New Books of March 2012
14 Mar 2012 Leave a Comment
in New Books Tags: family, fiction, historical fiction, list, mystery, new, reviews, romance
The O’Briens
Peter Behrens
In a family saga that begins in 1887, we follow Joe O’Brien through a harsh childhood in the Canadian bush, then into the wider world where three siblings enter the religious life, another dabbles in real estate, and Joe builds railroads. On a business trip to Venice, CA, he meets and marries Iseult and brings her back to Canada to live. Over their years together, Joe becomes the wealthy owner of a construction company, occasionally escaping to New York for alcoholic benders, while Iseult dedicates herself to their three children, her photography, and helping the less fortunate. Through births and deaths, love and wars, they struggle to make sense of themselves and their marriage.
The Good Father
Noah Hawley
Paul Allen, a successful Manhattan rheumatologist is completely stunned when two Secret Service agents inform him that his son by his first marriage, 20-year-old Daniel Allen, aka Carter Allen Cash, has killed a rising political star and presidential candidate. Resistant to the idea that his son is the actual assassin, he is taken aback when Daniel pleads guilty. He then becomes obsessed with finding out how his son could commit such a barbaric act. Combing Daniel’s childhood for clues to the one parental misstep that sent him down the path to becoming a killer and poring over documentation of Daniel’s every move in the 18 months prior to the assassination, Paul becomes a haunted figure.
The Dog Who Danced
Susan Wilson
Justine Meade has spent most of her 43 years on the move. She left home young, got in and out of an early marriage, and had a son who, unhappy with her restless life, went to live with his father. When Justine learns that her father is dying, she hitches a cross-country ride with a long-haul trucker from Seattle to Massachusetts, hoping for a resolution to their relationship. Her companion on the journey is Mack, a sheepdog trained to dance. But at a rest stop, her ride drives off, unknowingly taking Mack with him. Later abandoned, Mack is found by an older couple still grieving after their teenager daughter’s suicide years earlier. Meanwhile, Justine reaches her father in time to revisit the fight that sent her away from home. She gets a new perspective on the past while Mack, nearer to Justine than she realizes, helps the old couple heal. When chance reunites Justine and Mack, she decides to get back in touch with her son.
Carry the One –a Novel
Carol Anshaw
The one that must be carried when the Kenney siblings add themselves up is the girl who was hit and killed when two siblings, Nick and Alice, were driving home, stoned and stupid, from their sister Carmen’s wedding. That’s the first chapter: the rest of the novel and the rest of their lives-sex and drugs and prison visits, family parties and divorce, raising teenagers, painting, politics, and addiction-play out with that guilt and loss forever in the background.
Another Piece of My Heart
Jane Green
Andi has spent much of her adult life looking for the perfect man, and at thirty-seven, she’s finally found him. Ethan – divorced with two daughters, Emily and Sophia – is a devoted father and even better husband. Always hoping one day she would be a mother, Andi embraces the girls like they were her own. But in Emily’s eyes, Andi is an obstacle to her father’s love, and Emily will do whatever it takes to break her down. When the dynamics between the two escalate, they threaten everything Andi believes about love, family, and motherhood – leaving both women standing at a crossroad in their lives and in their hearts.
New Books of December 2011
14 Dec 2011 Leave a Comment
in New Books Tags: fiction, historical fiction, list, mystery, new
Lost December
By Richard Paul Evans
When Luke Crisp graduates from business school, his father, CEO and co-founder of Fortune 500 Crisp’s Copy Centers, is ready to share some good news: he wants to turn the family business over to his son. But Luke has other plans. Taking control of his trust fund, Luke leaves home to pursue a life of reckless indulgence. But when his funds run out, so do his friends. Humbled, alone, and too ashamed to ask his father for help, Luke secretly takes a lowly job at one of his father’s copy centers. There he falls in love with a struggling single mother and begins to understand the greatest source of personal joy.
