EVERYTHING I NEVER TOLD YOU (MAY 2015)

My favorite book this year is finally out in paperback! Outstanding prose, vibrant three dimensional characters combine to make this quiet powerful story unforgettable. The subtlle storyline will keep you holding your breathe. From the opening sentence, I could tell I was going to be hooked..am anxiously awaiting a second novel....

EVERYTHING I NEVER TOLD YOU by Celeste Ng (Fiction) “Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.” So begins this exquisite novel about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, and her parents are determined that she will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue. But when Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together is destroyed, tumbling them into chaos. A profoundly moving story of family, secrets and longing, EVERYTHING I NEVER TOLD YOU is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another. “If we know this story, we haven’t seen it yet in American fiction, not until now.... Deep, heartfelt.” —The New York Times Book Review

WALL STREET JOURNAL PICKS BEST SUMMER NOVELS

I love these authors and can't wait for their new releases! I didn't know that Jami Attenberg was writing another novel. THE MIDDLESTEINS was one of my all time faves and am anticipating another great read. And what can compare to short stories by award winning author, Anne Beattie?

The WSJ is usually right on target, "literally" and financially. So check out their choices...

  

“Saint Mazie”

by Jami Attenberg; June 2

Jami Attenberg, best-selling author of “The Middlesteins,” has written a novel inspired by Mazie P. Gordon, a woman profiled by Joseph Mitchell in the New Yorker in 1940. In the novel, Mazie, a bawdy movie-theater proprietress on New York’s Lower East Side, opens the theater’s doors to the homeless during the Great Depression.

“The State We’re In: Maine Stories”

by Ann Beattie; Aug. 11

This is the first new collection in more than a decade from short-story master Ann Beattie. Three of them are about Jocelyn, a teenager sent for the summer to live with her Uncle Raleigh and dreaded Aunt Bettina Louise Tompkins (BLT for short.)

“The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty”

by Vendela Vida; June 2

This is the fourth novel from award-winning author Vendela Vida. A woman traveling in Casablanca is robbed of all her money and identification, and takes a job as a stand-in for a movie star.

"THE HAND THAT FEEDS YOU"

by A.J. Rich; July 7

Award-winning authors Amy Hempel and Jill Ciment, writing together under the pen name A.J. Rich, have collaborated on a thriller in tribute to their late friend, Katherine Russell Rich. The story, about a woman who discovers that her fiancé is not who he said he was, is inspired by a real-life experience of Ms. Rich.

Pre-order on Amazon...Click on the Amazon Search Box in the Sidebar.

BUZZING IN THE BOOK WORLD (MAY 2015)

Every once in awhile a book debuts that causes a major buzz amongst book people. A GOD IN RUINS by Kate Atkinson Is buzzing non stop. It's a campanion piece to LIFE AFTER LIFE and it probably helps  if you've read the first one. Reviews have been over the top and the review below by author Tom Perotta says it all....

NEW TIMES REVIEW....

"But then you read a novel like Kate Atkinson’s “A God in Ruins,” a sprawling, unapologetically ambitious saga that tells the story of postwar Britain through the microcosm of a single family, and you remember what a big, old-school novel can do. Atkinson’s book covers almost a century, tracks four generations, and is almost inexhaustibly rich in scenes and characters and incidents. It deploys the whole realist bag of tricks, and none of it feels fake or embarrassing. In fact, it’s a masterly and frequently exhilarating performance by a novelist who seems utterly undaunted by the imposing challenges she’s set for herself."

Sounds like a must read...Is it really, really necessary to read LIFE AFTER LIFE first?  The response is a "yes" by most readers and reviewers.. Do you agree? Leave a comment.....

SUMMER READS (MAY 2015)

Summer is almost here and with its approach comes a selection of books that I'm anxious to read and share. Publisher's Weekly, a trade news magazine compiles a list that usually includes a wide range of choices. Below are some of the new titles....

"Summer is a time to catch up with old friends, like Stephen King, whose Finders Keepers, a new crime fiction novel, follows last summer's  Mr Mercedes. Harper Lee's second book, Go Set a Watchman, arrives after 55 years with all the usual suspects from her eternal blockbuster; and Judy Blume tackles the early 50s with In the Unlikely Event, her first adult novel since 1998. Things that go bump in the night are always fitting summer fare and The Decagon House Murders, a Japanese mystery by Yukito Ayatsuji fills the bill."

Here's a few reviews.....

All That Followed

Gabriel Urza 

A foreign setting that's just exotic enough (the Basque region of Spain), a terrible crime (kidnapping and murder), a small town with complicated history and delicious superstitions (fear of la Cerda, a woman who was burned to death in afurnace as a witch during the Spanish Inquisition for holding gatherings where young girls cavorted with the Devil), and a beautiful widow are just some of the elements that make this intriguing literary debut a book to while away a summer afternoon with. The narrator is an American who has lived in the village for 50 years but acknowledges that he "would always be considered a foreigner here, a visitor passing through." Aren't we all? –

Finders Keepers

Stephen King (Scribner)

I'm a huge fan of Stephen King's high-concept fiction, and last summer while sitting in the airport waiting to leave the American Library Association Annual Conference in Vegas, I read a review of Mr. Mercedes (which had just come out) that described it as a crime novel with the desperation of Under the Dome. I went to the airport's bookstore and picked it up, finished it in a couple days, and spent the rest of the summer reading crime fiction. I'm really excited to kick off another summer of crime fiction with the Mr. Mercedes follow-up. —Seth Dellon, digital business manager

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