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Uncle Fred in the Springtime
by P. G. Wodehouse“[Wodehouse’s] entire genius was for being funny.” —Douglas Adams Frederick Altamont Cornwallis Twistleton, Fifth Earl of Ickenham, better known as Uncle Fred, is back “to spread sweetness and light” wherever he goes. At the request of Lord Emsworth, Uncle Fred journeys to Blandings Castle to steal the Empress of Blandings before the ill-tempered, egg-throwing Duke of Dunstable can lay claim to her. Disguised as the eminent nerve specialist Sir Roderick Glossop, and with his distressed nephew Pongo in tow, Uncle Fred must not only steal a pig but also reunite a young couple and diagnose various members of the upper class with imaginary mental illnesses, all before his domineering wife realizes he’s escaped their country estate.
Lucy: A Novel
by Ellen FeldmanAn utterly absorbing novel about a famous political marriage and an epic infidelity. On the eve of World War I, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin Delano Roosevelt, fiercely ambitious and still untouched by polio, falls in love with his wife's social secretary, Lucy Mercer. Eleanor stumbles on their letters and divorce is discussed, but honor and ambition win out. Franklin promises he will never see Lucy again. But Franklin and Lucy do meet again, and again they fall in love. As he prepares to run for an unprecedented third term and lead America into war, Franklin turns to Lucy for the warmth and unconditional approval Eleanor is unable to give. Ellen Feldman brings a novelist's insight to bear on the connection of these three compelling characters. Franklin and Lucy did finally meet, across the divide of his illness and political ascendancy, her marriage and widowhood. They fell in love again. As he prepared to run for an unprecedented third term and lead America into war, Franklin turned to Lucy for the warmth and unconditional approval Eleanor was unable to give. Drawing on recently discovered materials to re-create the voice of a woman who played a crucial but silent role in the Roosevelt presidency, Lucy is a remarkably sensitive exploration of the private lives behind a public marriage. Reading group guide included.
Residue: A Kevin Kerney Novel (Kevin Kerney Novels)
by Michael McGarrity“Complex, entirely original, and whip-smart.” —John LescroartA long-unsolved missing person’s case becomes a homicide investigation when the bones of the girlfriend of now retired Santa Fe Police Chief Kevin Kerney are unearthed forty-five years after her disappearance. And he is now the main suspect.
Mothers, Tell Your Daughters: Stories
by Bonnie Jo Campbell"Bonnie Jo Campbell is a master of rural America’s postindustrial landscape." —Boston GlobeNamed by the Guardian as one of our top ten writers of rural noir, Bonnie Jo Campbell is a keen observer of life and trouble in rural America, and her working-class protagonists can be at once vulnerable, wise, cruel, and funny. The strong but flawed women of Mothers, Tell Your Daughters must negotiate a sexually charged atmosphere as they love, honor, and betray one another against the backdrop of all the men in their world. Such richly fraught mother-daughter relationships can be lifelines, anchors, or they can sink a woman like a stone.In "My Dog Roscoe," a new bride becomes obsessed with the notion that her dead ex-boyfriend has returned to her in the form of a mongrel. In "Blood Work, 1999," a phlebotomist's desire to give away everything to the needy awakens her own sensuality. In "Home to Die," an abused woman takes revenge on her bedridden husband. In these fearless and darkly funny tales about women and those they love, Campbell’s spirited American voice is at its most powerful.
Cockroach: A Novel
by Rawi HageA bold, razor-sharp novel about a shadowy antihero navigating Montreal’s immigrant underworld. One of the most highly anticipated novels of the year, Cockroach is as urgent, unsettling, and brilliant as Rawi Hage’s critically acclaimed first book, De Niro’s Game. The novel takes place during one month of a bitterly cold winter in Montreal’s restless immigrant community, where a self-described “thief” has just tried but failed to commit suicide by hanging himself from a tree in a local park. Rescued against his will, the narrator is obliged to attend sessions with a well-intentioned but naïve therapist. This sets the story in motion, leading us back to the narrator’s violent childhood in a war-torn country, forward into his current life in the smoky émigré cafés where everyone has a tale, and out into the frozen nighttime streets of Montreal, where the thief survives on the edge, imagining himself to be a cockroach invading the lives of the privileged, but willfully blind, citizens who surround him.Cockroach combines an uncompromising vision of humanity with razor-sharp portraits of society's outsiders, and a startling, poetic sensibility with bracing jolts of dark humor.
