Fabulous Fiction Firsts #331

Tue, 05/22/2012 - 4:27pm by muffy

Wife 22 * * is "smart, fresh, entertaining, moving and incredibly funny" (I can't say it any better) and perhaps, one of the best Women's Fiction">Women's Fiction titles this year.

Let's see how YOU would answer the following questions:

#10 Do you believe love can last?
#44 What do you believe should NOT be done in public?
#50 If your spouse gave you one free pass to have sex with another person, who would you choose?
#80 Define passion in one sentence
#88 Has your life turned out the way you would hoped it would?

Like these? Thankfully, debut novelist Melanie Gideon (author of The Slippery Year: A meditation on happily ever after: a memoir, and 2 YA novels: Pucker and The Map That Breathed) provides in an appendix these 110 questions - some survey-generic, some philosophical & probing, some downright invasive but all seriously provocative.

Alice Buckle: spouse of William, mother to Zoe and Peter, part-time drama teacher and Facebook chatter, downloader of memories and Googler of solutions is also "Wife 22". Readers will be privy to her honest and witty response to an anonymous survey on marital satisfaction. Over time, her correspondence with Researcher 101 has taken an unexpectedly personal turn, and soon, she comes dangerously close to making a decision that will affect more than her happiness.

Rights sold to 19 countries and optioned for film. Perfect escapism and a breezy, delightful summer read.

* * = starred reviews

Fabulous Fiction Firsts #330

Sun, 05/13/2012 - 5:15pm by muffy

Joining a recent crop of fictional biographies of famous women and their little-known love affairs such as The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott and Romancing Miss Brontë is Rosie Sultan's Helen Keller in Love.

No doubt we are all familiar with Helen Keller's early education as depicted in The Miracle Worker, a play by William Gibson (which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1960, and adapted into an Oscar-winning feature film in 1962), but we are less likely to remember her for her strong interest in women's rights, universal suffrage, and social activism. Very little is written about her private and emotional life.

This debut novel imagines a 30-something Helen's love affair with Peter Fagan, a brass young journalist hired to step in as her secretary when Annie Sullivan was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Their daily sensual interactions of signing and lip-reading with hands and fingers quickly set in motion a liberating, passionate, and clandestine affair, which was met with stern disapproval from her family and Annie. Helen is caught between the expectations of the people who love her and her most intimate desires.

"Richly textured and deeply sympathetic", it vividly depicts Helen's inner life and her feelings of utter dependence and loneliness and her desperate desire to be treated as a woman.

Rosie Sultan (website), winner of a PEN Discovery Award for fiction, has taught writing at Boston University, the University of Massachusetts, and Suffolk University. She lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.

May's Books to Film

Sat, 05/12/2012 - 5:58pm by muffy

The Avengers (PG-13) is based on the Marvel comic series by Stan Lee, first published in 1963 and remains a bestseller. A Super Hero team featuring iconic Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Captain America, Hawkeye and Black Widow must face an unexpected enemy that threatens global safety and security. With Robert Downey, Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, and Samuel L. Jackson.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (PG-13) follows a group of British retirees who decide to “outsource” their retirement to less expensive and seemingly exotic India. Enticed by advertisements for the newly restored Marigold Hotel and bolstered with visions of a life of leisure, they arrive to find the palace a shell of its former self. Though the new environment is less luxurious than imagined, they are forever transformed by their shared experiences, discovering that life and love can begin again when you let go of the past. The script is based on a novel by Deborah Moggach, previously published in the UK as These Foolish Things.

Starring Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Dev Patel, Tom Wilkinson, and Maggie Smith, it is my pick for our girls' night out.

What to Expect When You’re Expecting (PG-13) is adapted from Arlene Eisenberg's (written with her daughters Heidi Eisenberg Murkoff and Sandee Eisenberg Hathaway) perennial bestseller. It is a hilarious and heartfelt big screen comedy about five couples whose intertwined lives are turned upside down by the challenges of impending parenthood. Cameron Diaz, Jennifer Lopez, Elizabeth Banks, Chace Crawford, Brooklyn Decker complete the cast.

