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Fabulous Fiction Firsts #250

by muffy

Writing "with the spirit of Barbara Kingsolver and the flinty wit of Richard Russo", Bathsheba Monk gives us a nuanced, thoughtful and timely love story in Nude Walker, her debut novel.

Kat Warren-Bineki didn't join the National Guard to see the world. She joined to escape the rusty tentacles of Warrenside (PA) , a depressed steel town, and to avoid her mother. As the daughter of old-guard industrialists, Kat has no business falling for Max Asad, the son of nouveau riche Lebanese immigrants who is buying up Downtown Warrenside at lightning speed. Afterall, she has a perfectly acceptable boyfriend in Duck Wolinsky.

Not only is Kat forfeiting her social standing by declaring love for a bitterly resented foreigner, Max is jeopardizing his father’s dreams. "As the families feud (sometimes comically, sometimes ferociously), Warrenside braces for an epic flood, and the city’s citizens try to keep busy—with love, lust, insurance fraud, hallucinations . . . any means of outrunning the past."

"Nude Walker has everything: war and conflict, sex and betrayal, old-money people and fresh-dollar newcomers, and always, men and women looking for the purest kind of love, even if it burns too hot.” ~ Susan Straight.

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Fabulous Fiction Firsts #249

by muffy

High body count, fast-paced action, murder, conspiracy, secret society - if that's right up your alley, then you would like Scott Mariani's The Mozart Conspiracy : a thriller (due out early next week).

A centuries-old mystery. An “accidental” death. A conspiracy that may end in murder. Former British Special Air Service officer Ben Hope is running for his life. Enlisted by Leigh Llewellyn—the beautiful, world-famous opera star and Ben’s first love—to investigate her brother, Oliver’s, mysterious death, Ben finds himself caught up in a puzzle dating back to the 1700s and might somehow be connected to mysterious death of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

British author Miriani makes his U.S. debut with the second in his series featuring ex-SAS warrior Ben Hope. For fans of Dan Brown, James Rollins, and Robert Ludlum.

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Fabulous Fiction Firsts #248

by muffy

In the smart and insightful Enough About Love, debut novelist Hervé Le Tellier warns in the prologue that "Any man - or woman - who wants to hear nothing - or no more - about love should put this book down". How fabulously inviting.

And where else would we set such a novel but in Paris?

Successful, elegant Dr. Anna Stein is about to turn 40 and finds herself unsuspectingly struck by an "erotic thunderbolt " when she meets Yves, a writer. Thomas Le Gall, Anna's middle-aged psychoanalyst is equally unprepared when he too, was struck by a similar thunderbolt when meeting Louise Blum, a beguiling married woman at a party.

For the next three months, these two affairs paralleling one another - Louise and Thomas, Anna and Yves as they weather the turmoil and passion of clandestine trysts, deception and guilt that threatens the stability of their families.

"Le Tellier examines the possibilities of love after 40, and he deals with this issue with patience, understanding and bemusement". "Middle-aged romance has rarely seemed so intriguing".

Francophiles, and anyone eager for a Paris fix without the price of a cross-Atlantic flight, could try A Garden in Paris by Stephanie Grace Whitson , and Foreign Tongue:: A Novel of Life and Love in Paris by Vanina Marsot.

Reading Enough makes me long to revisit my favorite romantic French cinema classics such as The Lovers: Les Amants (1958), and A Man and a Woman: Un homme et une femme - the 1966 Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Film, and immediately brings to mind that lovely soundtrack.

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(My) Fabulous Fiction Firsts #247

by muffy

For someone who is eternally looking for the next Chick Lit. read, I have no idea how Jill Mansell gets by me. Mind you, not once, but 3 times. But I will be making up for lost time.

Charming and cheery, Staying at Daisy's (originally published in the UK, 2002) was just the thing to ward off the lingering winter chill and the incessant sleet and snow.

In this "screwball romantic comedy" set at a posh hotel in picturesque Bristol, Daisy MacLean handily juggles the hospitality business, misbehaving guests, an odd assortment of staff and the embarrassing excuse for an owner who happens to her father; but is leery and tentative with rich, successful (and very hot) former rugby player Dev Tyzack who might just be pursuing her romantically.

