books tagged “contemporary”

books tagged “contemporary”

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  • After the Quake
    by Haruki Murakami, Jay Rubin
    ISBN 0375713271 (0-375-71327-1)
    Softcover, Random House Inc

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    Book summary:

    Haruki Murakami, a writer both mystical and hip, is the West's favorite Japanese novelist. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Murakami lived abroad until 1995. That year, two disasters struck Japan: the lethal earthquake in Kobe and the deadly poison gas attacks in the Tokyo subway. Spurred by these tragic events, Murakami returned home. The stories in After the Quake are set in the months that fell between the earthquake and the subway attack, presenting a world marked by despair, hope, and a kind of human instinct for transformation. A teenage girl and a middle-aged man share a hobby of making beach bonfires; a businesswoman travels to Thailand and, quietly, confronts her own death; three friends act out a modern-day Tokyo version of Jules and Jim. There's a surreal element running through the collection in the form of unlikely frogs turning up in unlikely places. News of the earthquake hums throughout. The book opens with the dull buzz of disaster-watching: "Five straight days she spent in front of the television, staring at the crumbled banks and hospitals, whole blocks of stores in flames, severed rail lines and expressways." With language that's never self-consciously lyrical or show-offy, Murakami constructs stories as tight and beautiful as poems. There's no turning back for his people; there's only before and after the quake. --Claire Dederer [via]

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  • American Pastoral
    by Philip Roth
    ISBN 0375701427 (0-375-70142-7)
    Softcover, Random House Inc

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    Philip Roth's 22nd book takes a life-long view of the American experience in this thoughtful investigation of the century's most divisive and explosive of decades, the '60s. Returning again to the voice of his literary alter ego Nathan Zuckerman, Roth is at the top of his form. His prose is carefully controlled yet always fresh and intellectually subtle as he reconstructs the halcyon days, circa World War II, of Seymour "the Swede" Levov, a high school sports hero and all-around Great Guy who wants nothing more than to live in tranquillity. But as the Swede grows older and America crazier, history sweeps his family inexorably into its grip: His own daughter, Merry, commits an unpardonable act of "protest" against the Vietnam war that ultimately severs the Swede from any hope of happiness, family, or spiritual coherence. [via]

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  • Anil's Ghost
    by Michael Ondaatje
    ISBN 0375724370 (0-375-72437-0)
    Softcover, Vintage Books

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    In his Booker Prize-winning third novel, The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje explored the nature of love and betrayal in wartime. His fourth, Anil's Ghost, is also set during a war, but unlike in World War II, the enemy is difficult to identify in the bloody sectarian upheaval that ripped Sri Lanka apart in the 1980s and '90s. The protagonist, Anil Tissera, a native Sri Lankan, left her homeland at 18 and returns to it 15 years later only as part of an international human rights fact-finding mission. In the intervening years she has become a forensic anthropologist--a career that has landed her in the killing fields of Central America, digging up the victims of Guatemala's dirty war. Now she's come to Sri Lanka on a similar quest. But as she soon learns, there are fundamental differences between her previous assignment and this one:

    The bodies turn up weekly now. The height of the terror was 'eighty-eight and 'eighty-nine, but of course it was going on long before that. Every side was killing and hiding the evidence. Every side. This is an unofficial war, no one wants to alienate the foreign powers. So it's secret gangs and squads. Not like Central America. The government was not the only one doing the killing.
    In such a situation, it's difficult to know who to trust. Anil's colleague is one Sarath Diyasena, a Sri Lankan archaeologist whose political affiliations, if any, are murky. Together they uncover evidence of a government-sponsored murder in the shape of a skeleton they nickname Sailor. But as Anil begins her investigation into the events surrounding Sailor's death, she finds herself caught in a web of politics, paranoia, and tragedy.

    Like its predecessor, the novel explores that territory where the personal and the political intersect in the fulcrum of war. Its style, though, is more straightforward, less densely poetical. While many of Ondaatje's literary trademarks are present--frequent shifts in time, almost hallucinatory imagery, the gradual interweaving of characters' pasts with the present--the prose here is more accessible. This is not to say that the author has forgotten his poetic roots; subtle, evocative images abound. Consider, for example, this description of Anil at the end of the day, standing in a pool of water, "her toes among the white petals, her arms folded as she undressed the day, removing layers of events and incidents so they would no longer be within her." In Anil's Ghost Michael Ondaatje has crafted both a brutal examination of internecine warfare and an enduring meditation on identity, loyalty, and the unbreakable hold the past exerts over the present. --Alix Wilber [via]

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  • Andersen, Susan: Baby, I'm Yours
    Baby, I'm Yours
    by Susan Andersen
    ISBN 0380795116 (0-380-79511-6)
    Softcover, Harpercollins

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  • Behind the Scenes at the Museum
    by Kate Atkinson
    ISBN 0312150601 (0-312-15060-1)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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    "I exist!" exclaims Ruby Lennox upon her conception in 1951, setting the tone for this humorous and poignant first novel in which Ruby at once celebrates and mercilessly skewers her middle-class English family. Peppered with tales of flawed family traits passed on from previous generations, Ruby's narrative examines the lives in her disjointed clan, which revolve around the family pet shop. But beneath the antics of her philandering father, her intensely irritable mother, her overly emotional sisters, and a gaggle of eccentric relatives are darker secrets--including an odd "feeling of something long forgotten"--that will haunt Ruby for the rest of her life. Kate Atkinson earned a Whitbread Prize in 1995 for this fine first effort. [via]

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  • The Bell Jar
    by Sylvia Plath
    ISBN 0061148512 (0-06-114851-2)
    Softcover, Harpercollins

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    Plath was an excellent poet but is known to many for this largely autobiographical novel. The Bell Jar tells the story of a gifted young woman's mental breakdown beginning during a summer internship as a junior editor at a magazine in New York City in the early 1950s. The real Plath committed suicide in 1963 and left behind this scathingly sad, honest and perfectly-written book, which remains one of the best-told tales of a woman's descent into insanity. [via]

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  • The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
    by Milan Kundera
    ISBN 0140059245 (0-14-005924-5)
    Softcover, Penguin Books

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    In one of the finer modern ironies of the life-imitates-art sort, the country that Kundera seemed to be writing about when he talked about Czechoslovakia is, thanks to the latest political redefinitions, no longer precisely there. This kind of disappearance and reappearance is, partly, what Kundera explores in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. In this polymorphous work -- now a novel, now autobiography, now a philosophical treatise -- Kundera discusses life, music, sex, philosophy, literature and politics in ways that are rarely politically correct, never classifiable but always original, entertaining and definitely brilliant. [via]

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  • Banks, Iain: The Bridge
    The Bridge
    by Iain Banks
    ISBN 0312028814 (0-312-02881-4)
    Hardcover, St Martins Pr

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  • The Broom of the System
    by David Foster Wallace, Robert Boswell, Dale Peterson, Andrew Parker, Gerald Howard, Bonnie Nadell, William Kennick
    ISBN 0142002429 (0-14-200242-9)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Published when Wallace was just twenty-four years old, The Broom of the System stunned critics and marked the emergence of an extraordinary new talent. At the center of this outlandishly funny, fiercely intelligent novel is the bewitching heroine, Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman. The year is 1990 and the place is a slightly altered Cleveland, Ohio. Lenores great-grandmother has disappeared with twenty-five other inmates of the Shaker Heights Nursing Home. Her beau, and boss, Rick Vigorous, is insanely jealous, and her cockatiel, Vlad the Impaler, has suddenly started spouting a mixture of psycho-babble, Auden, and the King James Bible. Ingenious and entertaining, this debut from one of the most innovative writers of his generation brilliantly explores the paradoxes of language, storytelling, and reality.

