Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #362
by muffy
Award-winning poet Douglas Nicholas beautifully evokes 13th century England in his debut novel Something Red *, " a haunting story of love, murder, and sorcery. "
It was the coldest winter in memory, Mistress Molly, a traveling Irish healer must find shelter in the Pennine Mountains for her troupe before heavy snow set in. They sought refuge in a monastery where they first became aware of the presence of a mysterious evil force. There they met fellow travelers both humble and high-born, and soon realized that danger was lurking around them. Nothing was as it seemed, and the journey for survival was as magical as it was perilous.
"An intoxicating blend of fantasy and mythology, Something Red presents an enchanting world full of mysterious and fascinating characters - shapeshifters, sorceresses, warrior monks, and knights, where no one is safe from the terrible being that lurks in the darkness".
"Nicholas puts his flair for language and imagery to good use in his atmospheric first novel....A wickedly clever and evocative combination of history, horror, mystery, and magic."
* = starred review
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #361
by muffy
Known as the Babe Ruth of Bank Robbers, Willie Sutton, one of the most notorious criminals in American history is also a folk hero to some. He stole over $2 millions, often in costumes (thus dubbed "the actor"), engineered dramatic prison breaks and was serving virtually a life sentence when he received a surprise pardon on Christmas Eve in 1969.
In his debut novel, Sutton *, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter J. R. Moehringer relays, in electrifying prose, the highs and lows of Sutton's dramatic life, from the thrill of the heist and his great, doomed love affair to the brutal interrogations by cops and the hell of years spent in solitary confinement, all the while probing the psyche of an enigmatic man who had a genius for thievery and an even greater capacity for self-delusion.
"A captivating and absorbing read", that will appeal to true crime fans who enjoyed Catch Me if You Can : the amazing true story of the youngest and most daring con man in the history of fun and profit! by Frank W. Abagnale, Jr. (as a feature film).
For biographical fiction of other famous crime figures, try Bill Brooks' Bonnie and Clyde : a love story and And All the Saints by Michael Walsh, based on the life of Owen "Owney" Madden, the most influential mobster of the 20th century.
* = starred review
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #360
by muffy
In the first of the Valencian crime series, debut novelist Jason Webster introduced Chief Inspector Max Camara in Or the Bull Kills You * * (2011) where he is roped into investigating the grisly murder of a star matador. Not only does he hate bullfighting but what he finds on the blood-stained sand shocks the city of Valencia to its core.
In the follow-up, A Death in Valencia * Max is feeling low and virtually homeless (now that! ... is another story in itself). On the eve of a papal visit, the body of a well-known (and Max's favorite) paella chef washes up on the beach, drawing Max into a web of corruption and violence as he tried to untangle these threads.
"Dark and witty..., the plot is fast and twisting, the scene-setting vivid, and the atmosphere powerfully authentic, showcasing the determined, lonesome Camara, with his love of flamenco and brandy, and occasional doped-out high, A Death in Valencia delves into issues that rouse unruly passions and divide the Spanish people today."
"The undercurrent of melancholy, as Camara finds himself in conflict with the powers-that-be, sets this apart from the usual Southern European procedural/whodunit ". Will appeal to fans of the brooding, sexy Aurelio Zen Series by Michael Dibdin (now available as a PBS Masterpiece Mystery series).
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Born in California, journalist and travel writer Jason Webster ( website) moved to Spain in 1993. He lives near Valencia with his wife, the flamenco dancer, Salud.
* * = starred reviews
* = starred review
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #359
by muffy
Wednesday, October 10th at 7pm, author Peter Geye will be at Nicola's for a discussion and signing of his new novel The Lighthouse Road * , in which a young immigrant woman in 1890s Duluth, finds herself alone in a new country, abandoned and adrift. In the early 1920s, her orphan son, now grown, falls in love with the one woman he shouldn't and uses his best skills to build them their own small ark to escape. "Peter Geye has crafted another deeply moving tale of a misbegotten family shaped by the rough landscape in which they live--often at the mercy of wildlife and weather."
His first novel Safe from the Sea (in audio, nicely performed by David Aaron Baker), is "an archetypal story of a father and son, of the tug and pull of family bonds, (and) of Norwegian immigrant culture". Antique map-dealer Noah Torrs reluctantly returns from Boston to the lakeside cabin north of Duluth to spend time with his estranged father Olaf, who is dying. Once a curmudgeonly, headstrong ship's captain, and one of three survivors from the coal freighter Ragnarok that sank on Lake Superior, Olaf is still haunted after 35 years by the memory a friend he felt he could have saved and the catastrophic repercussions for his young family.
