THE SNOW CHILD by Eowen Ivey

 
 

Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart--he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season's first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone--but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees. This little girl, who calls herself Faina, seems to be a child of the woods. She hunts with a red fox at her side, skims lightly across the snow, and somehow survives alone in the Alaskan wilderness. As Jack and Mabel struggle to understand this child who could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, they come to love her as their own daughter. But in this beautiful, violent place things are rarely as they appear, and what they eventually learn about Faina will transform all of them.   ~ From the Publisher

Check out the author's website!

"... Penney wraps a riddle in a mystery inside an enigma that intrigues from the very first page." ~ Publishers Weekly

THE INVISIBLE ONES by Stef Penney

"Rose Janko is missing.  It's been seven years since she disappeared, and nobody said a word.

Small-time private investigator Ray Lovell veers between paralysis and delirium in a hospital bed. But before the accident that landed him there, he'd been hired to find Rose Janko, the wife of a charismatic son of a traveling Gypsy family, who went missing seven years earlier. 

Half Romany himself, Ray is well aware that he's been chosen more for his blood than his investigative skills. Still, he's surprised by the intense hostility he encounters from the Jankos, who haven't had an easy past. Touched by tragedy, they're either cursed or hiding a terrible secret-whose discovery Ray can't help suspecting is connected to Rose's disappearance. . . ." 

~ from the Publisher

"Searingly smart and exquisitely written, Halverson’s knockout debut limns family, marriage and a custody battle in a way that gets under your skin and leaves you changed. To say I loved this book would be an understatement." ~ Caroline Leavitt

THE UNDERSIDE OF JOY by Sere Prince Halverson

"Halverson's debut novel marks her as a strong new voice in women's fiction. Three years after the death of her husband, young widow Ella Beene looks back at the joy of her early married life with the recognition that the most genuine happiness cannot be so pure, so deep, or so blind. What she has failed to see is that Joe might not have been completely honest about what went wrong with his first marriage. As the loving stepmother to his two children, Ella suddenly finds herself vulnerable to a custody suit from their mother, Paige. In addition, the Italian grocery business that Joe's family has run for decades in the quaint town of Elbow, California, is about to go under, and Ella must find a way to make a living. Halverson tells a complex story in agile prose, but her tale is awash in a full-throated emotionalism that aligns her more with Elizabeth Berg than the more nuanced Anita Shreve." ~ Booklist

"Mitchard's latest ought to come with a warning: make no immediate plans, because this book will take over your life." Booklist

SECOND NATURE by Jacquelyn Mitchard

"Sicily Coyne was just thirteen when her father was killed in a school fire that left her face disfigured. Twelve years later, a young surgeon, Eliza Cappadora, offers hope in the form of a revolutionary new surgery that may give Sicily back the grace and function she lost. Raised by a dynamic, tenacious aunt who taught her to lead a normal life, and engaged to a wonderful man who knew her long before the accident, Sicily rejects the offer: She knows who she is, and so do the people who love her. But when a secret surfaces that shatters Sicily’s carefully constructed world, she calls off the wedding and agrees to the radical procedure in order to begin a new life.

Her beauty restored virtually overnight, Sicily rushes toward life with open arms, seeking new experiences, adventures, and, most of all, love. But she soon discovers that her new face carries with it risks that no one could have imagined. Confronting a moral and medical crisis that quickly becomes a matter of life and death, Sicily is surrounded by experts and loving family, but the choice that will transform her future, for better or worse, is one she must make alone."

~ Random House

"The Leftovers is, simply put, the best Twilight Zone episode you never saw."--Stephen King, New York Times Book Review

THE LEFTOVERS by Tom Perrotta

"One hundred people have disappeared from tiny Mapleton, New Jersey, in a Rapture-like event that has left the community visibly shaken. Some people are miffed at being left behind, while others are inconsolable over the loss of their loved ones. Mayor Kevin Garvey struggles to give the town a sense of community by adhering to such traditional rites as parades, yet his own family seems irrevocably broken. His son has joined a cult led by the charlatan Happy Wayne; his 16-year-old, straight-A daughter has morphed into a depressed goth; and his wife has become a member of the Guilty Remnant, a group of separatist fanatics who chain smoke, refuse to speak, and stalk Mapleton's citizens to ensure that they will never forget what happened."

~ Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association.