The Drop
By Michael Connelly
Harry Bosch has two new cases demanding his attention. In the first, DNA from a 1989 rape and murder matches a 29-year-old convicted rapist. Was he an eight-year-old killer or has something gone terribly wrong in the new Regional Crime Lab? Then in a second case, Bosch and his partner are called to a death scene fraught with internal politics. Councilman Irvin Irving’s son jumped or was pushed from a window at the Chateau Marmont. Irving, Bosch’s longtime nemesis, has demanded that Harry handle the investigation. Relentlessly pursuing both cases, Bosch makes two chilling discoveries: a killer operating unknown in the city for as many as three decades, and a political conspiracy that goes back into the dark history of the police department.
The Maid of Fairbourne Hall
By Julie Klassen
Pampered Margaret Macy flees London in disguise to escape pressure to marry a dishonorable man. With no money and nowhere else to go, she takes a position as a housemaid in the home of Nathaniel Upchurch, a suitor she once rejected in hopes of winning his dashing brother. Praying no one will recognize her, Margaret fumbles through the first real work of her life. If she can last until her next birthday, she will gain an inheritance from a spinster aunt–and sweet independence. Observing both brothers as an “invisible” servant, Margaret learns she may have misjudged Nathaniel. Is it too late to rekindle his admiration? And when one of the family is nearly killed, Margaret alone discovers who was responsible. Should she come forward, even at the risk of her reputation and perhaps her life?
The Leopard
By Jo Nesbo
After two women are found dead in Oslo, each with bizarre puncture wounds that were caused from the inside of their mouths, police are baffled, but homicide detective Kaja Solness is called to Hong Kong to track down a former serial killer specialist, Harry Hole, whom they hope can solve the case. Hole has to battle a new enemy-the impending death of his father-as well as the usual suspects: one (or more?) pathological killers, natural dangers, internecine warfare within the Oslo police department, and, most of all, himself.
The Winter Palace –a novel of Catherine the Great
By Eva Stachniak
Catherine the Great was born Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst, this “pale, appealing sliver of a girl” arrives in St. Petersburg in 1743 as a potential bride for Peter, Empress Elizabeth’s weak-willed nephew and heir. Readers follow Catherine from her early years of barrenness and disfavor through her even more demoralizing years of motherhood. While Elizabeth tolerates and even encourages Catherine’s sexual liaisons, she separates her from her children. During the massive rebuilding of the Winter Palace and war with Prussia, which impoverish Elizabeth’s subjects, a steelier, more confident Catherine emerges.
New Books of October
19 Oct 2011 Leave a Comment
in New Books Tags: fiction, historical fiction, list, mystery, new
The Cat’s Table
By Michael Ondaatje
In 1953, an 11-year-old boy spends 21 unsupervised days, aboard the ocean liner Oronsay, in order to meet up with his mother in London. This voyage proves momentous as significant events during the crossing profoundly impact the boy’s future while immensely expanding his world. Although seemingly at the periphery of society, seated at the so-called cat’s table, the boy’s dining mates are, in fact, a lot more instrumental in the ensuing intrigue aboard the ship than originally appears. As the years pass, the boy grows up to be an acclaimed writer with an international reputation (not unlike Ondaatje, especially for The English Patient, 1992), and frequently returns to the events of those three weeks and demonstrates how “over the years, confusing fragments, lost corners of stories, have a clearer meaning when seen in a new light, a different place.”
The Dovekeepers
By Alice Hoffman
In 70 C.E., nine hundred Jews held out for months against armies of Romans on a mountain in the Judean desert, Masada. According to the ancient historian Josephus, two women and five children survived. Based on this tragic historical event, Hoffman weaves a spellbinding tale of four extraordinary, bold, resourceful, and sensuous women, each of whom comes to Masada by a different path.
House of Secrets
By Tracie Peterson
The lives of sisters Bailee, Geena, and Piper Cooper are shrouded in secrecy and shame. A request to return to the beach house of their youth is certain to unearth what they fear the most, and one thing is assured: their family will never be the same again. A romance for one of the sisters provides a welcome distraction. As facts are revealed and each character tries to accept the truth, readers will be riveted by Peterson’s skill in building mystery while deftly addressing the stigma associated with mental illness.