"Geye tackles the subjects of death, dying, and living with admirable insight and courage." For readers who enjoy David Guterson, Robert Olmstead , and Canadians Joseph Boyden and Stef Penney.
A Minnesota native, Peter Geye ( webiste) received his Ph.D. from Western Michigan University , where he taught Creative Writing and was editor of Third Coast.
* = starred review
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #358
by muffy
UM grad (MFA) Scott Hutchins, a Truman Capote Fellow in the Wallace Stegner Program, a current faculty in Creative Writing at Stanford, will be in Ann Arbor at Nicola's on Tuesday, October 16, at 7 pm to read and sign his debut novel A Working Theory of Love.
Smarting from a recent divorce, Neill Bassett Jr. accepts a job with Amiante Systems, an artificial intelligence start-up in the Bay Area, and tries to put his life back together. With a degree in business marketing and absolutely no experience in computer science, he nevertheless is the perfect man for the job since it is his father's diaries, with spectacularly quotidian details, that will eventually become the world's first sentient computer. For 2 years, Neill has been giving it language using his father's words, and the computer actually appears to be gaining awareness and, most disconcerting of all, has started asking questions.
While his feelings for his ex. is unresolved, he meets Rachel, a one-night-stand who continues to surprise and upset his self-imposed isolation. When Neill discovers a missing year in the diaries, he senses that it could hold the secrets to his father's suicide 10 year ago, but everything Neill thought he knew about his past comes into question.
"With a lightness of touch that belies pitch-perfect emotional control, Scott Hutchins takes us on an odyssey of love, grief, and reconciliation that shows us how, once we let go of the idea that we're trapped by our own sad histories, our childhoods, our bad decisions, our miscommunications with those we loved, we have the chance to truly be free".
"First-time novelist Hutchins manages to address weighty questions (e.g., what makes us human?) without ever losing his sly sense of humor in this witty, insightful Silicon Valley comedy of manners."
"Clever and extensive navel-gazing is modulated by tenderness, humor and charm".
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #357
by muffy
Brooklyn bookseller and author of a short-story collection (Other People We Married, 2011) Emma Straub gives us an enchanting story of a Midwestern girl who escapes a family tragedy and is remade as a movie star during Hollywood's golden age in Laura Lamont's Life in Pictures * *, her debut novel.
At 17, Elsa Emerson, born to an amateur theatrical family in Door County, Wisconsin hops gamely on the bus that carries her and her young actor husband to Hollywood after a family tragedy. Two quick successive babies and a dissolving marriage later, she is discovered by one of the most powerful studio executives in Hollywood, who refashions her as a serious, exotic brunette and renames her Laura Lamont. Along with all the glamor and extravagance of stardom, Laura finds herself trying to balance career, family, friendship, personal happiness, while remaining true to herself.
"Straub offers a charming tale spanning 50 years. Her strength is an ability to foster originality by turning her back on the stereotyped assumptions of the lives of movie stars whose backstories feed the magic."
"Written in a removed prose, Straub brings Elsa to life with the detached analysis of an actor examining a character, exemplifying Elsa's own remote relationship to her identity. Through marriages, births, deaths, and career upheavals, Elsa and Laura coexist, sometimes uneasily until Elsa learns to reconcile her two selves. An engaging epic of a life that captures the bittersweetness of growing up, leaving home, and finding it again."
For novels about the entertainment industry and lives and loves of the glitterati, you might enjoy Third Girl From the Left by Martha Southgate (2005); Tilly Bagshawe's Adored (2005); Glen David Gold's Sunnyside (2009) about Charlie Chaplin; and The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty (2012).
* *= Starred reviews
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #356
by muffy
Anyone interested in rollicking adventure, puzzle-solving/code-breaking, the history of books and printing, digital technology, conspiracy theory, secret societies, quirky San Francisco (Did I catch just about everybody?) would find Robin Sloan's Mr. Penumbra's 24-hour Bookstore * immensely enjoyable. (Coming out in October, I will be doing a lot of hand-selling in the meantime. Get on the waiting list if I were you. )
It didn't take long for Clay Jannon, an unemployed graphic artist/web designer to realize that Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore is anything but the obvious. Working the grave-yard shift, his customers never buy but "borrow" archaic volumes according to some elaborate scheme. Mr. Penumbra's strict missive of never looking into any of the volumes produces just the opposite effect and soon, Clay finds himself, and his willing dot.com recruits plunging ( Googlers figure prominently in the plot and the solution) head-long into a heroic quest of complex code-breaking, high-tech data visualization, and digging at the truth behind secrets that reach back to the famous Venetian printer Aldus Manutius. "A gleeful and exhilarating tale".
