July's Books to Film (and a nice way to get out of the heat)

Wed, 07/20/2011 - 9:19pm by muffy

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is based on the novel by Lisa See.
China. Parallel stories, generations apart. Two young girls bound together by circumstances, history, and a secret language written on the folds of a white silk fan.

Sarah's Key is based on the novel by Tatiana de Rosnay.
Paris, July 1942: 10 yr.old Sarah locks her younger brother in a secret hiding place to save him from the Nazi round-up. Sixty-seven years later, Julia Jarmond, an American journalist stumbles onto a trail of secrets that link her to Sarah, and to questions about her own romantic future.

The film Cowboys & Aliens is adapted from Scott Mitchell Rosenberg's work of the same title.
1873. Arizona Territory. A stranger with no memory of his past stumbles into the hard desert town of Absolution, a town that lives in fear. But this stranger the town rejects might just be the only hope from the marauders from the sky.

Based on the real-life experience of Iraqi army lieutenant Latif Yahia as detailed in his book I was Saddam's Son, The Devil's Double recounts how he was ordered to become the body double to Saddam's son- the notorious "Black Prince" Uday Hussein, a reckless, sadistic party-boy with a rabid hunger for sex and brutality.

Good Neighbors is based on Chere Voisine by Chrystine Brouillet.
Neighbors Spencer and Louise have bonded over their fascination with a recent string of murders. When Victor moves in, they hit it off. But as they soon discover, each of them has their own dark secret. What they once thought of as a safe haven is as dangerous as any outside terrors they could imagine.

The First Avenger: Captain America is based on the Marvel Comics series by Ed Brubaker.
Steve Rogers volunteers to participate in an experimental program that turns him into the Super Soldier known as Captain America, joining forces with Bucky Barnes and Peggy Carter to wage war on the evil HYDRA organization, led by the villainous Red Skull.

Fabulous Fiction Firsts #277

Tue, 07/19/2011 - 5:08pm by muffy

NPR's Three Critics Pick The Best Books For Summer (listen to the podcast) has some fabulous titles. And no one was surprised that The Hypnotist * * featured prominently on it. Now NPR just unmasked the identity of the author(s), known until now, as Lars Kepler.

Stockholm. A gruesome triple murder. 15 year-old, the only witness/survivor, sustained 100 knife-wounds and is in shock. Detective Inspector Joona Linna's only option - to enlist the help of Dr. Erik Maria Bark, the hypnotist.

The battle-worn Linna and the reluctant and scarred Bark unwittingly set off a chain of violent events that climax at a remote cabin north of the Arctic Circle.

An international bestseller and already being adapted for film, The Hypnotist is an adrenaline- and action-packed thriller, "smart and unpredictable", atmospheric as it is cinematic. A nordic crime mystery debut to rival some of the best in the genre.

* * = Starred reviews

Fabulous Fiction Firsts #276

Fri, 07/15/2011 - 3:07pm by muffy

Graveminder * (also available in audio ) is the first adult title by popular YA author Melissa Marr (Wicked Lovely series).

Her grandmother Maylene's death brings Bek (Rebekkah) Barrow back to Claysville, a sleepy little town with strict rules how the dead are to be buried. Without a thought, Bek slips into performing the strange rituals at the gravesite that she has watched Maylene performed over the years: she takes three sips from a silver flask and speaks the words "Sleep well, and stay where I put you."

Bek never suspects that with Maylene's passing, she is the new "graveminder", the next Barrow female to uphold the century-old contract between the worlds of the living and the dead. Worse yet, no one will tell her that Maylene was actually murdered, and danger is lurking in Claysville. The dead are hungry.

Byron Montgomery, the young Undertaker seems to be the only one who could help her set things right once the dead begin to walk, but he is also the last person Bek would want to involve considering their complicated past and the itchy spark between them that Bek is trying desperately to ignore.

"Haunting, captivating, brilliant!" Check out the author's website and Maylene's Scrapbook for the backstory of the graveminders. A nice cross-over for YA readers.

Want more creepy/chilling read this summer?

Try So Cold the River by Michael Koryta (in audio); Coffin County by Gary Braunbeck; and The Caretaker of Lorne Field by Dave Zeltserman. Perfect to read around the campfire. Don't wander off though, and make sure someone's got your back.