    [via]

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  • Lodge, David: Changing Places
    Changing Places
    by David Lodge
    ISBN 0140170987 (0-14-017098-7)
    Softcover, Viking Pr

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  • McEwan, Ian: A Child in Time
    A Child in Time
    by Ian McEwan
    ISBN 0140112464 (0-14-011246-4)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    The Child in Time opens with a harrowing event. Stephen Lewis, a successful author of children's books, takes his 3-year-old daughter on a routine Saturday morning trip to the supermarket. While waiting in line, his attention is distracted and his daughter is kidnapped. Just like that. From there, Lewis spirals into bereavement that has effects on his relationship with his wife, his psyche and time itself: "It was a wonder there could be so much movement, so much purpose, all the time. He himself had none." This beautifully haunting book won a 1987 Whitbread Prize. [via]

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  • Chocolat
    by Joanne Harris
    ISBN 0140282033 (0-14-028203-3)
    Softcover, Penguin USA

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    Greeted as "an amazement of riches ... few readers will be able to resist" by The New York Times, Chocolat is an enchanting novel about a small French town turned upside down by the arrival of a bewitching chocolate confectioner, Vianne Rocher, and her spirited young daughter. [via]

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  • Cold Mountain
    by Charles Frazier
    ISBN 0375700757 (0-375-70075-7)
    Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group

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    NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE

    One of the most acclaimed novels in recent memory, Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain is a masterpiece that is at once an enthralling adventure, a stirring love story, and a luminous evocation of a vanished American in all its savagery, solitude, and splendor.

    Sorely wounded and fatally disillusioned in the fighting at Petersburg, Inman, a Confederate soldier, decides to walk back to his home in the Blue Ridge Mountains and to Ada, the woman he loved there years before. His trek across the disintegrating South brings him into intimate and sometimes lethal converse with slaves and marauders, bounty hunters and witches, both helpful and malign. At the same time, Ada is trying to revive her father's derelict farm and learn to survive in a world where the old certainties have been swept away. As it interweaves their stories, Cold Mountain asserts itself as an authentic American Odyssey--hugely powerful, majestically lovely, and keenly moving. [via]

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  • Crash
    by J.G. Ballard
    ISBN 0312420331 (0-312-42033-1)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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    In this hallucinatory novel, an automobile provides the hellish tableau in which Vaughan, a "TV scientist" turned "nightmare angel of the highways," experiments with erotic atrocities among auto crash victims, each more sinister than the last. James Ballard, his friend and fellow obsessive, tells the story of this twisted visionary as he careens rapidly toward his own demise in an internationally orchestrated car crash with Elizabeth Taylor.

    A classic work of cutting-edge fiction, Crash explores both the disturbing implications and horrific possibilities of contemporary society's increasing dependence on technology as intermediary in human relations.
    [via]

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  • Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
    by David Sedaris
    ISBN 0316010790 (0-316-01079-0)
    Softcover, Little Brown & Co

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    It just isnt fair: most of us would be lucky to be able to express ourselves in writing half as well as David Sedaris does in his new book, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim. But on top of his skills with the written word, the author also has substantial gifts as a performer, and he proves this on the audio version of the book. In his essay The Change in Me,Sedaris remembers that his mother was good at imitating people, and its clear that he takes after her. Whether hes doing impressions of high-voiced brother Paul, or recalling times when he and his sisters tried to win good karma by speaking and acting like well-behaved, fairytale children, Sedariss nuanced performance hits the right note on both the opening, comedic stories, and the more poignant essays that tend to come later in the reading. In fact, for those who have already read some of the best stories in other publications including The New Yorker, the CD or cassette version of this collection is probably the best bet for furthering your appreciation of the material.

    Sedariss career is closely linked with two things: audio (he was discovered by NPRs Ira Glass), and the personal lives of himself and his family. In Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, he describes fights with his boyfriend, and his sister-in-laws difficult pregnancy. When sister Lisa complains about the stories involving the family, he writes about that, too. Sedaris's latest provides more evidence that he is a great humorist, memoirist and raconteur, and readers are lucky to have the opportunity to know him so well. Perhaps they are luckier still not to know him personally. --Leah Weathersby [via]

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  • Eleven On Top
    by Janet Evanovich
    ISBN 0312985347 (0-312-98534-7)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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    Stephanie Plum, Trenton's favorite bondswoman, is having a career crisis, which gives Janet Evanovich plenty of opportunities to showcase her series heroine in a variety of alternative vocations, from dry cleaner to factory worker. Most of them don't last a full working day, which is good for the reader, since it plunges Stephanie back into the always seedy, often dangerous, and always colorful world of fugitives who'd rather flee than face their day in court. She may be tired of having her life threatened, her cars torched or blown up, and her apartment broken into, but one thing she can say about her job is that it's never boring... and neither is she. Despite her intentions of going straight at a job with a little more security and a bit less excitement, an old client won't let her--he keeps leaving her threatening notes, stalking and scaring her, and making sure she needs the protection of the two men in her life--Joe Morelli, the sexy cop who's been bedding her since high school, and Ranger, the even sexier tough guy who can take down the meanest fugitive around but has a tender spot in his heart for the plucky Ms. Plum. All Evanovich fans' favorite characters people this sprightly caper novel, including Lula, the fast-food-chomping former hooker who's hot to take over Stephanie's job but really belongs in a WWE Takedown; Grandma Mazur, who'd rather go to a wake than a fancy-dress ball; Grandma Bella, the matriarch of the Corelli family whose evil eye frightens even the indomitable Stephanie; and Valerie, Stephanie's sister, who's about to embark on another trip to the altar. A great beach read, Eleven on Top is a guilty pleasure that will delight readers of the author's 10 earlier novels and should win her even more fans. --Jane Adams

    Amazon Exclusive Content


    Amazon's Significant Seven
    Janet Evanovich kindly agreed to take the life quiz we like to give to all our authors: the Amazon Significant Seven.

    Q: What book has had the most significant impact on your life?
    A: Uncle Scrooge adventures by Carl Barks. They gave me a lifelong love of the adventure story both in film and literature. And I wouldn't mind pushing my quarters around with a bulldozer in real life, either.

    Q: You are stranded on a desert island with only one book, one CD, and one DVD--what are they?
    A: Book: The Neiman Marcus holiday catalog (I can pretend I'm shopping.)
    CD: MTVs Grind, Volume 1 (Happy music and I love the samba.)
    DVD: Shrek 2 (Happy movie.)

    Q: What is the worst lie you've ever told?
    A: "No. Your butt doesn't look big in those pants." Said to myself.

    Q: Describe the perfect writing environment.
    A: No phone. Locked door. Room service. Silence. My cat (Gus) on my lap.

    Q: If you could write your own epitaph, what would it say?
    A: "Later, Dudes!"

    Q: Who is the one person living or dead that you would like to have dinner with?
    A: Jim Henson (creator of the Muppets)

    Q: If you could have one superpower, what would it be?
    A: The ability to eat Cheez Doodles and Krispy Kremes and never get fat.


    The Stephanie Plum Series


    One for the Money
    Two for the Dough
    Three to Get Deadly

    Four to Score
    High Five
    Hot Six

    [via]

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  • England, England
    by Julian Barnes
    ISBN 0375705503 (0-375-70550-3)
    Softcover, Random House Inc

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    Imagine being able to visit England--all of England--in a single weekend. Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, Stonehenge and Hadrian's Wall, Harrods, Manchester United Football Club, the Tower of London, and even the Royal Family all within easy distance of the each other, accessible, and, best of all, each one living up to an idealized version of itself. This fantasy Britain is the very real (and some would say very cynical) vision of Sir Jack Pitman, a monumentally egomaniacal mogul with a more than passing resemblance to modern-day buccaneers Sir Rupert Murdoch or Robert Maxwell: "'We are not talking theme park,' he began. 'We are not talking heritage centre. We are not talking Disneyland, World's Fair, Festival of Britain, Legoland or Parc Asterix.'" No indeed; Sir Jack proposes nothing less than to offer "the thing itself," a re-creation of everything that adds up to England in the hearts and minds of tourists looking for an "authentic" experience. But where to locate such an enterprise? As Sir Jack points out,