2030: The Real Story About What Happens to America by Albert Brooks

"Comedian and filmmaker Brooks welcomes the reader to the year 2030 in his smart and surprisingly serious debut. Cancer has been cured, global warming is an acknowledged reality, people have robot companions, and the president is a Jew-and oy vey does he have his hands full with an earthquake-leveled Los Angeles and a growing movement by the young to exterminate the elderly. And when the Chinese offer to rebuild L.A. in exchange for a half-ownership stake in Southern California, President Bernstein is faced with a decision that will alter the future of America.

Brooks's sweeping narrative encompasses a diverse cast of characters, including an 80-year-old Angelino left homeless by the earthquake, a trust fund brat with a grudge against the elderly, and a teenage girl saddled with debt after her father's death, all of whom get brought together just in time for a climactic hostage crisis. Brooks's mordant vision encompasses the future of politics, medicine, entertainment, and daily living, resulting in a novel as entertaining as it is thought provoking, like something from the imagination of a borscht belt H.G. Wells."

~ Publishers Weekly, LLC

The Swimming Pool by Holly LeCraw


LeCraw's thoughtful debut novel tells of two families whose lives are entwined by tragedy, secrecy, and scandal. Marcella Atkinson's heart was broken the night her affair with Cecil McClatchey ended and his wife was murdered. Never entirely cleared as a suspect in her killing, Cecil himself died soon after. Years later, her own marriage destroyed by the affair, Marcella is again thrown into contact with the McClatchey family when her daughter Toni (ignorant of her mother's adultery) is employed by Cecil's daughter, Callie, who for her own reasons must seek solace with her brother Jed in their family's summer home on Cape Cod. Jed's discovery of Marcella's old swimsuit in a closet leads him to her and to an entirely new relationship. VERDICT This exceptionally complex and accomplished novel does not read like the work of a beginning writer. With a strong underlying theme of longing woven throughout, LeCraw's work skillfully takes these characters through varying emotional journeys. An insightful piece, not just for beach or airplane reading. An author to watch.

-Julie Kane, Sweet Briar Coll. Lib., VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC

Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson

In the not-too-distant future, the first true artificial intelligence, Archos. awaken. in a computer research center in northwest Washington State and decides that humanity's dominion over the planet has ended and the time of the machine has begun. Archos, unlike SkyNet in the Terminator movies, prefers more mundane but creepier methods: instead of using cyborg Arnold Schwarzeneggers as instruments of destruction, Archos relies on children's toys, battlefield pacification units, domestic service robots, and pleasure dolls to do its dirty work. In one unsettling scene, a little girls Baby-Comes-Alive doll tries to get out of the toy box so it can massacre the entire family.

But even in the face of almost certain defeat against the growing hordes of electronic killers in the New War, humanity unites to kick some serious robot butt. The author, who holds a doctorate in robotics, shows great promise as a worthy successor to Michael Crichton as Wilson, like the late Crichton, is skilled in combining cutting-edge technology with gripping action scenes.

--Gannon, Michae. Copyright 2010 Booklist

Then Came You: A Novel by Jennifer Weiner

A modern day fairy tale.....


"Weiner's latest outing chronicles the plight of four women who are brought together when one of them decides to have a baby. At 43, India knows her hopes of having a child naturally are slim, and the in vitro fertilization she and her older, wealthy husband, Marcus, have been trying isn't working. So India and Marcus decide to go another route: they select an egg from a donor and choose a surrogate to carry the baby. Weiner introduces us to both: Jules is a stunning college student who decides to donate her eggs so she can pay for her father to go to rehab, and Annie, a young mother of two, chooses to become a surrogate to help support her family. The only one not happy with India's plan is Bettina, Marcus' adult daughter, who is secretly hoping her parents will reunite. In this warm and winning yarn, Weiner draws readers into the lives of each woman, and brings them together in an unexpected and ultimately rewarding way."

~ -Huntley, Kristin. Copyright 2010 Booklist

Before I Go To Sleep: A Novel by S. J. Watson


"Forty-seven-year-old Christine Lucas awakens each morning believing she is still in her twenties and single. She suffered a terrible accident that has severely impaired her memory. She doesn't recognize Ben, the man who tells her he is her husband; she doesn't remember that she had a son; and, worst of all, she does not feel comfortable in her own skin, appalled by her wrinkled face and old-lady clothes.

