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Fabulous Fiction Firsts #610
by muffy
One of Bon Appetit's 8 New Food Novels to Read This Year - The City Baker's Guide to Country Living is a debut novel by Boston pastry chef Louise Miller.
Running away is what thirtysomething Livvy (Olivia) Rawlings does best. After her Baked Alaska sets fire to Boston's exclusive Emerson Club, she packs up and heads north to Guthrie, Vermont where her childhood (and only) friend Hannah lives. Luck would have it, the Sugar Maple Inn needs a pastry chef, a job that comes with a charming little cottage - the Sugarhouse.
Margaret Hurley, the cantankerous and demanding inn owner puts Livvy through her paces but is soon won over by Livvy's creations, along with the guests and the town-folks. Before long, Livvy finds herself immersed in small town life and intense scrutiny when she gets involved with Martin McCracken, a prodigal son who has returned to tend his ailing father.
After a Rockwell-worthy Thanksgiving, a funeral, and a surprise visitor shake things up, Livvy must decide whether to do what she does best and flee--or stay and finally discover what it means to belong.
This August Indie Next and LibraryReads pick, will appeal fo fans of Kitchens of the Great Midwest by Ryan Stradal; South of Superior by Ellen Airgood; novels by Erica Bauermesiter and the Little Beach Street Bakery series by Jenny Colgan.
Blog Post
If you liked Stranger Things…
by manz
The most talked about television show of the summer has been Stranger Things, a Netflix original that premiered on July 15. If you have not watched it yet, stop reading this and go watch it immediately.
Okay, you’re back. The 8-episode sci-fi horror series hit children of the 80s in the face like a bag of nostalgia that they didn’t know they needed so badly in 2016. Created by the Duffer brothers, it’s filled with enough suspenseful fright to keep you up at night (grab a buddy to watch with), but also adorned with well intended, adorable, adventurous kids to keep you smiling.
Set in 1983 the story follows four 12 year old boys who geek out over Dungeons and Dragons and the AV club. One of them goes missing and the others try to find him once his disappearance turns suspicious. Enter a small town police chief, a frantic mother of the boy gone missing (played effortlessly by Winona Ryder), a government lab, a mysterious alien creature, and a psychokinetic 12 year old girl… and well, you’ve got quite a story.
The show references so many 70s and 80s films it almost seems unreal. It’s an homage to Steven Spielberg and Stephen King. It’s Stand By Me meets Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It’s Cujo meets The Goonies. It’s Firestarter meets E.T. It’s IT meets Cloak and Dagger. It goes so far. And the music? Yes. An 80s soundtrack paired with eerie electronic music and John Carpenter-ish synth twangs, which fills another void you didn’t know existed. The first volume of a soundtrack will be released digitally this Friday, with a CD to follow.
As a fan of what I call “little boy adventure stories,” I was hooked immediately, and the nostalgia and soundtrack sealed the deal and created many late nights of watching the show.
Here is a list of books and movies that might be of interest to you if you finished season 1 and are jonesing for season 2 to begin, and yes, the Duffer brothers have claimed there are more seasons to follow.
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #609 “Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by doubling our joys, and dividing our grief.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
by muffy
Shutting out the world beyond her Paris apartment for a whole year after the accidental deaths of her husband and young daughter, leaving management of her literary cafe Happy People Read & Drink Coffee in the hands of her well-meaning-but-not-so-capable partner Felix, Diane is finally ready to join the world of the living. Out of the blue, she announces that she will be moving to Ireland, the one place her late husband had wanted to visit.
Renting an isolated cottage in Mulranny along the wind-swept Irish coast, Diane makes tentative steps towards rebuilding her life, aided by endless cigarettes, music, copious amount of wine, friendly villagers and Postman Pat, a canine who takes an immediate liking to her. The exception being Postman Pat's owner, her neighbor - the rude and abrasive photographer, Edward, who is battling his own demons. I don't have to tell you what is likely to happen....
Agnes Martin-Lugand's debut, already an international bestseller, confronts life's most nightmarish tragedy with an unblinking examination. "For readers of women’s journeys and tales of hope, this slim volume engages thoughts and feelings without whitewashing grief." (Booklist). In development as a Weinstein Company feature film, sequel anticipated.