* = Starred review

Fabulous Fiction Firsts #274

Fri, 07/08/2011 - 3:00pm by muffy

The hype for Alice LaPlante's Turn of Mind * * * * is building to a fever pitch with its publication this week. It is the leading title for the publisher this season. We saw early review copies back in January and knew this was going to be BIG, and now all the reviews just confirmed that it is the "must read" of the season.

The narrator is Dr. Jennifer White, a widowed retired orthopedic surgeon with rapidly advancing dementia. She is the prime suspect in the murder of her best friend and neighbor Amanda O'Toole. As proud and forceful women, their relationship has been complex and rocky at times. The killer has surgically removed four of Amanda's fingers, and worse yet, Jennifer does not know whether she did it or not. As the investigation into the murder deepens and White’s relationships with her live-in caretaker and two grown children intensify, a chilling question lingers: is White’s shattered memory preventing her from revealing the truth or helping her to hide it?

"A startling portrait of a disintegrating mind clinging to bits of reality through anger, frustration, shame, and unspeakable loss, Turn of Mind is a remarkable debut that examines the deception and frailty of memory and how it defines our very existence."

"An extraordinarily crafted debut novel... the author is able to do it so convincingly through the eyes and voice of the central character is an amazing achievement. Heartbreaking and stunning, this is both compelling and painful to read."

Good companion read to this year's bumper crop of FFFs dealing with neuroscience and the strange and wondrous workings of the human mind. See blogs on Left Neglected and Before I Go to Sleep. Turn of Mind also joins a growing list of titles dealing with Alzheimer's, and does it brilliantly.

Alice LaPlante was a Wallace Stegner Fellow and a Jones Lecturer at Stanford University. She teaches creative writing at both Stanford and San Francisco State University.

* * * * = Starred Reviews

Fabulous Fiction Firsts #271

Fri, 06/17/2011 - 7:57pm by muffy

A Cambridge grad (English Lit.), Rosamund Lupton won the Carlton Television's new writers' competition and was selected by the BBC for a place on their new writers' course before becoming a novelist. Her debut Sister: a novel * * * was originally published (2010) in the UK in paperback. Steadily building up steam and garnering great reviews (The New York Times, for example) along the way, it is likely to be one of the big "must reads" this summer. I read it in one night. Just couldn't put it down.

When Bee (Beatrice) Hemming receives a call in Manhattan from her mother that her sister Tess is missing, she is on the next plane out to London. The sisters are THAT close. When Tess is found dead (in an apparent suicide) Bee refuses to accept that. As Bee moves into Tess's art student studio/apartment, tracks down her friends and lovers, traces her movements leading up to her disappearance, a disturbing picture begins to emerge. All the tell-tale signs point to the murderer as someone Tess knows and trusts, someone that might see Bee now as a threat.

The narrative takes the form of a series of intimate letters from Bee to Tess as she recounts their family life, the fierce devotion between them, as well as being an effective device that would allow Bee to lay out in meticulous details, her fearless pursue of the murderer.

"A chilling, gripping, tragic, heartwarming, life-affirming enigma of a story" . "A skillfully wrought psychological thriller". You might be a bit late to the party already (Sorry about the waiting list), but don't miss this one.

Watch Rosamund Lupton discuss the inspiration behind the writing of the book on YouTube.

* * * = starred reviews.

Fabulous Fiction Firsts #267

Wed, 06/01/2011 - 7:02pm by muffy

S.J. Watson's Before I Go to Sleep : a novel * * * is definitely the buzz of the summer, the book everyone is waiting to get their hands on.

Young and single Christine Lucas awakes each morning appalled with the 47 year-old woman looking back at her in the mirror. A man named Ben reminds her each day he is her husband. Each night as she sleeps, her near-term memory is wiped clean. With the help of her memory coach Dr. Nash, Christine keeps a secret journal which contains key details from her past, details that don't quite match the story Ben has been telling her.

With a taut and well-constructed plot, the immediacy of the first-person narrative, and the pulse-pounding suspense, British debut novelist Watson gives us one of the season's very best psychological thriller. Rights sold to 34 countries. Film rights to Ridley Scott. Early blurbs by Dennis Lehane and Tess Gerritsen.

