieves his goal of demonstrating that sustainable energy really can work, and does it with a lot of humor and charm. This book reads like a mash-up of David Sedaris, Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, and the movie An Inconvenient Truth; it takes a serious issue and turns it into a really fun (and educational) book.
George Wythe of Richmond, Virginia was among the most prominent of the patriots who led the American Revolution; he signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and was a close friend and mentor to such luminaries as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison. In 1806, when Wythe was eighty, he and two members of his household were poisoned. Wythe lingered in agony for two weeks, insisting to anyone in earshot “I am murdered.” Adding to the shocking nature of the crime was the main suspect, Wythe’s grandnephew and namesake, George Wythe Sweeney, who had stolen money and forged checks in Wythe’s name. The case had many strange twists; for example, Wythe’s doctors refused to confirm that he had been poisoned. Forensic investigation was extremely primitive; criminal trials depended mostly on eyewitness testimony, as scientific evidence was neither widely available nor credible, and the most damaging witness in the case-the only one of the victims who survived-was not allowed to testify at the trial. Chadwick has written a completely absorbing account of a two-hundred- year-old crime that was as sensational in its day as the O.J. Simpson case or the Lindbergh kidnapping. Readers who enjoyed Howard Blum’s American Lightning or Founding Brothers by Joseph Ellis will be captivated.
Ellen Greene had made a lot of unfortunate choices in her life; her marriage ended in divorce, leaving her with two small children to care for on her own, and a series of unfulfilling and unhappy jobs forced her to move to several different states. By the time she was in her late thirties, she was convinced that she would never find a good man; then Marsh Greene appeared, and the two of them built a very happy life together. Ellen decided that she would keep track of all of her husband’s kindnesses and moments of humor and affection during the year, and share this “Sweet Things List” with him each Valentine’s Day. They continued this tradition from the beginning of their relationship, when Ellen was still learning to trust Marsh and the happiness of her new life, to the time they spent living in China, and later sailing around the Pacific Ocean, and eventually to Marsh’s serious illness and his death. This is a poignant and loving tribute to a beloved husband that has a great deal to say about how to cherish each other in the time we have together; readers who liked Randy Pausch’s The Last Lecture or Wesley the Owl by Stacy O’Brien will be moved and inspired by this book.
March 16, 2009
Fiction
Set in Montana during the Nez Perce War of 1877, this fine historical novel follows the saga of John Seton, a young Nez Perce who has spent parts of his life among both whites and among his own people. He understands the Indian way of life; the Nez Perce had always been migratory, following the game they hunted through the territory of the Columbia River Plateau in the Pacific Northwest, and he also understands that this nomadic lifestyle clashes with the ways of the white settlers moving into the area to farm or raise cattle. Some of the Nez Perce have accepted that their days of roaming the land freely are coming to an end, while other refuse to give up their traditional ways; conflict between the whites and the Indian factions is heating up. John believes he has had a vision from Coyote, but he is not certain what it means; he is drawn to the faction of Nez Perce trying to flee to Canada, and eventually witnesses the great battle between the Indians and the U.S. Army, which ended when their leader Chief Joseph was forced to surrender before reaching the Canadian border. Replete with fascinating details of the nomadic lifestyle of the Nez Perce, their cultural and religious beliefs and their traditions, this book manages to be informative while still telling a rousing story of one young man’s coming-of-age. Readers who like Larry McMurtry or Wilbur Smith will enjoy this novel.
In this exciting thriller, Caroline Perez is a former CIA agent who has become obsessed with her assignment to topple the government of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, who has ruled the country with an iron hand for half a century. She now works for a clandestine group called the White Orchid, whose goal is to overthrow Castro by any means necessary. To achieve this, Carolina is willing to do anything, including deceiving her Uncle Roberto, who is an important player in Miami’s Cuban expatriate community and is also working against Castro. Meanwhile, in Havana, Minister of Health Carlos Gutierrez has lost his faith in Cuba’s leadership, as he has seen lies and corruption in the government become commonplace, betraying the ideals of the Revolution. He becomes involved in an assassination plot at great risk to himself and his family. However, the conspiracy runs far deeper than either Carolina or Carlos knows, and there are double-agents and traitors all around them. Merullo creates a suspenseful story that grips the reader completely until the final page; readers who like John Le Carre or James Grippando will be riveted by this thriller.
A rather unusual and imaginative blend of mystery and fantasy awaits the adventurous reader in this new novel by Rafael Reig. Set in an alternative universe version of Madrid in 1999, it follows the story of children’s book author Lola Lios, who is murdered by a gun-toting thug. In this strange world, Spain has been annexed to the United States, and Spanish has been supplanted as the official language by “Anglo,” and the country is divided between the armed enclaves of the rich and the lawless and chaotic areas of the rest of the country. Lola’s ghost is trying to find out who killed her and why; she gets assistance in her quest from Benito, the teenage main character in her successful children’s book series. Lola’s death may have had something to do with K666, the mysterious drug that may be the key to eternal life. This novel is a fascinating blend of mystery, science fiction, fantasy, and comedy, all coming together to create a singular debut novel. Readers who liked The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami or Jonathan Lethem’s Gun, With Occasional Music will definitely want to read this one.
The third outing in the Honey Driver mystery series finds Honey, who owns the Green River Hotel in Bath and is also the Hotel Association police liaison, accompanying her friend Mary Jane on a “ghost walk” around the city. They don’t see any ghosts, but the tour is far from uneventful; one of the participants, Lady Templeton-Jones, is found strangled in a shop owned by a man with a suspicious past. Since Honey had been asked to book a room for the victim, and since she has ties with hunky local detective Steve Doherty, she decides she must investigate. The suspects include the shady shop owner, the tour participant who may be scamming people by selling them fake British titles, and various others who may have wished harm to Lady Templeton-Jones, and who have their own secrets to conceal. In addition to helping solve the murder, Honey must deal with family dramas involving her mother and her daughter’s boyfriend, as well as earning a living with her hotel. Will she be able to ferret out the truth and unmask the real killers? You’ll have to read it to find out. Fans of Dorothy Cannell’s Ellie Haskell series or the Peter and Georgia Marsh series by Amy Myers will like this funny and absorbing mystery.
