New Books of September 2012

Band of Sisters
Cathy Gohlke
Maureen O’Reilly and her younger sister flee Ireland in hope of claiming the life promised to their father over twenty years before. After surviving the rigors of Ellis Island, Maureen learns that their benefactor, Colonel Wakefield, has died. His family, refusing to own his Civil War debt, casts her out. Alone, impoverished, and in danger of deportation, Maureen connives to obtain employment in a prominent department store. Despite her family’s disapproval, Olivia Wakefield determines to honor her father’s debt but can’t find Maureen. Unexpected help comes from a local businessman, whom Olivia begins to see as more than an ally, even as she fears the secrets he’s hiding. As women begin disappearing from the store, Olivia rallies influential ladies in her circle to help Maureen take a stand against injustice and fight for the lives of their growing band of sisters.

The Accomplice
Charles Robbins
When Henry Hatten wangles a job as communications director for Nebraska SenatorTom Peele’s presidential campaign, he breathes a huge sigh of relief. Smarting over a recent gubernatorial campaign in which his pulling a political punch may have cost his boss the race, he’s thrilled to be back in action. This time around, Henry is determined to shuck his ethical qualms. But he soon finds he’s facing more than he imagined. The new gig turns out to be rife with scandal and corruption just the kind of politics Henry so fervently sought to banish. But when someone close to the campaign is murdered, Henry can no longer turn a blind eye. As he conducts his own covert investigation, still more secrets emerge. So deeply entrenched in the politics and manipulation, Henry must face a staggering reality in which his values are no longer his own.

The Forgetting Tree
Tatjana Soli
When Claire Nagy marries Forster Baumsarg, the only son of prominent California citrus ranchers, she knows she’s consenting to a life of hard work, long days, and worry-fraught nights. She embraces the life of the ranch, succumbing to its intoxicating rhythms and bounty until her love of the land becomes a part of her. Not even the tragic, senseless death of her son Joshua at kidnappers’ hands, her alienation from her two daughters, or the dissolution of her once-devoted marriage can pull her from the ranch she’s devoted her life to preserving. But despite having survived the most terrible of tragedies, Claire is about to face her greatest struggle: an illness that threatens not only to rip her from her land but take her very life.

In Between Days
Andrew Porter
The Harding family is teetering on the brink. Elson-once one of Houston’s most promising architects-is recently divorced from his wife of thirty years, Cadence. Their grown son, Richard, is still living at home: driving his mother’s minivan, working at a local coffee shop, resisting the career as a writer that beckons him. But when Chloe Harding gets kicked out of her East Coast college, for reasons she can’t explain to either her parents or her older brother, and returns to Houston, the Hardings’ lives begin to unravel.

John Saturnall’s Feast
Lawrence Norfolk
John Saturnall was tutored by his mother, an herbalist believed to be a witch, to assist her and understand the subtleties of the kitchen. Upon her death, John is dispatched to the estate of Sir William Fremantle, where his mother once worked. As he rises in the ranks from scullery boy to assistant master cook, he catches the eye of Sir William’s feisty daughter, Lucretia. When she is promised in marriage to the loathsome Piers Callock, whose family’s close connection will ensure the estate’s inheritance, she launches a hunger strike in protest. John is presented with the challenge of creating food that will persuade her to eat. The two fall in love, but the English Civil War ensues, and Lucretia is already promised in marriage.

Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures
Emma Straub
In 1920, Elsa Emerson is born in idyllic Door County, Wisconsin. Her family owns the Cherry County Playhouse, and more than anything, Elsa relishes appearing onstage. But when tragedy strikes her family, her acting becomes more than a child’s game of pretend. While still in her teens, Elsa marries and flees to Los Angeles. There she is discovered by Irving Green, one of the most powerful executives in Hollywood, who refashions her as a serious, exotic brunette and renames her Laura Lamont. Irving becomes Laura’s great love; she becomes an Academy Award-winning actress-and a genuine movie star. And she experiences all the glamour and extravagance of the heady pinnacle of stardom in the studio-system era, but ultimately her story is a timeless one of a woman trying to balance career, family, and personal happiness, all while remaining true to herself.