The Marriage Plot
By Jeffrey Eugenides
Set in the early 1980s, this is the tale of Madeleine Hanna, recent Brown University English grad, and her admirer Mitchell Grammaticus, who opts out of Divinity School to walk the earth as a pilgrim in India. Madeleine is equally caught up, both with the postmodern vogue and with the brilliant Leonard Bankhead, whom she met in semiotics class and whose fits of manic depression jeopardize his suitability as a marriage prospect. The book’s fidelity to its young heroes and to a superb supporting cast of enigmatic professors, feminist theorists, neo-Victorians, and concerned mothers, and all of their evolving investment in ideas and ideals is such that the central argument of the book is also its solution: the old stories may be best after all, but there are always new ways to complicate them.
Nightwoods
By Charles Frazier
Luce becomes foster mother to young twins when her sister is murdered by her husband. The traumatized children seem to have reverted to a wild state; they do not speak and have a troubling inclination to set fires. She is so isolated that she never even hears the news that her brother in law has somehow been declared innocent and is headed her way, in search of money he believes his deceased wife may have passed along to her. Time passes slowly for Luce and the children: she takes up with a local man who has inherited the rundown hotel where she lives, and the twins gradually begin to open up. When the children’s father arrives on their doorstep, the story takes a shocking turn.
PageTurners Read “Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter”
12 Oct 2011 Leave a Comment
in PageTurners Tags: fiction, mystery, PageTurners, readalikes, reviews
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
Tom Franklin
Silas “32″ Jones and Larry Ott were great friends for a few brief months in their childhood. Unfortunately, this wasn’t to last. Suspicion is cast upon Larry when a girl goes missing who was last seen with him. Silas moved away to pursue his dreams of playing baseball and Larry remained, convicted but not in prison. Twenty five years later, a new mystery draws them together again. Another girl is missing, and everyone seems to think Larry caused it. Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter explores the thin line between friendship and hatred.
The PageTurners Book Club met on Thursday, October 6 at 6 pm at the Rice Lake Public Library to discuss this book. Six people attended.
Click on the book graphic below to see a full recap of book club members’ opinions.
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Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin is available at the Rice Lake Public Library. There are over ten copies of this book in the MORE System. Please visit the card catalog website or call us at 234-4861 to reserve a copy today.
The PageTurners Book Club is sponsored by the Friends of the Rice Lake Public Library. It usually meets on the first Thursday of each month at 6 pm at the Rice Lake Public Library. Discussion lasts an hour; everyone is welcome.
New Books of September
07 Sep 2011 Leave a Comment
in New Books Tags: books, fiction, historical fiction, Holocaust, list, mystery, new, stillborn, WJMC
Come find out what’s new this month!
Good Graces
By Lesley Kagen
Sequel to Whistlin’ in the Dark
Eleven-year-old Sally, still traumatized by the sudden death of her father and her own narrow escape from a murderer and molester, no longer has confidence in her own judgment, but when she suspects her sister Troo of being involved in a series of crimes in their Milwaukee neighborhood, she knows she must somehow find a way to honor the deathbed promise she made to her dad to keep Troo safe.
The Art of Fielding
By Chad Harbach
At Westish College, a small school on the shore of Lake Michigan, baseball star Henry Skrimshander seems destined for big league stardom. But when a routine throw goes disastrously off course, the fates of five people are upended. Henry’s fight against self-doubt threatens to ruin his future. College president Guert Affenlight, Owen Dunne, Henry’s gay roommate and teammate, Mike Schwartz, and Pella Affenlight, Guert’s daughter, returns to Westish after escaping an ill-fated marriage, determined to start a new life. As the season counts down to its climactic final game, these five are forced to confront their deepest hopes, anxieties, and secrets. In the process they forge new bonds, and help one another find their true paths.
The Grief of Others
By Leah Hager Cohen
The Ryries have suffered a loss: the death of a baby just fifty-seven hours after his birth. Without words to express their grief, the parents, John and Ricky, try to return to their previous lives. Yet in the aftermath of the baby’s death, long-suppressed uncertainties about their relationship come roiling to the surface. But as the four family members scatter into private, isolating grief, an unexpected visitor arrives, and they all find themselves growing more alert to the sadness and burdens of others-to the grief that is part of every human life but that also carries within it the power to draw us together.