Benford, a physicist, and Malartre, a biologist, present a terrific overview of the history of robotics and artificial intelligence, covering the many ways in which robots are now used in everyday life, and predicting how their use will continue to expand in the future. The possibility-and the fear-that robots could someday become superior to humans have long been staples of science fiction and fantasy. Robots in books, like R. Daneel Olivaw in Asimov's Robot series, and in movies like the Terminator series or the HAL9000 in 2001: a Space Odyssey, make robots taking over and eliminating humans seem like something that could be just around the corner. However, the authors contend that robots, while very useful and sophisticated tools, can never match the complexity of a living human brain. This book is a great introduction for anyone who wants to learn more about robots and artificial intelligence; it discusses their history and their potential for the future in a very interesting and accessible way.
A sobering account of the long and bloody history of the ivory trade, which has had a profound and often terrible impact not only on the beautiful animals slaughtered for their tusks, but on the humans involved in gathering, transporting, and selling this precious commodity. Ivory has been prized since prehistoric times; it has been used to create religious objects, jewelry, and many other items such billiard balls, piano keys, and decoration on a myriad of things. In the nineteenth century, the vast demand for ivory led to the killing of millions of African and Asian elephants, until by the early 1980s they were in danger of extinction; in addition, many of the people who killed the elephants and carried the ivory to market were enslaved, brutally exploited, and killed. In 1990, a worldwide ban on the international ivory trade helped to bring some of the herds back, but poaching and black market ivory trading remain a huge problem, as does the lack of adequate habitat for many of the elephant herds in Africa; the dangers and abuses suffered by those who get the ivory also endure. This is a fascinating and important story; anyone interested in conservation or the plight of the elephants simply must read it.
The author is a young woman just starting out in her career as a web designer, living in a city apartment and wanting to avoid the consumer culture, and have a stronger connection to the basics; growing her own food, living a greener lifestyle, and generally learning to become more self sufficient. She decides to chuck her citified life and moves across the country to a small farm in Idaho, where she learns about gardening, raising chickens, beekeeping, and all manner of other things a person needs to know to be self-reliant. She celebrates such pleasures as finding good second-hand household items instead of buying new, cheap plastic implements; knitting her own sweaters and wearing the same dress for a year; and feeling a deeper connection to the land, and to the community that offers her knowledge and support as she creates this new life. The book offers a lot of information and tips, as well as a list of sources for do-it-yourselfers of all varieties, and it is charming, funny and engaging as well; Woginrich is willing to laugh at herself and some of her more disastrous attempts at practicing her burgeoning homesteading skills. Readers who liked Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle or The Prairie Girl’s Guide to Life by Jennifer Worick will definitely want to give this a try.
The Middle East region has been a hot spot for trouble for millennia, and the sixty years since the end of World War II have not seen any real change in this regard. The author, a foreign correspondent for the New York Times and the Washington Post with years of experience in the region, asserts that the foreign policy of the U.S. has been inconsistent and mostly ineffective in the post-war era. He proceeds to back up his analysis with a history of conflict in the Middle East, from the Suez Canal crisis to the current Iraq War, including the tangled history of the conflicts between Israel and Egypt, America and Iran, the Soviet Union and Iraq, Iran and Iraq, and fighting in Lebanon, as well as the two incarnations of the Intifada, beginning in 1987 and again in 2000. Tyler concludes that there are many villains and few heroes in this saga, on any side of the conflict, and we must find a better way to deal with the often troubled countries and factions in the region to have any hope of lasting peace. This is an absorbing, well-documented, and very fair-minded history of a complex and often explosive topic.
March 9, 2009
Fiction
A wonderful blend of suspense, fantasy, and mystery, Fathom weaves together the stories of ancient mythological creatures and modern day humans living in rural Florida. The story begins in the 1930s, when Arahab, an ancient water goddess who is trying to return earth to the rule of the ancient gods, uses an unhinged teenage girl named Bernice to set her plans in lotion. When Bernice’s horrified cousin Nia witnesses her committing a murder, Nia is turned into stone, where she remains until the final battle between the factions of the ancient gods begins. Nia realizes that she must act to save humanity from destruction, with the help of some of the elemental spirits who don’t want to go back to the old days, and of a human drawn into the conflict. Priest has done a wonderful job of world building; she combines elements from horror, fantasy and fairy tales to create a unique and intriguing story that will grab your attention from the first paragraph to the final sentence. Readers who enjoyed Priest’s Eden Moore trilogy or who like Neil Gaiman or Dan Simmons will want to try this one.
This is the third entry in the entertaining Cape Weathers series, following Stealing the Dragon and Beating the Babushka. As a private investigator in San Franscisco who started out as a reporter, sniffing out a story is second nature to Weathers. His latest gig involves looking into the disappearance of a California state senator and his son, a drug addict with a history of trouble with the law; when they both turn up dead on a golf course in Mexico, the senator’s daughter hires him to investigate. Weathers collects his associate Sally Mei, a tough chick who learned to fight in the Triad gang in Hong Kong, and goes south of the border. He follows the clues, which lead from a Mexican drug cartel to shady bankers and CEOs back in California, as well as getting on the wrong side of the cops and the DEA, and discovers a much bigger-and more dangerous-situation than he expected. This series features a terrific and funny wisecracking relationship between Weathers and Mei, as well as an absorbing mystery with plenty of action. Fans of Robert Crais or James Lee Burke should try it.
Theodor von Neuhoff was born into an aristocratic family that had fallen on hard times, and spent his life traveling and adventuring, making his way in the world by his wits and charm. After the death of his father, Theodor managed to achieve a position as a page at the Court of Louis XIV at Versailles, where he quickly became a favorite due to his skills at eavesdropping, gossiping, and making conversation. Due to a series of fortunate incidents, Theodor manages to secure wealthy and influential patrons to easy his way as he drifts through the courts of Europe, acting as a secret agent, a professional gambler, and other such pursuits, marrying a noblewoman and gaining and losing fortunes along the way. In 1736, he joins the Corsican rebellion and is proclaimed King; he believes he has found his true station at last, but his reign turns out to be a short and undistinguished one. Full of elaborate and fascinating historical detail about the glittering life of the European courts at their most ascendant, this novel is a treat for fans of historical fiction and history buffs alike. Readers who liked Philippa Gregory’s Earthly Joys or Beneath a Marble Sky by John Shors will enjoy this novel.