New Books of July 2012

Trust Me, I’m a Banker
David Charters
Meet Dave Hart, just your typical investment banker. It’s not long until Bonus Day, the most important day of the year, and anything less than a million pounds would be an insult. After all, Dave has to buy a new car, a new Rolex for his wife, and a second home in the country. Not to mention support a few personal habits, legal or otherwise, that gentlemen bankers don’t discuss in public. Unfortunately, a million really isn’t what it used to be, and no one else seems to value Dave as much as he knows he’s worth. Luckily, competence and charm have never been accurate barometers for success in high finance, and Dave just might be able to weasel and blunder his way to the top.

True Believers
Kurt Anderson
Composing her memoirs, onetime Supreme Court nominee Karen Hollander tells us up front that she is going to reveal the truth about a deadly incident from her radical past. But she doesn’t actually remember or know everything she wants to put in her book. She interviews old friends and even has herself investigated by a CIA-operative lover, but her old compatriots don’t share her eagerness to have their dark secret come to light. A child of privilege on Chicago’s wealthy North Shore, Hollander acted out James Bond novels with friends in her youth. The “missions” grew in seriousness when she became a college student outraged by Vietnam. As Karen reconstructs the past and reconciles the girl she was then with the woman she is now, finally sharing pieces of her secret past with her national-security-cowboy boyfriend and Occupy-activist granddaughter, the power of memory and history and luck become clear.

Reunion
Lauraine Snelling
Keira Johnson, a 50-year-old mother of two grown sons, believes she lives a good Christian life without secrets– until she discovers a life-jarring fact her late mother kept hidden all her life. Kiera was born out of wedlock, and the man she had always known as her father had adopted her as an infant. Meanwhile, Keira’s beloved 17-year-old niece, Kirsten, has just discovered an unwanted pregnancy. Her boyfriend, Jose, is bound for college and Kirsten does not know what to do. As the family comes together for a reunion, Keira and Kirsten struggle with their fractured pasts and jumbled present.

Gold
Chris Cleave
Spanning the Athens, Beijing, and looming London 2012 Olympics, the fierce competition between two track cyclists ultimately asks “What would you sacrifice for the people you love?” Now at thirty-two, these women are facing their last and biggest race: the 2012 Olympics. Each wants desperately to win gold, and each has more than a medal to lose. Kate is the more naturally gifted, but the demands of her life have a tendency to slow her down. Her eight year old daughter Sophie is battling leukemia for the second time. While intense, aloof Zoe has always hovered on the periphery of real human companionship, and her compulsive need to win at any cost has more than once threatened her friendship with Kate and her own sanity. Devoted and self-sacrificing Kate knows her daughter is fragile, but at the height of her last frenzied months of training, might she be blind to the most terrible prognosis? Will Zoe allow her obsession, and the advantage she has over a harried, anguished mother, to sever the bond they have shared for more than a decade?

East of Denver
Gregory Hill
Stacey “Shakespeare” Williams has returned home to the family farm. With no job and no prospects, Shakespeare suddenly finds himself caretaker to both his dad and the farm. They have no money, the land is fallow, and a local banker has cheated his father out of the majority of the farm equipment as well as his beloved Cessna. Shakespeare falls in with an unlikely clique of former classmates. Facing the loss of the farm, Shakespeare hatches a half-serious plot with his misfit friends to rob the very bank that has stolen their future.

Better with You Here
Gwendolyn Zepeda
Single mom Natasha Davila has done a good job holding things together. Her divorce didn’t leave her with much, but she has her kids and they are her world. Only now, she’s facing a problem she never predicted: Her ex-husband is re-marrying, expecting a new baby and –worst of all–suing Natasha for full custody of their two children. Desperate to save her family, she turns to her neighbors–fellow single moms facing their own drama. Sharing their laughter and their tears, these near strangers help Natasha find a strength she never knew she had. And when her ex ups the ante and exposes some disturbing news about Natasha’s new friends, she’ll need that strength more than ever. But playing dirty opens Mike to the same level of scrutiny, and no one, it turns out, is perfect.

New Books of May 2012

A Dog’s Journey
W. Bruce Cameron
Buddy is a good dog. After searching for his purpose through several eventful lives, Buddy is sure that he has found and fulfilled it. Yet as he watches curious baby Clarity get into dangerous mischief, he is certain that this little girl is very much in need of a dog of her own. When Buddy is reborn, he realizes that he has a new destiny. He’s overjoyed when he is adopted by Clarity, now a vibrant but troubled teenager. When they are suddenly separated, Buddy despairs – who will take care of his girl?