But it turns out she has been getting some help with her memory problem. Dr. Nash calls her every day after Ben leaves for work to tell her where to retrieve her journal, which contains key details about her previous life and work. The most upsetting thing she learns from her journal, however, is that certain facts don't match the story Ben has been telling her. But how can she be sure he is deceiving her when she can barely hold on to the threads of her own life? This mesmerizing, skillfully written debut novel from a British author works on multiple levels. It is both an affecting portrait of the profound impact of a debilitating illness and a pulse-pounding thriller whose outcome no one could predict."

--Wilkinson, Joanne Copyright 2010 Booklist

Note: Also available in large print.

"Kirkus Reviews named Tolstoy and the Purple Chair an outstanding debut novel of 2011 and gave it a starred review: “This celebration of the richness of reading will reward anyone who loves to read…Intelligent, insightful and eloquent, Sankovitch takes the reader on the literary journey…even the well-read reader will be inspired to explore some of the books from this magical year.”

Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading by Nina Sankovitch

"When Sankovitch lost her older sister to cancer, she was determined to "live her life double" in order to make up for her family's painful loss. But after three years spent at a frenetic pace, Sankovitch decided to slow down and rediscover the pleasure of books in order to reconnect with the memory of her sister. Despite the day-to-day responsibilities of raising four sons-and the holidays, vacations, and sudden illnesses that accompany a large family-Sankovitch vowed to read one book a day for an entire year and blog about it. In this entertaining bibliophile's dream, Sankovitch (who launched ReadAllDay.org and was profiled in the New York Times) found that her "year of magical reading" was "not a way to rid myself of sorrow but a way to absorb it." As well as being an homage to her sister and their family of readers, Sankovitch's memoir speaks to the power that books can have over our daily lives. Sankovitch champions the act of reading not as an indulgence but as a necessity, and will make the perfect gift from one bookworm to another."

~ Publishers Weekly, (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Caleb's Crossing: A Novel by Geraldine Brooks

"Pulitzer Prize-winner Brooks (for March) delivers a splendid historical inspired by Caleb Cheeshahteaumauck, the first Native American to graduate from Harvard. Brooks brings the 1660s to life with evocative period detail, intriguing characters, and a compelling story narrated by Bethia Mayfield, the outspoken daughter of a Calvinist preacher. While exploring the island now known as Martha's Vineyard, Bethia meets Caleb, a Wampanoag native to the island, and they become close, clandestine friends. After Caleb loses most of his family to smallpox, he begins to study under the tutelage of Bethia's father. Since Bethia isn't allowed to pursue education herself, she eavesdrops on Caleb's and her own brother's lessons.

Caleb is a gifted scholar who eventually travels, along with Bethia's brother, to Cambridge to continue his education. Bethia tags along and her descriptions of 17th-century Cambridge and Harvard are as entertaining as they are enlightening (Harvard was founded by Puritans to educate the "English and Indian youth of this country," for instance). With Harvard expected to graduate a second Martha's Vineyard Wampanoag Indian this year, almost three and a half centuries after Caleb, the novel's publication is particularly timely."

~ Publisher Weekly Review


This may be my new favorite of all of Geraldine Brook's books. She perfectly captures 17th century Martha's Vineyard and Cambridge. Her characters are memorable and the religious conflicts between the Puritans and Native Americans are thought-provoking. Looking forward to having a book discussion on this new release. ~kvl

THE WEIRD SISTERS by Eleanor Brown

"You don't have to have a sister or be a fan of the Bard to love Brown's bright, literate debut, but it wouldn't hurt. Sisters Rose (Rosalind; As You Like It), Bean (Bianca; The Taming of the Shrew), and Cordy (Cordelia; King Lear)--the book-loving, Shakespeare-quoting, and wonderfully screwed-up spawn of Bard scholar Dr. James Andreas--end up under one roof again in Barnwell, Ohio, the college town where they were raised, to help their breast cancera stricken mom. The real reasons they've trudged home, however, are far less straightforward: vagabond and youngest sib Cordy is pregnant with nowhere to go; man-eater Bean ran into big trouble in New York for embezzlement, and eldest sister Rose can't venture beyond the "mental circle with Barnwell at the center of it."

For these pains-in-the-soul, the sisters have to learn to trust love--of themselves, of each other--to find their way home again. The supporting cast--removed, erudite dad; ailing mom; a crew of locals; Rose's long-suffering fiancAc--is a punchy delight, but the stage clearly belongs to the sisters; Macbeth's witches would be proud of the toil and trouble they stir up."