The characters in these short stories always seem to become embroiled in unusual and bizarre situations; the author has managed the very neat trick of making everything he writes absolutely believable and true-to-life. In the story “Choco,” A Moscow woman finds that her pet bear, adopted from a circus, causes complications in her love life; in another story, with the very descriptive title "Aesthetic Displeasure Unearths Lack of Marital Fortitude," the main character makes a startling discovery while visiting an old friend at a rural retreat. The other stories in the collection are also full of weird and wonderful people and events, and all of them are engaging, funny and full of astute observations about human behavior and foibles. If you like Tom Perrotta or David Sedaris, give this a try.
This collection of black and white photographs was taken by the great photographer Jim Shaughnessy between 1946, when he was just 13 years old, and 1988, when he was well established as one of the premier railroad photographers in America. The pictures of trains show a variety of coal and diesel locomotives, lonely railroad crossings and bustling city roundhouses, railroad workers and passengers, and incidents like a derailed passenger train. The images are clear and crisp, and have a compelling and curious beauty; they depict everyday objects and people from a bygone era, giving them a gorgeous, almost mystical appearance, while revealing each scene’s intimate details. This book will be of particular interest to rail enthusiasts, but it is also a treat for those who appreciate the art of photography.
Anne Louise Germaine de Stael lived through perhaps the most tumultuous period in the history of France, and managed to retain her position and influence throughout, not an easy task when you consider the dangers she faced during the Revolution, the Terror, and the Napoleonic era. Born in 1766, Germaine was the daughter of Jacques Necker, the Minister of Finance for Louis XVI, a position of great power; from her birth she was a part of the most glittering circles of the court, and she possessed a prodigious intellect. She married a Swedish diplomat with whom she had three children, and continued her mother’s tradition of holding the most famous and respected salons in Switzerland and Paris; the greatest luminaries of the day were all in attendance at various times. She published novels and political treatises, making an enemy of Bonaparte, who exiled her when she dared to criticize him; she also championed a woman’s right to legal, economic and sexual freedom until her death in 1817. The author has written an erudite biography of one of the most fascinating women in European history, a woman who witnessed and participated in many of the most important events of the eighteenth century.
The forty children interviewed for this book range from age 6 to 16 and come from many different kinds of military families, all of whom have at least one parent who is serving, or who has served, in Iraq or Afghanistan. The children live in a variety of places, on military bases or in regular towns and cities, and they have different attitudes about the war; some support it, some oppose it, and others try not to think about it, as much as possible. All of them have important and interesting things to say about what it is like to live without a parent, either during a deployment, or forever, in the case of children whose parents who have died. The stories of these children are sometimes triumphant and happy, sometimes tragic and poignant, often even for the same child; this deeply affecting book illuminates the terrible human cost of war, and the amazing resilience of humanity, in ways that the reader will never forget.
There is perhaps no more divisive topic in present day America than the issue of race; with a newly elected African American President, it seem as if we have a golden opportunity to have an intelligent conversation about this highly charged subject, but somehow this has not happened (at least not yet). In Strange Fruit, Kenan Malik explores the concept of race as a social construct and as a biological reality, and finds that many of our most deeply held beliefs about race and about humanity are quite simply at odds with the facts. He considers the origins of our ideas about race, from the Enlightenment to the Romantic Movement, and from the scientific rationalism of Darwin to the twisted research of the Nazis, and on to current questions such as how race influences medical research and treatment, and asks the hard questions; what does race mean in a world where so many are multiracial, and how does it affect our sense of self and identity? The author is not afraid to broach controversial issues, and to offer ideas on how we can proceed. Provocative, well-researched, and lively and well-written, this book is recommended for anyone interested in current issues or history.
March 2, 2009
Fiction
Dr. Reggie Lee has just been hired as a curator at the National Gallery in London, and her first assignment is an exhibition of Caravaggio’s St. Cecilia and the Angel, an altarpiece created in 1605, as well as two other copies of the work. A problem crops up when the curator of the Italian collection of the Louvre, the owning museum of one of the copies Reggie wants for the exhibit, refuses to allow the loan of the painting. Reggie goes to Paris to try and change his mind, but before she can get to him, he dies in an apparent suicide. All of this may be connected to a recent theft from the museum, but when yet another, previously unknown copy of the Caravaggio turns up, Reggie investigates; is the new copy a fake? If so, who is responsible, and how does it tie into the art thefts? Reggie must find the answers before she too becomes a victim of the killers. This is a very enjoyable debut mystery; it will definitely appeal to fans of Aaron Elkins’ Chris Norgren series, or the Jonathan Argyll series by Iain Pears.
This intriguing novel is narrated entirely through the blog of the main character. L.G. Fickel has a day job as an editor at a rather staid literary publishing house in Boston, but her real passion is noir, which she discusses on her blog, entitled “Life is Pulp.” Her readers are just as passionate about noir as she is, whether they agree with her or not, and they don’t hesitate to make their views known, pulling no punches along the way. Fickel shares almost everything on her blog, including a frightening real-life incident when she witnesses a man jumping in front of a commuter train. At first his death seems to be a suicide, but the police are not so sure; they begin looking at Fickel as a possible murder suspect when some of her blog posters uncover a previous connection between Fickel and the dead man, and speculate online as to what really happened. The blog format is a new twist on the traditional mystery format, and it adds a freshness and vibrancy to the story. Readers looking for something a bit new and different should try this one.
Barzak has written a deeply affecting novel in the form of a series of interconnected short stories, all of which are set in Japan. Characters appear and disappear in the different stories, sometimes appearing in major roles, sometimes staying in the background. In “If you can read this you’re too close,” a young man has a strange experience with a blind man while on the train; “Realer than you” deals with an American teenager who is homesick for his own country. In “The suicide club,” four people who feel marginalized in Japanese society find a new purpose together, and “Sleeping beauties” explores a woman’s grief at the death of her lover. All of the stories are beautifully written and very evocative of different facets of Japan, urban and rural, modern and ancient; they are like an intricate puzzle box whose design can only be seen when the puzzle is complete. Readers who enjoyed Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-up Bird Chronicle or Jonathan Lethem’s Motherless Brooklyn will find this of interest.