Daisy's personal history, small town secrets, serendipity and surprises enrich the plot, add to the humor, and heighten the suspense, making it a "clever, absorbing, and very enjoyable read".

For fans of British Katie Fforde; Madeleine Wickham; and Isabel Wolff who enjoy lighthearted, contemporary women's fiction.

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Fabulous Fiction Firsts #246

by muffy

Keigo Higashino won Japan's Naoki Prize for Best Novel with The Devotion of Suspect X* * * , a stunning thriller about miscarried human devotion.

This is the first major English publication of Japan's best-loved and bestselling crime novelist, translated from the Japanese by Alexander O. Smith with Elye J. Alexander.

Young Yasuko is caught red-handed over the dead body of her abusive ex-husband, luckily by her neighbor, a middle-aged high school mathematics teacher named Shigami who quickly offers to help, not only to dispose of the body but to construct an elaborate alibi for her.

When Detective Kusanagi draws the case, he suspects Yasuko though he is unable to find any obvious holes in her alibi. So Kusanagi enlists the help of Dr. Manabu Yukawa, a brilliant physicist, who also happens to be a former classmates of Ishigami. What ensues is a high level battle of wits, as Ishigami tries to protect Yasuko by outmaneuvering and outthinking Yukawa, who faces his most clever and determined opponent yet.

Readers of atmospheric and psychological thriller should also like David Peace's WWII-era Tokyo Year Zero (2007), a darkly lyrical and original crime novel featuring Detective Minami of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police. Or noir mysteries by Natsuo Kirino, at the fringe of contemporary Tokyo society.

Readers interested in character-driven mysteries set in Asia should try James Church's Inspector O series, set in a politically-charged modern Korea.

* * * = Starred Reviews

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Fabulous Fiction Firsts #245

by muffy

Paula McLain will be reading and signing The Paris Wife at Borders on Liberty Street, Wednesday, March 2, at 7 pm.

In Paula McLain's The Paris Wife : a novel * * , Hadley Richardson takes center stage in this fictional biography of a marriage - between a quiet and supportive older woman (by 8 years) to her charismatic and soon-to-be famous husband Ernest "Hem" Hemingway.

Though doomed, the Hemingway marriage had its giddy high points, including a whirlwind courtship and a few fast and furious "gin-soaked and jazz-infused" years in the expatriate lifestyle of the 1920s Paris. Readers are also treated to intimate glimpses of many of the literary giants of the era, including Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, and F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.

Much more than a "woman-behind-the-man" homage, this beautifully crafted tale is an unsentimental and yet sympathetic tribute to a woman who acted with grace and strength as her marriage crumbled. Compelling and a pleasure to read.

For background information and research for this novel, here is an interview with the author at The Hemingway Project website. May I also suggest Hadley, a biography by Gioia Diliberto?

Poet Paula McLain (Like Family : Growing up in Other People's Houses : a memoir) received an MFA from the University of Michigan and has been a resident of Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony. This is the first of her novels in our collection.

* * = Starred reviews

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Fabulous Fiction Firsts #244

by muffy

Winner of the 2008 Amanda Davis Highwire Fiction Award, Hannah Pittard's debut novel The Fates Will Find Their Way * begins with the mysterious disappearance of 16-year old Nora Lindell from the unnamed mid-Atlantic town, all the more eerie as it was Halloween.

Told from the first-person plural point of view of the boys who still long for her and the sister she left behind, the mystery grows kaleidoscopically as years go by, fueled by rumors, divergent suspicions, and tantalizing what-ifs.

Capturing teenage lust, friendship, reverence, and regret, Hannah Pittard's beautifully crafted novel tracks the the boys as they "sleepwalk into an adulthood of jobs, marriages, families, homes, and daughters of their own, all the while pining for a girl–and a life–that no longer exists, except in the imagination."

This suspenseful and melancholy take on what it is like for those left behind will appeal to those who liked Please Don't Come Back from the Moon by Dean Bakopoulos, and What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn, long-listed for the Man Booker Prize, the Orange Prize, and "The Guardian" First Book Award.

The author will be reading and signing at Nicola's Books, Wednesday, March 9 @ 7 pm. (Details). Don't be late for the party.

