New Books in the Marketplace
Here are some newly published books that you might want to read. If you do, remember to write a review!
"House Rules"
"House Rules" is about Jacob Hunt, a teenage boy with Asperger’s Syndrome. He’s
hopeless at reading social cues or expressing himself well to others, and like many kids
with AS, Jacob has a special focus on one subject – in his case, forensic analysis. He’s
always showing up at crime scenes, thanks to the police scanner he keeps in his room,
and telling the cops what they need to do…and he’s usually right. But then one day his
tutor is found dead, and the police come to question him. All of the hallmark behaviors
of Asperger’s – not looking someone in the eye, stimulatory tics and twitches, inappropriate
affect – can look a heck of a lot like guilt to law enforcement personnel -- and suddenly,
Jacob finds himself accused of murder. HOUSE RULES looks at what it means to be different
in our society, how autism affects a family, and how our legal system works well for
people who communicate a certain way – but lousy for those who don’t.
(Synopsis courtesy of
www.jodipicoult.com)
"Winter Garden"
Can a woman ever really know herself if she doesn’t know her mother? From the author of the smash-hit bestseller Firefly Lane and True Colors comes a powerful, heartbreaking novel that illuminates the intricate mother-daughter bond and explores the enduring links between the present and the past.
Meredith and Nina Whitson are as different as sisters can be. One stayed at home to raise
her children and manage the family apple orchard; the other followed a dream and traveled
the world to become a famous photojournalist. But when their beloved father falls ill, Meredith
and Nina find themselves together again, standing alongside their cold, disapproving mother,
Anya, who even now, offers no comfort to her daughters. As children, the only connection
between them was the Russian fairy tale Anya sometimes told the girls at night. On his
deathbed, their father extracts a promise from the women in his life: the fairy tale
will be told one last time—and all the way to the end. Thus begins an unexpected journey
into the truth of Anya’s life in war-torn Leningrad, more than five decades ago.
Alternating between the past and present, Meredith and Nina will finally hear the singular,
harrowing story of their mother’s life, and what they learn is a secret so terrible and
terrifying that it will shake the very foundation of their family and change who they
believe they are.
(Synopsis courtesy of www.barnesandnoble.com)
"The Glister"
Acclaimed author John Burnside delivers a profound, page-turning novel about innocence, evil, morality, and the dark corners of the human psyche.
Mysterious illnesses affect the inhabitants of the post-industrial village
of Innertown, and a pervasive sense of malaise hangs everywhere. So when teenage
boys disappear into the poisoned woods surrounding the village’s abandoned
chemical plant, no one notices, or if they do, they don’t say a thing. Not
even the town’s only cop, whose leads have long since died. To one boy, however,
the chemical plant is beautiful, and it is there he will enact a plan to change
the fate of the children of Innertown. To do so he will have to confront the blinding
reality that burns in the chemical plant’s cavernous center.
(Synopsis courtesy of www.barnesandnoble.com)
"Letter to My Daughter"
Dear Elizabeth,
It’s early morning and I’m sitting here wondering where you are, hoping you’re all right.
A fight, ended by a slap, sends Elizabeth out the door of her Baton Rouge home on the eve of her fifteenth birthday. Her mother, Laura, is left to fret and worry—and remember. Wracked with guilt as she awaits Liz’s return, Laura begins a letter to her daughter, hoping to convey “everything I’ve always meant to tell you but never have.”
In her painfully candid confession, Laura shares memories of her own troubled adolescence in rural Louisiana, growing up in an intensely conservative household. She recounts her relationship with a boy she loved despite her parents’ disapproval, the fateful events that led to her being sent away to a strict Catholic boarding school, the personal tragedy brought upon her by the Vietnam War, and, finally, the meaning of the enigmatic tattoo below her right hip.
Absorbing and affirming, George Bishop’s magnificent debut brilliantly captures a sense
of time and place with a distinct and inviting voice. Letter to My Daughter is a heartwrenching
novel of mothers, daughters, and the lessons we all learn when we come of age.
(Synopsis courtesy of www.barnesandnoble.com)
"The Spare Room"
A powerful, witty, and taut novel about a complex friendship between two women—one dying, the other called to care for her—from an internationally acclaimed and award-winning author
How much of ourselves must we give up to help a friend in need? Helen has little idea what lies ahead—and what strength she must muster—when she offers her spare room to an old friend, Nicola, who has arrived in the city for cancer treatment. Skeptical of the medical establishment, and placing all her faith in an alternative health center, Nicola is determined to find her own way to deal with her illness, regardless of the advice Helen offers.
In the weeks that follow, Nicola’s battle for survival will turn not only her own
life upside down but also those of everyone around her. The Spare Room is a magical gem
of a book—gripping, moving, and unexpectedly funny—that packs a huge punch, charting a
friendship as it is tested by the threat of death.
(Synopsis courtesy of www.barnesandnoble.com)
"Deeper Than the Dead"
The #1 New York Times bestselling author joins the Dutton list with the thriller her millions of fans have been awaiting for two years.
Tami Hoag is in a class by herself, beloved by readers and critic s alike, with more than 22 million copies of her books in print. With Hoag's first novel for Dutton, she proves anew why the Chicago Tribune called her "one of the most intense suspense writers around."
California, 1984. Three children, running in the woods behind their school, stumble upon a partially buried female body, eyes and mouth glued shut. Close behind the children is their teacher, Anne Navarre, shocked by this discovery and heartbroken as she witnesses the end of their innocence. What she doesn't yet realize is that this will mark the end of innocence for an entire community, as the ties that bind families and friends are tested by secrets uncovered in the wake of a serial killer's escalating activity.