The Wizard of Loneliness
by John Nichols"John Nichols has remarkable insight into life's crazy blend of comedy and tragedy. . . . Pure pleasure to read." —New York Times Book Review It's World War II, and young Wendall Oler has been sent to stay will his father's family in rural Stebbinsville, Vermont. Using this opportunity to act out his resentment for the death of his mother and his father's leaving to fight in the war he does all he can to tyrannize his new family. Yet, thrown into the warmth of this country family, Wendall finds his resolve softening.
The Western Coast: A Novel
by Paula FoxAmerica and the catastrophic world of twentieth-century war, mass murder, and horror are the backdrop of this story of Annie Gianfala, a young woman who finds herself cast adrift in Hollywood with World War II looming. Defending herself with despairing stubbornness against personal catastrophe, she is able to save her life and escape. "Enormously touching and wholly believable."—Washington Post Book World
Shadow of Cain: A Novel
by Vincent Bugliosi Ken HurwitzRaymond Lomak is a mass murderer, and he's due to be released from San Quentin. Has he been rehabilitated?
Body of Lies: A Novel
by David IgnatiusThe novel made into the major motion picture released October 2008, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe: "Clever [and] well-paced, Body of Lies is hard to put down."—John Miller, Wall Street Journal CIA soldier Roger Ferris has come out of Iraq with a shattered leg and an intense mission— to penetrate the network of a master terrorist known only as "Suleiman." Ferris's plan is inspired by a masterpiece of British intelligence during World War II: He prepares a body of lies, literally the corpse of an imaginary CIA officer who appears to have accomplished the impossible by recruiting an agent within the enemy's ranks.This scheme binds friend and foe in a web of extraordinary subtlety and complexity. When it begins to unravel, Ferris finds himself flying blind into a hurricane. His only hope is the urbane head of Jordan's intelligence service. But can Ferris trust him?
The Widow's Children: A Novel
by Paula Fox"Chekhovian. . . . Every line of Fox's story, every gesture of her characters, is alive and surprising."—Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times On the eve of their trip to Africa, Laura Maldonada Clapper and her husband, Desmond, sit in a New York City hotel room, drinking scotch-and-sodas and awaiting the arrival of three friends: Clara Hansen, Laura's timid, brow-beaten daughter from a previous marriage; Carlos, Laura's flamboyant and charming brother; and Peter Rice, a melancholy editor whom Laura hasn't seen for over a year. But what begins as a bon voyage party soon parlays into a bitter, claustrophobic clash of family resentment. From the hotel room to the tony restaurant to which the five embark, Laura presides over the escalating innuendo and hostility with imperial cruelty, for she is hiding the knowledge that her mother, the family matriarch, has died of a heart attack that morning. A novel as intense as it is unerringly observed, The Widow's Children is another revelation of the storyteller's art from the incomparable Paula Fox.
Backlands: A Novel
by Victoria ShorrIn this Bonnie and Clyde story of love and betrayal, a band of outlaws fight for control of the brutal Brazilian outback.Set in the sparse frontier settlements of northeastern Brazil—a dry, forbidding, and wild region the size of Texas, known locally as the Sertão—Backlands tells the true story of a group of nomadic outlaws who reigned over the area from about 1922 until 1938. Taking from the rich, admired—and feared—by the poor, they were led by the famously charismatic bandit Lampião. The gang maintained their influence by fighting off all the police and soldiers the region could muster.A one-eyed goat rancher who first set out to avenge his father's murder in a lawless land, Lampião proved to be too good a leader, fighter, and strategist to ever return home again. By 1925 he commanded the biggest gang of outlaws in Brazil. Known to this day as a "prince," Lampião had everything: brains, money, power, charisma, and luck. Everything but love, until he met Maria Bonita."You teach me to make lace, and I'll teach you to make love"—this was the song the bandits marched to, across the vast open reaches of their starkly beautiful backlands, and it was Maria Bonita who made it come true. She was stuck in a loveless marriage when she met Lampião, but she rode off with him, becoming "Queen of the Bandits." Together the couple—still celebrated folk heroes—would become the country's most wanted figures, protecting their extraordinary freedom through cunning.Victoria Shorr's stunning literary debut tells Maria's story, her narrative of the intense freedoms, terrors, and sorrows of this chosen life, the end of which is clear to her all along. With the federal government in Rio mobilizing against the bandits, Backlands describes the epic final days of Lampião’s "fatal month," July on the River of Disorder, as the gang struggles to summon their good star to save them one more time.