The Lower River
Paul Theroux
Ellis Hock loved teaching in Malawi for the Peace Corps, but that experience was cut short when he had to return to take over the family business. Thirty-five years later, the store and his marriage have failed, and he returns to Malawi for a nostalgia-induced vacation. He’s warned on arrival that people are hungry and only want money, but he heads into the bush with a bagful of it. Malabo, the remote riverbank village where he’s remembered as the mzungu (white man) who helped build the school and clinic, gives him a warm welcome, but Hock’s disillusion sets in fast. The school is a ruin; the visiting doctor is a quack; AIDS is rampant; requests for money are constant. The villagers keep him under surveillance at the direction of the headman Manyenga, who is all smiles and lies. He makes three escape attempts. All his escapes are foiled by the formidable Manyenga. This novel will have you on the edge of your seat wondering whether he will escape, and what will happen to the villagers.

Magic Words
Gerald Kolpan
Young Jewish immigrant Julius comes of age surrounded by the wild world of 1867 Nebraska. While traveling in the American West, he is captured by the Ponca Indian tribe. Living as a slave, Julius meets the noble chief Standing Bear and his young daughter, Prairie Flower, with whom he falls in love. Becoming the tribe’s interpreter-its speaker-his life seems safe and settled. But Julius has reckoned without the arrival of his older cousin, Alexander-who, as the Great Herrmann, is the most famous young magician in America. Filled with adventure, humor, and colorful characters, Magic Words is a riveting adventure about the nature of prejudice, the horror of genocide, and a courageous young man who straddles two worlds to fight for love and freedom.

A Gift for My Sister
Ann Pearlman
Sky and Tara share the same mother but different fathers. Sky is cautious, dutiful, marrying the perfect man, practicing her dream career as a lawyer, and raising their daughter, Rachel. Music is all Tara cares about until Aaron, a black rapper with a juvenile record, comes along. Tara gets pregnant in high school and runs away with Aaron and his rap crew. About the time Tara and Aaron’s music takes off and they are on their way to stardom, Sky’s life crashes. Tara attempts to step in and help only to be met with anger and jealousy. The two sisters, along with an interesting collection of other characters, spend the time on the road, and between gigs, trying to understand what it’s like to be the other sister and just what love and family mean.

Home
Toni Morrison
Frank Money is an angry, self-loathing veteran of the Korean War who, after traumatic experiences on the front lines, finds himself back in racist America with more than just physical scars. His home may seem alien to him, but he is shocked out of his crippling apathy by the need to rescue his medically abused younger sister and take her back to the small Georgia town they come from and that he’s hated all his life. As Frank revisits his memories from childhood and the war that have left him questioning his sense of self, he discovers a profound courage he had thought he could never possess again.

Objects of My Affection
Jill Smolinski
Lucy Bloom is broke, freshly dumped by her boyfriend, and forced to sell her house to send her nineteen-year-old son to drug rehab. So when she’s offered a high-paying gig helping clear the clutter from the home of reclusive and eccentric painter Marva Meier Rios, Lucy grabs it. Fueled by a burning desire to get her life back on track, Lucy rolls up her sleeves to take on the mess that fills every room of Marva’s huge home. Lucy soon learns that the real challenge may be taking on Marva, who seems to love the objects in her home too much to let go of any of them. Lucy discovers that Marva isn’t just hoarding, she is also hiding a big secret. The two form an unlikely bond, as each learns from the other that there are those things in life we keep, those we need to let go but it’s not always easy to know the difference.

New Books of April 2012

The House of Velvet and Glass
Katherine Howe
Still reeling from the deaths of her mother and sister on the Titanic, Sibyl Allston is living a life of quiet desperation. Trapped in a world over which she has no control, Sibyl flees for solace to the parlor of a table-turning medium. But when her brother is suddenly kicked out of Harvard under mysterious circumstances and falls under the sway of a strange young woman, Sibyl turns for help to psychology professor Benton Derby. As Benton and Sibyl work together to solve a harrowing mystery, their long-simmering spark flares to life, and they realize that there may be something even more magical between them than a medium’s scrying glass.