The author, a former NFL player with the New York Giants football team, certainly knows whereof he writes in this debut novel about… an NFL player for the New York Giants. Dominic Fucillo is thirty, which is just about retirement age in the brutally youth oriented culture of professional sports; he is also recovering from a knee injury that may end his career. He sees the current season, in which the Giants are having an unexpected hot streak, as his ticket to sports immortality; if he can help his team win the Super Bowl, he can go out in a blaze of glory. Dom’s life is focused on the game; he is isolated from his family and friends, and keeps his teammates at arm’s length; the coach is obsessed with winning and cares little about the problems of the players, and drug use and corruption are rampant. This is a dark and gritty look at the world of professional athletes, but it is a compelling read, especially for those who are interested in the behind the scenes details of the NFL.
Belt was one of the first women photographers for National Geographic magazine, and this is a wonderful portfolio of her work. She documented places and events all over the world, from refugee camps in Southeast Asia to snowstorms in the Midwest, from survivors of Hurricane Katrina to survivors of war in Bosnia. Her photographs are absolutely stunning, but this book also includes terrific stories about how and when the photographs were made. Belt traveled all over the globe with loads of photographic equipment, and often with her husband and two children traveling along with her; she has many funny and interesting anecdotes about her adventures. This book will be appreciated by photography lovers, armchair travelers, and anyone who likes a good story.
This is one of those books that will have you laughing out loud at certain passages, making the person next to you ask “What’s so funny?” A compendium of disastrous attempts at matchmaking, it includes such catastrophes as Brenda Scott Royce’s mother’s insistence that TV producer Michael Gelman of the Regis and Kathie Lee show was the perfect match for her daughter, and she sent dozens of letters to the show to convince him her daughter was perfect for him. There is also the would-be actor who peppers each sentence with the word “totally,” the Dungeons and Dragons fanatic, and many more wacked-out contenders for worst date in the history of… well, EVER. Anyone who has ever been fixed up by a family member with less-than-impressive results will get a special kick out of this, but the hilarity will resonate with everyone. If you liked Carrie Fisher’s recent memoir Wishful Drinking this one will be right up your alley.
Wilderson grew up in a comfortable middle class family in Minneapolis; his was one of the few black families living in Kenwood in the fifties and sixties, and his family’s position insulated him from American racism of that era, at least to some extent. When he married a South African woman and returned with her to her homeland, he became involved with the African National Congress; Wilderson documented incidents of violence against blacks, becoming radicalized to the extent that Nelson Mandela declared him a threat to national security. Eventually, disillusioned with life in South Africa, he spilt from his wife and returned to the U.S., where he followed a rather meandering career path, becoming a stockbroker for a time, and later a writer and academic. This is a fascinating portrait of a turbulent and painful time in history, not so far removed from the present day; Wilderson’s brutally honest (and not always flattering) portrayal of the ANC is absolutely compelling. Readers who liked Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane or Saidiya Hartman’s Lose Your Mother will want to read this.
Sinatra is of course best known as one of the greatest singers of American popular music, but he was also a film actor who appeared in more than 70 movies from 1941 to 1995; his film work has generally garnered less respect than his music. His Hollywood resume included such undisputed classics From Here to Eternity, On the Town, and The Manchurian Candidate, but most of his other films are less well known, and many are, quite frankly, pretty terrible (Guys and Dolls or The Kissing Bandit, for example). Santopietro makes the case that Sinatra had real talent as an actor, but his already-huge fame as a singer defined and limited his onscreen persona, and his self-absorption did not serve him well, leading him to coast on his fame when he could have done so much more with his acting career. The author provides a great deal of interesting detail on Sinatra’s long and varied Hollywood career; this is essential for Sinatra fans, and will also be of interest to movie buffs.
February 23, 2009
Fiction
The title of this terrific debut novel might turn some people off, but don’t let it make you miss a truly compelling read. It is set in the waning years of the corrupt and oppressive Marcos dictatorship, which is being propped up by the U.S. government to protect American interests in the Philippines. Dissident Doming Aquinaldo has been forced to abandon his university studies and now works as a driver for American diplomat Trace Caldwell and his wife Rue. Doming is secretly spying on Caldwell for the rebel movement trying to overthrow Marcos; however he develops an attachment to Rue, who is growing more and more uncomfortable with her husband’s support of the corruption and cruelty of the regime, and they fall in love, which creates complications for everyone. The world of Manila in the Marcos era is brilliantly recreated, from the smell of the food and heat of the tropics to the casually accepted violence of the government against dissenters and the unbelievable arrogance of the dictatorship. Readers who liked Richard Price’s Lush Life or Sujata Massey’s Rei Shimura series should definitely try this one.
Max Rydal of the Special Investigation Branch of the British Army is looking forward to some downtime with his family when a delicate situation comes to the attention of his superiors. It appears that Sam Collier, a pilot decorated for bravery in the Gulf War, is the target of a smear campaign. It starts with anonymous poison pen letters, but then escalates as Sam’s wife, Margot, is threatened. Max can hardly believe this is happening, as Sam and Margot has always appeared to be the golden couple, successful and happy; but in taking a closer look, Max discovers that all may not be as it seems in the Collier household. Meanwhile the unit doctor, Major Clarkson, is grappling with his own difficulties as he deals with an unfounded accusation against him; all of this puts the whole base in an uproar, making it difficult for Max to ferret out the truth. This is an absorbing mystery, with a military twist on the traditional police procedural; fans of Jonathan Kellerman’s Alex Delaware series or the Dalziel and Pascoe series by Reginald Hill will enjoy it.
Bridget Sweeney flees London with her young daughter, Yasmin, taking a job as caretaker at Rospetroc, the Cornwall estate of the Blakemore family, to escape the physical abuse of her ex-husband Kieran. It seems like a heaven-sent opportunity, until Bridget starts to notice odd things happening; footsteps are heard where no living person could have been, objects are mysteriously moved, and it appears that someone invisible is sleeping in the spare bed in Yasmin’s room. Bridget discovers that the locals believe the house is haunted; decades earlier, a nine-year-old girl named Lily disappeared under suspicious circumstances while staying at Rospetroc as a refugee from the Blitz. Now Yasmin is talking about her new friend Lily, and Bridget is frightened that what she thought was their haven may present as much danger to them as Kieran did. The mystery of what really happened to Lily, and Bridget and Yasmin’s peril, make for a taut and suspenseful read; fans of Elizabeth George will like it.