There But for The
By Ali Smith
At a dinner party in the posh London suburb of Greenwich, Miles Garth suddenly leaves the table midway through the meal, locks himself in an upstairs room, and refuses to leave. An eclectic group of neighbors and friends slowly gathers around the house, and Miles’s story is told from the points of view of four of them: Anna, a woman in her forties; Mark, a man in his sixties; May, a woman in her eighties; and a ten-year-old named Brooke. The thing is, none of these people knows Miles more than slightly. How much is it possible for us to know about a stranger? And what are the consequences of even the most casual, fleeting moments we share every day with one another?
The Emperor of Lies
By Steve Sem-Sandberg
A fictionalized account of the second-largest Jewish ghetto established by the Nazis in the Polish city of Lodz in 1940, chronicling the daily life of its inhabitants under the authoritarian rule of Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, the ambitious sixty-three-year-old Jewish businessman who sought to transform the ghetto into a productive industrial complex. Sem-Sandberg risks courting controversy by revisiting this complicity with evil, as he does by allowing the possibility that Rumkowski may have honestly believed that he was saving his fellow Jews by his acts–a possibility that historians have lately been wrestling with.
PageTurners Read “Room”
10 Aug 2011 Leave a Comment
in PageTurners Tags: family, fiction, Hero, kidnapping, mystery
Room
by Emma Donoghue
Narrator Jack and his mother, who was kidnapped seven years earlier when she was a 19-year-old college student, celebrate his fifth birthday. They live in a tiny, 11-foot-square soundproofed cell in a converted shed in the kidnapper’s yard. The sociopath, whom Jack has dubbed Old Nick, visits at night, grudgingly doling out food and supplies. But Ma, as Jack calls her, proves to be resilient and resourceful–and attempts a nail-biting escape.
Eight people attending the book club on Thursday, August 4 at 6 pm. Conversation was fast and full of varying opinions. One woman was vocal in her disapproval of its sensationalistic focus, and another loved it for its timely message. The average rating was 3.18 out of 5 possible books; the lowest score was 1 and the highest was 4.5 out of 5.
Click on the book graphic below to see a full recap of book club members’ opinions.
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Room by Emma Donoghue is available at the Rice Lake Public Library. There are over ten copies of this book in the MORE System. Please visit the card catalog website or call us at 234-4861 to reserve a copy today.
The PageTurners Book Club is sponsored by the Friends of the Rice Lake Public Library. It usually meets on the first Thursday of each month at 6 pm at the Rice Lake Public Library. Discussion lasts an hour; everyone is welcome.
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If you’d like more information on this subject, please contact Tami Richardson, Adult Services Manager at the Rice Lake Public Library, at 234-4861 x15.
New Books of July
06 Jul 2011 Leave a Comment
in New Books Tags: fiction, historical fiction, list, mystery, new
The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb
By Melanie Benjamin
Mercy Lavinia “Vinnie” Warren Bump, the diminutive wife of Gen. Tom Thumb, narrates her life story in this vivacious fictionalized autobiography that takes her from a small New England town to a seedy Mississippi showboat and eventually into the entourage of the impresario P.T. Barnum. Born with proportionate dwarfism, Vinnie, a “perfect woman in miniature,” rejects a career as a schoolteacher in favor of show business, eventually finding an intellectual soul mate in Barnum and international fame that leads her into the opulence of New York society and meetings with heads of state from the White House to Europe and India.
The End of Everything
By Megan Abbott
Thirteen-year-old Lizzie Hood is the last person to see her best friend, Evie, before she disappears. They’ve been inseparable for years, and Lizzie knows everything about her-or does she? Lizzie seizes upon a random memory—a car that circled the block twice—to point the finger at a neighbor. Her narration is full of quick glimpses of another story, just there on the edges, that create layers of suspense. Has Evie been abducted, or has her fierce older sister driven her to run away? Just how safe and perfect is the family next door?
A Good Hard Look
By Ann Napolitano
Writer Flannery O’Connor, forced by illness to leave New York and return to her family farm in Milledgeville, Georgia, plans to live quietly in the shadows, but her mother drags her to the wedding of family friend Cookie Himmel, the embodiment of Southern womanhood, where Flannery’s presence has an unsettling effect on guests, including Cookie’s groom Melvin Whiteson and policeman’s wife Lona Waters, who begin to question the life choices they have made.
