"Flirt with Romance at The Brookfield Library"

From Connecticut Romance Writers

An Author Panel Featuring:

Lori Avocato

Mary Beth Bass
Kristan Higgins

Sharon Schulze

Saturday, June 14, 2008 at 2:00 p.m. at

The Brookfield Library

What better way to kick off a hot summer of reading and our 2008 Adult Summer Reading Program?

Come and discover - or rediscover - why women (and men, too) enjoy reading this popular bestselling genre about smart, independent and strong women. Also, if you're an aspiring writer or thinking about writing the Great American Novel, get insider tips on the writing process and getting published. Plan to join us for lively conversation and dessert.

Call 203-775-6241 or stop in to sign up. You may also register online.

Sponsored by The Friends of The Brookfield Library and The Brookfield Library
182 Whisconier Road
Brookfield, CT

Song Yet Sung by James McBride

"Escaped slaves, free blacks, slave-catchers and plantation owners weave a tangled web of intrigue and adventure in bestselling memoirist (The Color of Water) McBride's intricately constructed and impressive second novel, set in pre–Civil War Maryland. Liz Spocott, a beautiful young runaway slave, suffers a nasty head wound just before being nabbed by a posse of slave catchers. She falls into a coma, and, when she awakes, she can see the future—from the near-future to Martin Luther King to hip-hop—in her dreams. Liz's visions help her and her fellow slaves escape, but soon there are new dangers on her trail: Patty Cannon and her brutal gang of slave catchers, and a competing slave catcher, nicknamed The Gimp, who has a surprising streak of morality.Liz has some friends, including an older woman who teaches her The Code that guides runaways; a handsome young slave; and a wild inhabitant of the woods and swamps. Kidnappings, gunfights and chases ensue as Liz drifts in and out of her visions, which serve as a thoughtful meditation on the nature of freedom and offer sharp social commentary on contemporary America. McBride hasn't lost his touch: he nails the horrors of slavery as well as he does the power of hope and redemption."

~ Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Breath by Tim Winton

"MaineThis slender book packs an emotional wallop. Two thrill-seeking boys, Bruce and Loonie, are young teenagers in smalltown Australia, circa the early 1970s. Their attraction is focused on the water—ponds, rivers, the sea—but they do little more than play around until they fall in with a mysterious, older man named Sando. He recognizes their daredevil wildness and takes it upon himself to teach them to surf. As the boys become more skilled, their exploits become more reckless; narrator Bruce (nicknamed Pikelet) has doubts about where all this is heading, while the aptly named Loonie wants only bigger and bolder thrills. This mix of doubt and desire intensifies when the boys make a discovery about their mentor's past.Surfing isn't the only dangerous game in town. As Sando's attentions and favor flip-flop from one boy to the other, the rivalry between the two, present from the beginning, grows stronger and more sinister. Sando's American wife, Eva, becomes more of a presence, too. She walks with a limp, has plenty of secrets of her own and becomes increasingly involved in Pikelet's life, in ways that even a 15-year-old might recognize as not entirely appropriate........The author of 13 previous books, Winton is well-known in Australia and should be here. He touches upon important themes, of death, life, breathing and its absence, while looking dispassionately upon the relentless pursuit of thrills, pleasure, sex, status: the mundane obsessions of the ordinary and extraordinary alike."

~David Maine, Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Skeletons at the Feast by Chris Bohjalian

"Based on a real-life World War II diary, Bohjalian's (The Double Bind) 12th novel chronicles the last days of the Nazi regime through the eyes of an unlikely threesome. Anna Emmerich, an 18-year-old Prussian aristocrat, along with her mother and younger brother, is making a desperate attempt to journey west across the Reich out of the path of the advancing Red Army. Callum Finnella, Anna's lover and a Scottish POW who worked on the Emmerich family estate, is also traveling with the family. Uri Singer, a German Jew who escaped from a train bound for Auschwitz, is ironically the group's guardian as they travel through Germany. The novel is immensely readable, but the characters—the Jewish escapee, the heroic Allied soldier, and the beautiful Prussian aristocrat—seem more like archetypes than individuals. However, Bohjalian takes a fresh perspective and details the brutal realities of World War II in a novel that for once does not focus entirely on the Allies."

~Andrea Y. Griffith, Loma Linda Univ. Libs., CA Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Searching for Paradise in Parker, PA by Kris Radish

"Radish's latest warm-fuzzy (after The Sunday List of Dreams) tracks the troubled marriage of Lucky and Addy Lipton. Lucky's Kingdom of Krap—the garage littered with dismantled appliances, an old car and every other project Lucky never finished—has brought Addy nearly to the breaking point in her stale marriage, but it's the last straw when their planned trip to Costa Rica (with its possibilities for romantic rejuvenation) doesn't happen. What ensues is a summer of separation, discovering personal desires and strong female friendships (it is, after all, a Radish book). As the summer gives way to fall, Lucky tries to win his wife back, while Addy is torn between living alone or giving the marriage another go. Girl-power readers will get a kick out of the hokey girl get-togethers, and women will surely connect with Radish's empowered femmes."

~Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Best Day of Someone Else's Life by Kerry Reichs


"Despite being cursed with a boy's name, Kevin "Vi" Connelly is seriously female and a committed romantic. The affliction hit at the tender age of six when she was handed a basket of flower petals and ensnared by the "marry-tale." The thrill, the attention, the big white dress—it's the Best Day of Your Life, and it's seriously addictive. But at twenty-seven, with a closetful of pricey bridesmaid dresses she'll never wear again, a trunkful of embarrassing memories, and an empty bank account from paying for it all, the illusion of matrimony as the Answer to Everything begins to fray. As her friends' choices don't provide answers, and her family confuses her more, Vi faces off against her eminently untrustworthy boyfriend and the veracity of the BDOYL.
Eleven weddings in eighteen months would send any sane woman either over the edge or scurrying for the altar. But as reality separates from illusion, Vi learns that letting go of someone else's story to write your own may be harder than buying the myth, but just might help her make the right choices for herself."


~ From Harper Collins

White Rose Rebel by Janet Paisley

"This richly textured historical romance from Scottish poet and short story writer Paisley reimagines the story of Col. Anne Farquharson, a real-life leader in the Jacobite uprising of 1745. When Bonnie Prince Charlie returns to Scotland in an attempt to take the throne, the English naturally seek to suppress his supporters. Aeneas McIntosh, chief of Scots Clan Chatton, reluctantly takes a commission with the English army, believing it the best way to preserve his clan and their land. His younger and far more impetuous wife, Anne, responds by joining with a former lover, Alexander McGillivray, and raising an army in support of the prince's ultimately doomed claim. Aeneas and Anne continues to love and lust after one another, despite their political differences. A complex, passionate love triangle; a realistic look at the horrific consequences of war; and a balanced, satisfying resolution mark Paisley's notable first novel."

~ Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Quiver: A Novel by Peter Leonard

"In his debut novel, Leonard (son of crime fiction master Elmore) shows more than a little promise. Katie McCall is a still-grieving widow whose past comes back to hurt her in a bizarre manner. Shortly after her husband is killed by their son in a bow-hunting accident, an ex-boyfriend and a group of thugs show up and set in motion events that will lead to a life-or-death climax. It's impossible not to compare Leonard with his famous father, and there are some similarities. The story is tight, and the descriptions of the Michigan setting ring true, whether it's the Detroit area or further upstate. The pacing is excellent, and the characters all have unique voices. What prevents the book from being outstanding is the stilted dialog, which too often sounds like a written report rather than a conversation you'd expect people to have. Still, this is an excellent debut, and one that many will likely finish in one sitting. Leonard is an author to watch...."

~ Craig Shufelt, Fort McMurray P.L., AL Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Sugar Queen by Sarah Addison Allen

"Allen's second bewitching offering (after Garden Spells) is a candy jar of magical characters and mystical adventures set in an ordinary North Carolina town. At 27, Josey Cirrini is plain and just this side of plump and trying to make up for her legendary childhood temper tantrums by caring for her aging, widowed mother Margaret. Her closet features neatly stacked junk food packages and romance novels, and her life chugs along. But as the book opens, Della Lee Baker, waitress at the local greasy spoon, shows up in Josey's closet, having propped a ladder against the house and climbed silently in overnight. She's hiding from someone or something, and has no intention of leaving anytime soon. Instead, the very direct Della Lee sends Josey on a series and missions and misadventures that encourage our low self-esteem heroine to step outside her box and away from her snack-filled closet. As in Allen's previous work, there's an element of the supernatural (self-help books that literally follow one around; tears that sprout mysterious tropical flowers), and again it works. Words such as sweet, charming and delightful are weak accolades for such a pleasurable book."

~Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Scream for Me by Karen Rose

"Bestseller Rose makes her hardcover debut with this intricately plotted romantic thriller, a sequel to Die for Me (2007). Georgia Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Daniel Vartanian, having recently buried his parents, who were done in by his late serial-killer brother, Simon, looks into a series of killings that appear to copycat the brutal rape and murder of Alicia Tremaine 13 years earlier. In the course of his investigation, Daniel meets Alex Fallon, an attractive nurse who asks him to help locate her hairdresser stepsister, Bailey Crighton, who's mysteriously disappeared. In a twist, Alex turns out to be Alicia's twin sister. The romance between Daniel and Alex intensifies along with the suspense as the body count rises. This chilling novel will leave Rose's fans breathlessly anticipating her next release."

~Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Outlander by Gil Adamson

"Set in 1903, Adamson's compelling debut tells the wintry tale of 19-year-old Mary Boulton ([w]idowed by her own hand) and her frantic odyssey across Idaho and Montana. The details of Boulton's sad past—an unhappy marriage, a dead child, crippling depression—slowly emerge as she reluctantly ventures into the mountains, struggling to put distance between herself and her two vicious brothers-in-law, who track her like prey in retaliation for her killing of their kin. Boulton's journey and ultimate liberation—made all the more captivating by the delirium that runs in the recesses of her mind—speaks to the resilience of the female spirit in the early part of the last century. Lean prose, full-bodied characterization, memorable settings and scenes of hardship all lift this book above the pack."

~ Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Belong to Me by Marisa de los Santos

"Having met Cornelia Brown in de los Santos's well-reviewed debut, Love Walked In, we now follow her and her oncologist husband, Teo Sandoval, to suburban Philadelphia. Piper Truitt lives across the street with her husband and two young children. She considers herself the arbiter of style and local propriety. Add to the mix waitress Lake and her son, Dev, who is enrolled in a private academy far superior to his previous California public school. From the outset, Cornelia and Piper are traveling down different paths, while Cornelia and Lake seem to hit it off. Go figure? But there is more beneath the surface of these women and their motivations than the lovely locale can mask. Dev thinks he and his mother moved to the area because his long-lost (and unknown to him) father is there. But how do you go about locating someone who's been gone for 13 years? Then Piper becomes caregiver to her longtime friend Elizabeth, diagnosed with cancer, a role that seems more appealing to Piper than wife to Kyle. These family dynamics collide and reconfigure in a variety of ways that readers will find fascinating. De los Santos keeps us totally engaged with these fragile creatures, who get under our skin and, ultimately, into our hearts."

~Bette-Lee Fox, Library Journal Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

"Four years after the release of her best-selling novel, The Namesake, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lahiri returns with her highly anticipated second collection of short stories exploring the inevitable tension brought on by family life. The title story, for example, takes on a young mother nervously hosting her widowed father, who is visiting between trips he takes with a lover he has kept secret from his family. What could have easily been a melodramatic soap opera is instead a meticulously crafted piece that accurately depicts the intricacies of the father-daughter relationship. In a departure from her first book of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies, Lahiri divides this book into two parts, devoting the second half of the book to "Hema and Kaushik," three stories that together tell the story of a young man and woman who meet as children and, by chance, reunite years later halfway around the world. The author's ability to flesh out completely even minor characters in every story, and especially in this trio of stories, is what will keep readers invested in the work until its heartbreaking conclusion."

~Sybil Kollappallil, Library Journal Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Outlaw Demon Wails by Kim Harrison

"Red-headed witch Rachel Morgan has a demon after her, but that's just one of her many troubles in this action-packed sixth installment of Harrison's Hollows series (after 2007's For a Few Demons More). A nice guy might be moving into Rachel's town and life, but she's still getting over her last boyfriend, whose murder she has yet to solve. Elf politician Trent Kalamack wants her to go to the ever-after on a dangerous mission. Rynn Cormel, Cincinnati's new master vampire and ex-leader of the free world, is interfering in her life. Her friend, former demon familiar Ceri, is unexpectedly pregnant, by an unexpected partner. On top of all this, Rachel worries she may have had a too close encounter with a vampire and soon becomes concerned about her own abilities with demon magic. With the help of her feisty mother, Alice, and her pixy partner, Jenks, Rachel boldly tackles every challenge amid a cascade of plot twists that will delight Harrison's fans."

~ Publisher's Weekly, Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Cure for Modern Life by Lisa Tucker

"Tucker offers a cure for modern readers seeking an enjoyable literary page-turner that also explores serious social issues such as addiction, ethics and genetics. Tucker's fourth and most ambitious novel (following Once Upon a Day) is her first to have a male protagonist. Sardonic and emotionally aloof, Matthew Connelly directs his energies away from romantic entanglements and toward his work as an executive at pharmaceutical giant Astor-Denning. His bitter ex-girlfriend, Amelia, works as a medical ethics watchdog and is poised to take Matthew and his company down. But the appearance of homeless 10-year-old Danny and his toddler sister shakes up the lives of the combustible pair. In crisp, lively prose, Tucker cleverly executes a series of surprising twists that, coupled with the Big Pharma backdrop and cinematic feel, make the novel as fast-paced as a thriller, but with astute and often humorous observations about the shifting morality of 21st-century America. The relationship dilemmas at the center of this story make it an excellent choice for book clubs, but the novel should also increase Tucker's male readership and solidify her position as a gifted writer with a wide range and a profound sense of compassion for the mysteries of the human heart."

~Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Book of Dahlia by Elisa Albert


"When Dahlia Finger—a 29-year-old, pot-smoking, chronically underachieving Jewish-American princess—learns that she has brain cancer, the results are hilarious and heartbreaking in Albert's superb first novel (following the story collection How This Night Is Different). Opening in the Venice, Calif., cottage to which Dahlia has retreated, at her father's expense, after unsuccessfully trying to forge a life in New York, chapter one begins with the omniscient narrator's scathingly Edith Wharton–worthy catalogue of Dahlia's symptoms and ends with her first grand mal seizure. As Dahlia endures blistering radiation, sits numbly through her support group, smokes medical marijuana (with her crisis-reunited divorced parents) and carries a condescending book called It's Up to You: Your Cancer To-Do List, Albert masterfully interweaves Dahlia's battle with flashbacks, most tellingly involving her complexly overbearing Israeli mother, Margalit (who unceremoniously imploded the family decades earlier), and contemptuous older brother, against whom Dahlia has never learned to defend herself."


~Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

What I Was by Meg Rosoff



"Growing up is tough to do. The narrator of Rosoff's foray into adult literature has been shuffled through two upper-class boarding schools and now is on his third. His tenure at St. Oswald's looks tenuous as well until one day during a long run along the coastline. Taking a break from the mandatory exercise, our narrator meets Finn, who lives alone in a small hut near the beach free from school and parents. The two boys come together in an idyllic friendship that eventually ends in tragedy. Rosoff, the Printz Award-winning author of How I Live Now, creates a coming-of-age tale full of mystery and angst. Relying on a narrator looking back at his life, the reader is in for an intriguing read."



~Robin Nesbitt, Columbus Metropolitan Lib., OH Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Well and the Mine: A Novel by Gin Phillips

"A tight-knit miner's family struggles against poverty and racism in Phillips's evocative first novel, set in Depression-era Alabama. Throughout, she moves skillfully between the points of view of miner father Albert, hard-working mother Leta, young daughter Tess and teenage daughter Virgie, and small son Jack. They see men who are frequently incapacitated or killed by accidents in the local mines; neighbors live off what they can grow on their patch of land; and blacks like Albert's fellow miner and friend Jonah are segregated in another part of Carbon Hill—and often hauled off to jail arbitrarily. When Tess witnesses a woman throwing a baby into their well, no one believes her until the dead child is found, and few are shocked. Tess, hounded by nightmares, and Virgie, on the cusp of womanhood and resistant to the thought of an early marriage to the local boys who court her, begin making inquiries of their own, visiting wives who've recently had babies and learning way more than they imagined. With a wisp of suspense, Phillips fully enters the lives of her honorable characters and brings them vibrantly to the page."

~Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Johnny One-Eye by Jerome Charyn

"In a rollicking tale that is equal parts Tom Jones, Tristram Shandy, and Gulliver's Travels, award-winning novelist Charyn (The Green Lantern) vividly re-creates revolutionary Manhattan through the eyes of young double agent John Stocking, aka Johnny One-Eye. In Zelig-like fashion, Stocking saves Benedict Arnold from death, consoles George Washington by regaling the colonel with fairy tales, befriends the British commanders Sir William Howe and his brother, "Black Dick" Howe, and falls in love with one of the prostitutes in the brothel he calls home. Much like the foundlings of Charles Dickens's and Henry Fielding's tales, the picaresque hero Stocking moves from episode to episode, seeking the story of his birth only to find he is the illegitimate son of his protector, the madame of Holy Ground, a famous Manhattan bordello. Through the eyes of his young hero, Charyn gives us a glimpse of the Revolutionary War as lived not by the soldiers and the politicians but by those whose homes, jobs, and lives were completely turned upside down by the war."

~Henry L. Carrigan Jr., Evanston, IL Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz


"At the heart of this sprawling, dizzying debut from a quirky, assured Australian writer are two men: Jasper Dean, a judgmental but forgiving son, and Martin, his brilliant but dysfunctional father. Jasper, in an Australian prison in his early 20s, scribbles out the story of their picaresque adventures, noting cryptically early on that [m]y father's body will never be found. As he tells it, Jasper has been uneasily bonded to his father through thick and thin, which includes Martin's stint managing a squalid strip club during Jasper's adolescence; an Australian outback home literally hidden within impenetrable mazes; Martin's ill-fated scheme to make every Australian a millionaire; and a feverish odyssey through Thailand's menacing jungles. Toltz's exuberant, looping narrative—thick with his characters' outsized longings and with their crazy arguments—sometimes blows past plot entirely, but comic drive and Toltz's far-out imagination carry the epic story, which puts the two (and Martin's own nemesis, his outlaw brother, Terry) on an irreverent roller-coaster ride from obscurity to infamy..."


~Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Before Green Gables by Budge Wilson

"Set in Nova Scotia, the book follows Anne through a string of foster homes full of diapers, dirty dishes, screaming children and endless chores. Orphaned at three months by her schoolteacher parents, she searches for knowledge and love in the chaotic, grueling, unpredictable world she inhabits. Every time Anne is on the brink of finding happiness it's taken away from her, though by the time she's 11 and living with her second (but not last) foster family, the Hammonds, it appears as if Anne's life might be calming down. But after a tragic turn of events, her future is uncertain yet again. Although a little long, the book is a quick read that will keep the reader invested in its compelling characters from start to finish."

~ Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Killer's Wife: A Novel by Bill Floyd


"After Leigh Wren's ex-husband, Randy, is convicted and sentenced to death for killing a dozen people in a ten-year spree, she relocates to a new town, changes her name, and lives an uneventful six years as a single mom to the couple's young son, Hayden. But when the vengeful father of one of Randy's victims locates her and publicly reveals her secrets, her picture-perfect life is shattered, her world, turned upside down. As Leigh struggles to keep their comfortable life intact, a copycat killer mimicking Randy's bizarre murders strikes too close to home. Newcomer Floyd has crafted a powerhouse thriller that plunges the reader into the intimate life of a serial killer as viewed from his wife's vantage point. Nail-biting flashbacks into Leigh's past with her dangerous husband and frightful glimpses into the psyche of a new killer keep the tension mounting. This is a book that grabs you and won't let go..."


~ Mary Todd Chesnut, Northern Kentucky Univ. Lib., Highland Heights Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Celebutantes by Amanda Goldberg and Ruthanna Khalighi Hopper

"Gawker.com meets Glamour in this insider's look at Oscar week penned by L.A. junior royalty: Goldberg, producer Leonard Goldberg's daughter, has worked for Todd Oldham; Khalighi Hopper, daughter of Dennis Hopper and Daria Halprin, produced and starred in the indie film Americano. After a disastrous turn acting and bedding her superhunk co-star, Lola Santisi, 26 and the daughter of famed director Paul Santisi, swears off actors and acting for good. But Lola agrees to be the Hollywood ambassador for Best Gay Forever designer Julian Tennant, to help get a major actress to wear one of his dresses at the Oscars. Lola woos an array of glitterari, each more self-absorbed than the next in the runup to Graydon Carter's famed Vanity Fair bash, and competes against the ruthless Prada ambassador Adrienne Hunt for the plum actor bods. There's up-to-the-minute star chatter and fashion name-checking throughout; wonderfully dead-on moments as Lola negotiates underlings to get on set; and a possibly fatal relapse of actor fever. The shallowness is more severe than Angelina's neckline, but that's the point, and it quickly becomes imperative to discover just who is going to wear Julian Tennant to the Oscars."

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Captivity by Debbie Lee Wesselmann

"Primatologist Dana Armstrong is passionate about making a difference in the lives of the animals living at a South Carolina chimpanzee sanctuary. But a break-in resulting in the escape of numerous chimpanzees forces Dana to not only determine who was responsible for the vandalism but also deal with her traumatic memories of the past—for Dana is a survivor of a psychological experiment, raised as a child with a chimp named Annie. She now faces opposition from the local community, political pressure from her university, and a ghost from her past who is bent upon her destruction. To further complicate matters, Dana's seldom-seen rogue brother appears on her doorstep, and a handsome journalist tugs at her heartstrings."

~Melody Ballard, Pima Cty. P.L., Tucson, AZ Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

*Note: Recommended for book clubs, reading guide available

The Girl Who Stopped Swimming by Joshilyn Jackson

"Quilt artist Laurel, her game programmer husband, David, and their 13-year-old daughter, Shelby, lead a seemingly charmed life in a serene Florida suburb. But when the ghost of a drowned girl awakens Laurel, the veneer of that life seems ready to crack beyond repair. Can Laurel trust her flamboyant, outspoken sister, Thalia, to help as old family secrets emerge with dizzying speed? With the appearance of a ghost on the first page, you'll feel compelled to race to the end, but slow down for Jackson's great descriptions—you'll be rewarded for the effort. Jackson illuminates not just the complexities of family love as a source of safety and support but also the complexities of danger and death."

~Rebecca Kelm, Northern Kentucky Univ. Lib., Highland Heights Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Curse of the Spellmans by Lisa Lutz

"In the two years that have passed since the action in Lutz's hit debut, The Spellman Files (2007), zany Isabel Spellman, who works for the family PI firm in San Francisco, has become a somewhat responsible member of society. Unfortunately, she's also become obsessed with Subject (aka John Brown), a next-door neighbor who she's convinced has an evil secret she must expose, even if it means losing her PI license. Adding further hilarity is The Stone and Spellman Show, transcripts of recordings revealing 15-year-old sister Rae's fascination with her middle-aged best friend, stoic SFPD inspector Henry Stone, who endures Rae's adoration with liberal doses of Doctor Who watching. Henry's link to the Spellman family's fortunes suggests he might be a good candidate for Isabel's Ex-boyfriend #11 when Subject fails to make the grade. Fans of The Spellman Files will laugh just as loudly at the comic antics chronicled in this sparkling sequel."

~ Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Chasing Windmills by Catherine Ryan Hyde

"In the simple and captivating latest from Pay It Forward author Hyde, a chance encounter proves life-changing for two lonely New York City subway riders. Four months shy of 18, Sebastian Mundt has been held a virtual prisoner by his father since his mother died: his father home-schools him and doesn't let him have outside relationships. One night, with his father heavily sedated by his sleeping pill, Sebastian sneaks out to ride the subway and locks eyes with Maria Arquette, a young mother who is caught in an abusive marriage. The two share an instant connection and take to meeting on the subway almost nightly and tentatively planning a future in the California desert town that Sebastian remembers from childhood, where thousands of windmills stretch out across the horizon. Hyde gracefully alternates between Sebastian's and Maria's perspectives with gentle nods to this New York love story's precursors (Maria obsessively watches West Side Story). It is their voices—at once utterly credible and heartbreakingly naïve—that make the book, and while this is being billed as an adult novel, its closest stylistic relative is S.E. Hinton's YA classic The Outsiders."

~Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Somnambulist by Jonathan Barnes

"Set in Victorian London, this superb debut from British author Barnes raises the bar for historical thrillers, starting with its curious opening line: Be warned. This book has no literary merit whatsoever. A page-turner, it's full of peculiar characters, notably Edward Moon, a highly unorthodox detective, and Moon's bizarre sidekick, known only as the Somnambulist. Moon, a conjuror by profession whose act has fallen on hard times, has cracked some of the city's most notorious murders. Now, he's leading the investigation into a shadowy religious group aiming to overtake London and do away with its oppressive, bourgeois tendencies. Moon is a remarkable invention, a master of logic and harborer of all sorts of unnatural habits and mannerisms. The Somnambulist—a giant, milk-swigging mute—doesn't appear to be human at all, yet serves as Moon's moral as well as intellectual compass. Together, they wend their way through a London rich in period detail. Barnes saves his best surprise for the story's homestretch, when he reveals the identity of his narrator, who's been cleverly pulling strings since the opening."

~Publisher Weekly Review. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff


"Twenty-eight-year-old Willie Upton has just detonated a promising academic career by her scandalous affair with a married professor. Now pregnant, she slinks home to Templeton, NY, just as an enormous dead monster is pulled from nearby Lake Glimmerglass. There, Willie's mother, a former hippie, admits she has always lied about Willie's paternity and discloses this one clue about her biological father's actual identity: he is a descendant of Judge Marmaduke Temple and currently a prominent member of Templeton. Sound familiar? Pay attention: James Fenimore Cooper is from Cooperstown, NY (as is Groff) and used it as the model for Templeton, NY, setting of The Pioneers. Yes, Groff has daringly used Cooper's Templeton and its inhabitants as the launching pad for Willie's search for her father. Willie takes her mother's clue and pulls on it, following endless strands to get her answer, all the while tormented with indecision about her own pregnancy. Liberally peppered with old photographs, diary entries, letters, and a family tree constantly in need of revision as Willie eliminates one possibility after another spanning more than two centuries of shocking Templeton history, this is an irresistible adventure."


~Beth E. Andersen, Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks



"In 1996, a rare book expert is offered the job of a lifetime: analysis and conservation of a mysterious, beautifully illuminated Hebrew manuscript created in fifteenth-century Spain and recently saved from destruction during the shelling of Sarajevo's libraries. When Hanna Heath, a caustic Aussie loner with a passion for her work, discovers a series of tiny artifacts in the book's ancient binding - an insect-wing fragment, wine stains, salt crystals, a white hair - she begins to unlock the mysteries of the book's eventful past and to uncover the dramatic stories of those who created it and those who risked everything to protect it." "In Bosnia during World War II, a Muslim risks his life to protect it from the Nazis. In the hedonistic salons of fin-de-siecle Vienna, the book becomes a pawn in the struggle against the city's rising anti-Semitism. In Venice in 1609, a Catholic priest saves the book from the Inquisition's fires. In Taragona in 1492, the scribe who wrote the text sees his family destroyed by the agonies of forced exile. And in Seville in 1480, the reason for the manuscript's extraordinary illuminations is finally disclosed. Hanna's investigations unexpectedly plunge her into the intrigues of fine art forgers and ultranationalist fanatics. Her experiences will test her belief in herself and in the man she has come to love."



--BOOK JACKET.

Becky: The Life and Loves of Becky Thatcher by Lenore Hart

"Hart's latest (after Ordinary Springs) imagines the fictional Becky Thatcher—best known as Tom Sawyer's crybaby girlfriend—as a strong heroine whose true story was held back by childhood friend Samuel Clemens, who chose to give the charismatic Tom Sawyer center stage in his writings. Hart's riveting and often moving take intersperses Becky's version of events in the Mark Twain novel with the events of Becky's life as the wife of Tom's cousin Sid during and after the Civil War. In Hart's hands, Becky morphs from sniveling and helpless to woman warrior: dressing as a man to find her husband on Civil War battlefields and trying to hide from Sid and herself her lifelong love for Tom. The narrative finds Becky in Nevada, navigating life in a mining town, and eventually in San Francisco as a wealthy woman. In between, the author conveys the hell of battle and how its effects linger long after the last shot is fired. Mark Twain purists may balk at the idea of Becky fearlessly trekking with Tom's Freebooters, and though the charisma that Tom supposedly radiated doesn't entirely come through, Hart brings her sometimes motley cast to life throughout. Mark Twain is a tough act to follow, but Hart does her heroine justice."

~ Publisher Weekly Review, Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Happy Chinese New Year and Gung Hay Fat Choy!

The Brookfield Library is currently displaying books with a Chinese theme for all ages, both fiction and nonfiction.