Journalist and translator Milena Busquets's debut This Too Shall Pass * is a lively, sexy, honest, and moving novel about a woman coming to terms with grief.
Forty year-old Blanca is wrecked with grief, losing her mother - the most important person in her life. Unable to carry on in Barcelona, she returns to her mother’s former home in Cadaqués with, among others, 2 sons, 2 ex-husbands, 2 best friends, and looking forward to meeting up with her married lover.
Surrounded by those she loves most, she spends the summer in an impossibly beautiful place, finding ways to reconnect and understand what it means to truly live on her own terms, just as her mother would have wanted.
"Witty and playful in tone as well as poignant and reflective, Busquets’ novel is drawn in part from the loss of her own mother, Esther Busquets, a prominent publishing figure in Spain. The seductions of its setting add to its appeal for American readers." (Booklist) Film rights to Buenos Aires based producer Daniel Burman.
* = starred review
Blog Post
Heart-tugging Fantasy Book from Newberry Winning Author
by mansii
Fans of Karen Cushman--Newberry winner for The Midwife’s Apprentice, and author of a lifetime of other beloved historical fiction novels--will be absolutely enthralled by her latest novel, Grayling’s Song. Without leaving behind her usual depth and heart-tugging characters, Cushman brings a new world to life with a pinch of magic.
Confronted with a task far larger than she feels capable of managing, Grayling—an ordinary girl with a magical mother—grows in maturity and compassion through the choices she must make. Despite her sense of inadequacy, when an unknown evil steals the Grimoire (their book of spells) and roots her mother to the ground, Grayling must go out alone to rescue her mother and the book. With each new magical friend she meets along the way, Grayling’s hopes rise that they will be the one to conquer the evil. She meets a weather witch, a complaining helpless ward, an enchantress, and a diviner of cheese. But though each have “bits and pieces” of usefulness, making a team of unlikely heroes, only Grayling can lead the way. Only she can sing a song that beckons an answering tune from the Grimoire which they must find.
Through a series of circumstances that stretch her heart till she almost has nothing left to give, Grayling gradually becomes the hero she never imagined she could be. Rather than leaving us with the wish to escape to another reality where magic makes hardship better, Grayling’s world reminds us that in winning our battles what we need is not the extra talent of another that we so easily envy. Instead, what triumphs in our trials is the strength of character that builds itself by small choices in the right direction. This precious story inspires an overflowing heart, and hope in the journey that’s it’s adding up to something worth every scab.
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Fabulous Fiction Firsts #608 “In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. And that makes me happy.” ~ Albert Camus
by muffy
Invincible Summer by Alice Adams is "a dazzling depiction of the highs and lows of adulthood, ... a story about finding the courage to carry on in the wake of disappointment, and a powerful testament to love and friendship as the constants in an ever-changing world." (Kirkus Reviews)
Eva, Benedict, and siblings Sylvie and Lucien were inseparable throughout college. Upon graduation Eva, hopelessly in love with playboy Lucien breaks away to scale the peak of global finance, and finds herself lonely in her London loft. Artistic Sylvie and carefree Lucien travel the world, looking for adventure and good times. Only Benedict stays behind, pursuing a PhD in Physics, and pining over Eva.
Over the course of 2 decades, these friends would meet up, determined to remain close while circumstances, geography, and life choices strain their relationships until tragedies draw them together again, but in ways they never could have imaged.
"Adams has crafted a light, charming tale of love, loss, and the lasting power of friendship... the characters are engaging and one cannot help but care about them. All in all, a perfect summer read." (Booklist) For fans of Meg Wolitzer's The Interestings and Lucky Us by Amy Bloom.
Chronicle of a Last Summer: a novel of Egypt by Yasmine El Rashidi traces a young Egyptian woman's coming of age through three pivotal summers, from the oppressive Mubarak era to the turbulent Arab Spring.
Cairo, 1984. the 6 year-old unnamed narrator, observant and wildly imaginative, spends the hot summer days away from her English school listening to her mother’s phone conversations, watching the three state-sanctioned TV stations with the volume off, and wondering about her father's absence - why, or to where, no one will say.
In 1998, the narrator, now a university student and an aspiring filmmaker, yearns for change but is deeply fearful of terrorism and the repression that surrounds her. Finally, as a writer in 2104, after reunited with her father, she is acutely aware of how difficult it is to affect any real change, and wonders about the silences that have marked and shaped her generation.