It’s hard to believe that this is the author’s debut novel; the writing is compelling and fresh, and the novel is populated with fully realized characters. Christophe and Joshua DeLisle are twins growing up in Bois Sauvage, a small town along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The twins have had a difficult life so far; abandoned by their mother and cared for by an ailing grandmother, they have few prospects in this economically depressed and somewhat backward place. Joshua manages to find work on the docks, but Christophe falls into the drug trade, supplementing the family’s income with profits from selling pot and eventually other, harder drugs. When the twins’ absent father shows up, a confrontation ensues that will change all of their lives forever. The Mississippi heat is almost palpable, and the wonderful dialog and descriptions are so vivid the images seem to rise off the page. This is an author to watch.
This new biography of one of the giants of cinema takes a slightly different approach than the usual narrative of achievements; the author, a professor of psychiatry, offers a psychological analysis of how Chaplin’s early life and family shaped his later work. Born in 1889 to a pair of vaudeville performers who could not care for him and his two siblings, Chaplin was sent to an orphanage at age seven. His father died of alcoholism and his mother of syphilis, after a long period of destitution and madness. Desperate to escape the poverty and hopelessness of his childhood, Chaplin found success as a vaudeville comedian, and was eventually discovered by Keystone Studios mogul Mack Sennett, who brought him to Hollywood, where he soon became the biggest film star of the era, and the most famous person in the world. Chaplin’s miserable childhood was part of the inspiration for his genius, especially the beloved “Little Tramp;” the author sheds light on how Chaplin transformed the tragic events of his life into inspired comedy. Readers interested in film history or who enjoy illuminating biographies will want to read this book.
Dolphins have been a source of fascination since the beginning of human history; they are featured in ancient legends and stories, and in modern times they are scrutinized for their complex social structure and methods of communication. The authors are scientists who have studied these beautiful animals for years, discovering how they live and interact with each other, and with other species (like humans). Individual dolphins seem to have distinct personalities, and dolphins as a group have a large “vocabulary” they use to communicate information and share their emotions. This interesting book provides a closer look at the mysterious world of these majestic creatures.
It might seem like a contradiction to create something as orderly as an encyclopedia about something as anarchic and anti-establishment as punk music, but Cogan succeeds admirably at documenting the history of the genre over the last 30 years. From well-known bands like the Clash and the Sex Pistols to lesser known entities like Crass or The Vandals, Cogan provides an overview of the genre as a whole, along with entries on just about every band from the punk and hardcore scene, including many previously unavailable photos, often in color. If you remember the movies “Rock and Roll High School” or “The Decline of Western Civilization” fondly, or have ever wanted to go to (the now defunct) CBGB, this book is the next best thing. Read it and re-live your misspent youth.
This little book will provide hours of fun for kids and adults. It provides simple, easy-to-follow instructions for creating all kinds of paper crafts, including pop-up books and greeting cards, flip books to make your own tiny animated movies, and paper toys like the “Hexaflexagon” and Magic Wallet. The examples given are fun and whimsical, and can easily be adapted to allow each crafter’s own creativity and ideas to shine. If you are looking for something new, fun, and different to try, this book is just what you are looking for!
February 9, 2009
Fiction
Julian Custer is enjoying a long-awaited holiday in the Scottish countryside when he happens upon the scene of an accident. Rushing to the burning car, he manages to save the young woman in the passenger seat, although not without suffering burns on his arms; but the driver, her brother, is dead. In the hospital, Julian discovers that the woman he’s saved, Delia Barrow, had just arrived from New Zealand with Ally, the brother killed in the crash, hoping to claim their inheritance, which is a farm near Inverness. As Julian is a solicitor, he offers to help Delia, who is without any friends or family or means of support, to try and obtain her legacy. The two of them grow closer as they try to settle Delia’s affairs, and discover that the crash was not an accident; their lives may be in danger as the killers try to finish the job. Hammond has created an entertaining yarn with engaging characters, and the reader gets a real sense of rural life in Scotland.
Lily Bartholomew enjoys the perks and privileges of her New York City upper-crust lifestyle; living in a lavish apartment, wearing designer clothes, attending swanky charity events and eating in the best restaurants is a heady experience for a middle-class girl from Nashville, Tennessee. However Lily’s fairy-tale marriage hits a speed bump when she gets pregnant unexpectedly, and her relationship with her husband Robert becomes strained when he can’t decide if he loves his mother (and the trust fund she uses to control him) more than his wife. Throw in Lily’s inability to lose the last few pounds of baby weight (a huge problem in a world where wearing anything larger than a size 2 is unthinkable) and you have a real crisis. Lily reinvents herself by writing a newspaper column on lifestyles of society’s elite; her honesty about the snobbishness and shallowness of the wealthy creates new problems until Lily figures out what really matters to her. Readers who liked Bergdorf Blondes or Sex and the City will get a kick out of this.
This entertaining mystery follows the story of Elena, Princess of Wales, who has had enough of the stultifying royal lifestyle, and has filed for divorce from her husband, Prince Edward. Her mother-in-law, Queen Catherine, wants to avoid scandal at any cost, including perhaps even the lives of Elena and her sons, 13-year-old Richard and 10-year-old Lawrence. When Elena’s divorce lawyer dies under rather suspicious circumstances, and then she and Lawrence are almost killed by an explosion, Elena realizes that she must look outside the royal family for assistance. She turns to a journalist, American Michael McLarrity, for protection and help, but there are those who believe the monarchy should be eliminated, and will stop at nothing to achieve that goal, including murder. Froetschel uses the bare bones of the story of the late Diana, Princess of Wales, to construct this engrossing mystery; readers who enjoyed Julie Kramer’s Stalking Susan or Mary Stewart’s romantic suspense books will like this one.
Linda Van Wyck left South Africa years ago to live in Australia, trying to escape both the repression of apartheid and difficulties with her family. Now she is returning for her father’s funeral, but after she arrives at the family’s orange farm she discovers that her father left a mystery; who really killed her younger brother Hannes, who was stabbed to death more than forty years ago? At the time, three black men were convicted of the crime, but there is evidence that their confession was coerced. Linda investigates, but encounters many difficulties; the murder happened a long time ago, and some would prefer to leave all of these matters buried in the past. The South African setting is beautifully recreated, with lovely descriptions of the landscape and people, and the author has written a thoughtful depiction of life under the terrible system of apartheid and in its aftermath.