The Coldest Night
Robert Olmstead
Henry Childs is just seventeen when he falls into a love affair so intense it nearly consumes him. But when young Mercy’s disapproving father threatens Henry’s life, Henry runs as far as he can—to the other side of the world. The time is 1950, and the Korean War hangs in the balance. Henry enlists in the marines and arrives in Korea on the eve of the brutal seventeen-day battle of the Chosin Reservoir—the turning point of the war—completely unprepared for the forbidding Korean landscape and the unimaginable circumstances of a war well beyond the scope of anything his ancestors ever faced. But the challenges he meets upon his return home, scarred and haunted, are greater by far.

The Song Remains the Same
Allison Winn Scotch
One of only two survivors of a plane crash, Nell Slattery wakes in the hospital with no memory of the horrific experience-or who she is, or was. Now she must piece together both body and mind, with the help of family and friends, who have their own agendas. She filters through photos, art, music, and stories, hoping something will jog her memory, and soon, in tiny bits and pieces, Nell starts remembering. . . . It isn’t long before she learns to question the stories presented by her mother, her sister and business partner, and her husband. In the end, she will discover that forgiving betrayals small and large will be the only true path to healing herself-and to finding happiness.

The Cove
Ron Rash
At the height of World War I, deep in the rugged Appalachians of North Carolina lies the cove, a dark, forbidding place where spirits and fetches wander. Or so the townsfolk of Mars Hill believe–just as they believe that Laurel Shelton, the lonely young woman who lives within its shadows, is a witch. Alone except for her brother, Hank, newly returned from the trenches of France, she aches for her life to begin. Then it happens–a stranger appears, carrying nothing but a beautiful silver flute and a note explaining that his name is Walter, he is mute, and is bound for New York. As the days pass, Walter slips easily into life in the cove and into Laurel’s heart, bringing her the only real happiness she has ever known. But Walter harbors a secret that could destroy everything–and danger is closer than they know.

The Beginner’s Goodbye
Ann Tyler
Crippled in his right arm and leg, Aaron spent his childhood fending off a sister who wants to manage him. So when he meets Dorothy, a plain, outspoken, self-dependent young woman, she is like a breath of fresh air. Unhesitatingly he marries her, and they have a relatively happy, unremarkable marriage. But when a tree crashes into their house and Dorothy is killed, Aaron feels as though he has been erased forever. Gradually he discovers, as he works in the family’s vanity-publishing business, turning out titles that presume to guide beginners through the trials of life, that maybe for this beginner there is a way of saying goodbye.

True Sisters
Sandra Dallas
In a novel based on true events, set in 1856, Mormon converts, encouraged by Brigham Young himself, and outfitted with two-wheeled handcarts, set out on foot from Iowa City to Salt Lake City, the Promised Land. The Martin Handcart Company, a ragtag group of weary families headed for Zion, is the last to leave on this 1,300-mile journey. Three companies that left earlier in the year have completed their trek successfully, but for the Martin Company the trip proves disastrous. This is the story of four women from the British Isles traveling in this group. Four women whose lives will become inextricably linked as they endure unimaginable hardships, each one testing the boundaries of her faith and learning the true meaning of survival and friendship along the way.

New Books of March 2012

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.

Oscars 2012

 

 

Who do you think will win the Oscar?

 

 

 

 

After you’ve voted join us on Feb. 26th at 6:30 pm for our Annual Oscar Party. We’ll be serving hors d’oeuvres with games, trivia, and a red carpet. This year we’ll be showing it on the big screen with our new sound system.

New Books of February 2012

Defending Jacob : a Novel
William Landay
A 14-year-old boy is stabbed to death in the park near his middle school in an upper-class Boston suburb, and Assistant District Attorney Andy Barber takes the case, despite the fact that his son, Jacob, was a classmate of the victim. But when the bloody fingerprint on the victim’s clothes turns out to be Jacob’s, Barber is off the case and out of his office, devoting himself solely to defending his son. Even Barber’s never-before-disclosed heritage as the son and grandson of violent men who killed becomes potential courtroom fodder, raising the question of a “murder gene.”

