[bksvol-discuss] Fw: Fiction A to Z August 2009
- From: "Amber Wallenstein" <amber.wallens@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 17 Aug 2009 07:52:47 -0400
New and Recently Released!
A Girl Made of Dust - by Nathalie Abi-Ezzi
Publisher: PGW
Check Library Catalog
Pub Date: 07/08/2009
ISBN-13: 9780802118950
ISBN-10: 080211895X
For children, political tensions outside the home can be understood only in the
way their family members react to them, and in Lebanon in the mid-80s,
eight-year-old
Ruba sees only that her father is withdrawn, her mother sad, and her brother,
Naji, taken to hanging out with gun-toting teens. As the war intensifies
around their Christian town, Ruba learns what happened to cause her father's
emotional paralysis, and ultimately becomes the means through which he is
freed. Readers who don't know much about the Israeli invasion of Lebanon will
come to grasp it through Ruba's questions to the adults around her; this
debut novel was written by a woman who was herself a child in Lebanon in the
1980s.
Heroic Measures - by Jill Ciment
Publisher: Pantheon Books
Check Library Catalog
Pub Date: 06/30/2009
ISBN-13: 9780375425226
ISBN-10: 0375425225
In the course of one long weekend, elderly Ruth and Alex Cohen must get their
suddenly half-paralyzed dachshund Dorothy to the animal hospital, host an
open house for their Manhattan apartment, and face the threat of a possible
terrorist attack when a gas tanker gets stuck in the Midtown Tunnel (immediately
depressing real estate prices). Both gripping and humorous, this multi-faceted
novel tackles all three plot elements with style, making it a great choice
for anyone who enjoys reading about ordinary people in extraordinary
situations. Dog lovers especially will love Dorothy and her owners'
relationship with
her.
The deep blue sea for beginners : a novel - Rice, Luanne
Publisher: Bantam Books
Check Library Catalog
Pub Date: 08/04/2009
ISBN-13: 9780553805147
ISBN-10: 0553805142
A follow-up to The Geometry of Sisters. Years ago, Lyra Davis left behind a
world of wealth and privilege and the people she loved most in the world, unable
to reconcile the expectations of her celebrated family with the longings of her
own wild heart. Now she lives quietly among a community of expatriates
on the isle of Capri--until her daughter Pell travels across an ocean to find
the mother she remembers and the deeper truths they all need so desperately.
First Chapter
Hitler's war - Turtledove, Harry
Publisher: Del Rey Books
Check Library Catalog
Pub Date: 08/04/2009
ISBN-13: 9780345491824
ISBN-10: 0345491823
Alternative history. Booklist (07/01/2009):
Turtledove is always good, but this return to World War II, one of his favorite
turfs, is genuinely brilliant. Suppose Britain and France had not folded
at Munich, and the Sudeten Crisis had led to war? In Turtledoves alternate
history, a Czech soldier fights to the last before fleeing to Poland and then
France, while a traveling American wife fights the German bureaucracy, as
tenaciously as the Wehrmacht if not as skilled, to get home. The tankers of the
Wehrmacht ride into battle in the modest Mark III, radio-equipped but
undergunned, while on the opposite side, a French conscript and a British
sergeant
improvise a new war effort. Stuka pilot Hans Ulrich Rudel is as brilliant as
his counterpart in our time line, while trying to live the clean life of a
ministers son. Russian bomber pilots have to fly against the Poles (a German
ally), while worrying about the secret police, while in Germany the Goldman
family is watchful about everything. And in Peking, the American marines are
evacuated to Shanghai, while Sergeant Suzuki, a good and loyal soldier of
his emperor, marches into Russian Siberia at the same time the German
spearheads are being halted not far from Paris. The characterizations in
particular
bring the book to extraordinary life and will make most readers hope this is
the beginning of another saga.
In the Heart of the Canyon - by Elisabeth Hyde
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Check Library Catalog
Pub Date: 07/14/2009
ISBN-13: 9780307263674
ISBN-10: 0307263673
For 13 days, veteran guide JT Maroney will lead rafters on a whitewater trip
through the Grand Canyon. With 124 successful trips under his belt, JT's seen
it all. But with the problems his rafters are facing, the addition of a stray
dog, and some poor decisions, this suddenly becomes the sort of adventure
never mentioned in tourist brochures. Between a troubled mother-daughter
relationship, two strained marriages, a broken-hearted professor, a know-it-all
history buff, and an aging couple facing the onset of Alzheimer's, this is a
trip that will force its participants to navigate more than just white water.
Fans of family dramas will enjoy this adventure story, which also features
beautiful descriptions of the surroundings.
First Chapter
Short Girls: A Novel - by Bich Minh Nguyen
Publisher: Viking
Check Library Catalog
Pub Date: 07/23/2009
ISBN-13: 9780670020812
ISBN-10: 0670020818
Serious Van and spirited Linny Luong, each wrestling with their own separate
careers and personal lives, are as different as two sisters can be. It's not
until their father calls them home to Grand Rapids, Michigan, to celebrate his
U.S. citizenship (and help him prepare for a reality show on which he'll
show off his inventions for short people) that the two Vietnamese-American
sisters reunite, forging a new relationship. As they come to learn more about
their Vietnamese heritage, we are treated to a discourse on food, conflict,
immigration law and immigrant culture, relationships, and the importance of
family. For a nonfiction take on the same themes, try the author's memoir,
Stealing Buddha's Dinner.