Yasmine El Rashidi covers Egypt and the Middle East for the The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. She splits her time between New York City and Cairo.
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Modern Lovers: not your typical summer read
by eapearce
Emma Straub gifted readers with the perfect summer novel two years ago, with The Vacationers, a beach read that was made so much more by the insight and wit with which Straub captured her characters. This summer, she’s done it again with Modern Lovers, a less beachy (it takes place in Brooklyn rather than the Mallorca setting of The Vacationers) but equally riveting story.
Former college bandmates Elizabeth, Andrew and Zoe have remained friends and neighbors since graduating thirty years ago. They’ve all clung on to their youth, some more successfully than others, but as their own children grow up and begin the fledging steps of adulthood themselves, the three friends must cope with the abrupt realization that they are no longer the young, sexy musicians they once were. It seems at first glance that Elizabeth, Andrew and Zoe have all come to an easy form of success in their adulthood; they have good jobs, families, partners, homes and each other. But it is the summer when their own children reach maturity that this all begins to unravel, and long kept secrets, truths, and loves come to the light. Re-enter the legacy of a fourth band member who actually went on to become famous without the trio but died a tragic death before reaching thirty, and it’s a complicated summer indeed.
“Straub packs wisdom and insight and humor together in a satisfying book about neighbors and nosiness, ambition and pleasure, the excitement of youth, the shock of middle age, and the fact that our passions never go away, they just evolve and grow along with us,” concludes the book jacket. The New York Times Book Review cautions readers from dismissing the book as light vacation reading, despite its sunny cover: “It’s just too deftly and thoughtfully written to be relegated merely to the beach.”
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Fabulous Fiction Firsts #607 "Fin del mundo y principio de todo" (The end of the world and the beginning of everything)
by muffy
My Last Continent by Midge Raymond is "a delicate romance, a fragile habitat, and two people who literally have gone to the end of the earth to find each other." (Booklist).
Every year, environmental scientist Deb Gardner makes the arduous journey to Ushuaia, commonly regarded as the southernmost city in the world - literally the end of the world. For a few weeks on the remote Petermann Island, she studies the Emperor and Adélie penguins in solitude, and conducts eco-tours for the cruise ship company that sponsors the research.
Keller Sullivan, a former Boston attorney appears one season to work as a dishwasher but shares Deb's passion for the environment. Soon they look forward to the blissful few weeks each season spent among their penguin family, to escape the frustrations and sorrows of their separate lives and find solace in their work and in each other. Then Keller fails to show up at the beginning of a new season.
Shortly into the journey, Deb’s ship receives an emergency signal from the Australis, a cruise liner that has hit desperate trouble in the ice-choked waters. Among the crew, Deb finds, is Keller.
"Midge Raymond’s phenomenal novel takes us on a voyage deep into the wonders of the Antarctic and the mysteries of the human heart. My Last Continent is packed with emotional intelligence and high stakes—a harrowing, searching novel of love and loss in one of the most remote places on earth, a land of harsh beauty where even the smallest missteps have tragic consequences... Half adventure, half elegy, and wholly recommended." ~ Karen Joy Fowler
Suggested read-alikes: The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney; The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman; and Euphoria by Lily King.
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Fabulous Fiction Firsts #606, Capitol Crimes
by muffy
The Second Girl * * by former D.C. police detective David Swinson is "an auspicious, and gleefully amoral, series debut" (Kirkus Reviews), featuring retired DC cop Frank Marr - damaged, damned, and an unrepentant drug addict who works sporadically as a private investigator for defense attorney (and occasional bed-mate) Leslie Costello.
When Frank breaks into a drug den to replenish his personal stash, he discovers a teenage girl doped up and chained to the bathroom. Rather than calling the authority and trying to explain his involvement, he hands her off to Leslie, but not before he manages to draw out all the details of her kidnapping. As the news of Amanda Meyer's return to her family, another suburban family with a missing girl hires him to find her, and Frank is not above administering his own brand of justice to get the job done.
"Swinson delivers an excellent addition to the noir genre as he unveils layer after layer of his gritty protagonist. Readers of Dennis Lehane and Richard Price as well as fans of The Wire will appreciate the bleak description of inner-city Washington, DC." (Library Journal)
The Dead Don't Bleed * by David Krugler is a mystery/police procedural/spy thriller set in Washington, D.C at the waning days of WWII.