    England, as the mighty William and many others have observed, is an island. Therefore, if we are serious, if we are seeking to offer the thing itself, we in turn must go in search of a precious whatsit set in a silver doodah.
    Soon the perfect whatsit is found: the Isle of Wight; and a small army of Sir Jack's forces are sent to lay siege to it. Swept up in the mayhem are Martha Cochrane, a thirtysomething consultant teetering on the verge of embittered middle age, and Paul Harrison, a younger man looking for an anchor in the world. The two first find each other, then trip over a skeleton in Sir Jack's closet that might prove useful to their careers but disastrous to their relationship. In the course of constructing this mad package-tour dystopia, Julian Barnes has a terrific time skewering postmodernism, the British, the press, the government, celebrity, and big business. At the same time his very funny novel offers a provocative meditation on the nature of identity, both individual and national, as the lines between the replica and the thing itself begin to blur. Readers of Barnes have learned to expect the unexpected, and once again he more than lives up to the promise in England, England. But then, that was only to be expected. --Alix Wilber [via]

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  • Fever Pitch
    by Nick Hornby
    ISBN 0140237291 (0-14-023729-1)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    In the States, Nick Hornby is best know as the author of High Fidelity and About a Boy, two wickedly funny novels about being thirtysomething and going nowhere fast. In Britain he is revered for his status as a fanatical football writer (sorry, fanatical soccer writer), owing to Fever Pitch--which is both an autobiography and a footballing Bible rolled into one. Hornby pinpoints 1968 as his formative year--the year he turned 11, the year his parents separated, and the year his father first took him to watch Arsenal play. The author quickly moved "way beyond fandom" into an extreme obsession that has dominated his life, loves, and relationships. His father had initially hoped that Saturday afternoon matches would draw the two closer together, but instead Hornby became completely besotted with the game at the expense of any conversation: "Football may have provided us with a new medium through which we could communicate, but that was not to say that we used it, or what we chose to say was necessarily positive." Girlfriends also played second fiddle to one ball and 11 men. He fantasizes that even if a girlfriend "went into labor at an impossible moment" he would not be able to help out until after the final whistle.

    Fever Pitch is not a typical memoir--there are no chapters, just a series of match reports falling into three time frames (childhood, young adulthood, manhood). While watching the May 2, 1972, Reading v. Arsenal match, it became embarrassingly obvious to the then 15-year-old that his white, suburban, middle-class roots made him a wimp with no sense of identity: "Yorkshire men, Lancastrians, Scots, the Irish, blacks, the rich, the poor, even Americans and Australians have something they can sit in pubs and bars and weep about." But a boy from Maidenhead could only dream of coming from a place with "its own tube station and West Indian community and terrible, insoluble social problems."

    Fever Pitch reveals the very special intricacies of British football, which readers new to the game will find astonishing, and which Hornby presents with remarkable humor and honesty--the "unique" chants sung at matches, the cold rain-soaked terraces, giant cans of warm beer, the trains known as football specials carrying fans to and from matches in prisonlike conditions, bottles smashing on the tracks, thousands of policemen waiting in anticipation for the cargo of hooligans. The sport and one team in particular have crept into every aspect of Hornby's life--making him see the world through Arsenal-tinted spectacles. --Naomi Gesinger [via]

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  • McCall Smith, Alexander: Friends, Lovers, Chocolate: The Sunday Philosophy Club
    Friends, Lovers, Chocolate: The Sunday Philosophy Club
    by Alexander McCall Smith
    ISBN 0375422994 (0-375-42299-4)
    Hardcover, Random House Inc

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    Book summary:

    The delightful second installment in Alexander McCall Smiths already hugely popular new detective series, The Sunday Philosophy Club, starring the irrepressibly curious Isabel Dalhousie  editor of the Journal of Applied Ethics  and her no-nonsense housekeeper, Grace.

    When Isabels niece, Cat, asks Isabel to run her delicatessen while she attends a wedding in Italy, Isabel meets a man with a most interesting problem. He recently had a heart transplant, and is suddenly plagued with memories of events that never happened to him. The situation appeals to Isabel as a philosophical question. Is the heart truly the seat of the soul? And it piques her insatiable curiosity: could the memories be connected with the donors demise? Grace, of course, thinks it is none of Isabels business. Add to the mix the lothario Cat brings home from the wedding in Italy, who, in accordance with all that Isabel knows about lotharios, shouldnt be trusted . . . but goodness, he is charming.

    That makes two mysteries of the heart to be solved  just the thing for Isabel Dalhousie. [via]

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  • Frisco's Kid
    by Suzanne Brockmann
    ISBN 0373077599 (0-373-07759-9)
    Softcover, Silhouette Books

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    ALL HE COULD SEE WERE CLOSED DOORS... Frisco Francisco's leg--and career--were shot, and he had every intention of wallowing in self-pity. But there were two complications with his plan: his five-year-old niece, whose sudden presence in his life added "daddy" to his resume, and his comely next-door-neighbor who wouldn't take no for an answer. ...TILL SHE KICKED ONE OPEN Teacher Mia Summerton knew that what Frisco really needed to do was focus on the positive. She was going to teach him what he could do. Was it possible that loving her was on the list? TALL, DARK & DANGEROUS: They're who you call to get you out of a tight spot -- or into one! [via]

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  • The Ground Beneath Her Feet
    by Salman Rushdie
    ISBN 0312254997 (0-312-25499-7)
    Softcover, Picador USA

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    The ground shifts repeatedly beneath the reader's feet during the course of Salman Rushdie's sixth novel, a riff on the Orpheus and Eurydice myth set in the high-octane world of rock & roll. Readers get their first clues early on that the universe Rushdie is creating here is not quite the one we know: Jesse Aron Parker, for example, wrote "Heartbreak Hotel"; Carly Simon and Guinevere Garfunkel sang "Bridge over Troubled Water"; and Shirley Jones and Gordon McRae starred in "South Pacific." And as the novel progresses, Rushdie adds unmistakable elements of science fiction to his already patented magical realism, with occasionally uneven results.

    Rushdie's cunning musician is Ormus Cana, the Bombay-born founder of the most popular group in the world. Ormus's Eurydice (and lead singer) is Vina Apsara, the daughter of a Greek American woman and an Indian father who abandoned the family. What these two share, besides amazing musical talent, is a decidedly twisted family life: Ormus's twin brother died at birth and communicates to him from "the other side"; his older brothers, also twins, are, respectively, brain-damaged and a serial killer. Vina, on the other hand, grew up in rural West Virginia where she returned home one day to find her stepfather and sisters shot to death and her mother hanging from a rafter in the barn. No wonder these two believe they were made for each other.

    Narrated by Rai Merchant, a childhood friend of both Vina and Ormus, The Ground Beneath Her Feet begins with a terrible earthquake in 1989 that swallows Vina whole, then moves back in time to chronicle the tangled histories of all the main characters and a host of minor ones as well. Rushdie's canvas is huge, stretching from India to London to New York and beyond--and there's plenty of room for him to punctuate this epic tale with pointed commentary on his own situation: Muslim-born Rai, for example, remarks that "my parents gave me the gift of irreligion, of growing up without bothering to ask people what gods they held dear.... You may argue that the gift was a poisoned chalice, but even if so, that's a cup from which I'd happily drink again." Despite earthquakes, heartbreaks, and a rip in the time-space continuum, The Ground Beneath Her Feet may be the most optimistic, accessible novel Rushdie has yet written. --Alix Wilber [via]

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  • Hot Item
    by Carly Phillips
    ISBN 0373771223 (0-373-77122-3)
    Softcover, Harlequin Enterprises, Limited

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    Seen On The Sidelines What star quarterback has been spotted with a new flavor of arm candy? It's notorious bad boy Riley Nash, but his newest flame is the last person this reporter could imagine -- none other than Sophie Jordan, beautiful, buttoned-down co-owner of The Hot Zone, the industry's top sports management agency. What's behind this unlikely team? Some say it has to do with the sudden disappearance of superagent Spencer Atkins. Could there be a connection between the red-hot quarterback and the missing dealmaker? Or has the famous groupie magnet simply met his perfect match in cool, collected Sophie? Watch this space, because the resulting news is bound to be one Hot Item. [via]

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  • Hot Number
    by Carly Phillips
    ISBN 0373770553 (0-373-77055-3)
    Softcover, Harlequin Enterprises, Limited

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    Micki Jordan, publicist to the brightest stars in the sports world, is pleased to announce the end of her tomboy ways, effective immediately. While she will still be able to discuss the finer points of the two-man defense, Micki has transformed herself into one hot number, and she will no longer be known as "just one of the guys."