Omnivores: A Novel
by Lydia MilletLydia Millet’s debut novel, first published in 1996, is an explosive satire that scorches our culture’s monstrous men and institutions.In a claustrophobic, surreal California house, teenager Estée Kraft lives with her domineering father, whose obsession with insect taxonomy bleeds into sadism. As his schemes multiply, Estée’s bedridden mother, entranced by the glow of the shopping channel, remains oblivious to the escalating chaos. Estée manages to escape her childhood home only to find new horrors awaiting her in marriage and motherhood. In a climactic twist, her traumas take form in flesh and blood—a legacy of the voracious male appetites that have haunted her life.With acerbic wit, philosophical depth, and enthralling lyricism, Omnivores cuts to the core of America’s hypocrisies and anxieties, and introduced Lydia Millet as one of the wildest satirists of our time.
Scottsboro: A Novel
by Ellen FeldmanA powerful novel about race, class, sex, and a lie that refused to die. Alabama, 1931. A posse stops a freight train and arrests nine black youths. Their crime: fighting with white boys. Then two white girls emerge from another freight car, and fast as anyone can say Jim Crow, the cry of rape goes up. One of the girls sticks to her story. The other changes her tune, again and again. A young journalist, whose only connection to the incident is her overheated social conscience, fights to save the nine youths from the electric chair, redeem the girl who repents her lie, and make amends for her own past. Intertwining historical actors and fictional characters, stirring racism, sexism, and anti-Semitism into an explosive brew, Scottsboro is a novel of a shocking injustice that convulsed the nation and reverberated around the world, destroyed lives, forged careers, and brought out the worst and the best in the men and women who fought for the cause.
Storming Heaven: A Novel
by Denise GiardinaThis is the story of the miners and the union they wanted, of the people who loved them and the people who wanted to kill their dreams.Annadel, West Virginia, was a small town rich in coal, farms, and close-knit families, all destroyed when the coal company came in. It stole everything it hadn't bothered to buy—land deeds, private homes, and ultimately, the souls of its men and women.Four people tell this powerful, deeply moving tale: Activist Mayor C. J. Marcum. Fierce, loveless union man Rondal Lloyd. Gutsy nurse Carrie Bishop, who loved Rondal. And lonely, Sicilian immigrant Rosa Angelelli, who lost four sons to the deadly mines.They all bear witness to nearly forgotten events of history, culminating in the final, tragic Battle of Blair Mountain—when the United States Army greeted ten thousand unemployed pro-union miners with airplanes, bombs, and poison gas. It was the first crucial battle of a war that has yet to be won.
Tularosa: A Kevin Kerney Novel (Kevin Kerney Novels #0)
by Michael McGarrity"Mystery fans shouldn't miss Tularosa. Michael McGarrity's first entry in the field moves like lightning. An ex-cop, he knows what he's writing about—and how to write it." —Tony HillermanIt's been two years since an on-the-job shooting forced ex-Santa Fe chief of detectives Kevin Kerney to retire. He is drawn back into action when Terry Yazzi, his former partner and the man responsible for his wounds, pleads for Kerney's help. Yazzi's son, a soldier, has disappeared in the barren desert surrounding the White Sands Missile Range.Kerney's investigation resurrects the long-forgotten thrill of the hunt—and other emotions surface after meeting the tough-but-beautiful Capt. Sara Brannon, the Army's investigating officer. Together, they uncover a crime far greater than an AWOL soldier: a conspiracy of death that snakes from the secretive world of military operations, to the cutthroat alleys of a Mexican border town, leading them to a final, shocking revelation that may cost them both their lives.Tularosa is the first book in McGarrity's "Kevin Kerney" crime series.