With victory in sight, the suspicion of communist spies in the capitol is palpable, spies who seem to stop at nothing to get their hands on the atomic bomb project. When Naval Intelligence officer Logan Skerrill is found dead in a back alley of the Navy Yard, Lt. Ellis Voigt is called in to investigate.
With clues of the murder pointing to Skerrill's connection to a news-clipping service suspected of Communist affiliations, Voigt goes undercover. Pursuing crosses and double-crosses, he discovers a defecting German physicist, a top secret lab in Los Alamos, and Uranium-235 which suggest something far larger than the usual spy v. spy shenanigans.
"Voigt is an engaging character.... (History professor) Krugler’s portrait of wartime Washington, particularly the rivalries within ONI and the enmity between the FBI and ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence), is thoroughly absorbing." (Booklist) For fans of David Downing and Philip Kerr
* * = 2 starred reviews
* = starred review
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #605
by muffy
A best-seller in Europe, the first foreign-language romance novel to be translated and published in the U.S, All In * by Swedish author Simona Ahrnstedt is "sexy, smart, and completely unputdownable." (Tessa Dare)
David Hammer, the upstart, infamous venture capitalist and corporate raider, known for his brutal take-overs is poised to pull off the biggest deal in the history of Swedish finance, make it world-wide finance. His sight is set on Investum - one of Sweden's biggest and oldest financial institutions, owned and controlled by the De la Grip Family. After years of planning, all the players are in place; he needs just one member of the owning family on his side—Natalia De la Grip. He invites her to lunch.
(Countess) Natalia is everything David despises - upper-class, traditional, as close to royalty as you could get without actually being royal and yet he finds her brilliant, driven to succeed in a man’s world, and enchanting. Natalia is intrigued by this way-too handsome man who is rich, dangerous, and in the business circles - utterly unethical. However, the powerful chemistry between them leaves both of them exhilarated and vulnerable.
As the deal goes through, it turns out that it is not all about business. Past history, family secrets and revenge will force David and Natalia to confront their innermost fears and desires as they make deeply difficult choices.
“The author’s ability to skillfully fuse a luxurious lifestyle, a refreshingly different Swedish setting, a plot riddled with revenge and financial intrigue, and plenty of steamy romance means All In will be the must-have leisure read everywhere this summer.” (Booklist). For fans of the glitz-and-glam novels of Judith Krantz, Beatriz Williams, and perhaps Sylvia Day.
* = starred review
Blog Post
An Unexpected Path to Redemption
by mansii
Ramona Ausubel's newest expertly crafted novel, Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty, explodes with searing heartache and shocking joy. Through failure, she reveals the mysterious grace that sometimes a person’s most devastating choices are also their means to redemption.
Beginning with all the glitz of Gatsby, we are introduced to a young couple in their 20s, Fern and Edgar, who enjoy the life of the rich while romanticizing visions of laboring for every penny. But when their wealth completely and suddenly disappears, Edgar and Fern catapult away from each other. Fern wants Edgar to take over his father’s business, be a man, and make them an income. Edgar revolts against Fern pushing him into the shackles of a life he does not want and runs head-long into his first affair.
In rage, and gasping for escape, both husband and wife set out on their own trips, paired with the temporary salves of other lovers, willing to risk their marriage to force their idea of happy. As wrongly motivated as their respective journeys are, these turn out to be pathways to redemption. Edgar becomes aware of his weakness as he incurs temporary blindness, causing him to long for the comfort of the wife who knows him in all his forms. Fern's journey confronts her with past regrets and destructive inherited values, a catharsis that reminds her that she is more whole not in isolation, but in the history and struggle of family.
Edgar and Fern return, softened, back into each other’s lives. Though their choices will undoubtedly scar, they have been rescued to a healing they had yet to know. Before the road they imagined existence and meaning might be found in a way of life they had not attained, with a different heritage and fulfilled dreams. Now, Fern and Edgar understand that completeness is found through giving of oneself, through allowing oneself to be defined in terms of another: a wife, a husband, a mother, a son, a neighbor, a friend.
In language emotional and gripping, Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty affirms the worth and beauty of that sacred word: family.