    To that end, Micki is now holding tryouts for the position of new man in her new life. Current leading contender Damian Fuller is a professional ballplayer and a major league playboy. Those who would like to go head-to-head with the wildest player in the league for a chance at winning Micki's heart should apply in person . . .

    Let the games begin. [via]

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  • Hot Target
    by Suzanne Brockmann
    ISBN 0345456955 (0-345-45695-5)
    Softcover, Ballantine Books

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    Book summary:

    New York Times bestselling author Suzanne Brockmann knows exactly what makes hearts race and pulses pound: peril and passion. No one succeeds more brilliantly at blending these exhilarating elements in breathtaking novels of men and women forced to grapple with the deepest emotions and the highest risks. And theres no better proof than her new novel of suspense: Hot Target aims to thrill on every level.

    Like most men of action, Navy SEAL Chief Cosmo Richter never learned how to take a vacation. So when he finds himself facing a months leave, he offers his services to Troubleshooters Incorporated. Founded by a former SEAL, the private-sector security firm is a major player in the ongoing war against terrorism, known for carrying out covert missions too volatile for official U.S. military action. But the first case Richter takes on is anything but under the radar.

    High-profile maverick movie producer Jane Mercedes Chadwick hasnt quite completed her newest film, but shes already courting controversy. The World War II epic frankly portrays the homosexuality of a real-life heroand the storm of advance media buzz surrounding it has drawn the fury of extremist groups. But despite a relentless campaign of angry E-mails, phone calls, and smear tactics, Chadwick wont be pressured into abandoning the project. Then the harassment turns to death threats.

    While the FBI appears on the scene, nervous Hollywood associates call in Troubleshooters, and now Chadwick has an army of round-the-clock bodyguards, whether she likes it or not. And she definitely doesnt. But her stubbornness doesnt make FBI agent Jules Cassidys job any easier. The fiercely independent filmmaker presents yet another emotional obstacle that Cassidy doesnt needhes already in the midst of a personal tug-of-war with his ex-lover, while fighting a growing attraction to Chadwicks brother.

    Determined to succeedand surviveon her own terms, Chadwick will face off with enemies and allies alike. But she doesnt count on the bond she forms with the quiet, capable Cosmo Richter. Yet even as their feelings bring them closer, the noose of deadly terror all around them draws tighter. And when all hell erupts, desire and desperate choices will collide on a killing ground that may trap them both in the crossfire. [via]

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  • House of Sand and Fog
    by Andre Dubus
    ISBN 0375727345 (0-375-72734-5)
    Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group

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    Andre Dubus III wastes no time in capturing the dark side of the immigrant experience in America at the end of the 20th century. House of Sand and Fog opens with a highway crew composed of several nationalities picking up litter on a hot California summer day. Massoud Amir Behrani, a former colonel in the Iranian military under the Shah, reflects on his job-search efforts since arriving in the U.S. four years before: "I have spent hundreds of dollars copying my credentials; I have worn my French suits and my Italian shoes to hand-deliver my qualifications; I have waited and then called back after the correct waiting time; but there is nothing." The father of two, Behrani has spent most of the money he brought with him from Iran on an apartment and furnishings that are too expensive, desperately trying to keep up appearances in order to enhance his daughter's chances of making a good marriage. Now the daughter is married, and on impulse he sinks his remaining funds into a house he buys at auction, thus unwittingly putting himself and his family on a trajectory to disaster. The house, it seems, once belonged to Kathy Nicolo, a self-destructive alcoholic who wants it back. What starts out as a legal tussle soon escalates into a personal confrontation--with dire results.

    Dubus tells his tragic tale from the viewpoints of the two main adversaries, Behrani and Kathy. To both of them, the house represents something more than just a place to live. For the colonel, it is a foot in the door of the American dream; for Kathy, a reminder of a kinder, gentler past. In prose that is simple yet evocative, House of Sand and Fog builds to its inevitable denouement, one that is painfully dark but unfailingly honest. --Alix Wilber [via]

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  • The Human Stain
    by Philip Roth
    ISBN 0099282194 (0-09-928219-4)
    Softcover, Random House Uk Ltd

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    Athena College was snoozing complacently in the Berkshires until Coleman Silk--formerly "Silky Silk," undefeated welterweight pro boxer--strode in and shook the place awake. This faculty dean sacked the deadwood, made lots of hot new hires, including Yale-spawned literary-theory wunderkind Delphine Roux, and pissed off so many people for so many decades that now, in 1998, they've all turned on him. Silk's character assassination is partly owing to what the novel's narrator, Nathan Zuckerman, calls "the Devil of the Little Place--the gossip, the jealousy, the acrimony, the boredom, the lies."

    But shocking, intensely dramatized events precipitate Silk's crisis. He remarks of two students who never showed up for class, "Do they exist or are they spooks?" They turn out to be black, and lodge a bogus charge of racism exploited by his enemies. Then, at 71, Viagra catapults Silk into "the perpetual state of emergency that is sexual intoxication," and he ignites an affair with an illiterate janitor, Faunia Farley, 34. She's got a sharp sensibility, "the laugh of a barmaid who keeps a baseball bat at her feet in case of trouble," and a melancholy voluptuousness. "I'm back in the tornado," Silk exults. His campus persecutors burn him for it--and his main betrayer is Delphine Roux.

    In a short space, it's tough to convey the gale-force quality of Silk's rants, or the odd effect of Zuckerman's narration, alternately retrospective and torrentially in the moment. The flashbacks to Silk's youth in New Jersey are just as important as his turbulent forced retirement, because it turns out that for his entire adult life, Silk has been covering up the fact that he is a black man. (If this seems implausible, consider that the famous New York Times book critic Anatole Broyard did the same thing.) Young Silk rejects both the racism that bars him from Woolworth's counter and the Negro solidarity of Howard University. "Neither the they of Woolworth's nor the we of Howard" is for Coleman Silk. "Instead the raw I with all its agility. Self-discovery--that was the punch to the labonz.... Self-knowledge but concealed. What is as powerful as that?"

    Silk's contradictions power a great Philip Roth novel, but he's not the only character who packs a punch. Faunia, brutally abused by her Vietnam vet husband (a sketchy guy who seems to have wandered in from a lesser Russell Banks novel), scarred by the death of her kids, is one of Roth's best female characters ever. The self-serving Delphine Roux is intriguingly (and convincingly) nutty, and any number of minor characters pop in, mouth off, kick ass, and vanish, leaving a vivid sense of human passion and perversity behind. You might call it a stain. --Tim Appelo [via]

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  • The Hundred Secret Senses
    by Amy Tan
    ISBN 0375701524 (0-375-70152-4)
    Softcover, Random House Inc

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    The Hundred Secret Senses is an exultant novel about China and America, love and loyalty, the identities we invent and the true selves we discover along the way. Olivia Laguni is half-Chinese, but typically American in her uneasiness with her patchwork family. And no one in Olivia's family is more embarrassing to her than her half-sister, Kwan Li. For Kwan speaks mangled English, is cheerfully deaf to Olivia's sarcasm, and sees the dead with her "yin eyes."

    Even as Olivia details the particulars of her decades-long grudge against her sister (who, among other things, is a source of infuriatingly good advice), Kwan Li is telling her own story, one that sweeps us into the splendor, squalor, and violence of Manchu China. And out of the friction between her narrators, Amy Tan creates a work that illuminates both the present and the past sweetly, sadly, hilariously, with searing and vivid prose.