Fabulous First Lines
Middlesex - by Jeffrey Eugenides
Publisher: Farrar, Straus, Giroux
Check Library Catalog
Pub Date: 09/04/2002
ISBN-13: 9780374199692
ISBN-10: 0374199698
Right from the beginning ("I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a
remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage
boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.") you'll
know what it is that's so special about Cal, born Calliope. Struggling with
her identity as she approaches adolescence, Callie, a hermaphrodite, eventually
becomes Cal, who narrates the story of his own life intertwined with those
of his parents and his grandparents--a brother and sister who escaped Greece
for America in the 1920s. This sweeping tale, lit with humor, is "altogether
irresistible" (Kirkus Reviews).
Table of Contents
First Chapter
Waiting - by Ha Jin
Publisher: Vintage International
Check Library Catalog
Pub Date: 09/01/2000
ISBN-13: 9780375706417
ISBN-10: 0375706410
At the insistence of his dying mother, Lin Kong agrees to an arranged marriage;
though Shuyu bears him a daughter, Lin lives apart from his family and falls
in love with another woman. Until he can divorce his wife, however, they cannot
act on their love, and so, for 18 years, "Every summer Lin Kong returned
to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu." Taking place in China during the
Cultural Revolution, Waiting captures both life in an ideologically oppressive
regime and a life spent waiting for happiness. This National Award-winning book
is "a deceptively simple tale, written with extraordinary precision and
grace" (Kirkus Reviews).
First Chapter
A Hatred for Tulips - by Richard Lourie
Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
Check Library Catalog
Pub Date: 08/07/2007
ISBN-13: 9780312349332
ISBN-10: 0312349335
"'I am your brother,' said the stranger at the door." So begins the tale of an
elderly man named Joop who, in present-day Amsterdam, describes his efforts
as a young man to feed his starving family during the WWII Nazi occupation. So
desperate was he to find his family food that he was willing to betray others;
tormented by a secret he's kept for 60 years, he tells his long-lost (and not
much-missed) brother that it was he who betrayed Anne Frank and her family.
While Joop is a self-pitying, bitter old man (who in part blames his brother
for his choice, and blames his choice for his unhappy, closed-off life), this
fictional account of the Franks' unknown betrayer is "stark and deftly written"
(Publishers Weekly).
First Chapter
The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint: A Novel - by Brady Udall
Publisher: Norton
Check Library Catalog
Pub Date: 05/01/2001
ISBN-13: 9780393020366
ISBN-10: 0393020363
This quirky debut begins with the attention-grabbing line "If I could tell you
one thing about my life it would be this: when I was seven years old the
mailman ran over my head." Three months later, Edgar Mint is as good as new.
True, his alcoholic mother has by now completely abandoned him, but she wasn't
around much anyway. And while he can't write longhand, a typewriter offers
solace. Sent from the hospital to a truly terrible boarding school (where Edgar
is tortured for being only half-Apache) and then placed with a dysfunctional
Mormon family in Utah, Edgar eventually decides on a purpose: to find the
mailman who almost killed him and let him know he's fine. His journey makes for
a simultaneously humorous and touching tale.
First Chapter
Table of Contents
The Lovely Bones: A Novel - by Alice Sebold
Publisher: Little, Brown
Check Library Catalog
Pub Date: 07/03/2002
ISBN-13: 9780316666343
ISBN-10: 0316666343
Let's let the narrator of The Lovely Bones speak for herself: "My name was
Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered
on December 6, 1973." Nearly a decade passes as Susie, narrating from a kind of
interim heaven, remembers her life and watches as her family and friends
try to come to terms with her death. This delicate debut novel, which received
high praise for its treatment of a difficult subject, is due to be released
as a movie late this year. Saoirse Ronan (who starred in Atonement, which was
based on the book by Ian McEwan) will play Susie.
First Chapter
On Beauty: A Novel - by Zadie Smith
Publisher: Penguin Press
Check Library Catalog
Pub Date: 09/13/2005
ISBN-13: 9781594200632
ISBN-10: 1594200637
Art historian Howard Belsey is facing a father's worst nightmare: his son
Jerome wants to marry the daughter of his greatest rival (in art and politics),
the rabidly right-wing Monty Kipps. In addition, his own marriage is stale, his
two other children are floundering, and his career seems stalled. But when
the Caribbean Monty accepts an invitation to travel from England (where Howard
is from) to speak at the school where Howard teaches, the dynamic between
the two families changes drastically. Riffing on race relations and affirmative
action, love and art, author Zadie Smith also draws parallels to E.M. Forster's
Howards End, even beginning her tale with the line "One may as well begin with
Jerome's emails to his father."
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