~Copyright Publishers Weekly Review

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

"Diana Bishop is the last of the Bishops, a powerful family of witches, but she has refused her magic ever since her parents died and, instead, has turned to academia. When a new project takes her to Oxford, she is looking forward to several months in the Bodleian, investigating alchemical manuscripts. Her peace is soon interrupted when one of the books she finds in the library turns out to have been lost for 150 years and is wanted desperately by the witch, daemon, and vampire communities so desperately that many are willing to kill for it. But the very first creature to approach her after her discovery is Matthew, a very old vampire and fellow scholar, who seems only to want to protect her. Harkness creates a compelling and sweeping tale that moves from Oxford to Paris to upstate New York and into both Diana's and Matthews complex families and histories. All her characters are fully fleshed and unique, which, when combined with the complex and engaging plot, results in one of the better fantasy debuts in recent months."

~ Booklist (starred review)

Excellent read! Also available as Book on CD.

"An intoxicating chillfest that's sharper than a vamp's incisors." ~Daily Record

The Radleys: A Novel by Matt Haig

"The Radleys Peter, Helen, and their two teenagers, Clara and Rowan live outwardly in domestic bliss, but it comes at a price: Peter and Helen are abstainers, vampires who view blood drinking as an addiction, and keeping up the facade has strained their marriage. They've kept the truth from their children, but this backfires when Clara's vegan diet (dangerous for abstainers, who need meat) causes uncontrollable blood lust, culminating in her ripping a boy to shreds. Enter Uncle Will, an unrepentant vampire, whose subtle and dangerous charm brings even more trouble. This is a dark domestic drama about a loving but dysfunctional family that just happens to be vampires, though delicious moments of gore maintain its horror connection. Excerpts from The Abstainer's Handbook, which the Radley's rigidly follow, cleverly mimic self-help manuals, and Haig's sly digs at suburbia's forced banality and conformity are on target. As Rowan says, Everyone represses everything. . . . We're middle-class and we're British. Repression is in our veins. A white-picket-fence-style happy ending caps off this unusual blended story."

--Hutley, Krista Copyright 2010 Booklist

"Hellenga is fearlessly inventive. Could anybody else combine snake handling, the Ituri pygmies of the Congo, life in a women's prison, learning to play timpani, a murder trial and a poignant love affair in three hundred-odd fast-paced, highly readable pages?"
—Maxine Kumin

THE SNAKEWOMAN OF LITTLE EGYPT by Robert Hellenga


"The lovers in Hellenga's moving, profound novels do not live in a world of conventional happy endings. His romances often end in attenuated moments of both disappointment and tenderness, partings that have the feel not of failed relationships but of life moving on and working out as it must. There is melancholy in that but a kind of happiness, too.

So it was in his best-selling debut, The Sixteen Pleasures (1994), and so it is in his latest novel, about a young woman, Sunny, just released from prison after serving five years for shooting (but not killing) her husband, and Jackson, an anthropology professor torn between his desire to return to Africa and to settle into the comfortable university life he's found in southern Illinois. Everything changes when Jackson meets Sunny, who grew up in a snake-handling church in Illinois' Little Egypt area (she shot her husband after he forced her to put her hand in a box of rattlesnakes). Sunny rents Jackson's garage apartment and quickly becomes his lover, but she is trying to escape her childhood and her husband, and Jackson is entranced by her stories of the Church of the Burning Bush with Signs Following, eventually going there to do fieldwork.

Hellenga fills the novel not only with fascinating details of snake handling and the religious ecstasy it inspires but also with a beguiling portrait of the comfort and shared intimacy of domestic life. Jackson and Sunny dance between the safe harbor of their life together and the wider sea of courage, risk, and adventure, each teaching the other about the many forms of joie de vivre.Yes, it is a melancholy story, but it is also immensely satisfying and even uplifting in that unique way that only deeply felt life can provide"

.--Ott, Bill Copyright 2010 Booklist

THE OUTSIDE BOY by Jeanine Cummins



"Christy, nearly 12, is an Irish Traveller, a Pavee, a child of motion who, with his family, journeys restlessly from town to town, never staying in any place long enough to call it home. But when his beloved Grandda dies, family secrets begin to spill out, and things begin to change, perhaps irrevocably. Set in Ireland in 1959, Cummin's first novel (shes also the author of the memoir A Rip in Heaven, 2004) is a deeply moving and elegiac look at a vanishing culture. Told in Christy's vernacular but often poetic first-person voice, The Outside Boy is gorgeously written and an implicit celebration of Irish storytelling. And it offers a convincing and evocative look at a way of life little known or understood by the many foreign to it. Though Cummin's treatment of the Pavee may sometimes seem idealized, she is quick to acknowledge their occasional petty thefts and tradition of mooching. Her overriding, beautifully realized theme is larger than that, however: it is the universal desire to find a place where one belongs and people whether ones own family or as-yet-unknown others whose presence provides essential comfort, contentment, and completion.

~ Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association

It's that time of year when we're out and about more, life gets a bit rushed and people can be thoughtless and sometimes, just downright rude. Whoopi's book may be just what you need to realize you're not the only one who thinks good manners are a thing of the past.

IS IT JUST ME? OR IS IT NUTS OUT THERE? By Whoopi Goldberg


"Have you noticed that things aren't as civil as they once were? Or that rudeness is no longer an exception but a lifestyle? Sure you have. All you need to do is set foot outside your door to see that bad manners are taking over everywhere. People are yakking on cell phones in restaurants, even at church. Folks in carpools wear enough cologne to make our eyes bleed. Complete strangers think it's OK to rub a pregnant lady's belly. Passengers abuse flight attendants, family outings to the ball park are ruined by rowdy drunks . . . a congressman heckled the President of the United States.

Well, Whoopi Goldberg has noticed all this and more and asked herself, "Is it just me?" Unleashing her trademark irreverence and humor, her new book of observations takes a funny and excruciatingly honest look at how a loss of civility is messing with the quality of life for all of us.

So if your pet peeve is folks who talk in movie theaters like it was their living room, or if you get bugged by people clipping their nails and performing other personal hygiene next to you on the bus, or if you cringe when "please" and "thank you" get replaced by "gimme" and "huh?" . . . you have found a kindred spirit. Because Whoopi has witnessed the growing disrespect and rudeness in our lives and realized she is not alone. And, as you'll discover in these pages, neither are you."

~ from the Publisher

"Salvation City" is not only timely and thought-provoking but also generous in its understanding of human nature. When apocalypse comes, I want Nunez in my lifeboat." -"Vanity Fair"

SALVATION CITY by Sigrid Nunez


"Teenager Cole Vining had just moved with his parents from Chicago to a rural Indiana college town when a deadly flu epidemic leaves him orphaned and memory impaired. Shuffled from a Dickensian orphanage to a conservative Christian couple, Cole finds his muddled memories of his liberal parents clashing with the new reality of life in Salvation City with Pastor Wyatt, a charismatic preacher with a history of substance abuse, and his wife, Tracy. Cole now has a safe, close-knit community around him, but he feels its limitations as Tracy struggles to homeschool him. Then, an unexpected visitor presents Cole with new options and hope for a more balanced future...."

.-Jenn B. Stidham, Houston Community Coll.-Northeast, TX (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc.

BLOOD OF THE PRODIGAL by P. L. Gaus



"Amish bishop Eli Miller of Holmes County, OH, placed a ban on his own 18-year-old son Jonah when he refused to follow Amish precepts. Now, after ten years, Jonah returns to kidnap the son he fathered as a teenager, then disappears again. Not wanting to publicize private problems, Miller asks local professor Mike Branden for help in locating the pair. Branden, in turn, frets about not contacting police, especially after murder muddies the waters. Gaus obviously knows his subject well: a professor at the College of Wooster in the heart of Ohio's Amish region, he provides precise, detailed descriptions of Amish practices and full-bodied, unhurried, well-measured prose."

~ Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc.

THE DINOSAUR HUNTER by Homer Hickam


"Former Los Angeles police detective-turned-Montana cowboy Mike Wire is enjoying the quiet life on the Square C ranch until the arrival of the titular paleontologist. The scientist's zeal impresses the ranch's owner, widow Jeanette Coulter, who allows him to hunt for T. rex bones, much to Mike's surprise. The mysteries begin with cattle killings and strange engine noises at night, and soon more newcomers appear, including a retired Hollywood producer and his heavily tattooed Russian friend. Environmental activists and government land agents add to the suspect pool, and when a murder occurs at the county Fourth of July party, Mike is forced to combine his skill sets to discover the truth and protect those he cares about."

-Dan Forrest, Western Kentucky Univ. Libs., Bowling Green (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc.