The Healing : a Novel
Jonathan Odell
Pre-Civil War Mississippi plantation mistress Amanda Satterfield loses her daughter to cholera after her husband refuses to treat her for what he considers to be a “slave disease.” Insane with grief, Amanda takes a newborn slave child as her own and names her Granada, much to the outrage of her husband and the amusement of their white neighbors. Troubled by his wife’s disturbing mental state and concerned about a mysterious plague sweeping through his slave population, Master Satterfield purchases Polly Shine, a slave reputed to be a healer. But Polly’s sharp tongue and troubling predictions cause unrest across the plantation. Complicating matters further, Polly recognizes “the gift” in Granada, the mistress’s pet, and a domestic battle of wills ensues. Seventy-five years later, Granada, now known as Gran Gran, is still living on the plantation and must revive the buried memories of her past in order to heal a young girl abandoned to her care. Together they learn the power of story to heal the body, the spirit and the soul.

The House I Loved
Tatiana de Rosnay
As all Francophiles know, Paris was remade in the 1860s by order of Emperor Napoleon III, with Baron Haussmann initiating a plan that included the long, straight, sweeping boulevards that give the city its dramatic character (and got rid of many crooked little alleys where rebellious types could hide). Set during this era, Rose Bazelet fights to keep her family home from being demolished while confronting a secret she’s kept for 30 years.

A Good American
Alex George
An uplifting novel about the families we create and the places we call home. It is 1904. When Frederick and Jette must flee her disapproving mother in Germany, where better to go than America, the land of the new? Originally set to board a boat to New York, at the last minute, they take one destined for New Orleans instead (“What’s the difference? They’re both new”), and later find themselves, more by chance than by design, in the small town of Beatrice, Missouri. Not speaking a word of English, they embark on their new life together. From bare-knuckle prizefighting and Prohibition to sweet barbershop harmonies, the Kennedy assassination, and beyond, James’s family is caught up in the sweep of history. Each new generation discovers afresh what it means to be an American. And, in the process, Frederick and Jette’s progeny sometimes discover more about themselves than they had bargained for.

The Garden Intrigue
Lauren Willig
Secret agent Augustus Whittlesby has spent a decade undercover in France, posing as an insufferably bad poet. The French surveillance officers can’t bear to read his work closely enough to recognize the information drowned in a sea of verbiage. As Napoleon pursues his plans for the invasion of England, Whittlesby hears of a top-secret device to be demonstrated at a house party at Malmaison. The catch? The only way in is with Emma Morris Delagardie, a thorn in Augustus’ side who enjoys mocking him, who has been asked to write a masque for the weekend’s entertainment. In this complicated masque within a masque, nothing goes quite as scripted- especially Augustus’s feelings for Emma.

New Books of January 2012

An Available Man
By Hilma Wolitzer
Edward Schuyler is now in his mid-sixties, but as a younger man he had his share of love’s highs and lows. His first love, the beautiful Laurel, left him stranded at the altar. Years later he met Bee and her two children. He fell madly in love, and his family was complete. But after 20 years, Bee got sick and died. Once the shock clears, Edward is stunned to realize what a “catch” he is. When his grown stepchildren place a personal ad for him in the New York Review of Books, the women respond in droves. Edward is forced into the dating world, and the results are heartbreaking, maddening, comical, and poignant.

The Spy Who Jumped Off the Screen
By Thomas Caplan
Ty Hunter, once an intelligence officer and now a major movie star (it’s a lot more plausible than it sounds), is tasked by the U.S. president to find out whether billionaire Ian Santel has anything to do with some nukes stolen by a now-deceased Russian colonel. The novel boasts great, James Bond…style supporting characters—the colorful Santel; his alluring goddaughter, Isabella Cavill, who designs expensive jewelry and seems to have designs on Ty; Santel’s protégé and henchman, Philip Frost. And it has a story that, with its action and intrigue, is guaranteed to keep readers glued to their seats.

How It All Began
By Penelope Lively
Author Lively explores the far-reaching effect of happenstance, as individual circumstances shift, lives change, and the known is perceived in an altogether new light. The novel opens with the mugging of retired schoolteacher Charlotte Rainsford on a London street. Subsequently, a diverse cast of richly embroidered acquaintances and strangers find their lives irrevocably altered by this event, which many of them haven’t even heard about. We see how the mugging affects Charlotte’s daughter Rose, who works for a historian desperate to return to the limelight, and the spillover to his niece Marion, a cash-poor interior designer hunting for a business partner while carrying on an affair eventually revealed through a stray cell-phone call.