Most cookbooks provide detailed instructions for exactly how to reproduce a particular dish, with precise measurements, cooking times, and techniques; this one brings out the cook’s creativity by letting you decide how to put everything together. The authors provide detailed information on how to create fabulous taste in any dish by mixing flavors together to achieve maximum deliciousness. The list of thousands of ingredients tells you how to cook just about anything, and what flavors work well together in different ways and in different seasons of the year. This book would be terrific both for very experienced and for beginning cooks; it will help them free their creative impulses, and concoct something truly spectacular in the kitchen.
After the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968, the nation was a tinderbox waiting to explode. James Brown, probably the preeminent black entertainer at that moment, was scheduled to give a concert that night in Boston, but the mayor and other city officials feared that the show might encourage rioting and moved to cancel it. Brown fought back, arguing that the concert could be a chance for making a plea for calm, and he prevailed; the concert went on, opening with “Please please please,” which called on all Americans to follow Dr. King’s message of non-violence, self-respect, and tolerance. The concert was broadcast on live television, and unlike most other major U.S. cities, Boston did not erupt in violence that night. The author goes on to trace Brown’s career and involvement in politics, and discussing his powerful influence on the music industry. Fans of the Godfather of Soul will not want to miss this, but it will also be of interest to those interested in the sixties and the Civil Rights Movement.
Marco Polo’s epic journey from Venice across the Silk Road to the court of Kublai Khan in China and back, traveling more than 20 years and 30,000 miles, began in 1271. Along the way he and his party survived many hazards and saw many amazing things, which are recounted in Marco Polo’s book Il Milione, or The Travels of Marco Polo. Belliveau and O’Donnell retrace his route as closely as possible, crossing Central Asia by train, by jeep, by camel and other beasts of burden, and on foot, marveling at everything they see. They have many adventures and are often in danger, as this has always been a rather unstable area of the world; the book also has hundreds of gorgeous photographs of the people and landscapes on the journey. Armchair travelers, photographers, and historians alike will love this book.
In the tradition of such investigative journalists as Ida Tarbell and Upton Sinclair, who exposed the Standard Oil conspiracy and the atrocities of the meat packing industry, the author takes on Big Oil with no holds barred. The oil industry is the most profitable one in the world, and the ongoing machinations of the industry to avoid competition and regulation are scandalous; Juhasz asserts that Big Oil has wormed its way into the corridors of power, exerting tremendous influence on American economic and foreign policy, enriching itself at the expense of the American people, and destroying the environment. The author pulls no punches, providing detailed documentation and sources for her claims; this is a very readable and extremely sobering look at an industry that affects each one of us on a daily basis, and is essential reading for anyone interested in the current state of the U.S. economy and government.
February 2, 2009
Fiction
This book is a sequel to the excellent The Fat Man’s Daughter from 2005, featuring antiques dealer Leah Kolbe and her fiancé Jonathan. The story begins in Hong Kong in 1937; the Japanese have invaded, and Leah barely escapes to the island of Macau, while Jonathan is left behind to fight the occupation. Leah arrives without any money, and goes to work for the British Consulate. Eventually she agrees to become the mistress of a Japanese weapons and steel industry tycoon, acting as a spy for the British. While living this dangerous double life and simply doing what she must to survive, Leah tries to discover what happened to Jonathan. The author skillfully creates the desperation and terror of living in wartime, and keeps the reader absorbed until the last page. Readers who like Eliot Pattison’s Shan Tao Yun mystery series or Invisible World by Stuart Cohen will like this.
Valdes-Rodriguez has come out with a sequel to 2003’s The Dirty Girls Social Club, the bestseller about six young Latinas, a tight-knit group of college friends who have stuck together after graduating. In this book, five years have passed, and the lives of the sucias (dirty girls) have changed, some for the better, and some not. Usnavys has a great job, a husband and a child, but she is bored and restless and jeopardizes her marriage with her cheating; Lauren struggles with bulimia and an unfaithful fiancé; Rebecca is dealing with infertility; Sara is now a successful cooking show host, but her past as a battered wife has come back to haunt her; Amber has become a pop star, but her fame is precarious; and Elizabeth worries that her desire to be a mother has soured her relationship with her lover. All of them have achieved some success and suffered some failures, and they will all have to face up to their problems; but they will do it together, and have a lot of fun while they’re at it. This is one of those chick-lit titles that is fun and frothy but also has three-dimensional characters and some interesting things to say about friendship and life. Anyone who read the first book should definitely pick this up; fans of Terry McMillan or Emily Giffen will enjoy it as well.
This is an intriguing historical novel set in Jacobean England, in the early years of the 17th century. The story follows Sarah, a widowed herbalist who has earned the enmity of Sam Ridley, a leader in her village; fleeing his revenge, she encounters Bill, a “sin-eater,” paid to eat food touched by the dying and thus take their sins into himself, allowing them to die in peace. The abuse he suffers as a result of this has nearly driven him mad, but Sarah believes she can heal him with her knowledge of herbal remedies. Later they meet Mary, a woman unhappily married to the man who holds her father’s debts. The intersection of their lives will lead to great troubles, but also opportunities for change in a world that offers little hope for the poor and downtrodden. Filled with fascinating historical detail, this is a novel that will reward a reader willing to try something a bit different.
The author sets the novel during the founding of Israel, beginning with the Zionist pioneers of the 1920s who went to Palestine hoping to create a new Jewish nation, and following on through the events of the war in 1973. Leon Abramowitz and his son Chaim come to Palestine in 1922, but find that the Promised Land is not the paradise they sought; despite this, Chaim learns to prosper in this new land, eventually amassing a fortune. Later others arrive, including disillusioned Zionist Yehezkel Klein, his son Schmuel, Russian expatriate Lev Gutkin, whose hatred of the Stalinist regime led him to Israel, and David Bonhopper, who tried to help people who have fallen through the cracks into poverty and despair. The complex narrative follows the characters lives through their country’s often violent and chaotic history, creating a nuanced picture of some of the most important events of the twentieth century; the novel is also a gripping story. Readers who liked Dara Horn’s The World to Come or The Book Thief by Markus Zusak will enjoy this book.