    "Truly magical...unforgettable...this novel...shimmer[s] with meaning."--San Diego Tribune

    "The Hundred Secret Senses doesn't simply return to a world but burrows more deeply into it, following new trails to fresh revelations."--Newsweek [via]

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  • Interview With the Vampire
    by Anne Rice
    ISBN 0345337662 (0-345-33766-2)
    Softcover, Ballantine Books

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    In the now-classic novel Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice refreshed the archetypal vampire myth for a late-20th-century audience. The story is ostensibly a simple one: having suffered a tremendous personal loss, an 18th-century Louisiana plantation owner named Louis Pointe du Lac descends into an alcoholic stupor. At his emotional nadir, he is confronted by Lestat, a charismatic and powerful vampire who chooses Louis to be his fledgling. The two prey on innocents, give their "dark gift" to a young girl, and seek out others of their kind (notably the ancient vampire Armand) in Paris. But a summary of this story bypasses the central attractions of the novel. First and foremost, the method Rice chose to tell her tale--with Louis' first-person confession to a skeptical boy--transformed the vampire from a hideous predator into a highly sympathetic, seductive, and all-too-human figure. Second, by entering the experience of an immortal character, one raised with a deep Catholic faith, Rice was able to explore profound philosophical concerns--the nature of evil, the reality of death, and the limits of human perception--in ways not possible from the perspective of a more finite narrator.

    While Rice has continued to investigate history, faith, and philosophy in subsequent Vampire novels (including The Vampire Lestat, The Queen of the Damned, The Tale of the Body Thief, Memnoch the Devil, and The Vampire Armand), Interview remains a treasured masterpiece. It is that rare work that blends a childlike fascination for the supernatural with a profound vision of the human condition. --Patrick O'Kelley [via]

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  • Adair, Cherry: Kiss and Tell
    Kiss and Tell
    by Cherry Adair
    ISBN 0345478908 (0-345-47890-8)
    Softcover, Random House Publishing Group

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  • Leviathan
    by Paul Auster
    ISBN 0140178139 (0-14-017813-9)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    So begins the story told by Peter Aaron and his best friend, Benjamin Sachs. Sachs had a marriage Aaron envied, an intelligence he admired, a world he shared. and then suddenly, after a near-fatal fall that might or night not have been intentional, Sachs disappeared. Now Aaron must piece together the life that led to Sach's death. His sole aim is to tell the truth and preserve it, before those who are investigating the case invent an account of their own.

    Paul Auster's extraordinary seventh novel is about friendship and betrayal, sexual desire and estrangement, and the unpredictable instrusions of violence in the everyday. It is a daring and immensely moving story by an author whom The Times Literary Supplement has called "one of America's most spectacularly inventive writers."

    [via]

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  • London Fields
    by Martin Amis
    ISBN 0224026097 (0-224-02609-7)
    Hardcover, J. Cape

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    Set in the pubs and streets of West London, this is a murder story for the end of the millennium. The author has written six novels including "The Rachel Papers", for which he won the Somerset Maugham Award, "Money" and "Success". [via]

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  • Lost in a Good Book
    by Jasper Fforde
    ISBN 0142004030 (0-14-200403-0)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Thursday Next, literary detective and newlywed is back to embark on an adventure that begins, quite literally on her own doorstep. It seems that Landen, her husband of four weeks, actually drowned in an accident when he was two years old. Someone, somewhere, sometime, is responsible. The sinister Goliath Corporation wants its operative Jack Schitt out of the poem in which Thursday trapped him, and it will do almost anything to achieve this - but bribing the ChronoGuard? Is that possible? Having barely caught her breath after The Eyre Affair, Thursday must battle corrupt politicians, try to save the world from extinction, and help the Neanderthals to species self-determination. Mastadon migrations, journeys into Just William, a chance meeting with the Flopsy Bunnies, and violent life-and-death struggles in the summer sales are all part of a greater plan. But whose? and why? [via]

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  • Roberts, Nora: The MacGregor Grooms
    The MacGregor Grooms
    by Nora Roberts
    ISBN 0373218559 (0-373-21855-9)
    Softcover, Harlequin Enterprises, Limited

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  • Miss Wyoming
    by Douglas Coupland
    ISBN 0375707239 (0-375-70723-9)
    Softcover, Vintage Books

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    The eponymous heroine of Miss Wyoming is one Susan Colgate, a teen beauty queen and low-rent soap actress. Dragooned into show business by her demonically pushy, hillbilly mother, Susan has hit rock bottom by the time Douglas Coupland's seventh book begins. But when she finds herself the sole survivor of an airplane crash, this "low-grade onboard celebrity" takes the opportunity to start all over again:

    She felt like a ghost. She tried to find her bodily remains there in the wreckage and was unable to do so.... Then she was lost in a crowd of local onlookers and trucks, parping sirens and ambulances. She picked her way out of the melee and found a newly paved suburban road that she followed away from the wreck into the folds of a housing development. She had survived, and now she needed sanctuary and silence.
    She's not, of course, the only Hollywood burnout who'd like to vanish into thin air. Her opposite number, a producer of big-budget, no-brainer action flicks named John Johnson, stages a similar disappearing act. After a near-death experience, in the course of which he is treated to a vision of Susan's face, he roams the western badlands. And even after his return to L.A., Johnson is determined to unravel the mystery of this woman's fate.

    Throughout, Coupland displays his usual gift for capturing the absurdities of modern existence. The distinctive minutiae of our age--junk mail and fast food, sitcoms and Singapore slings, and the "shop fronts bigger and brighter and more powerful than they needed to be"--come to vivid, funny life in this author's hands. And while Susan and John occupy center stage, Coupland is just as generous with his peripheral characters. A scriptwriter and his supernaturally intelligent girlfriend, a recluse who spends his evening generating Internet rumours--all manage to be blessed and cursed, numbed by their pointless existences but full of humanity when put to the test. Picture Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut collaborating on a Tinseltown version of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and you come halfway to grasping Coupland's brand of thoughtful, supremely funny storytelling. --Matthew Baylis [via]

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  • Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana
    by Umberto Eco, Geoffrey Brock
    ISBN 0156030438 (0-15-603043-8)
    Softcover, Harcourt

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    Yambo, a sixtyish rare-book dealer who lives in Milan, has suffered a loss of memory-he can remember the plot of every book he has ever read, every line of poetry, but he no longer knows his own name, doesn't recognize his wife or his daughters, and remembers nothing about his parents or his childhood. In an effort to retrieve his past, he withdraws to the family home somewhere in the hills between Milan and Turin.There, in the sprawling attic, he searches through boxes of old newspapers, comics, records, photo albums, and adolescent diaries. And so Yambo relives the story of his generation: Mussolini, Catholic education and guilt, Josephine Baker, Flash Gordon, Fred Astaire. His memories run wild, and the life racing before his eyes takes the form of a graphic novel. Yambo struggles through the frames to capture one simple, innocent image: that of his first love. A fascinating, abundant new novel-wide-ranging, nostalgic, funny, full of heart-from the incomparable Eco. [via]

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  • Nineteen Eighty-Four
    by George Orwell, Peter Davison
    ISBN 0151660344 (0-15-166034-4)
    Hardcover, Harcourt

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    "Outside, even through the shut window pane, the world looked cold. Down in the street little eddies of wind were whirling dust and torn paper into spirals, and though the sun was shining and the sky a harsh blue, there seemed to be no color in anything except the posters that were plastered everywhere."

    The year is 1984; the scene is London, largest population center of Airstrip One.

    Airstrip One is part of the vast political entity Oceania, which is eternally at war with one of two other vast entities, Eurasia and Eastasia. At any moment, depending upon current alignments, all existing records show either that Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia and allied with Eastasia, or that it has always been at war with Eastasia and allied with Eurasia. Winston Smith knows this, because his work at the Ministry of Truth involves the constant "correction" of such records. "'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.'"

    In a grim city and a terrifying country, where Big Brother is always Watching You and the Thought Police can practically read your mind, Winston is a man in grave danger for the simple reason that his memory still functions. He knows the Party's official image of the world is a fluid fiction. He knows the Party controls the people by feeding them lies and narrowing their imaginations through a process of bewilderment and brutalization that alienates each individual from his fellows and deprives him of every liberating human pursuit from reasoned inquiry to sexual passion. Drawn into a forbidden love affair, Winston finds the courage to join a secret revolutionary organization called The Brotherhood, dedicated to the destruction of the Party. Together with his beloved Julia, he hazards his life in a deadly match against the powers that be.