* * * = Starred reviews

Fabulous Fiction Firsts #263

Sat, 05/14/2011 - 6:48pm by muffy

Touch *, Alexi Zentner's debut is set in Sawgamet, a north woods boomtown gone bust, where the cold of winter breaks the glass of the schoolhouse thermometer, and the dangers of working in the cuts are overshadowed by the mysteries and magic lurking in the woods. Stephen, a pastor, is at home on the eve of his mother's funeral, thirty years after the mythic summer his grandfather returned to the town in search of his beloved but long-dead wife. And like his grandfather, Stephen is forced to confront the losses of his past.

"Touch introduces you to a world where monsters and witches oppose singing dogs and golden caribou, where the living and the dead part and meet again in the crippling beauty of winter and the surreal haze of summer."

It brings to mind another powerful debut Three Day Road by fellow Canadian Joseph Boyden. It is a stunning tale of brutality, survival, and rebirth set in Northern Ontario where Niska, an Oji-Cree medicine woman journeyed to retrieve Xavier Bird, her only relation, who has returned from the trenches of Europe, gravely wounded and addicted to morphine.

Sharron Smith, a librarian who knows everything Canadian (mostly books and authors), also suggests Gil Adamson's The Outlander as a readalike for its setting (wilderness); the suspense (the deadly pursuit of a young woman accused of murder); the style (slow and lyrical unfolding of the storyline); and the elements of magical realism.

* = Starred review

Fabulous Fiction Firsts #262

Sat, 05/14/2011 - 5:08pm by muffy

After the second ice age, America Pacifica is one of the last habitable places and it is the only home that 18 year-old Darcy ever known. The island is ruled by a mysterious dictator named Tyson where education, food and the basic means of survival are strictly rationed and controlled by the "chosen" few.

Darcy lives a hand-to-mouth existence with her mother Sarah, a pearl diver by trade, in a leaky apartment. When Sarah disappears, Darcy embarks on a quest to find her. Along the way, Darcy learns about her island home's history, the secrets her mother guarded fiercely, and the same secrets that now put Darcy in mortal danger.

In Anna North's richly imagined debut novel set in the near future, she chooses to downplay the "science" aspects in favor of a more naturalist and realistic narrative, from the perspective of a likable heroine who is plucky and resourceful as she is melancholic and vulnerable. "An entertaining, stylishly written doomsday novel."

Readers looking for a readalike to Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games might find Darcy a new protagonist to root for.

Fans of post-apocalyptic dystopian, global-disaster survival story might also enjoy the Flood series by Stephen Baxter.

Fabulous Fiction Firsts #257

Fri, 04/22/2011 - 6:45pm by muffy

In Paul Elwork's atmospheric debut The Girl Who Would Speak for the Dead * 13 year-old twins Emily and Michael Stewart, privileged, precocious and orphaned from the Great War are allowed to roam aimlessly around their family's estate along the Delaware River until one day Emily discovers a special "gift" that they take to fool the neighborhood children as "spirit knockings".

Somehow this game of contacting the dead catches on with adults reeling from loss and grief, desperate to believe in life after death. In the meantime, Emily is trying to piece together her own family's history, reaching back to plantation life in Virginia, and discovering family secrets planted along the way.

Loosely based on true events from the early 20th century, this "subtle and moving portrayal of people in the grip of powerful emotions that overwhelm rational thinking will haunt readers long after they put the book down." "Family secrets, a love triangle, and a duplicitous magician add to the darkening atmosphere of a thought-provoking novel that blurs the boundaries between faith and trickery."

* = starred review

Fabulous Fiction Firsts #256

Fri, 04/15/2011 - 5:37pm by muffy

Harvard grad Edward Conlon is a former detective with the New York City Police Department. His memoir Blue Blood (2004) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; a New York Times Notable Book; and has been adapted into a popular television series.

His highly anticipated debut novel Red on Red * * * * tells the story of two NYPD detectives, Meehan and Esposito and their fierce and unlikely friendship. One damaged and introspective, the other ambitious and unscrupulous, they nevertheless prove to be complimentary and a successful team working the rough Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, handling gritty crimes of suicides, rapes, gang wars, and the disappearance of a troubled Catholic schoolgirl who is a mystery in her own right.

A potent mix of strong story line, police jargon, crisp dialog, black humor, with complicated romances thrown in for good measure, makes this a captivating thrill ride. A readalike for Lou Manfredo's Rizzo's War (and its follow-up Rizzo's Fire), and gritty police/crime thrillers of Joseph Wambaugh, George Pelecanos, and Dennis Lehane.

* * * * = starred reviews