Synopsis: When her plane goes down in Nazi occupied France, a teenage Scottish spy known only as Verity has just one chance to write her confession before her captors send her off to a concentration camp. Review: Code Name Verity was the best read I have had all year. No contest. (Well, maybe The Devil in Silver.) I seriously just want everyone to feel how I feel when I think about “FLY THE PLANE MADDIE.” I am about to cry and I might just have…
Synopsis: While working on her PhD thesis on unmarried mothers in British literature, a young woman finds disturbing parallels between a violent work of fiction from the mid-20th century and her own life living with her gay brother. Review: Everything I love about Barbara Vine is present in The Child’s Child: a haunting atmosphere, complicated characters, and a sense of urgency to the storytelling that has nothing to do with a jam-packed plot. The book opens with Grace, a PhD candidate living a peaceful life…
Synopsis: A lost professor muses on the mess he’s made of his life and his inability to shake himself free from the burdens of family, tradition, and history. Review: As It Is On Earth is a stunningly well-written novel. Comparisons to Walker Percy are more than apt, they’re jump-with-joy appropriate. Who writes like this? I’m just not used to seeing this level of thoughtfulness, depth, poetry, and philosophy in books anymore. Plus it’s weird and funny and bawdy and depressing and bizarre and twisted. It…
Synopsis: A jaded private eye takes on the case of a lifetime when an unusually small client by the name of “Tweedle” walks in the door wearing a red and green outfit claiming his boss is missing. Review: Lost Claus is really, really funny. Dan Fiorella gets all the hard boiled lingo just right and it’s hilarious when juxtaposed with some snooty elves, Santa’s hot-to-trot adopted daughter, and the threat of Christmas without the big man himself. It’s a great satire and a fun story,…
Synopsis: Gifted with prescience borne of his preturnatural ability to make the most minute observations possible about people, Alex Luthecker lives in the criminal underworld, until an impulsive choice to save a strange woman’s life by revealing her future to her exposes him and puts him in jeopardy from the government and criminals alike. Review: Luthecker is a fast-paced, aggressively plotted book with a compelling protagonist whose abilities confound and terrify. I think that anyone who likes crime novels should pick this one up, because…
Synopsis: When he’s kidnapped by a feisty female assassin, a young blacksmith discovers himself at the heart of a battle between dead gods who want to live again. Review: I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the prose in Bound by Fire, because, you know, with emerging fantasy authors you have to be prepared for the worst. I really felt like I was drawn into a world I was interested in, and the characters had enough depth to keep me reading. However, about 3/4…
Synopsis: When Pete discovers his mother is living in a filthy hoard, he tries to get her help–not realizing that her problems may have a supernatural origin. Review: I loved the idea of marrying a zombie story to a hoarder story, but I did feel like The Hoard petered out and ended on an unsatisfactory note. But up until the last few pages, I really couldn’t put it down and even got pretty freaked out–not to mention grossed out. Many thanks to DarkFuse for the…
Synopsis: Subtitled: How to Live a Happier, Healthier, Uncluttered Life. Review: The Hoarder in You is a self help book for people who struggle with clutter and hoarding. I’m a very very organized person and find hoarding fascinating, and Dr. Zasio is one of my favorite experts on A&E’s Hoarders. I actually got some good counseling tips that will help in my volunteer work!
Synopsis: Subtitled “Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance.” Review: In Superfreakonomics, economist Levitt and journalist Dubner use principles of economics to understand the vagaries of human behavior. As they put it, human beings respond to incentives, and through looking at some very fascinating studies they show over and over again that this is the case, in bizarrely complex ways.
Synopsis: After a popular parish council member drops dead from an aneurysm, the bucolic English town of Pagford comes undone over fears about how a new council member might upset the balance of power with the encroachment of council flats from the next town over. Review: The Casual Vacancy isn’t quite as high concept as JK Rowling’s more familiar works, but most good novels defy my particular brand of glib summarization. I always enjoy a complicated soap opera and I appreciated how deftly Rowling wove…