    Newspeak, doublethink, thoughtcrime--in 1984, George Orwell created a whole vocabulary of words concerning totalitarian control that have since passed into our common vocabulary. More importantly, he has portrayed a chillingly credible dystopia. In our deeply anxious world, the seeds of unthinking conformity are everywhere in evidence; and Big Brother is always looking for his chance. --Daniel Hintzsche [via]

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  • Mitchell, David: Number9dream
    Number9dream
    by David Mitchell
    ISBN 0375507264 (0-375-50726-4)
    Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group

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  • On Gold Mountain
    by Lisa See
    ISBN 0312119976 (0-312-11997-6)
    Hardcover, St Martins Pr

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    Lisa See, daughter of novelist Carolyn See, brings a novelist's skill to this sprawling ancestral history. Books tracing the roots of overseas Chinese writers are not uncommon these days, but See uncovered in her family tree a capsule history of the Sino-American diaspora: her great-grandfather, Fong See, founded a California business, married a Caucasian woman and fathered many offspring, and returned periodically to China to redistribute some of his wealth and launch another family. See, a Publishers Weekly writer, has conducted extensive interviews and drawn on family lore for an enthralling saga of ambition, prejudice, love, loyalty, and sorrow--social history at its best. [via]

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  • Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four: Text, Sources, Criticism
    by Irving Howe
    ISBN 0155658115 (0-15-565811-5)
    Softcover, Cengage Learning

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    Book summary:

    Among the seminal texts of the 20th century, Nineteen Eighty-Four is a rare work that grows more haunting as its futuristic purgatory becomes more real. Published in 1949, the book offers political satirist George Orwell's nightmare vision of a totalitarian, bureaucratic world and one poor stiff's attempt to find individuality. The brilliance of the novel is Orwell's prescience of modern life--the ubiquity of television, the distortion of the language--and his ability to construct such a thorough version of hell. Required reading for students since it was published, it ranks among the most terrifying novels ever written. [via]

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  • Perfume
    by Patrick Suskind
    ISBN 0307277763 (0-307-27776-3)
    Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group

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    An acclaimed bestseller and international sensation, Patrick Suskind's classic novel provokes a terrifying examination of what happens when one man's indulgence in his greatest passion-his sense of smell-leads to murder. In the slums of eighteenth-century France, the infant Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born with one sublime gift-an absolute sense of smell. As a boy, he lives to decipher the odors of Paris, and apprentices himself to a prominent perfumer who teaches him the ancient art of mixing precious oils and herbs. But Grenouille's genius is such that he is not satisfied to stop there, and he becomes obsessed with capturing the smells of objects such as brass doorknobs and frest-cut wood. Then one day he catches a hint of a scent that will drive him on an ever-more-terrifying quest to create the "ultimate perfume"-the scent of a beautiful young virgin. Told with dazzling narrative brillance, Perfume is a hauntingly powerful tale of murder and sensual depravity. Translated from the German by John E. Woods. [via]

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  • Brockmann, Suzanne: Prince Joe
    Prince Joe
    by Suzanne Brockmann
    ISBN 0373077203 (0-373-07720-3)
    Softcover, Harlequin Books

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  • Ravelstein
    by Saul Bellow
    ISBN 0141001763 (0-14-100176-3)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Saul Bellow confined himself to shorter fictions. Not that this old master ever dabbled in minimalism: novellas such as The Actual and The Bellarosa Connection are bursting at the seams with wit, plot, and the intellectual equivalent of high fiber. Still, Bellow's readers wondered if he would ever pull another full-sized novel from his hat. With Ravelstein, the author has done just that--and he proves that even in his ninth decade, he can pin a character to the page more vividly, and more permanently, than just about anybody on the planet.

    Character is very much the issue in Ravelstein, whose eponymous subject is a thinly disguised version of Bellow's boon companion, the late Allan Bloom. Like Bloom, Abe Ravelstein has spent much of his career at the University of Chicago, fighting a rearguard action against the creeping boobism and vulgarity of American life. What's more, he's written a surprise bestseller (a ringer, of course, for The Closing of the American Mind), which has made him into a millionaire. And finally, he's dying--has died of AIDS, in fact, six years before the opening of the novel. What we're reading, then, is a faux memoir by his best friend and anointed Boswell, a Bellovian body-double named Chick:

    Ravelstein was willing to lay it all out for me. Now why did he bother to tell me such things, this large Jewish man from Dayton, Ohio? Because it very urgently needed to be said. He was HIV-positive, he was dying of complications from it. Weakened, he became the host of an endless list of infections. Still, he insisted on telling me over and over again what love was--the neediness, the awareness of incompleteness, the longing for wholeness, and how the pains of Eros were joined to the most ecstatic pleasures.
    Ravelstein is a little thin in the plot department--or more accurately, it has an anti-plot, which consists of Chick's inability to write his memoir. But seldom has a case of writer's block been so supremely productive. The narrator dredges up anecdote after anecdote about his subject, assembling a composite portrait: "In approaching a man like Ravelstein, a piecemeal method is perhaps best." We see this very worldly philosopher teaching, kvetching, eating, drinking, and dying, the last in melancholic increments. His death, and Chick's own brush with what Henry James called "the distinguished thing," give much of the novel a kind of black-crepe coloration. But fortunately, Bellow shares Ravelstein's "Nietzschean view, favorable to comedy and bandstands," and there can't be many eulogies as funny as this one.

    As always, the author is lavish with physical detail, bringing not only his star but a large gallery of minor players to rude and resounding life ("Rahkmiel was a non-benevolent Santa Claus, a dangerous person, ruddy, with a red-eyed scowl and a face in which the anger muscles were highly developed"). His sympathies are also stretched in some interesting directions by his homosexual protagonist. Bellow hasn't, to be sure, transformed himself into an affirmative-action novelist. But his famously capacious view of human nature has been enriched by this additional wrinkle: "In art you become familiar with due process. You can't simply write people off or send them to hell." A world-class portrait, a piercing intimation of mortality, Ravelstein is truly that other distinguished thing: a great novel. --James Marcus [via]

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  • Reflections and Dreams
    by Nora Roberts
    ISBN 0373484429 (0-373-48442-9)
    Softcover, Silhouette Books

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    Nora Roberts will enchant and entertain her millions of fans with this special volume containing two full-length novels. In these editorially connected stories, two inspiring women learn that they must live...and love...on their own terms. [via]

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  • The Rotters' Club
    by Jonathan Coe
    ISBN 0375713123 (0-375-71312-3)
    Softcover, Alfred a Knopf Inc

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    At a time when people are looking back on the 1970s with nostalgia, Jonathan Coe's The Rotters' Club is a timely reminder of how ghastly that benighted decade was in Britain. Set in the "industrial" heartland of the West Midlands, it chronicles the growing pains of four Brummie schoolboys--Philip, Sean, Doug, and Benjamin--who must come to terms not only with the normal pangs of adolescence but with terrible knitwear, ludicrous pop music, nightmarish food, and insidious racism, all set against the awful, surreal, and tragicomic reality of a postimperial nation.

    The book suffers in its programmatic attempts to make the four boys and their families symbolize, or represent, something important to do with British life. Doug, for instance, symbolizes Industrial Decline--his dad is a shop steward at the doomed British Leyland Longbridge plant. Sean symbolizes Sexual Liberation--at least he's the one who seems most likely to get his rocks off. And young Ben Trotter would appear to represent A Young Jonathan Coe. But if this aspect of the novel seems contrived, then the author's capricious, deft, wryly comedic, and touchingly empathetic style keeps things chugging along, as he knits together the troubles and tragedies of some fairly ordinary people living through fairly extraordinary years. --Sean Thomas, Amazon.co.uk [via]

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  • Santa, Baby
    by Jennifer Crusie, Lori Foster
    ISBN 0312939760 (0-312-93976-0)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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    Get ready for a holiday season you'll never forget with three of today's most sensational writers who know what every woman wants for the holidays. You'll believe in Santa all over again with these seductive stories from:
     
    JENNIFER CRUSIE
    Mayhem ensues under the mistletoe as a determined shopper grabs the very last hot toy action figure off the shelf, only to find herself plunged into the middle of a real-life spy game--in the arms of a sexy secret agent. . .
     