* = Starred review

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Fabulous Fiction Firsts #243

by muffy

Michael David Lukas's debut novel The Oracle of Stamboul beautifully evokes life in 19th-century Turkey.

Raised by a doting father after her mother's death at childbirth, Eleonora Cohen is recognized as a prodigy (aka The Oracle) at an early age. Unable to endure her stepmother's iron-fisted discipline, Eleonora stows away on the ship that bears her father to Stamboul (modern day Istanbul) on business. When tragedy strikes, Eleonora's extraordinary genius comes to the attention of Sultan Abdul Amid II who is impressed with her shrewd political evaluations, and seeks her advice that might have changed the course of history.

"The exotic sights and sounds of nineteenth-century Turkey spring vividly to life, ... In addition to conducting a delightfully quirky magical mystery tour via an appealingly quirky heroine, Lukas also paints a bold portrait of an empire precariously poised on the chasm between an old and a new world."

Readers intrigued with historic Istanbul might enjoy Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red (audio), translated from the Turkish by Erdağ Göknar. Set in In sixteenth-century Istanbul, a furor erupts when the sultan hires a group of artists to illuminate a great book. An intellectual mystery that will appeal to fans of Umberto Eco, Iain Pears, and Arturo Perez-Reverte.

Also check out The Janissary Tree by Jason Goodwin, first in a mystery series, and the Edgar Award Winner for a First Novel. In 1836, Europe is modernizing and the Ottoman Empire must follow suit. But just before the sultan announces sweeping changes, a wave of murders threatens the fragile balance of power in his court.

Katie Hickman's The Aviary Gate is a "lush, ancient tale of treacherous secrets, forbidden love, and murder in an Ottoman palace where a British sea captain’s daughter is held captive in the sultan’s harem in 16th-century Constantinople.

* = Starred review

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Fabulous Fiction Firsts #242

by muffy

Benjamin Hale's "mischievous debut" The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore * is a love story between the world's first speaking chimpanzee and a primatologist. Just bear with me here, alright?

Born and raised in captivity (no less, at Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo, famous for its primate house), Bruno is unlike any chimpanzee in the world - precocious, self-conscious and very gifted, and he speaks. Primatologist Dr. Lydia Littlemore takes him into her home to oversee his education and nurture his passion for painting but has a rough time with his more primal urges and outbursts which ultimately cost her her job, and send the unlikely pair on the road.

"Like its protagonist, this novel is big, loud, abrasive, witty, perverse, earnest and amazingly accomplished.... it goes beyond satire by showing us not what it means, but what it feels like to be human -- to love and lose, learn, aspire, grasp, and, in the end, to fail."

Caution!!!!!! Exuberantly detailed sex between species might offend some readers. Proceed at your own risk.

Benjamin Hale is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop, where he received a Provost's Fellowship to complete this novel, which also went on to win a Michener-Copernicus Award.

Readers who enjoyed Sara Gruen's Ape House and Laurence Gonzales' Lucy (blog) will find this a delight.

* = Starred review

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Fabulous Fiction Firsts #241

by muffy

If you let a snarky remark like "Readable, upmarket, non-mold-breaking escapism" to keep you away from Eleanor Brown's ,The Weird Sisters then it really is a shame.

I am thick in the middle of it and can't put it down but I can't wait until I'm done to blog it either. So here it is, the blurb from the publisher...

"The Andreas family is one of readers. Their father, a renowned Shakespeare professor who speaks almost entirely in verse, has named his three daughters after famous Shakespearean women. When the sisters return to their childhood home, ostensibly to care for their ailing mother, but really to lick their wounds and bury their secrets, they are horrified to find the others there. See, we love each other. We just don't happen to like each other very much. But the sisters soon discover that everything they've been running from-one another, their small hometown, and themselves-might offer more than they ever expected."

So far, I have to agree with one of the reviewers, "There are no false steps in this debut novel: the humor, lyricism, and realism characterizing... will appeal to fans of good modern fiction as well as stories of family and of the Midwest." Oh, BTW, Weird is set in Buckeye territory but we won't hold that against it.

Listen to the NPR review and author interview. And don't be surprised with the buzz around this book big time in the weeks to come.

In the meantime while you are waiting for your copy, read Short Girls - homegrown and Maize-and-Blue all the way.