Letting Loose the Hounds: Stories
by Brady Udall“Funny, unpredictable, and abounding with strange beauty . . . a fierce new voice of the American West.”—Outside Exploding with an unsettling exuberance, Brady Udall’s stories traverse a geography of lost love, fragmented lives, and satisfying revenge. From the night a six-foot-three Apache Indian holding a goat steps into a moonlit Arizona backyard in "Midnight Raid" to the pivotal moment when a man, delirious from a dental extraction, gets rescued by a stranger in the title story, Udall injects his stories and characters with equal parts darkness and humor. These are sad and sweet stories, moving from the familiar to surprising destinations. But even when disaster looms, Udall's fine comic sense sustains his men and women in their sometimes extravagant efforts to connect and cope. Plunged in the moment, these stories have velocity; they spray gravel as they take off.
Agents of Innocence: A Novel
by David IgnatiusA "superlative spy novel" (New York Times) by the author of the bestselling espionage thrillers Body of Lies and The Director.Agents of Innocence is the book that established David Ignatius's reputation as a master of the novel of contemporary espionage. Into the treacherous world of shifting alliances and arcane subterfuge comes idealistic CIA man Tom Rogers. Posted in Beirut to penetrate the PLO and recruit a high-level operative, he soon learns the heavy price of innocence in a time and place that has no use for it.
American Son: A Novel
by Brian Ascalon RoleyA powerful novel about ethnically fluid California, and the corrosive relationship between two Filipino brothers.Told with a hard-edged purity that brings to mind Cormac McCarthy and Denis Johnson, American Son is the story of two Filipino brothers adrift in contemporary California. The older brother, Tomas, fashions himself into a Mexican gangster and breeds pricey attack dogs, which he trains in German and sells to Hollywood celebrities. The narrator is younger brother Gabe, who tries to avoid the tar pit of Tomas's waywardness, yet moves ever closer to embracing it. Their mother, who moved to America to escape the caste system of Manila and is now divorced from their American father, struggles to keep her sons in line while working two dead-end jobs. When Gabe runs away, he brings shame and unforeseen consequences to the family. Full of the ache of being caught in a violent and alienating world, American Son is a debut novel that captures the underbelly of the modern immigrant experience.A Los Angeles Times Best Book, New York Times Notable Book, and a Kiriyama Pacific Rim Prize Finalist
Service with a Smile
by P. G. Wodehouse“[Blandings] is an entire world unto itself and, one senses, Wodehouse pours into it his deepest feelings for England.” —Stephen Fry The final Uncle Fred novel marks his return to Blandings Castle to relieve Lord Emsworth’s woes: a nagging secretary, prankster Church Lads, and a plot to thieve his prize-winning sow. Uncle Fred must serve up his brand of sweetness and light to ensure that everything turns out very capital indeed.
The Driest Season: A Novel
by Meghan Kenny"An elegant coming-of-age story that brings real heart to the American heartland. The book may be set during World War II, but the questions it asks—about love, loyalty, and the meaning of life—are timeless ones." —Elliott Holt, author of You Are One of ThemAs her Wisconsin community endures a long season of drought and feels the shockwaves of World War II, fifteen-year-old Cielle endures a more personal calamity: the unexpected death of her father. On a balmy summer afternoon, she finds him hanging in the barn—the start of a dark secret that threatens her family’s livelihood. A war rages elsewhere, while in the deceptive calm of the American heartland, Cielle’s family contends with a new reality and fights not to be undone.A stunning debut, The Driest Season creates a moving portrait of Cielle’s struggle to make sense of her father’s time on earth, and of her own. With wisdom and grit, Kenny has fashioned a deeply affecting story of a young woman discovering loss, heartache, and—finally—hope.