Detective Tony Mendez, fresh from a law enforcement course at FBI headquarters, is charged with interpreting those now revealed secrets. He's using a new technique-profiling-to develop a theory of the case, a strategy that pushes him ever deeper into the lives of the three children, and closer to the young teacher whose interest in recent events becomes as intense as his own.
As new victims are found and the media scrutiny of the investigation bears down
on them, both Mendez and Navarre are unsure if those who suffer most are
the victims themselves-or the family and friends of the killer, blissfully
unaware that someone very close to them is a brutal, calculating psychopath.
(Synopsis courtesy of www.barnesandnoble.com)
"Noah's Compass"
From the incomparable Anne Tyler, a wise, gently humorous, and deeply compassionate novel about a schoolteacher, who has been forced to retire at sixty-one, coming to terms with the final phase of his life.
Liam Pennywell, who set out to be a philosopher and ended up teaching fifth grade, never much liked the job at that run-down private school, so early retirement doesn’t bother him. But he is troubled by his inability to remember anything about the first night that he moved into his new, spare, and efficient condominium on the outskirts of Baltimore. All he knows when he wakes up the next day in the hospital is that his head is sore and bandaged.
His effort to recover the moments of his life that have been stolen from him leads him on an unexpected detour. What he needs is someone who can do the remembering for him. What he gets is—well, something quite different.
We all know a Liam. In fact, there may be a little of Liam in each of us.
Which is why Anne Tyler’s lovely novel resonates so deeply.
(Synposis courtesy of www.bn.com)
"All Things at Once"
From the MSNBC "Morning Joe" co-host comes a candid and inspiring motivational book that can help women of all ages to confront the unique professional and personal challenges they face in the key moments in their lives. (Synopsis courtesy of www.bn.com)
In her second year as cohost of MSNBC's Morning Joe, TV news veteran Brzezinski is on fire,
after enduring her share of professional setbacks and personal hardships. In this straightforward,
frank account of her career trajectory, Brzezinski, the daughter of President Carter's national
security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, does not bother to disguise her hard-fought ambition to
secure a top news anchor position or hide the fact that she is not satisfied (nor very good at)
being a stay-at-home mom of two daughters. From the beginning of her TV career, working her way
up at local affiliates in Hartford, to her big break, getting hired in 1997 for an overnight
CBS network anchor program in New York, Up to the Minute, the author resolved to make the frantic
pace work, despite the increasing toll the late hours and absences from her family were taking.
Distracted, pressured to return too early to work after the birth of her second child and
exhausted, she took a bad fall down the stairs of her Yonkers home while holding her infant.
The trauma scared her into slowing down, but not for long. Opportunity has seasoned Brzezinski
but not hardened her, and having found her venue and voice with Morning Joe, she shares a
refreshingly pragmatic approach for the professional woman: don't wait to have children and
don't let your job treat you like a bad boyfriend. (Jan.)
(Review courtesy of Publishers Weekly)
"The Swan Thieves"
Psychiatrist Andrew Marlowe, devoted to his profession and the painting hobby he loves,
has a solitary but ordered life. When renowned painter Robert Oliver attacks a canvas in the
National Gallery of Art and becomes his patient, Marlow finds that order destroyed.
Desperate to understand the secret that torments the genius, he embarks on a journey
that leads him into the lives of the women closest to Oliver and a tragedy at the
heart of French Impressionism. Kostova's masterful new novel travels
from American cities to the coast of Normandy, from the late 19th century
to the late 20th, from young love to last love. THE SWAN THIEVES is a story
of obsession, history's losses, and the power of art to preserve human hope.
(Synopsis courtesy of www.bn.com)
Kostova follows up her blockbuster debut about the undead (The Historian, 2005) with a romance about a contemporary painter's obsession with an undiscovered 19th-century Impressionist. After he attempts to slash the painting Leda at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., respected artist Robert Oliver is committed to a mental hospital under the care of psychiatrist Andrew Marlow (think Heart of Darkness). A painter himself, Marlow is fascinated by his patient, who refuses to speak and paints the same dark-haired woman over and over. "When I asked him whether he was sketching from imagination or drawing a real person," Marlow remembers, "he ignored me more pointedly than ever." Then Robert lends Marlow a package of letters written in the late 1870s by aspiring painter Beatrice de Clerval Vignot to her husband's uncle Olivier Vignot, an established artist at the Paris Salon. Knowing he is stretching professional boundaries, Marlow goes to North Carolina to visit Robert's charming, pragmatic ex-wife and tracks down the spirited painter Mary Bertison, with whom Robert later lived in D.C. Both women loved the artist and felt they lost him to the woman in the painting. Marlow himself falls increasingly under Beatrice's spell as he reads letters tracing her growing feelings for Uncle Olivier. The psychiatrist, a 52-year-old bachelor, is also drawn to Mary despite the questionable professional ethics of dating a patient's ex-girlfriend. With Robert tucked away painting his Beatrice in silence, Marlow travels to Mexico with Mary, then alone to Paris to trace the life of the real Beatrice and track down her secret paintings of swans; short chapters set in 1879 reveal what happened to her and herwork. Kostova's theme is creative obsession and what everyday boundaries can be broken in its name; the novel seems to favor the most romantic answer. Neither Robert's decisions nor Marlow's make a lot of sense, but lush prose and abundant drama will render logic beside the point for most readers. Author tour to New York, Boston, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Ann Arbor, Raleigh, Seattle, Portland, Ore.(Review courtesy of Kircus Reviews)