The Last Empress by Anchee Min

"The Last Empress is the story of Orchid's dramatic transition from a strong-willed, instinctive young woman to a wise and politically savvy leader who ruled China for more than four decades. Moving from the intimacy of the concubine quarters into the spotlight of the world stage, Orchid must face not only the perilous condition of her empire but also a series of devastating personal losses, as first her son and then her adopted son succumb to early death. Yearning only to step aside, yet growing constantly into her role, only she - allied with the progressives, but loyal to the conservative Manchu clan of her dynasty - can hold the nation's rival factions together. Anchee Min offers a powerful revisionist portrait based on extensive research of one of the most important figures in Chinese history. Viciously maligned by the Western press of the time as the "Dragon Lady," a manipulative, blood-thirsty woman who held on to power at all costs, the woman Min gives us is a compelling, very human leader who assumed power reluctantly and who sacrificed all she had to protect those she loved and an empire that was doomed to die."--BOOK JACKET.

The Senator's Wife: A Novel by Sue Miller

"Bestselling author Miller (The Good Mother; When I Was Gone) returns with a rich, emotionally urgent novel of two women at opposite stages of life who face parallel dilemmas. Meri, the young, sexy wife of a charismatic professor, occupies one wing of a New England house with her husband. An unexpected pregnancy forces her to reassess her marriage and her childhood of neglect. Delia, her elegant neighbor in the opposite wing, is the long-suffering wife of a notoriously philandering retired senator. The couple have stayed together for his career and still share an occasional, deeply intense tryst. The women's routines continue on either side of the wall that divides their homes, and the two begin to flit back and forth across the porch and into each others physical and psychological spaces. A steady tension builds to a bruising denouement. The clash, predicated on Delia's husband's compulsive behavior and on Meri's lack of boundaries, feels too preordained. But Miller's incisive portrait of the complex inner lives of her characters and her sharp manner of taking them through conflicts make for an intense read."

~Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

My Revolutions by Hari Kunzru

"It's the 1970s, and Chris Carver, briefly imprisoned for participating in a demonstration and increasingly disillusioned with the British revolutionaries with whom he's been involved since the 1960s, goes on the run, assuming the identity of one Michael Frame. Decades later, an ex-inmate of Chris tracks him down and pressures him to provide false evidence against another former comrade, now about to gain a powerful position in the British government. Unwilling to cooperate, Chris runs away again, this time to France, where he believes his old cohort, the supposedly dead Anna Addison, is hiding. As Kunzru (The Impressionist) shows how the present-day Michael's comfortable middle-class life has been interrupted, he reconstructs Chris's life story, focusing on his early interest in protests and his arrest while a student at the London School of Economics. With these simultaneous stories of Chris's early life and his evasion of his true identity, Kunzru creates a graphic and realistic portrait of the 1960s and beyond. Exciting, dramatic, and enthralling."

~ Library Journal Review

The Commoner: A Novel by John Burnham Schwartz

“Schwartz’s renderings of the royal family are not only believable but absorbing…. well nuanced and tightly executed…. A moving portrait of women living the most interior of lives.”
–Bookpage

"It is 1959 when Haruko, a young woman of good family, marries the Crown Prince of Japan, the heir to the Chrysanthemum Throne. She is the first non-aristocratic woman to enter the longest-running, almost hermetically sealed, and mysterious monarchy in the world. Met with cruelty and suspicion by the Empress and her minions, Haruko is controlled at every turn. The only interest the court has in her is her ability to produce an heir. After finally giving birth to a son, Haruko suffers a nervous breakdown and loses her voice. However, determined not to be crushed by the imperial bureaucrats, she perseveres. Thirty years later, now Empress herself, she plays a crucial role in persuading another young woman—a rising star in the foreign ministry—to accept the marriage proposal of her son, the Crown Prince. The consequences are tragic and dramatic. Told in the voice of Haruko, meticulously researched and superbly imagined, The Commoner is the mesmerizing, moving, and surprising story of a brutally rarified and controlled existence at once hidden and exposed, and of a complex relationship between two isolated women who, despite being visible to all, are truly understood only by each other. " (from the book jacket)

Natural Born Charmer by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

"Stunningly handsome football star Dean Robillard has been charming people all his life, so why is he having such a hard time winning over one small, determined, opinionated woman? Though she needs Dean's help, Blue Bailey, pragmatic survivor of an itinerant childhood with a peace activist mom, isn't about to become another notch in Dean's belt, even when she ends up on his Tennessee farm running interference between him and his estranged mother, protecting his privacy with a fake engagement, and growing closer to him every day. A natural-born storyteller who has a wicked way with words, Phillips has penned another sexy, funny, but deeply touching romance."

~ Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

When the Ground Turns In Its Sleep by Sylvia Sellers-Garcia

"As Sellers-García's rich debut opens in 1993, Nítido Amán is seeking his origins in Guatemala following his father's death by spending a year as a teacher in the remote village of Río Roto. His father had said that the Amáns came from a place very near there, but was never specific as to the family's home village. Upon arrival, Nítido is immediately mistaken for an arriving priest and is too tired at first to correct the man who meets his bus and settles him in the sacristry. When, the next morning, his innocent questions about the burned schoolhouse and the path to a certain village are met with evasion, stony silence and worse, Nítido begins to suspect that Río Roto hides a deep trauma. On the third morning, when he is suddenly called in to give a woman last rites, Nítido, for reasons even he doesn't fully understand, tacitly accepts the role of priest. In a moving tale of mourning and revelation, Sellers-García puts Nítido's secret and hidden origins on a slow-motion collision course with the secrets of the town. While the pace is slowed by Nítido's letters to his dead father, this spare and vivid debut brings together wrenching personal and political histories."

~Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

The Dragons of Babel by Michael
Swanwick


"In this triumphant return to the universe of The Iron Dragon's Daughter (1994), Hugo-winner Swanwick introduces Will le Fey, an orphan of uncertain parentage. After defeating an evil mechanical war dragon who has enslaved him and his village, Will finds himself displaced by war, first imprisoned in an internment camp and then transported to the many-miles-high city of Babel. On the way, he falls in with Esme, an immortal child with no memory, and Nat Whilk, a donkey-eared confidence man of superhuman abilities. Fusing high technology seamlessly with magic, Swanwick introduces us to a wide range of marvelous conceits, fascinating digressions and sparkling characters. His language bounces effortlessly back and forth between the high diction of elfland and thieves' argot to create a heady literary stew."


~Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Beginner's Greek: A Novel by James Collins

"The two young professionals of Collins's polished debut, Holly and Peter, meet on a flight bound from New York to L.A. They tacitly understand they are soul mates, and she invites him to dinner, but Peter soon discovers that he has lost the number Holly wrote on a page torn from Mann's The Magic Mountain. With Peter's financial career and New York society as a mundane backdrop, years pass and Holly ends up married to Jonathan, a successful author and womanizer—and, conveniently, Peter's best friend. Still aching for his one-time seatmate, Peter marries Charlotte, a dull Francophile, because it made sense. Charlotte, of course, is also in love with someone else—a former flame, Maximilien-Francois-Marie-Isidore. At Peter and Charlotte's wedding, Jonathan is struck by lightning, precipitating an endless series of events that changes the lives of family, friends and lovers alike—including Peter's boss and Charlotte's ex-stepmother."

~ Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Beaufort: A Novel by Ron Leshem

"In order to limit Hezbollah's attacks on Israeli settlements, Israel maintained a security force in southern Lebanon for close to 20 years. Leshem's searing, award-winning first novel chronicles the lives of the last group of Israeli soldiers to man the outpost at Beaufort, a crusader-castle ruin of questionable military significance. Written as the diary of Liraz "Erez" Liberti, the hotheaded twentysomething leader of a 13-man commando unit stationed in an outpost prior to the Israeli withdrawal in 2000, the novel brings to life the situation of very young men on a dangerous mission. This is a picture of war from a soldier's point of view. Its language is crude, the body count rises, and yet the tenderness of the bonds among the men is extraordinary. As they begin to have doubts about their mission and their government begins to seem cynical about the situation in southern Lebanon, the novel also becomes an indictment of war irrevocably altering the futures of idealistic young men. Leshem brings these issues to life."

~Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Book of Old Houses: A Novel by Sarah Graves

"In the midst of renovating her 1823 house, Jacobia "Jake" Tiptree (Trap Door) found an old book listing the previous owners of her home. Strangely, the list, which was dated and appeared to be written in blood, included Jake's name. She sent it to local book historian Horace Robotham to authenticate, but Robotham died, and the book disappeared. Now a friend of his is in town asking questions and looking for the volume. In her 11th "Home Repair Is Homicide" mystery, Graves fools the reader into relaxing and then shows who is in charge by ending her book in an unexpected way. With each title, she just keeps getting better."

~Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Gas City: A Novel by Loren D. Estleman

"Shamus-winner Estleman, best known for his hard-boiled Amos Walker series (American Detective, etc.), creates a new, morally complex world in this razor-sharp tale of crime and corruption in a fictional eastern U.S. city. Gas City, once known as Garden Grove, has enjoyed stability as a result of understandings among the politicians, the police and the local gangsters. An enclave known as the Circle serves as the community's vice outlet, while the rest of the metropolis is virtually crime free. Police chief Francis Russell, after his wife's death, begins to question the devil's bargain he'd struck years earlier with mob boss Anthony Zeno. When Russell resumes acting like a lawman, virtually everyone in town feels the repercussions. Estleman masterfully creates a wide and diverse cast of characters, and sympathetically portrays their struggles to survive on the mean streets. A superfluous serial killer subplot doesn't detract from the author's achievement, which will justly be compared with that of James Ellroy's Los Angeles noir mysteries and John Gregory Dunne's True Confessions. Admirers of unsparing crime fiction will hope that Estleman plans to visit Gas City again."

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.