    LORI FOSTER
    Two dedicated coworkers with a lot of secrets (and fantasies!) between them must plan a Christmas party side by side--and discover a love worth celebrating--in this steamy office romance.
     
    CARLY PHILLIPS
    A "mistletoe moment" begins when a no-nonsense lawyer intent on seducing her boss meets his twin instead--after giving him a scintillating kiss that leaves him begging for more. . .
    [via]

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  • The Sea
    by John Banville
    ISBN 0307263118 (0-307-26311-8)
    Hardcover, Alfred a Knopf Inc

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    Incandescent prose. Beautifully textured characterisation. Transparent narratives. The adjectives to describe the writing of John Banville are all affirmative, and The Sea is a ringing affirmation of all his best qualities. His publishers are claiming that this novel by the Booker-shortlisted author is his finest yet, and while that claim may have an element of hyperbole, there is no denying that this perfectly balanced book is among the writers most accomplished work.

    Max Morden has reached a crossroads in his life, and is trying hard to deal with several disturbing things. A recent loss is still taking its toll on him, and a trauma in his past is similarly proving hard to deal with. He decides that he will return to a town on the coast at which he spent a memorable holiday when a boy. His memory of that time devolves on the charismatic Grace family, particularly the seductive twins Myles and Chloe. In a very short time, Max found himself drawn into a strange relationship with them, and pursuant events left their mark on him for the rest of his life. But will he be able to exorcise those memories of the past?

    The fashion in which John Banville draws the reader into this hypnotic and disturbing world is non pareil, and the very complex relationships between his brilliantly delineated cast of characters are orchestrated with a masters skill. As in such books as Shroud and The Book of Evidence, the author eschews the obvious at all times, and the narrative is delivered with subtlety and understatement. The genuine moments of drama, when they do occur, are commensurately more powerful. --Barry Forshaw [via]

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  • The Shadow of the Wind
    by Lucia Graves, Carlos Ruiz Zafon
    ISBN 0143034901 (0-14-303490-1)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    The Shadow of the Wind [Paperback] by Carlos Ruiz Zaf_n; Lucia Graves [via]

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  • Hiaasen, Carl: Skinny Dip
    Skinny Dip
    by Carl Hiaasen
    ISBN 0375411089 (0-375-41108-9)
    Hardcover, Random House Inc

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  • Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
    by Lisa See
    ISBN 0375435247 (0-375-43524-7)
    Hardcover, Random House Large Print

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    BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Lisa See's Peony in Love.

    Lily is haunted by memoriesof who she once was, and of a person, long gone, who defined her existence. She has nothing but time now, as she recounts the tale of Snow Flower, and asks the gods for forgiveness.

    In nineteenth-century China, when wives and daughters were foot-bound and lived in almost total seclusion, the women in one remote Hunan county developed their own secret code for communication: nu shu (womens writing). Some girls were paired with laotongs, old sames, in emotional matches that lasted throughout their lives. They painted letters on fans, embroidered messages on handkerchiefs, and composed stories, thereby reaching out of their isolation to share their hopes, dreams, and accomplishments.

    With the arrival of a silk fan on which Snow Flower has composed for Lily a poem of introduction in nu shu, their friendship is sealed and they become old sames at the tender age of seven. As the years pass, through famine and rebellion, they reflect upon their arranged marriages, loneliness, and the joys and tragedies of motherhood. The two find solace, developing a bond that keeps their spirits alive. But when a misunderstanding arises, their lifelong friendship suddenly threatens to tear apart.

    Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a brilliantly realistic journey back to an era of Chinese history that is as deeply moving as it is sorrowful. With the period detail and deep resonance of Memoirs of a Geisha, this lyrical and emotionally charged novel delves into one of the most mysterious of human relationships: female friendship. [via]

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  • Sputnik Sweetheart
    by Haruki Murakami, J. Philip Gabriel, Philip Gabriel
    ISBN 0375726055 (0-375-72605-5)
    Softcover, Random House Inc

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    Sputnik Sweetheart finds Haruki Murakami in his minimalist mode. Shorter than the sweeping Wind-up Bird Chronicle, less playfully bizarre than A Wild Sheep Chase, the author's seventh novel distills his signature themes into a powerful story about the loneliness of the human condition. "There was nothing solid we could depend on," the reader is told. "We were nearly boundless zeros, just pitiful little beings swept from one kind of oblivion to another."

    The narrator is a teacher whose only close friend is Sumire, an aspiring young novelist with chronic writer's block. Sumire is suddenly smitten with a sophisticated businesswoman and accompanies her love object to Europe where, on a tiny Greek island, she disappears "like smoke." The schoolteacher hastens to the island in search of his friend. And there he discovers two documents on her computer, one of which reveals a chilling secret about Sumire's lover.

    Sputnik Sweetheart is a melancholy love story, and its deceptively simple prose is saturated with sadness. Characters struggle to connect with one another but never quite succeed. Like the satellite of the title they are essentially alone. And by toning down the pyrotechnics of his earlier work, Murakami has created a world that is simultaneously mundane and disturbing--where doppelgängers and vanishing cats produce a pervasive atmosphere of alienation, and identity itself seems like a terribly fragile thing. --Simon Leake [via]

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  • Lee, Linda Francis: Suddenly Sexy
    Suddenly Sexy
    by Linda Francis Lee
    ISBN 0345462718 (0-345-46271-8)
    Softcover, Ballantine Books

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  • Ten Big Ones
    by Janet Evanovich
    ISBN 0312936222 (0-312-93622-2)
    Softcover, St Martins Pr

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    She's accidentally destroyed a dozen cars. She's a target for every psycho and miscreant this side of the Jersey Turnpike. He mother's convinced she'll end up dead...or worse, without a man. She's Stephanie Plum and she kicks butt for a living [via]

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  • Thursday Next in the Well Of Lost Plots
    by Fforde Jasper
    ISBN 0143034359 (0-14-303435-9)
    Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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    The third installment in Jasper Fforde's New York Times bestselling series follows literary detective Thursday Next on another adventure in her alternate reality of literature-obsessed England Jasper Fforde has done it again in this genre-bending blend of crime fiction, fantasy, and top-drawer literary entertainment. After two rollicking New York Times bestselling adventures through Western literature, resourceful BookWorld literary detective Thursday Next definitely needs some downtime. And what better place for a respite than in the hidden depths of the Well of Lost Plots, where all unpublished books reside? But peace and quiet remain elusive for Thursday, who soon discovers that the Well is a veritable linguistic free-for-all, where grammasites run rampant, plot devices are hawked on the black market, and lousy books-like the one she has taken up residence in-are scrapped for salvage. To make matters worse, a murderer is stalking the personnel of Jurisfiction and it's up to Thursday to save the day. A brilliant feat of literary showmanship filled with wit, fantasy, and effervescent originality, this Ffordian tour de force will appeal to fans of Douglas Adams and P. G. Wodehouse. Thursday's zany investigations continue with Something Rotten. Look for the five other bestselling Thursday Next novels, including One of Our Thursdays is Missing and Jasper Fforde's latest bestseller, The Woman Who Died A Lot. Visit jasperfforde.com for a ffull window into the Ffordian world! [via]

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  • Gibson, Rachel: Truly Madly Yours
    Truly Madly Yours
    by Rachel Gibson
    ISBN 0380801213 (0-380-80121-3)
    Softcover, Avon Books

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  • Vernon God Little: A 21st Century Comedy in the Presence of Death
    by D. B. C. Pierre
    ISBN 0156029987 (0-15-602998-7)
    Softcover, Harcourt

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    If there's any justice, it is only a matter of time before the work of the curiously-named D B C Pierre becomes essential for anyone interested in cutting-edge writing today. Vernon God Little is a book that has a totally individual (and very quirky) identity, from a writer with a finger on the pulse of contemporary society (particularly its less comfortable aspects). Pierre is also a satirical writer in the vein of such talents as Terry Southern, and there is a manic quality to his work that makes the experience of reading him both disorienting and exhilarating. As a first novel, this is a remarkable achievement.