Fabulous Fiction Firsts #329

Sat, 05/12/2012 - 2:02pm by muffy

I have done nothing in the last 2 days except immersing myself in Beatriz Williams's Overseas, a rather puzzling title (the connection will be revealed in due course) for this most appealing romantic fantasy (or is it a paranormal romance?).

Independent, ambitious, smart Kate Wilson, an analyst at Sterling Bates (Bear Stearns, you think?) catches the eyes of British billionaire hedge fund mogel (and a 5-star client) Julian Laurence. The chemistry is undeniable and the flirty emails promise a whole lot more. Then Julian begs off. Kate is crushed. Months later, they finally connect, after a timely rescue at Central Park. (You get the picture, no violins but some nice Chopin, courtesy of Mr. there-is-nothing-he-can't do).

Of course disaster strikes, fast, furious, but not entirely out of the blue, though Julian did! Kate finds out that Julian is actually Julian Laurence Ashford, aristocratic WWI hero/poet, supposedly killed in 1916 in France. Now a mysterious and malevolent force is out to destroy them. It seems like Kate, with her 21st century sensibility and toughness is the only one who could travel back in time, reverse the course of history to save them.

This debut novel which won two Romance Writers of America awards already, is poised to become the sizzling read this summer. Comparison is being made to Diana Gabaldon and Anne Fortier. Fans of the movie Pretty Woman will delight in the frame of the novel - the Cinderella storyline, the Manhattan glitterati (a ruby necklace made an appearance here as well), and sometime, if we are lucky, love could rescue us.

Readers interested in the scenes set in World War I Amiens might check out historical notes at the author's website. The character Julian Laurence Ashford is actually based on biographical details from a number of historical figures. Amiens is also the setting for Sebastian Faulks' "intensely romantic yet stunningly realistic" Birdsong, recently adapted into a PBS Television Masterpiece Classic.

* = starred review

Checkout the Thrilling Tale, "God's Spy"

Fri, 05/11/2012 - 12:00pm by ErinDurrett

If you are looking for a new adventure and don't shy away from murder, intrigue and graphic violence, God’s Spy could be the next book for you! Originally published in Spain, Juan Gomez-Jurado's God’s Spy is a thrilling story about a serial killer loose in Vatican City just after the death of the last pope, Pope John Paul II. The tale alternates between past events leading to the killer's arrival in Vatican City and the present circumstances, where a new Pope must be elected and potential candidates for the honor are being murdered.

Our serial murderer is revealed from page one, a former priest forced into a rehabilitation home for wayward clergy members with substance abuse problems or sexual repressions that manifest as physical abuse. Led by Paola Dicanti, head of the Laboratory for Behavioral Analysis, investigators must find the killer before another victim can be taken. Using her incredible talents, Paola must get inside of the mind of the disturbed priest and create a profile that will enable investigators to track him down. Definitely not for the faint of heart, this book is a great read if you have an interest in psychological profiling and general intrigue.

Fabulous Fiction "Firsts" #328

Fri, 05/04/2012 - 9:04pm by muffy

Gillespie and I is British author Jane Harris' second novel (first in our collection), and a follow-up to her award-winning The Observations (2006).

Writing her memoirs in her Bloomsbury flat in 1933, Ms. Harriet Baxter recounts the summer of 1888 when she traveled to Glasgow as a well-heeled, youngish spinster, eager to embrace the excitement of the International Exhibition.

Untethered, self-assured but nevertheless adrift and grieving from the recent death of her kindly aunt, Harriet was immediately drawn to Ned Gillespie, a young, immensely talented painter and his large, eccentric family. "The initially playful narrative tone darkens decidedly as the double mystery of Ned's eventual suicide and Harriet's reliability as a memoirist steadily unpeels."

This "elegant novel of love, loss and redemption among the Victorians and Caledonians", is "irresistible and unforgettable". Already long listed for the Orange Prize, and shortlisted for the Galaxy National Book Awards, it "places (Harris) alongside Michel Faber, D.J. Taylor, and Sarah Waters as a gifted 21st-century conjuror of new 19th-century novels incorporating our own era's sensibilities while deeply honoring the milieu of the characters she creates."