The name of Casanova has become a synonym for the sexually adventurous man, but the real Giacomo Casanova was so much more, as Ian Kelly reveals in this excellent biography. Born in Venice in 1725, Casanova intended to become a priest but was tossed out of the seminary; he then embarked on a series of amazing adventures that would take to all of the capitals of Europe and gain him entry to the most glittering courts of the era. An intimate of such luminaries as Voltaire, Madame de Pompadour and Catherine the Great of Russia, he was at various times in his life a musician, a diplomat, a merchant, a librarian, and a writer and translator; he amassed several fortunes, and lost huge sums of money as well. This fascinating puzzle of a man wrote his memoirs, which astonished, entertained and often outraged readers, and guaranteed his place in history; his life story is also an essential document of European history during a tumultuous and critical period of time. Kelly brings Casanova vividly to life.
Once a feared and respected lawman who kept order in the vast unsettled territory west of the Mississippi River before and during the Civil War, Jack Slade’s dismal fate is recorded in Mark Twain’s short story “Roughing It;” he was hanged by a band of vigilantes in Montana. The author delves into the true history of Slade’s life, and discovers that Twain didn’t get everything correct. Slade was almost single-handedly responsible for the security of the Overland Mail service in the West from Nebraska to California, making sure that stagecoaches and mail got to their destinations, and keeping the supply of California gold moving back east to enrich the federal government. Yet Slade was also an alcoholic who began later turned to crime himself, becoming a menace to the people he had formerly protected. Full of terrific period detail, this is an excellent book about one of the “lost” figures of Western history.
Those of us who have never gone mountain climbing, and perhaps have no desire to do so, will be fascinated by this history of mountaineers’ incursions into one of the most inhospitable places on earth, the Himalayas. Starting in the 1890s, adventurers (mostly from Europe and America) made their way to the region to explore and to attempt climbing the rugged peaks. Their equipment and knowledge was primitive by today’s standards, but the success they achieved despite this is astonishing. In addition to documenting the important people and expeditions over the last century, the authors talk about the political and social significance of mountain climbing; why do people choose to do this? For armchair adventurers, this is an exciting look at an insular and rarified world.
Coste had always dreamed of a career as a major-league ballplayer from his earliest years growing up in Fargo, North Dakota. He was an All-American at Concordia College in Moorhead, but this did not help him much in his quest to get to the big leagues; instead he spent the eleven years after college in the minors, moving from team to team as a catcher in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Ottawa, and Brainerd, among other places; he even played on teams in Mexico and Venezuela. All the while he refused to give up his dream of being called up to the big leagues, and his spirit and persistence earned him fans and admirers wherever he went. When he finally got the call from the Philadelphia Phillies in 2006, he was determined to make the most of his big chance, and he succeeded admirably; he eventually earned the nickname “Chris Clutch” for his ability to get hits in do-or-die situations. This is an entertaining and gripping story of perseverance and determination; Coste is personable and modest about his successes, the kind of guy you’d like to take out for a beer after the game.
January 26, 2009
Fiction
Ramona Griffen was devastated by the sudden death of her husband two years ago, leaving her overwhelmed with grief and with two small children to raise while trying to finish her dissertation on linguistics. Leonardo da Vinci is a young Italian student in her ESL class; when he needs a place to live, Ramona lets him rent her husband’s old studio in the back yard. The young man’s enthusiasm and joy in living surprise her, and she begins to recover from her sorrow as they fall into a romantic relationship; then the arrival of another suitor, as well as the meddling of Ramona’s family in her life, makes things even more complicated. This novel is fresh and funny, and also a poignant examination of how grief affects us; readers who liked The Pull of the Moon by Elizabeth Berg or Jane Green’s The Beach House will love this.
A terrific follow-up to The Ragtime Kid, this mystery, set in New York City in 1916, features Scott Joplin, the great composer. Dying from syphilis, afflicted with dementia and desperate for money to leave to his wife Lottie, Joplin goes to Irving Berlin to try to convince him to produce the musical he is writing, despite his belief that Berlin had cheated him in an earlier collaboration. After their meeting ends in disarray, Joplin is found standing over the body of one of Berlin’s employees. He proclaims his innocence, and his protégé Martin Niederhoffer enlists the help of Nell Stanley, another Joplin friend, to go undercover at Berlin’s firm and ferret out the truth. The New York City setting is vividly described, and the characters-both historical and fictional-are just as strongly realized. Fans of Larry Millett’s Sherlock Holmes American Chronicles should definitely try this series.
Sebastian Rolveden, called Seb, has an interesting life; he lives in England, in a lighthouse on the coast of Essex, and supports himself as a writer. When Seb comes into possession of the papers of his grandfather and namesake, he discovers that his grandfather may have been involved in the murder of celebrated artist Julian Rawbeck and the disappearance of one of his most notorious works, a painting called “The Ruffian on the Stair.” Seb and his girlfriend Leah are intrigued with this old mystery, and try to find out the truth while looking for the missing artwork; however it soon becomes obvious that although the crime occurred long ago, there are still those who do not want the truth revealed. This is an intelligent and absorbing mystery with an engaging main character; fans of Anne Perry or Elizabeth Peters will enjoy the Victorian atmosphere.
The latest short story collection from Bradbury contains both new stories and old favorites, all set in the Midwestern town of Green Town, Illinois, Bradbury’s fictional stand-in for his hometown of Waukegan. The twenty-seven stories here range from short vignettes (The River that Went to the Sea) to longer and more complex tales (Miss Bidwell), but they all have in common Bradbury’s lyrical writing, a gorgeous recreation of an entire world of color, movement, and sensation of summer in a small town. This collection should be savored and enjoyed by Bradbury’s fans and readers who love beautiful writing.
The remains of the city of Pompeii, destroyed by lava and ash flows in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79, have been a rich treasure trove for scholars since its “discovery” by workers building a palace for the King of Naples in 1738. In the centuries following, the site has been carefully excavated, providing a wealth of information about life in the Roman Empire. The author takes us on a fascinating and entertaining tour of the archeological evidence, explaining what everyday life was like in that time and place, and how the denizens of Pompeii lived and died.
The Kent was a ship of the British East India Company, bound for India with more than 700 people aboard, including most of a military regiment and their wives and children, and a full load of cargo that included a large quantity of beer and spirits. Not far from England, in the Bay of Biscay, disaster struck; in the middle of a violent storm, fire broke out on board, moving toward the ship’s gunpowder magazine. By sheer luck, the Cambria, another vessel, happened upon the burning Kent and begin the extremely perilous rescue of the ship’s passengers and crew in very heavy seas, knowing that the Kent could explode at any moment. Amazingly, almost all were rescued, and the disaster had a huge impact on the British public; accounts of survivors and rescuers were published for years afterwards, and the Kent became a symbol of British courage and fortitude. This gripping account of the tragedy will be of great interest to nautical and history buffs, or anyone who likes a rousing adventure story.