    Teenager Vernon Gregory Little's life has been changed by the Columbine-style slaughter of a group of students at his high school. Soon his hole-in-the-wall town is blanketed under a media siege, and Vernon finds himself blamed for the killing (rather than the real culprit, a friend of Vernon's). Eulalio Ledesma is his particular nemesis, manipulating things so that Vernon becomes the fulcrum for the bizarre and vengeful impulses of the townspeople of Martirio. After a truly surrealistic set of events, Vernon finds himself heading for a fateful assignation in Mexico with the delectable Taylor Figueros (everyone in the book has names as odd as the author's).

    By setting his novel in the barbecue sauce capital of Central Texas, Pierre ensures that his narrative is going to be some distance from naturalistic writing. And as a scalpel-like satirical incision into the mores of contemporary America, reality TV and media hysteria, Vernon God Little often reads like a fractured modern-day take on such novels as John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces. --Barry Forshaw [via]

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  • The Villa
    by Nora Roberts
    ISBN 0375431039 (0-375-43103-9)
    Hardcover, Random House Large Print

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    Set in beautiful Napa Valley, California, Nora Roberts's novel The Villa portrays a rich world of family-owned wineries, complete with enough romance, sophisticated business intrigue, betrayal, and murder to cow the Medicis of Florence. The Villa focuses on the merger of two prominent winemaking families, the Giambellis and MacMillans, and the incendiary combination of the two upcoming leaders of those dynasties, Sophia Giambelli and Tyler MacMillan. Tyler is the manager of the MacMillan vines and the distilling process, a job that suits his frank and no-frills personality. Creative and flashy, Sophia is head of Giambelli's public relations, and her job has been to put the best spin on whatever her family business produces--hard to do when the merger requires that she and Tyler switch jobs, and particularly hard to do when her own heart seems to spin out of control whenever they're together.

    Soon after the merger goes through, Tony Avano, a Giambelli executive and Sophia's father, is murdered, and threats surface against the Giambelli women. As a quiet woman, Sophia's mother, Pilar, has made few enemies, except for Tony's new wife, Rene. The matriarch of the family--known simply as La Signora--may have knocked some rivals aside as she clawed her way to the top, but few would have reason to threaten her now. When poison is discovered in Giambelli wine, Sophia and Tyler learn the killer is much closer than they thought.

    In description, dialogue, and plot, Roberts's talent and control are as fine as ever. But while the relationship between Pilar and David, the new COO, feels complex and mature, Sophia and Tyler's romance can at times feel slightly forced. As Roberts explains repeatedly, Sophia approaches sex "as a man does," which apparently means with no strings attached. And while that does tend to take the "romance" out of the romance to some extent, the positive aspects to be found in The Villa outweigh this flaw, ensuring another hit for the talented and prolific Roberts. --Nancy RE O'Brien, Amazon.com [via]

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  • We Need to Talk About Kevin
    by Lionel Shriver
    ISBN 006112429X (0-06-112429-X)
    Softcover, Harpercollins

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    Now a major motion picture by Lynne Ramsay, starring Tilda Swinton and John C. Reilly,Lionel Shrivers resonant story of a mothers unsettling quest to understandher teenage sons deadly violence, her own ambivalence toward motherhood, andthe explosive link between them reverberates with the haunting power of highhopes shattered by dark realities. Like Shrivers charged and incisive laternovels, including So Much for That and The Post-Birthday World, We Need to Talk About Kevin isa piercing, unforgettable, and penetrating exploration of violence, familyties, and responsibility, a book that the Boston Globe describes assometimes searing . . . [and] impossible to put down. [via]

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  • The Well of Lost Plots
    by Jasper Fforde
    ISBN 0340825928 (0-340-82592-8)
    Softcover, Hodder & Stoughton

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    Leaving Swindon behind her to hide out in the Well of Lost Plots (the place where all fiction is created), Thursday Next, Literary Detective and soon-to-be one parent family, ponders her next move from within an unpublished book of dubious merit entitled 'Caversham Heights'. Landen, her husband, is still eradicated, Aornis Hades is meddling with Thursday's memory, and Miss Havisham - when not sewing up plot-holes in 'Mill on the Floss' - is trying to break the land-speed record on the A409. But something is rotten in the state of Jurisfiction. Perkins is 'accidentally' eaten by the minotaur, and Snell succumbs to the Mispeling Vyrus. As a shadow looms over popular fiction, Thursday must keep her wits about her and discover not only what is going on, but also who she can trust to tell about it ...With grammasites, holesmiths, trainee characters, pagerunners, baby dodos and an adopted home scheduled for demolition, 'The Well of Lost Plots' is at once an addictively exciting adventure and an insight into how books are made, who makes them - and why there is no singular for 'scampi'. In the words of one critic: 'Don't ask. Just read it.' [via]

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  • Without a Trace
    by Nora Roberts
    ISBN 0373096259 (0-373-09625-9)
    Softcover, Harlequin Books

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    Trace had turned his back on responsiblity and commitment long ago. Gillian Fitzpatrick was frightened and desperate--her brother had disappeared. Trace was her only hope. He had the connections, the expertise and the guts. But just what was she going to have to do to convince him to help her? [via]

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  • A Wrinkle in Time: Library Edition
    by Madeleine L'Engle
    ISBN 0312367546 (0-312-36754-6)
    Softcover, Feiwel & Friends

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    Everyone in town thinks Meg is volatile and dull-witted and that her younger brother Charles Wallace is dumb. People are also saying that their father has run off and left their brilliant scientist mother. Spurred on by these rumors, Meg and Charles Wallace, along with their new friend Calvin, embark on a perilous quest through space to find their father. In doing so they must travel behind the shadow of an evil power that is darkening the cosmos, one planet at a time.

    Young people who have trouble finding their place in the world will connect with the "misfit" characters in this provocative story. This is no superhero tale, nor is it science fiction, although it shares elements of both. The travelers must rely on their individual and collective strengths, delving deep into their characters to find answers.

    A classic since 1962, Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time is sophisticated in concept yet warm in tone, with mystery and love coursing through its pages. Meg's shattering yet ultimately freeing discovery that her father is not omnipotent provides a satisfying coming-of-age element. Readers will feel a sense of power as they travel with these three children, challenging concepts of time, space, and the power of good over evil. (Ages 9 to 12) [via]

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Spanish

  • La Misteriosa Llama De La Reina Loana
    by Umberto Eco, Helena Lozano Miralles
    ISBN 0307350029 (0-307-35002-9)
    Softcover, Random House Espanol

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    Es triste despertarte una mañana en una cama de hospital y ser incapaz de reconocer a tu mujer y a tus hijos, abrir los ojos y no recordar cuál es tu profesión, ni dónde vives o cuáles son tus gustos a la hora de comer y beber. Esa es la desconcertante realidad de Giambattista Bodoni, Yambo para los amigos, un hombre de sesenta años que, tras sufrir un accidente, ha perdido por completo la memoria personal, la más ligada a las emociones, y en cambio conserva intacta la memoria histórica, así que sabe muy bien quién es Napoleón, pero ve su propia vida como si acabara de inaugurarla.
    Para ayudarle en el proceso de recuperación, su esposa Paola insiste en que pase una temporada en el caserón de Solara, un pueblo en las colinas piamontesas. Ahí Yambo vivió su infancia, y en el desván están guardados los libros, los tebeos, los discos, los recortes de periódico y los carteles de las películas que lo acompañaron en los primeros años de su vida. Inicia así una labor casi detectivesca para reencontrarse con el pasado a través de estos objetos, que para él no son recuerdos sino hipótesis de trabajo, cosas nuevas que le hablan de un mundo que fue el suyo y el de todas las personas que vivieron en primera persona los momentos más importantes de la historia del siglo XX. Las fotos de Mussolini se juntan con las imágenes de Flash Gordon y Mandrake, Salgari le da la mano al ratón Mickey, y los negros uniformes de las juventudes fascistas se mezclan con las redacciones escolares de ese niño que fue Yambo, mientras el rostro de una mujer amada y el recuerdo de un crimen atroz asoman en la niebla. [via]

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