"A rewarding, gripping, and disconcerting novel".

Winners of the 2012 Indies Choice Award for adult fiction and non-fiction

Fri, 05/04/2012 - 6:26pm by prlhw

The American Booksellers Association (ABA) has released the titles of the winners of the 2012 Indies Choice Award for the adult fiction and non-fiction categories.

And the winners are... for fiction, The Marriage Plot, by Jeffrey Eugenides, and for non-fiction, Blood, bones, & butter: the inadvertent education of a reluctant chef by Gabrielle Hamilton.

From the ABA website: "The Indies Choice Book Awards reflect the spirit of independent bookstores nationwide and the IndieBound movement. Book of the Year winners and Honor Award recipients are all titles nominated by ABA member booksellers to the Indie Next Lists... [The finalists] were chosen by a jury of seven ABA member booksellers from titles appearing on the Indie Next Lists in 2011."

Last year, the winner of the adult fiction category was Room, by Emma Donoghue and non-fiction went to Unbroken: a World War II airman's story of survival, resilience, and redemption by Laura Hillenbrand.

ABA also has a category for the Indies Choice Award called the Adult Debut Book of the Year, which for 2012 went to Téa Obreht's The Tiger's Wife. The 26-year-old author's first novel instantly became a huge success, also winning the United Kingdom's most prestigious literary award in 2011, the Orange Prize for Fiction.

Fabulous Fiction Firsts #327

Tue, 05/01/2012 - 5:49pm by muffy

True * is author Riikka Pulkkinen's first novel available in English. A graduate of the University of Helsinki, she received the Kaarle Prize and the Laila Hirvisaari Prize in 2007 for her first novel The Border.

Haunting and melancholic, True is forty years of family secrets and untold history, gradually teased out through the voices of the three generations of the Ahlqvist women. Elsa, a world-renowned child psychologist is dying. Daughter Ella, a brutally efficient physician and granddaughters Anna and Maria are struggling to cope, but have accepted Elsa's wishes to spend her remaining days at home. When Elsa proposes a dress-up picnic in the spring sunshine, Anna pulls out a lovely dress hidden for decades in a closet - a dress that belongs to Eeva, her mother's nanny. Eeva's forgotten story, whom her grandparents have been silent about for years, is finally revealed layer by layer through Elsa's painful recounting and Anna's probing, and resonates with her own loss. As Eeva once observed : "Love is always true".

"Pulkkinen has a fine eye for description and infuses her characters with longing". "The emotional intelligence of the prose avoids melodrama to develop authentic poignancy." A fine writer to watch.

"Beautifully translated by Lola M. Rogers to capture the full chill of a Finnish winter and the lightness of its spring,"

* = Starred review

World Language Books on CD

Mon, 04/23/2012 - 2:40pm by lucroe

Did you know that the library has books on CD (or BOCDs) in different languages at the Downtown branch in both Youth and Adult? Languages that we currently have BOCDs for are Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish.

All are shelved after the books in the respective language in either the Youth (1st floor) or Adult (3rd floor) World Language Collection. They have the same loan period as regular BOCDs. And, as with many of our other materials, you can place holds and request them for pick up at any of our branches. You can find them in our catalog here or by doing a search by call number for ' bocd world*' for the adult (or click here) and ' youth-bocd world* ' for the youth (or click here).

#10 Amazon Teen Bestseller: The Serpent's Shadow

Sun, 04/22/2012 - 3:33pm by annevm

Coming out May 1 is another Rick Riordan novel sure to appeal to many teen readers: The Serpent's Shadow, today #10 on Amazon's List of Teen Best Sellers. This is Book 3 in the Kane Chronicles, following Book 1 The Red Pyramid and Book 2 The Throne of Fire. In what apparently is the final installment, Apophis, the chaos snake, is back, and Carter and Sade Kane are struggling to keep him down. As the snake threatens eternal darkness over the globe, the Kanes aim to defeat him forever. Making their task most difficult are characters including the magicians of the House of Life, who are approaching civil war, and the gods, who are split. There is hope, though, in an ancient spell that might have power to turn the serpent's shadow into a weapon. Right now there are 74 people waiting for the book at AADL.