The author is a Professor of English at Vermont’s Middlebury College, as well as a poet, novelist, biographer and literary critic; in this book he considers the tremendous influence of thirteen books, from Of Plymouth Plantation, William Bradford’s narrative of the history of the Pilgrim colony from 1620 to about 1650, to Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, the 1963 book that energized the feminist movement. Each of the titles is placed in historical context; some the author considers masterpieces, others he considers more important for their impact on American culture and society than for their literary merit. The selections are sometimes provocative, and always interesting. This would be an excellent choice for anyone who is interested in how books are important in everyday life.
Florenz Ziegfeld started life as the son of immigrants living in Chicago, and became one of the most powerful men in American theater, whose influence is still being felt even now. Ziegfeld had an uncanny knack for spotting properties and performers that would have broad appeal, and was a very shrewd businessman and promoter. He discovered such stars as Eddie Cantor, Fannie Brice, W.C. Fields, and Will Rogers, featuring them in elaborate musical revues that become the Ziegfeld Follies, and creating the Ziegfeld Girl, a chorus of beautiful women who performed in scandalous costumes. Ziegfeld was instrumental in creating the form of the Broadway musical as we know it today, i.e. a strong story enhanced with related songs, instead of a series of unrelated popular songs performed in a revue; Show Boat, first produced in 1927, was the first in a series of such shows. This lively biography brings to life the raucous origins of American musical theater and the fascinating life of one of its most innovative, successful, and influential people.
January 12, 2009
Fiction
In the Dark is full of twists and turns that will keep you guessing until the last page. When Det. Sgt. Paul Hopwood of the London Metropolitan Police is killed by an out of control car during a gang initiation gone wrong, his pregnant girlfriend (and fellow police officer) Helen Weeks suspects that his death was not an accident. While going through his things, she discovers evidence of his relationship with shadowy crime boss Frank Linnell, and it begins to seem that Paul’s death is related to an ongoing internal affairs investigation. When the gang members involved in the fatal accident start turning up dead, Helen must figure out what’s going on before it’s too late. This gritty and action-packed thriller will appeal to fans of George Pelecanos or Richard Price.
Vincenzi’s sprawling saga, originally published in the U.K. in 1993, follows the life of wealthy society doyenne Lady Caroline Hunterton from the Second World War to the Sixties. During the War, Caroline falls in love with American fighter pilot Brendan FitzPatrick, bearing him a daughter; she believes he has abandoned her and gives the daughter, Fleur, up for adoption, and marries another man, with whom she eventually has three more children. Brendan returns unexpectedly, and when Caroline is unavailable, he decides to go back to America with Fleur. When Caroline’s second family learns about the existence of Fleur, turmoil and bitterness follow. Then, when celebrity gossip journalist Magnus Phillips writes a tell-all book about Caroline’s life, it threatens the very existence of both families. Readers who like Barbara Taylor Bradford or Anne Rivers Siddons should give Vincenzi a try.
This excellent novel follows the intertwined lives of three women over three generations and four decades. In 1953, Ruby’s young son George suffers an eye injury; wracked with guilt about the accident that caused it, Ruby feels that she deserves the anonymous letters that start arriving, blaming her for George’s predicament. Iris, George’s nurse, has fallen in love with Rob, a medical student, but her working-class background makes it difficult for her to gain acceptance in the world of Rob’s wealthy upper-class family. Years later, in 1995, highly successful eye surgeon Sylvia tries to reconstruct George’s surgery; however her personal life is in chaos, as she fears that she is unsuited to motherhood. The connections between all of these women are slowly revealed as we move back and forth across the years, until the intricate web of circumstances that bind them together is revealed. Readers who enjoyed Penelope Lively’s The Photograph or Jennifer Haigh’s Mrs. Kimble will find this a terrific read.
This intriguing debut novel follows a young Parisian woman in her obsessive quest for love. The unnamed young woman has a job as an announcer in the Gare du Nord, one of the city’s massive train stations; however her real preoccupation is with watching the man she loves, who is unfortunately involved with another woman. Feeling powerless to take control of her own life, she drifts along, filling her time with meaningless activities and chance sexual encounters, until an unexpected opportunity to be with her love makes her delve deeper into the reasons for her unhappiness. The City of Light is as much a character in the novel as any of the people who live there, and the emotional realism of the story is compelling. Readers who like Paul Auster or Ian McEwan will want to try this one.
Delta blues music has had tremendous influence on music all over the world, continuing on into the twenty-first century; the author, a jazz pianist and historian, has written an epic history of the creation of the blues tradition. From the earliest African roots music, to the minstrel shows and W.C. Handy, to the greats of the twenties and thirties (Robert Johnson, Charley Patton, Son House) and the post-war era (Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, B.B. King), and the rediscovery of classic blues in the later part of the twentieth century, Gioia covers everything thoroughly and well. This is a great introduction to a classic American art form.
In 1968, the members of the Apollo 8 mission to the moon were concentrating on their survey of the moon; however one of the crew’s photographs of the Earth rising above the surface of the moon were astonishing. They have now become iconic images of the planet on which we all live. When the photographs of the earthrise were transmitted back, they had a profound impact on nearly everyone who saw them, providing a spark that helped create the environmental movement, and making us ponder our place in the universe.
This newly updated history of the Marine Corps is a treat for anyone who likes military history. Beginning with the origins of marine forces back to ancient times, and covering the long and storied history of the U.S. Marines, it features a large and excellent array of photographs and illustrations, as well as a chapter on the Marines in the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is authoritative and fascinating for history buffs.
For most people, running in the New York City Marathon is either an unattainable dream or a perplexing puzzle; why on earth would anyone want to do that? The answer, even for those who don’t understand the motivations of marathoners, can be found in these pages. New York Times writer Robbins has produced an exhilarating account of the 2007 marathon, a mile-by-mile account from the shifting perspectives of both the professional athletes and amateurs who compete, as well as the history of the race and the fascinating details of how such a huge and complex event is staged. Anyone who likes sports, or New York City, or just an interesting tale, will want to read this one.
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