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Fabulous Fiction Firsts #370
by muffy
Based on the 80 year-old unsolved murder case of Dorothy Dexter Moormeister, City of Saints * * by debut novelist Andrew Hunt is the 2011 Tony Hillerman Prize winner.
On a cold February morning in 1930, Salt Lake City Sheriff Deputy Art Oveson is called to a gruesome crime scene where young Helen Pfalzgraf, wife of a prominent physician, lay battered and dead in an open field. As it is an election year, Art and his foul-mouthed partner Roscoe Lund are under great pressure to quickly solve this high-profile case.
Among the suspects are the victim's husband, her adoring step-daughter, and her many lovers. The investigations take Oveson and Lund into the underbelly of Salt Lake City, a place rife with blackmail and corruption, underneath a veneer of "upright Mormonism and congeniality".
This engrossing...procedural steadily builds up steam and explodes in all the right places".
"(T)his hard-edged whodunit with echoes of James Ellroy warrants a sequel."
Andrew Hunt is a professor of history in Waterloo, Ontario. He grew up in Salt Lake City.
* * = Starred reviews
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Fabulous Fiction Firsts #339, The Boys of Summer (Revised)
by muffy
A Land More Kind Than Home, the title drawn from Thomas Wolfe's You Can't Go Home Again is set in Marshall, North Carolina where evil is allowed to disguise as faith.
Narrated alternately by Adelaide Lyle, an aged local midwife, the taciturn County Sheriff Clem Barefield, and young Jesse Hall, our 9 year-old protagonist, as they are drawn into the tragedy that involves Jesse's mute and autistic older brother.
"As lean and spare as a mountain ballad, Wiley Cash's ( author website) debut novel resonates perfectly, so much so that it could easily have been expanded to epic proportions. An evocative work about love, fate and redemption". THIS TITLE HAS JUST BEEN PICKED BY LIBRARY JOURNAL AS ONE OF 10 BEST BOOKS OF 2012 !!! Worth a look if you didn't catch it the first time around...
Tom Wright sweeps us up in a tale of lost innocence in his debut What Dies in Summer *
Teenager James Beaudry "Biscuit" is taken in by his grandmother when home life becomes dangerous with his "Uncle" Jack. With his cousin LA (Lee Ann) they look forward to a bucolic Texas summer, until they come across the body of a girl brutally raped and murdered. Jim's recurring vision of the dead girl and the ensuring police investigation put the cousins in harm's way.
"Wright, a practicing psychologist, expertly weaves together a literary tapestry of self-discovery, brutal sadistic violence, custodial battles, and tender, burgeoning sexuality, leaving readers spellbound by a story that delivers on several levels."
Worthy additions to the Southern Gothic genre, and great YA crossovers, they will appeal to those who liked Stephen Wetta's If Jack's in Love, and Tom Franklin's Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter.
* = starred review
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #369
by muffy
Writing for the first time as B.A. Shapiro, Barbara Shapiro's The Art Forger is a richly-detailed and well-researched literary thriller based on the 1990 art heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum where 13 works of art (download the images) worth over $500 million were stolen, making it the largest unsolved art crime in history.
In this "classy and pleasurably suspenseful debut", "a cleverly plotted art-world thriller/romance with a murky moral core", Claire Roth, on the 21st anniversary of the heist, is presented by Aiden Markel, the handsome owner of a prestigious gallery with a Faustian bargain: if she agrees to forge one of the Degas masterpieces (fictional) stolen from the Gardner, he would arrange for a one-woman show of her works in his gallery. But when the Degas is delivered to her studio, Claire begins to suspect that it too, may be a forgery. Luckily for both of them, Claire is as fine a sleuth as she is an artist because their freedom (and their lives) are now hanging in the balance.
"The result is an entrancingly visual, historically rich, deliciously witty, sensuous, and smart tale of authenticity versus fakery in which Shapiro artfully turns a clever caper into a provocative meditation on what we value most".
Shapiro’s next project is a novel about the early years of the abstract expressionists, when many worked for the Works Progress Administration. Eleanor Roosevelt is a character. Can't wait.
Will appeal to fans of the popular television seriesWhite Collar (about to start its 4th season in January), Carson Morton's Stealing Mona Lisa, The Forgery of Venus by Michael Gruber, and Theft : a love story by Peter Carey.
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #368
by muffy
Death in Breslau * * introduces to US readers Marek Krajewski, an award-winning Polish crime writer and linguist, and at the same time, the first of a stylish and moody historic detective series featuring Inspector Eberhard Mock.