John the Baptizer: A Novel
by Brooks HansenA vivid, moving, and unprecedented biographical saga of John the Baptist. Traditionally, John the Baptist is seen as little more than an opening act—“the voice crying in the wilderness”—in the great Christian drama. In presenting the epic of John’s life, novelist Brooks Hansen draws on an extraordinary array of inspirations, from the works of Caravaggio, Bach, and Oscar Wilde to the histories of Josephus, the canonical gospels, the Gnostic gospels, and the sacred texts of those followers of John who never accepted Jesus as Messiah: the Mandeans.Gripping as literary historical fiction, and fascinating as a diligent exploration of ancient and modern sources, this book brings to eye-opening life the richly textured world—populated by the magnificently sordid, calculating, and reckless Herods, their families, and their courts—into which both John and Jesus were born. John the Baptizer is a captivating tapestry of power and dissent, ambition and self-sacrifice, worldly and otherworldly desire, faith, and doubt.
Restoration
by Rose TremainThe Booker shortlisted novel that “restored the historical novel to its rightful place of honor” (New York Times).Robert Merivel, son of a glove maker and an aspiring physician, finds his fortunes transformed when he is given a position at the court of King Charles II. Merivel slips easily into a life of luxury and idleness, enthusiastically enjoying the women and wine of the vibrant Restoration age. But when he’s called on to serve the king in an unusual role, he transgresses the one law that he is forbidden to break and is brutally cast out from his newfound paradise. Thus begins Merivel’s journey to self-knowledge, which will take him down into the lowest depths of seventeenth-century society.
Two Storm Wood: A Novel
by Philip GrayThree months after the end of the Great War, a young woman sets out across the wastelands of the Western Front to learn the fate of the man she loved.On the desolate battlefields of northern France, the guns of the Great War are silent. Special battalions now face the dangerous task of gathering up the dead for mass burial.Captain Mackenzie is a survivor of the war, but still its prisoner. He cannot return home until his fallen comrades are recovered and laid to rest. His task is upended when a gruesome discovery is made beneath the ruins of a German strongpoint. Amy Vanneck’s fiancé is one soldier lost amongst many, but she cannot accept that his body may never be found. Defying convention, hardship, and impossible odds, she heads to France, determined to discover what became of the man she loved.It soon becomes clear that what Mackenzie has uncovered is a war crime of inhuman savagery. As the truth leaches out, both he and Amy are drawn into the hunt for a psychopath, one for whom the atrocity at Two Storm Wood is not an end, but a beginning.
The Last Summer of the World: A Novel
by Emily Mitchell"Absorbing…Mitchell's novel [is] the real thing." —Boston GlobeIn the summer of 1918, with the Germans threatening Paris, Edward Steichen arrives in France to photograph the war for the American army. There, he finds a country filled with poignant memories for him: early artistic success, marriage, the birth of two daughters, and a love affair that divided his family. Told with elegance and transporting historical sensitivity, Emily Mitchell’s first novel captures the life of a great American artist caught in the reckoning of a painful past in a world beset by war.A Finalist for the New York Public Library's Young Lion's Fiction Award and named a Best Book of the Year by the Providence Journal, the Austin-American-Stateman, and the Madison Capital Times.
The Book of Splendor: A Novel
by Frances SherwoodA historical novel about the most unlikely of lovers, interwoven with the mysticism of the Jewish occult. Frances Sherwood brings to life the experience of the Jewish community during a period of oppression and rebirth. Set in seventeenth-century Prague, The Book of Splendor is an adventure-filled romance stocked with court intrigue and political tension, including the machinations of the rival Ottoman Empire, the religious controversies of Protestantism, and the constant threat of violence to the Jewish community. At the heart of the novel is Rochel, a bastard seamstress who escapes poverty through an arranged marriage to the tailor Zev, but falls in love with Yossel, the Golem created by Rabbi Loew to protect the Jewish community. Meanwhile, Emperor Rudolph II puts the safety of all Prague at risk in his mad bid for an elixir of immortality. The Book of Splendor is an epic tale reminiscent of Anita Diamant's The Red Tent, and a love story as unlikely as Tracy Chevalier's Girl with a Pearl Earring. Reading group guide included.