The Orphan Master’s Son
By Adam Johnson
The Orphan Master’s Son follows a young man’s journey through the icy waters, dark tunnels, and eerie spy chambers of the world’s most mysterious dictatorship, North Korea. Pak Jun Do is the haunted son of a lost mother—a singer “stolen” to Pyongyang—and an influential father who runs Long Tomorrows, a work camp for orphans. Jun Do comes to the attention of superiors in the state, rises in the ranks, and starts on a road from which there will be no return. Considering himself “a humble citizen of the greatest nation in the world,” Jun Do becomes a professional kidnapper who must navigate the shifting rules, arbitrary violence, and baffling demands of his Korean overlords in order to stay alive. Driven to the absolute limit of what any human being could endure, he boldly takes on the treacherous role of rival to Kim Jong Il in an attempt to save the woman he loves, Sun Moon, a legendary actress “so pure, she didn’t know what starving people looked like.”

Home Front
By Kristin Hannah
Jolene, 41, struggles with her marriage, her 12-year-old daughter, and a traumatic relationship with her parents. She even has a plucky best friend who lives next door. But Home Front is different because Jolene is a Black Hawk helicopter pilot. Just when her marriage has neared its breaking point, and her children need her more than ever, Jolene is deployed to active duty in Iraq. She returns home seriously injured physically and emotionally and must learn to swallow her pride, accept help, and continue living in the face of heartbreaking loss.

New Books of December 2011

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 November 2011

The Boy in the Suitcase
Lene Kaaberbol
Red Cross nurse Nina Borg, who works helping illegal refugees, gets a call from an estranged friend begging her to pick up a package in one of the lockers at the main Copenhagen train station. The package turns out to be a suitcase with a drugged three-year-old boy inside. When the friend is murdered, Nina realizes she’s caught in the middle of a kidnapping case. Nina must use her connections in the refugee community to discover the identity and nationality of the child before she can find out who is behind his abduction.

Paper Angels
Billy Coffey
Andy Sommerville is guided by and angel named Old Man, but his angel fails to prevent something terrible that claims the life of a precious friend and leaves Andy badly burned. Regaining consciousness in the hospital, Andy feels abandoned by Old Man and also feels that nothing really matters any more until he opens up to a beautiful counselor named Elizabeth. He shares the secret of his angel and of 12 odd items the Old Man told him to store in a special box. Each of these apparently unrelated trinkets launches memories of choices and life lessons that combine to provide answers for Andy about his life’s purpose and why God allows suffering.

The Pilgrim
Hugh Nissenson
Coming of age as a New England Pilgrim was a tough, bloody and sexy business. Charles Wentworth always had doubts. Raised in the English town of Winterbourne, “a godly town,” as the son of a minister, the young man has all his needs cared for. But unlike his father, or even their illiterate servant Ben, his faith is shaky. Perhaps because of various heartaches and brutality not uncommon as the 17th century began, Charles cannot believe he will be among the elect, those he believes are predestined to be saved. When the opportunity to emigrate to New England comes, he grabs it. The freedom to worship, however, comes with starvation, sickness and the constant fear of Indian attacks. It also brings the promise of new love and–eventually–the promise of salvation.

The Time in Between
Maria Duenas
Sira Quiroga begins life as the bastard daughter of a humble seamstress in Madrid, but bad luck, fate, and the crooked path -toward true love all lead her to a life of adventure, and high-stakes espionage. When young Sira is abandoned by her lover in Morocco, she is forced to reinvent herself as a sophisticated dressmaker to the expatriate community while the Spanish civil war devastates her homeland. Her work brings her into contact with powerful men, compelling women, and a man she believes to be a journalist and perhaps the love of her life. When the British government asks her to return to Madrid to spy for them as World War II sweeps Europe, she reluctantly agrees, but in doing so becomes a heroine.

White Truffles in Winter
N.M. Kelby
Delphine Daffis is dying, and she wants her husband, French chef August Escoffier (famous for his restaurants, the Savoy and the Ritz), to create a dish named after her, as he has done for his lover, Sara Bernhardt, and countless others, even Queen Victoria. He had always refused, saying “one should never attempt to define the sublime” but Delphine didn’t believe him for a minute. Delphine hires Sabine, a local beauty stricken with polio as kitchen help to persuade her husband to create a dish named for her. Without one, Delphine fears the world won’t know that the great chef loved her.