Breslau (present-day Wroclaw),1933. The city is in the grip of the Gestapo. Two young women are found murdered on a train, scorpions writhing on their bodies, and a bloody indecipherable note on the wall. Police Inspector Eberhard Mock is roused from his weekly assignation at a house of ill-repute to investigate. The urgency is heightened as one of the victim is the daughter of a powerful Breslau baron.
As Mock and his young troubled assistant Herbert Anwaldt plunge into the city's squalid underbelly for clues, the case takes on a dark twist of the occult when the mysterious note indicates a ritual killing with roots in the Crusades.
"Mock is a compelling protagonist, part Hercule Poirot and part thug, who uses blackmail as a standard investigative tool. He also has a weakness for nubile young Jewish women and chess-playing prostitutes. Krajewski's characterization of the prewar Nazis as a murderous lot who spend most of their time scheming against each other and indulging their various libidinous kinks is intriguing, but what makes this novel a stunner is the detailed portrait of Breslau in the otherworldly, uberdecadent, interwar years."
"(I)ntelligent, atmospheric... with a distinctly European, Kafkaesque sensibility", it will appeal to international and historic crime fiction fans, especially those who follow the Bernie Gunther series by Philip Kerr; and the The Liebermann Papers series by Frank Tallis, set in Freud's dangerous, dazzling Vienna.
* * = starred reviews
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #367
by muffy
In late 18th century Sweden, the Octavo is a form of fortune-telling (cartomancy) with playing cards that reveals the 8 persons when identified, could influence favorably, a significant event in one's life.
In Karen Engelmann's debut novel The Stockholm Octavo * * * Emil Larsson, a low-level bureaucrat is under pressure to marry. His sight is set on Carlotta Vingstrom, a voluptuous woman of means and connection. Mrs. Sparrow who runs a gaming establishment uses the Octavo to weave a special fortune for Emil, charging him with finding the eight people in his life who can make or break his future - a search that becomes dangerous when his ambitions become enmeshed in a larger scenario involving a plot against King Gustav himself. As 8 characters emerges, they each have their own story to tell, from Fredrik Lind, the gregarious calligrapher, to the Nordéns, refugees from France. In the midst of the intrigue is the folding fan owned by a lady known simply as the Uzanne.
"Mysterious, suspenseful, and, at times, action-packed, ...Engelmann has crafted a magnificent story set against the vibrant society of Sweden's zenith, with a cast of colorful characters balanced at a crux of history."
Literary entertainment at its best, and "a stylish work by an author of real promise". For fans of Andrew Miller, especially Pure (2012); and David Liss.
* * * = starred reviews
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Three Times Lucky by Sheila Turnage
by Caser
Three Times Lucky is one Philip Marlowe away from being a full-fledged crime noir for young readers. Miss Mo LoBeau is a quick tongued, rising sixth grade orphan living in tiny modern-day southern town, Tupelo Landing, with her adopted parents, The Colonel and Miss Lana, who own and operate a cafe attached to their home. When big-city Detective Starr comes to Tupelo investigating a murder, secrets about everyone's past begin to surface, and Mo and her best friend Dale race against time to solve the mystery and save the only family Mo has ever known.
This debut novel from Sheila Turnage is packed with humor, deception, wit, and colorful characters, and it's buzzing on many year-end must-read lists.
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Middle-School Novel Celebrates Human Kindness
by annevm
One of the best books I have read recently is Wonder by R.J. Palacio. A recommendation by youth librarians, the book champions kindness in a way that somehow manages not to be preachy. It also reflects the value of loving one's family and not judging people by appearance.
The star of the novel is August ("Auggie") Pullman, age 10, who was born with extreme facial abnormalities. His mother homeschooled him until fifth grade; as the novel opens he is about to enter a private middle school in Manhattan. The novel covers Auggie's turbulent first year, as he struggles to be seen as just another kid. He is gentle and bright, but faces heartbreaking challenges to fit in.
Written for readers in about fourth through seventh grades, the book is entirely believable in its presentation of various personalities and challenges faced by middle-school kids. As the story moves along, the characters develop and grow. Multiple narrators -- Auggie, two new friends at school, Auggie's sister (struggling as she starts high school), and his sister's one-time best friend -- add richness and balance to the story. Auggie's parents are unforgettable, as are his friends, which he does make, one by one.
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November's New Book Clubs to Go
by muffy
We have 5 new sets of Book Clubs to Go for your book clubs. Again, we tried to strike a balance between the classics, the literary, the popular, and the award winners - fiction and nonfiction.
A Death in the Family is the 1958 Pulitzer Prize–winning novel by James Agee who reconstructs through the lens of fiction the real-life car accident that claimed his father when James was not yet six years old.