"With irresistible brio and dazzling intelligence, Robin Sloan has crafted a literary adventure story for the twenty-first century, evoking both the fairy-tale charm of Haruki Murakami and the enthusiastic novel-of-ideas wizardry of Neal Stephenson or a young Umberto Eco, but with a unique and feisty sensibility that's rare to the world of literary fiction."
Debut novelist Robin Sloan, a native of Michigan is a gradate of Michigan State University (Economics). He was a member of the Media Partnerships team at Twitter before becoming a writer and a "media inventor".
* = starred review
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #355
by muffy
In Courtney Miller Santo's debut novel The Roots of the Olive Tree, five generations of the firstborn Keller women live together in the same house on a secluded olive grove in the Sacramento Valley. Headed by Anna, the 112-year-old matriarch, still sturdy in body and sharp of mind, they have an unique ability to live long, healthy lives.
It is this ability that draws the interest of a geneticist who plans to interview them. But his visit, and the unexpected arrival of the youngest member of the clan sparks tension. Old grudges reignite as new revelations and shocking secrets come to light.
"Santo paints a moving portrait of an extraordinary, yet flawed, family". For fans Kaye Gibbon's Charms for the Easy Life; Prayers for Sale by Sandra Dallas; and the Elm Creek Quilts series by Jennifer Chiaverini.
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #354
by muffy
Two debut novels sharing the same title, each very distinct and worlds apart. But fantastic, just the same.
In Silver * * by Rhiannon Held, Andrew Dare, a werewolf enforcer/protector for the Roanoke pack, picks up a scent no one has ever encountered. It belongs to beautiful "Silver" - wild and crazy, having been tortured and injected with silver into her veins.
She represents a terrible threat to every Were on the continent unless Andrew join forces with her. While tracking down her attacker and the menace behind the threat, they discover their own power and their passion for each other. "Urban fantasy takes a walk on the wild side"
"The combination of engaging characters and a well-developed world will leave readers anxiously awaiting the next installment. A must-read for fans of Kelley Armstrong's Bitten (2001), another compelling werewolf story".
For perilous game of pack politics, try Toby Barlow's award-winning Sharp Teeth * * .
For fans of the recent crop of exceptional urban fantasies of Glen Duncan's The Last Werewolf, and Anne Rice's The Wolf Gift.
Silver: return to Treasure Island * by biographer and UK poet laureate Andrew Motion, is a sequel to Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. It picks up twenty years later and finds Natty, the daughter of Long John Silver, teaming up with Hawkins' son, Jim, on a dangerous voyage to the legendary island in search of their fathers' hidden treasure.
This "clever and satisfying high-seas tale of madness and brutality, treachery and courage, resourcefulness and romance" is not to be missed.
* = starred review
* * = starred reviews
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #353
by muffy
In Benjamin Wood's The Bellwether Revivals * , bright, bookish Oscar Lowe escapes his squalid upbringing and finds new life amid the colleges and spires of Cambridge as a care assistant at a local nursing home. Lured into the chapel at Kings College by the otherworldly organ music, he meets and falls in love with Iris Bellwether, a beautiful and enigmatic medical student, and her brother Eden's exclusive circle of the very wealthy and privileged.
Eden, a charismatic but troubled musical prodigy, believes that music can cure, and convinces their close-knit circle to participate in a series of disturbing experiments, thus putting in motion the devastation foretold in the gripping opener, "two people lie dead, and a third sits nearby, barely breathing".
"A sophisticated debut novel about the hypnotic influence of love, the beguiling allure of money and the haunting power of music".
For fans of the PBS Masterpiece Mystery Inspector Morse and Inspector Lewis series created by Colin Dexter, many of which are based on his novels, set in Oxford.
Another great academic mystery set in Cambridge is the second in the Detective Constable Lacey Flint series Dead Scared * * (2012) by S. J. Bolton, a brilliant psychological thriller, and a follow-up to Now You See Me (2011).
British-born Benjamin Wood was awarded a Commonwealth Scholarship to attend the MFA Creative Writing Programme at the University of British Columbia, Canada, where he was also the fiction editor of the literary journal PRISM international. Wood is now a lecturer in creative writing at Birkbeck, University of London.
* = Starred review
* * = Starred reviews