By Ian McEwan Nan A. Talese, $26.95, 293 pages Climate change seems an odd backdrop for a novel; however, award-winning author McEwan uses this hot button topic to shed light on the human condition. Nobel-winning physicist Michael Beard is on a downward trajectory in his career, more interested in marrying, having affairs, and divorcing. Coasting [...]
By Sherrilyn Kenyon Griffin, $17.99, 480 pages Readers can always tell when an author favors a character. Like a mother, they coddle the character, carefully crafting a story that is just right. This works out well for the reader, particularly when they love the character as much as the author does. This is certainly the [...]
By Barbara K. Richardson Bay Tree Publishing, $14.00, 216 pages In one fell swoop, Melba Burns, a middle-aged realtor, stops driving, quits her job, and retreats to the farmhouse property she has just purchased in a ramshackle Portland, Oregon neighborhood—all this after she witnesses the tragic death of a cyclist. Then the dysfunctional Garry family [...]
By Egan, Jennifer Knopf, $25.95, 274 pages As Proust explored the vagaries of memory, so Jenifer Egan examines time and its effects in her brilliant, Gordian knot of a novel, A Visit From the Goon Squad. Egan, an able writer with a history of pushing boundaries, weaves a glittering inescapable web with a shifting point [...]
By Jane Green Viking, $25.95, 343 pages Promises to Keep is a book about the effect of one woman’s cancer on her husband, aging parents, young children, best friend, and sister. However, the first mention of cancer (book jacket included) does not appear until nearly halfway through the book. First, we meet the cast of [...]
By Schalesky, Marlo Multnomah Books, $13.99, 338 pages To an outside observer, 35-year-old Marnie Wittier—independent woman and bookstore/coffee shop owner—seems to be living her dream life on the California coast. Likewise, on the eastern seaboard, Taylor Cole leads an outwardly peaceful life as a successful lawyer and horse rancher. In Shades of Morning, Marlo Schalesky [...]
By Monique Proulx Douglas & McIntyre, $16.95, 320 pages In her sixth novel, originally published in French, Quebecois author Proulx creates an intriguing cast of characters, each struggling with secrets. But the wilderness of the Laurentians brings these individuals together, particularly Lila and Jérémie. At 76, Lila has been the caretaker of the land for [...]
By Jay Lake Subterranean Press, $40.00, 406 pages Jay Lake is a first-class wordsmith, an author who relishes the possibilities of language, utilizing words to their utmost to craft incredibly detailed worlds both hauntingly familiar and mind-bogglingly different. From a desolate prison to dense cityscapes, from rooftops to cemeteries, from Shakespeare in space to ghosts [...]
By Zoe Whittall House of Anansi Press, $15.95, 302 pages Canadian writer Whittall’s second novel tracks the lives of a group of 20-somethings as they navigate their way into adulthood in Toronto. She focuses on three main characters who narrate their own sections: Josh, a transsexual paramedic who channels his insecurities into patching up the [...]
By Ann Beattie Scribner, $10.00, 102 pages Ann Beattie’s Walks with Men rides a fine line between deadpan minimalism and postmodern entropy. Her characters have always seemed to drift around in a haze of summer humidity and pot smoke, late bloomer hippies coming of age during the Carter administration who wouldn’t be out of place [...]
By Brunonia Barry William Morrow, $25.99, 394 pages Zee Finch is the star of this story and we meet her in her adulthood working as a respected psychotherapist in Boston. We understand that she worked hard to obtain this professional position, and also to win the heart of Boston’s most eligible bachelor. But we know [...]
By Demas, Corinne Voice, $23.99, 296 pages The Writing Circle by Corinne Demas takes readers into the fictional Leopardi Circle, a group of six writers who come together to share their work. Nancy Markopolis is invited to join the group, which meets weekly to share and critique each other’s work. Nancy finds a lot more [...]
By Sara Gruen Spiegel & Grau, $26.00, 306 pages “They’ve become more human, and I’ve become more bonobo.” Sara Gruen’s new novel Ape House will be certain to please fans of her wildly popular 2007 novel Water for Elephants. Human-animal relationships and the dangers of animal exploitation are again Gruen’s focus, but here she explores [...]
By Blossom Kan, Michelle Yu Thomas Dunne Books, $24.99, 252 pages Sarah Cho has always wanted to be an actress, but the rigors of life in New York City have always meant few opportunities to break into the business, and a subsequent need to work multiple menial jobs just to make ends meet. But then [...]
By Nora McFarland Touchstone, $14.99, 288 pages Lilly Hawkins is having the worst day ever. After a string of bad luck, this TV news “shooter” finally has the scoop she needs to get her career back on track: exclusive footage of a murder crime scene. But when she brings the tape back to the studio, [...]
By Pouncey, Maggie Pantheon, $24.95, 275 pages Twenty-something Flora Dempsey returns home after the death of her father, ex-president and retired English professor of Darwin College. She has inherited not only his house and his dog Larks (named after the poet, Philip Larkin) but been named his literary executor. She is unprepared for and loath [...]
