Don't Miss Lists and Other Reading Resources

January - March 2008

Allen, Sarah Addison. GARDEN SPELLS.
In this fairy tale-like story, set in North Carolina, two half-sisters with unusual talents become reacquainted after a ten year separation.

Cain, Chelsea. HEARTSICK.
In this thriller set in Portland, Oregon, a police detective, who has been on disability and addicted to pain killers since his own kidnapping by a psychopath, investigates the serial murders of teenaged girls.

Clarke, Brock. AN ARSONIST'S GUIDE TO WRITER'S HOMES IN NEW ENGLAND.
A man who served time in prison after accidentally setting fire to Emily Dickinson's house seems to lead a normal life once he's released, until fires start breaking out at the homes of other nearby writers.

Diaz, Junot. THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO
This is the complex story of several generations of a Dominican-American family, particularly focusing on events during the regime of dictator, Rafael Trujillo.

Faulks, Sebastian. ENGLEBY: A NOVEL.
The main character in this British novel is an intelligent and strange man who was abused as a child, and whose extraordinary memory has disturbing gaps as he obsesses over the disappearance and presumed murder of a popular classmate.

Hart, John. DOWN RIVER.
In this mystery novel, a bitter man, who five years earlier had been tried and acquitted of murder, returns home to North Carolina after a cryptic phone call from an old friend, who is subsequently found dead.

Havazelet, Ehud. BEARING THE BODY.
When a former 1960's war protestor is found dead in San Francisco in the 1990's, his younger brother leaves behind his own troubled life to investigate, and is unexpectedly joined by their widowed father, who is haunted by his own memories of the Holocaust.

Horan, Nancy. LOVING FRANK.
This novel is based on the life of Mamah Cheney, a feminist and intellectual who scandalized Oak Park, Illinois society by leaving her husband and children in order to live with the architect, Frank Lloyd Wright.

Hospital, Janette Turner. ORPHEUS LOST.
In this romantic thriller, a Boston mathematics student falls in love with an Australian musician, whose mysterious disappearances coincide with terrorist bombings that disrupt the city.

Johnson, Denis. TREE OF SMOKE.
The events in this big novel about the Vietnam war span the years from 1963 to 1970, and revolve around a new CIA recruit and his uncle, a longtime intelligence operative.

Leavitt, David. THE INDIAN CLERK.
In this novel based on the lives of historical figures early in the 20 th century, British mathematician G.H. Hardy becomes a mentor to a young clerk from India who may be a mathematical genius.

Lent, Jeffrey. A PECULIAR GRACE.
A Vermont blacksmith who is still brooding over the loss of his girlfriend twenty years earlier befriends a troubled young woman who eventually reveals connections to his late father.

Lightman, Alan. GHOST
A divorced middle-aged man who has lost his job at a bank goes to work at a mortuary, where he sees a ghost and becomes the object of controversy.

Martin, Valerie. TRESPASS.
A middle-aged liberal woman finds her comfortable, self-satisfied life threatened when her son introduces his new girlfriend, a Croatian refugee.

Murray, Sabina. FORGERY.
An American visits a Greek island in the 1960's to find ancient artifacts for his millionaire uncle, meets a group of expatriates, and becomes immersed in political and personal intrigue.

Némirovsky, Irène. FIRE IN THE BLOOD.
In this rediscovered novel by a French writer who died in Auschwitz, a middle-aged man living in Burgundy recounts three interconnected stories that illustrate the brief but intense loves and infidelities of youth.

O'Nan, Stewart. LAST NIGHT AT THE LOBSTER.
This novel depicts the last day of business at a Red Lobster Restaurant in Connecticut, focusing on its conscientious manager who scrambles to keep his dying business open one final evening despite a blizzard and the absence of most of his disaffected, minimum-wage staff.

Patchett, Ann. RUN
On a snowy night in Boston, a stranger saves the life of a young man by pushing him out of the way of a car, and is struck herself. The incident brings together two seemingly unrelated families - a poor, single black mother; and a white former mayor and his two adopted black college-aged sons.

Phillips, Caryl. FOREIGNERS.
This book, a mixture of fact and fiction, tells the sad stories of three black men in England: Francis Barber, who was a servant to Dr. Samuel Johnson in the 18 th century; Randolph Turpin, a mixed-race boxer of the 1950's; and David Oluwale, a homeless Nigerian immigrant who was killed by Police in 1969.

Seiffert, Rachel. AFTERWARDS.
In this novel set in contemporary London, Alice and Joseph, a nurse and a plasterer, fall in love, but Joseph's refusal to talk about his past as a soldier in Northern Ireland drives them apart.

Sofer, Dalia. THE SEPTEMBERS OF SHIRAZ.
In this novel set in Tehran after the Iranian Revolution, a Jewish businessman is wrongfully imprisoned, charged with being a Zionist spy; meanwhile, his family in Iran tries to find him, and his son, a student in New York, tries to cope when money and information from home dry up.

Trevor, William. CHEATING AT CANASTA.
These twelve short stories explore the different ways that people bear the loss of people and things close to them, and show how their memories allow them to commune with those they have lost.

MORE FROM MADREADS: Book News and Reviews from Madison Public Library

Madison Public Library librarians review a new book every day on our blog, MADreads. Get ideas on new books to read, and share your thoughts with us.

Justice in a time of madness

Berlin in the 1920s was a desperate city, its collection of decadant cabarets a veneer for a population struggling to survive after the horrors of the first World War. As such, it’s an apt home for Esther Solomonova, a Jewish Russian emigree who bears the literal and emotional scars of the tumultuous Russian revolution. She has only begun to put her past behind her when her employer, the flamboyant club owner ‘Prince’ Nick, discovers a woman in a local insane hospital that he believes is Grand Duchess Anastasia, the sole surviving member of the Russian royal family.

Nick hopes to cash in on the royal wealth, and Esther is given the task of making Anastasia–or Anna Anderson, as she is known to the skeptical–into believable royalty. But soon people associated with the would-be princess begin to turn up murdered. Esther has her suspicions that the identity of the murderer can be found in Anna’s murky past, but it is only when Inspector Siegfried Schmidt takes on the case that the truth begins to be revealed. But in a city that is rapidly coming under the domination of the rising Nazi party, Schmidt and Esther struggle for justice in a new Germany that has little respect for the law.

Ariana Franklin’s suspense novel City of Shadows masterfully blends the fictional and the historical into an atmospheric mystery with a climactic finish. Although Esther and Schmidt are fictional, there was a real Anna Anderson whose story Franklin follows fairly closely. Perhaps the best aspect to Franklin’s novel, however, is the depiction of Berlin, which comes to life as fully as the human characters to create a compelling mystery in a time and place gone terribly wrong.

Reviewed by Katie H.

Not ice skating…skating as in skateboarding

A new arena for Nick Hornby — young adult fiction– works out really well with this latest novel, Slam.

Alicia and Sam are high school lovers that go too far (if you get my drift). The fallout becomes even more readable than the usual Hornby (spoiler alert here) because Hornby alters the usual narrative structure with….time travel. Wha? Hornby? Yes, and it makes the book so much better. I’m NOT one for magical realism normally, but in the same way that The Time Traveller’s Wife engaged me despite my initial reluctance due to the subject matter, Slam really worked. The dialog, as usual, is spot on. And the references to skating (read skateboarding) were great fun.
Reviewed by Liz A. – Central