Half Broke Horses, called a true-life novel (read the New York Times review) by Jeannette Walls who brings us the story of her grandmother Lily Casey Smith, a no-nonsense, resourceful, hard working woman who survived tornadoes, droughts, floods, the Great Depression, and the most heartbreaking personal tragedy.
Ava Bigtree has lived her entire life at Swamplandia!, a gator-wrestling theme park in the Florida Everglades. But when her mother the headliner dies, the family is plunged into chaos and it is left up to Ava to save them all. Karen Russell's Swamplandia is a seriously fun read to share.
The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua is a story about a mother, two daughters, and two dogs. It was supposed to be a story of how Chinese parents are better at raising kids than Western ones. But instead, it's about a bitter clash of cultures, a fleeting taste of glory, and how you can be humbled by a thirteen-year-old.
In The Tiger's Wife, Natalia, a young doctor, is compelled to unravel the mysterious circumstances surrounding her beloved grandfather’s recent death. Searching for clues, she turns to his worn copy of The Jungle Book and the stories he told her of his encounters over the years with “the deathless man.” But most extraordinary of all is the story her grandfather never told her—the legend of the tiger’s wife. Winner of the 2011 Orange Prize for debut novelist Tea Obreht.
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #366
by muffy
Mrs. Queen Takes the Train is historian/biographer William Kuhn's first foray into fiction and I hope, with more to follow.
On a cold and drippy November afternoon, The Queen, suffering from a recent bout of melancholia found herself walking towards Jermyn Street looking for cheddar - a special kind for her horse Elizabeth. Remembering happier times, she caught a train heading for Edinburgh where the royal yacht Britannia is docked as a tourist attraction. Meanwhile, in Buckingham Palace her royal attendants, fearing the worst, frantically searched for clues as to her whereabouts while fending off MI5, eager to chase down the errant monarch, hopefully one step ahead of the tabloids.
"Kuhn explores not only the queen's inner life (and the secrets she carries in that iconic purse), but the Downton Abbey style-tensions between servants and royals, the old guard and the new. The servants are the real stars here".... Among them is William, her butler, Lady Anne (her Lady-in-Waiting), her Chief Dresser Shirley (from humble beginnings but definitely the Queen's confidant), and Luke Thomason, her equerry, a decorated young officer recently returned from Iraq, wounds and all. Their back stories, their inner lives, and their friendship are engaging, but it is their utterly selfless devotion to the Crown that shines through.
Fans of Lilibet would enjoy Sue Townsend's immensely entertaining The Queen and I, and as brilliantly and sympathetically portrayed in The Queen by Dame Helen Mirren.
Blog Post
2012 National Book Award winners have been announced
by sernabad
Last night, the The National Book Award winners for 2012 were announced at a gala event at the posh Cipriani on Wall Street.
The big winners were:
Louise Erdrich, 58, received the fiction award for The Round House. An adult Joe Coutts looks back in time when, as a teenager, he went in search of the man who brutalized his mother on an Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota. This winning title is part two of a trilogy. The Coutts family was first introduced in The Plague of Doves (2008). Erdrich's win is especially poignant as, shortly after she started writing The Round House, she was diagnosed with a particularly aggressive form of breast cancer, which she has beat.Ms. Erdrich, who is part Ojibwe, delighted last night's audience by addressing some of her remarks in her tribal tongue.
Katherine Boo, 48, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer for the The New Yorker, received the nonfiction award for Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life,Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, a wrenching account of a teenage boy who lives in the slums that are hidden from view by some of India's luxury hotels.
Poet David Ferry, 88, tearfully accepted what he described as "preposterous pre-posthumous award" for his Bewilderment; New Poems and Translations. "We're all in this apart" (From FoundSingle-Line Poems). Ferry has a PhD from Harvard and is the Sophie Chantal Hart Professor Emeritus of English at Wellesley, where he taught for many years.
William Joseph Alexander, 36, is a first-time novelist who captured the Young People's Literature prize for his fantasy, Goblin Secrets. In this steampunk/witch-infested tale, Rownie escapes Graba who 'adopts' orphans to do her bidding, and sets out on a quest to find his missing older brother.
Rounding out the evening, host Faith Salie, a media star on NPR, the BBC and CBS Sunday Morning, bestowed two special awards. Detroit author, Elmore Leonard, 88, accepted the Distinguished Contribution to American Letters prize. New York Times publisher, Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., 61, was honored for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community. NPR's Fresh Air host, Terry Gross, introduced Mr. Sulzberger and said the New York Times Book Review was like "...a shopping catalog...[for] authors I've overlooked."
Each winner received $10,000.