THE WOLVES OF ANDOVER by Kathleen Kent

"This prequel to Kent's The Heretic's Daughter (2008) focuses on the early life of outspoken, tart-tongued Martha Allen, from whom the author is descended. Set in seventeenth-century Massachusetts, the novel finds the still-unmarried 23-year-old Martha being sent to live with her cousins as a domestic. Once there, she finds herself intrigued by a hired man named Thomas Carrier. A Welshman, he is the tallest man she has ever seen and one of the most taciturn. But when he saves her from two marauding wolves, intrigue turns to attraction. But other wolves human ones this time may pose an even greater danger to the two. Who is Thomas, in fact? What part might he have played in the overthrow and beheading of England's Charles I? And why have a clutch of dangerous assassins come from England in search of him? An example of the currently popular genre-blender, the book is part historical fiction, part romance, and part suspense. Skillfully meshing these various elements, the author's latest effort is bound to please fans of each."

--Michael Cart, Copyright 2010 Booklist

“Straight is both a novelist and a mother, and has to be numbered among the Mothers of Invention who count for so much in our literature, writers such as Louise Erdrich and Jane Smiley, Barbara Kingsolver and Dorothy Allison.”

—"The Boston Globe"

TAKE ONE CANDLE LIGHT A ROOM by Susan Straight

"Straight's (A Million Nightingales) newest heroine, FX Antoine, keeps a distance from her family, her past, and even her present. Her one tie to home is her godson Victor, the child of her murdered best friend, whose involvement in a shooting sends him careening off the college path and potentially straight into a life of crime. He flees to Louisiana, where FX grew up, and is followed by her and her father, who wrestles with family secrets of his own. Their pursuit of Victor is marred by complications, not the least of which is the looming Hurricane Katrina, putting them all at risk. Straight again places readers in a rich and alien culture, a melange of misfits and outlaws. FX is a detached protagonist, resisting her own family and culture, and readers will share her outsider's viewpoint. Straight's love of language is embedded in every page....."

~ Publisher Weekly Review, Copyright 2010 Reed Business Information.

Cleo: The Cat Who Mended a Family
by Helen Brown

I'll admit it, I'm a sucker for animal stories, especially ones about cats.

"Grace can come in deceptively small packages. For Brown, it arrived in the form of a runt-of-the-litter kitten whom her two young sons, Sam and Rob, adored on sight. Promised as an upcoming present for Sam's tenth birthday, it was a gift the boy never received. While the kitten was being weaned from its mother, Sam was taken from his. Just weeks after his birthday, Sam was killed in an auto accident, and Brown's world changed forever. Yet when the kitten was delivered to her new home right on schedule, Brown's heart first broke with the unfairness of it all, then gradually began to mend as little Cleo did what all kittens do: mounted a charm offensive like no other. Over the next 23 years, as Brown's marriage ended and career blossomed, the spunky Cleo remained her constant source of comfort and inspiration. Heartfelt and open, Brown's buoyant tale of loss and recovery celebrates the resilient patience and restorative powers of animal compassion."

~ Carol Haggas, Copyright 2010 Booklist

The Lady Matador's Hotel by Cristina Garcia

"The Hotel Miraflor is the epicenter for explosive conflict in the capital of an unnamed Central American country ravaged by civil war and corruption. During the first week in November 2003, a presidential campaign reaches fever pitch, a military conference convenes at the hotel, and battles intimate and political, ritualized and spontaneous, erupt with seismic force. The hotels most prominent guest is a veritable goddess, Suki Palacios, a lithe and fearless matador from California of Mexican and Japanese descent, a woman who brandishes her beauty like a weapon. Another indomitable woman, attorney Gertrudis, uses the hotel as headquarters for her lucrative black-market adoption operation. Won Kim, a reluctant Korean factory owner, has sequestered his pregnant teenage mistress in the honeymoon suite. Aura, an ex-guerrilla working as a waitress at the hotel, plots revenge against a murderous, weight-lifting colonel. Garcia strides and twirls with a matadors daring, grace, and focus as she enters the psyches of diverse, intense, and unnerving characters; choreographs converging and dramatic story lines; and confronts the pervasiveness of the inexplicable. Streamlined, sexy, darkly witty, and succinctly tragic, Garcias fifth sharply imagined novel of caustic social critique concentrates the horrors of oppression and violence into a compulsively readable tale of coiled fury and penetrating insight.

~Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association

Big Girls Don't Cry: The Election that Changed Everything for American Women by Rebecca Traister

"Superb.... Big Girls Don't Cry is much more than an assemblage of these type of 'boys on the bus' campaign anecdotes. As anyone who's followed Traister's sharp and lively essays in Salon knows, her particular 'beat' is gender. What she does here is tease out the cultural narratives that came to wield so much power during the [2008 presidential] campaign and, finally, in the voting booth.... There's so much…to be learned and argued over in Big Girls Don't Cry…. Girls, these days, can not only run for president; they can also brilliantly analyze presidential campaigns, too."—Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air

THE EXILE: AN OUTLANDER GRAPHIC NOVEL by Diana Gabaldon (Illustrated by Hoang Nguyen)

"Diana Gabaldon’s brilliant storytelling has captivated millions of readers in her bestselling and award-winning Outlander saga. Now, in her first-ever graphic novel, Gabaldon gives readers a fresh look at the events of the original Outlander: Jamie Fraser’s side of the story, gorgeously rendered by artist Hoang Nguyen." ~ Book Jacket

The Mullah's Storm by Thomas W. Young

"At the start of Young's well-crafted first novel, a transport plane carrying a high-value prisoner, a radical mullah, is forced down in the rugged Hindu Kush of Afghanistan. Maj. Michael Parson, the plane's co-pilot, and female Master Sergeant Gold, an interpreter who speaks Pashto, must brave a ferocious winter storm and reach a nearby Special Forces team with the mullah, but they wind up in the hands of Taliban insurgents. The SF team rescues Parson, but the Taliban escape, taking the mullah and the translator in opposite directions. The team must try to recapture the mullah, but Parson can't abandon Gold because "You love your comrades more than you hate your enemies." Young (The Speed of Heat: An Airlift Wing at War in Iraq and Afghanistan) draws on his own war experiences for verisimilitude, which, along with believable characters and an exciting plot, makes this one of the better thrillers to come out of the Afghan theater."

~ Copyright 2010 Reed Business Information

Freedom: A Novel by Jonathan Franzen



"Patty and Walter Berglund were the new pioneers of old St. Paul, the gentrifiers, the hands-on parents, the avant-garde of the Whole Foods generation. Patty was the ideal sort of neighbor, who could tell you where to recycle your batteries and how to get the local cops to actually do their job. She was an enviably perfect mother and the wife of Walter's dreams. Together with Walter (environmental lawyer, commuter cyclist, total family man) she was doing her small part to build a better world. But now, in the new millennium, the Berglunds have become a mystery. Why has their teenage son moved in with the aggressively Republican family next door? Why has Walter taken a job working with Big Coal? What exactly is Richard Katz rocker and Walter's college best friend and rival still doing in the picture? Most of all, what has happened to Patty? Why has the bright star of Barrier Street become a very different kind of neighbor an implacable Fury coming unhinged before the street's attentive eyes?


In his first novel since The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen has given us an epic of contemporary love and marriage. Freedom comically and tragically captures the temptations and burdens of liberty: the thrills of teenage lust, the shaken compromises of middle age, the wages of suburban sprawl, the heavy weight of empire. In charting the mistakes and joys of Freedom's characters as they struggle to learn how to live in an ever more confusing world, Franzen has produced an indelible and deeply moving portrait of our time."

Room: A Novel by Emma Donoghue

(*Note: This novel was already written by the time the Jaycee Dugard story broke).

"Five-year-old Jack and his Ma enjoy their long days together, playing games, watching TV, and reading favorite stories. Through Jack's narration, it slowly becomes apparent that their pleasant days are shrouded by a horrifying secret. Seven years ago, his 19-year-old Ma was abducted and has since been held captive-in one small room. To her abductor she is nothing more than a sex slave, with Jack as a result, yet she finds the courage to raise her child with constant love under these most abhorrent circumstances. He is a bright child-bright enough, in fact, to help his mother successfully carry out a plan of escape. Once they get to the outside world, the sense of relief is short lived, as Jack is suddenly faced with an entirely new worldview (with things he never imagined, like other people, buildings, and even family) while his mother attempts to deal with her own psychological trauma. Verdict Gripping, riveting, and close to the bone, this story grabs you and doesn't let go."

~ Susanne Wells, P.L. of Cincinnati & Hamilton Cty. Copyright 2010 Reed Business Information.