Iron House
By John Hart
Two brothers, Michael and Julian, are both raised and abused at the Iron House, an orphanage in the mountains of North Carolina. As a boy, Michael flees the place and ends up on the streets of New York City, where Otto Kaitlin, “the most powerful crime boss in recent memory,” rescues him and fashions him into an accomplished killing machine and a surrogate son. When Kaitlin dies, his real son, Stevan, fueled by a mixture of jealousy and greed, sets out to destroy everything the now grownup Michael has. Stevan kidnaps Michael’s girlfriend, Elena, and threatens emotionally fragile Julian, a creative, tortured genius who is now living at the North Carolina mansion of his adoptive parents.
Turn of Mind
By Alice LaPlante
Dr. Jennifer White, 64, is a widowed retired orthopedic surgeon with rapidly advancing dementia. She lives at home with her caregiver; her son and daughter are doing their best to cope with her mood swings, confusion, and wanderings, but they have their own challenges. When Jennifer’s best friend and neighbor is found murdered with four of her fingers surgically removed, she is understandably the prime suspect. She has no memory of committing the crime. The police questioning reveals the intimate story of two strong women whose friendship was both compassionate and highly adversarial.
Lilian Jackson Braun
15 Jun 2011 Leave a Comment
in News Tags: Cat Who..., death, historical fiction, list, mystery
Lilian Jackson Braun Bettinger (1913-2011)
Lilian Jackson Braun Bettinger passed away at the age of 97 on June 4, 2011. She was the prolific, best-selling author, more commonly known simply as Lilian Jackson Braun, of the “Cat Who…” series that featured Jim Qwilleran and his two crime-solving siamese cats, Koko and Yum-Yum. She received fame for her first three “Cat Who…” books in the mid 1960s. Then she took a break; twenty years passed before she wrote any more books. She wrote 29 “Cat Who…” books in total. She wrote all of her stories out in longhand before giving them to a professional to be typed.
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Here are some of Lilian Jackson Braun’s books that you can request from the Rice Lake Public Library :
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The Fifth Witness and Readalikes
30 Mar 2011 Leave a Comment
in Readalikes Tags: fiction, fifth witness, list, mystery
The Fifth Witness
by Michael Connelly
Pub. Date : April 5, 2011
5th in Mickey Haller series
Mickey Haller, an LA lawyer, is specializing in “foreclosure defense.” Haller’s first foreclosure client, Lisa Trammel, is fighting hard to keep her home, maybe too hard. The bank has gotten a restraining order to stop Trammel’s protests, and she becomes the prime suspect when Mitchell Bondurant, a mortgage banker, is killed with a hammer in his office parking lot. Mickey puts his team into high gear to exonerate Lisa Trammel, even though the evidence and his own suspicions tell him his client is guilty. Soon after he learns that the victim had black market dealings of his own, Haller is assaulted, too–and he’s certain he’s on the right trail. Despite the danger and uncertainty, Haller mounts the best defense of his career in a trial where the last surprise comes after the verdict is in.
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This book is already popular and it hasn’t even been published yet. The MORE system libraries have purchased over thirty copies of it to satisfy demand. However, there are already over 115 holds placed on this title. That means, put your hold on it NOW because that hold list will only get longer after its officially published. Unfortunately, you may have to wait a while to receive it. In the mean time, check out these great books:
‘The Fifth Witness’ and ‘Dark Justice’ are intricately plotted, fast-paced, and suspenseful Legal thrillers and Mystery stories about Trials (Murder).
If you enjoy ‘The Fifth Witness,’ you may also enjoy ‘Smash Cut.’ Both are intricately plotted, fast-paced, suspenseful, and gritty Legal thrillers about Trials (Murder) and lawyers.
If you enjoy ‘The Fifth Witness,’ you may also enjoy ‘Ties that Bind.’ Both are fast-paced and suspenseful Legal thrillers and Mystery stories about Attorney and client and Trials (Murder).
These suggestions and others like it can be found on Novelist.
