Don't Miss Lists and Other Reading Resources

July - September 2009

Arana, Marie. LIMA NIGHTS.
In this Peruvian novel, a middle class salesman begins an affair with a teenaged bar girl from the slums, destroying his marriage; when the story resumes twenty years later, the two are still together but have drifted apart due to the class and cultural differences between them.

Bazell, Josh. BEAT THE REAPER.
In this fast paced suspense novel, a former mob hitman goes into the witness protection program and becomes a physician to atone for his crimes, but his life is in danger when a mobster who is a hospital patient recognizes him.

Chute, Carolyn. THE SCHOOL ON HEART’S CONTENT ROAD.
This novel, set in fictional Egypt, Maine, centers on the residents of a rural, communal group, known as the Settlement, including the wives and children of the leader.

Cleave, Chris. LITTLE BEE.
A British couple vacationing at a Nigerian beach resort are forced to confront the realities of war-torn Africa when they are unable to protect a teenaged girl whose family has been massacred.

Dyer, Geoff. JEFF IN VENICE, DEATH IN VARANASI.
This novel and travelogue is in two sections: in the first, Jeff, a freelance journalist, goes to Venice to cover an art show, and occupies himself with drugs, alcohol, and a beautiful woman; in the second part, he goes to Varanasi, where he explores religion and the temples of India’s holiest city.

Evaristo, Bernadine. BLONDE ROOTS.
This novel by a British writer imagines an alternative history, in which people from Africa enslaved Europeans and brought them to America.

Haskell, John. OUT OF MY SKIN.
A lonely writer from New York moves to Los Angeles and takes an assignment to write about a Steve Martin impersonator; he becomes so intrigued by the process of inhabiting another person’s identity that he becomes a Martin impersonator himself.

Johnson, Denis. NOBODY MOVE.
In this hard-boiled story, a hapless gambler goes on the lam after wounding an enforcer who comes to collect for a loan shark, and then meets a beautiful alcoholic divorcee who is running from the law.

Khadivi, Laleh. THE AGE OF ORPHANS.
In this novel set in Persia in the 1920's, a Kurdish boy is orphaned by a military massacre, conscripted into the Shah’s army, trained as a soldier, and sent back to his homeland to fight his own people.

Li, Yiyun. THE VAGRANTS.
This realistic novel portrays the lives of a group of characters in a small village, Muddy River, in China, in 1979.

Lutz, Lisa. REVENGE OF THE SPELLMANS.
In this wacky crime novel, the third in a series, private eye Isabel “Izzy” Spellman enters court-ordered therapy, tends bar, and investigates the case of a cheating wife.

Moody, David. HATER.
In this thriller, a young English bureaucrat witnesses a series of brutal incidents unleashed by formerly normal people. As the situation escalates, he must try to keep himself and his family alive long enough to find out what’s really going on.

Mueenuddin, Daniyal. IN OTHER ROOMS, OTHER WONDERS.
This is a collection of eight interconnected short stories that explore relationships among the members of a wealthy farming family in Pakistan.

Nelson, Antonya. NOTHING RIGHT: SHORT STORIES.
These 11 carefully written short stories with vivid characters involve relationships in contemporary American middle class families.

Obejas, Achy. RUINS.
In this novel set in Cuba in the 1990's, a poor man becomes curious about his only valuable, a stained glass lamp inherited from his mother. His research into its history reveals a family secret.

Ogawa, Yoko. THE HOUSEKEEPER AND THE PROFESSOR.
In this Japanese novel, a struggling single mother with a young son takes a job looking after an elderly mathematician with short term memory problems.

Phillips, Jayne Anne. LARK AND TERMITE.
In this novel set in West Virginia in the 1950's, a teenaged girl, Lark, cares for her severely disabled half-brother, Termite, after their father, a soldier, dies in the Korean War.

Ramsland, Morten. DOGHEAD.
This Danish novel is a fantastic and generally comic story of three generations of the narrator’s dysfunctional family.

Rotter, Jeffrey. THE UNKNOWN KNOWNS.
In this comic suspense novel, an eccentric museum curator obsessed with water pursues a Homeland Security agent who the curator believes to be descended from a race of aquatic apes.

Simmons, Dan. DROOD.
In this Victorian melodrama, named after Charles Dickens’ final and uncompleted novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and narrated by Dickens’ friend, the English writer, Wilkie Collins, the two writers pursue a possibly fictional vampire/murderer named Drood.

Smith Rakoff, Joanna. A FORTUNATE AGE.
This novel is a portrait of a group of artistic Generation Xers in New York City in the 1990's, as they experience marriages and children, successes and failures.

Tower, Wells. EVERYTHING RAVAGED, EVERYTHING BURNED.
This is a group of short stories, mostly with first person narrators, whose characters are men going through difficult transitions in their lives.

Wray, John. LOWBOY.
This novel is a look into the mind of a teenage schizophrenic who escapes from a hospital and journeys through the subways of Manhattan, pursued by his mother and a detective, in his attempt to save the world from global warming.

Yu, Hua. BROTHERS.
This is a realistic story of two step-brothers in China, as they live through the Cultural Revolution and reforms, and fall in love with the same woman.

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.

Between Heaven and Hell = Washington, D.C

What are The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears–friendship and love and a chance to start over or loneliness, despair and lost hopes and dreams? First-time novelist Dinaw Mengestu’s story of an Ethiopian immigrant grocer living in Washington, D.C. quietly draws the reader into the Logan Circle neighborhood that is slowly transitioning from an area of poverty and vice into one filled with gentrified homes owned by professors and lawyers. What happens to the residents, both old and new, when a neighborhood moves on?

Stephanos flees Addis Ababa after his father’s murder some eighteen years before the start of the novel and opens the Logan Market shortly after that. Chapters jump from the present day and back throughout the years with Stephanos as an idealistic teenager of privilege in Africa, as a young man with big dreams for his corner store, playing drinking games with his D.C. friends Kenneth from Kenya and Joseph from the Congo, and culminating in a brief (the briefest) romance with the white professor who moves in next door. All the while, the reader knows that the neighborhood where Stephanos currently resides is in serious trouble, as is he.

Stephanos struggles with leaving his mother and brother behind in Ethiopia, he struggles with being a poor immigrant in America, he struggles with his store, he struggles with love and relationships, and he struggles with what he wants to be and do. You know how some books stay with you on and on because the characters are written so well, be it inspiring or infuriating? That is this book for me.

The title of the book comes from a quote from Dante’s Inferno, as Dante emerges from Hell:

Through a round aperture I saw appear,
Some of the beautiful things that Heaven bears.
Where we came forth, and once more saw the stars.

I’m not sure if the main character Stephanos discovers the beautiful things that Heaven bears upon his own emergence from hell, but there is much beautiful writing to be found here. And much to discuss.

Molly - Central