Book News and New Book Reviews
Just a sampling of our new materials (right side)!
by Don Winslow. (Get the Book)
Money may make the world go - round, but drugs make it spin out of control. That's one of the many deadly lessons in best-seller Winslow's breathless prequel to 2010's Savages. Here readers learn the blistering backstories of twentysomething buds Ben and Chon as well as O, the rebellious babe they both love. Beginning his tale in the 1960s, Winslow paints an unsettling portrait of the underbelly of Southern California, from pot- and coke-dealing hippie parents to Mexican gang leaders who compose messages with human entrails. Surf bums, beatniks, and Botox-pumped beauties play pivotal roles in the three characters' lives. (Especially memorable here is O's bubble-headed mother, dubbed PAQU Passive Aggressive Queen of the Universe.) Winslow serves up nonstop action, tempering the tension with his trademark razor-sharp wit. Military man Chon believes in microwave karma . . . what goes around comes around, in a freaking hurry and usually with ill intent. Published to coincide with the release of Academy Award-winning filmmaker Oliver Stone's adaptation of Savages, this cool, clever entry is sure to be a royally popular summer read. --Booklist
by Cheryl Strayed (Get the Book)
This beloved Internet advice columnist, using the pseudonym Sugar, revealed herself in early 2012 to be the acclaimed novelist and memoirist Strayed (Wild). First appearing on The Rumpus (therumpus.net) in 2010, her column "Dear Sugar" quickly attracted a large and devoted following with its cut-to-the-quick aphorisms like "Write like a motherfucker" and "Be brave enough to break your own heart." This collection gathers up the best of Sugar, whose trademark is deeply felt and frank responses grounded in her own personal experience. In many ways, it is a portrait of Strayed herself: she describes her estranged father, her passionate but doomed first marriage, her relationship with her current husband (Mr. Sugar), and, most thoroughly, her much-missed mother, who died suddenly while Strayed was in college. She answers queries on subjects ranging from professional jealousy to leaving a loved partner to coping with the death of a child to a (not-so) simple "WTF?" VERDICT Part advice, part personal essay, these pieces grapple with life's biggest questions. Beautifully written and genuinely wise, this book is full of heartache and love. Highly recommended. --Library journal
by G. Willow Wilson (Get the Book)
The scripter of the graphic novel Cairo (2007) and writer of the memoir The Butterfly Mosque (2010) here offers her first prose novel, ushering the energy of the Arab Spring into urban fantasy while unleashing jinns into the digital age. A young hacker-for-hire who goes by the handle Alif becomes an enemy of the state (an unspecified Middle Eastern emirate) after his computer program, designed to suss out the identity of a user solely through keystroke patterns and language tendencies, catches the eye of the iron-clad security presence known as the Hand. Alif has also come into possession of the fabled Alf Yeom, a book that supposedly compiles the entire knowledge of the jinn (which, surprise, are real, and, in the case of the saucy and dangerous Vikram the Vampire, a bit too real). Both Alif and the Hand see in this book the inspiration for a quantum leap in computing sophistication, but will it be a tool for revolution or a means to obliterate dissent? Wilson has a lot on her mind with this ambitious and layered novel, which swirls about ideas of theology, technology, activism, class conflict, and cultural inquiry without getting bogged down in any of them. As timely and thoughtful as it is edgy and exciting, this dervish of a novel wraps modern tendrils around ancient roots, spanning the gulf between ones and zeros, haves and have-nots, and seen and unseen worlds. --Booklist
by Mark K. Shriver (Get the Book)
Shriver, founder of the Peace Corps, had by the time of his death at 95 in 2011 earned a sound reputation as a good man. Now his son explores the man behind what has come to be an overused and not always deserved description, portraying someone who was not just kind and principled on a public stage but also in everyday interactions with family, friends, and neighbors. Shriver wrote his son a letter nearly every day of his adult life, which the son ignored in the hustle and bustle of life. Drawing on those letters and others, including one written in anticipation of Shriver's death, Mark offers an intimate portrait of an ambitious man whose drive was more spiritual than political, a man of great personal stature operating in the shadow of a powerful political family. Mark recalls childhood in a hyperactive household, with hard-charging adults, the trauma of the Kennedy assassinations, and the steadfast guidance of his father. Mark, founder of Save Our Children, watched his father struggle with Alzheimer's in his later years and yet maintain the riddle of his joy. --Booklist
by David Brin (Get the Book)
Gerald Livingston makes his living by recovering space garbage, collecting a century's worth of defunct satellites, rocket parts, and other detritus. When he brings in a strange orb, rumors spread around the world about the alien nature of the object. Then it begins to speak. The world is thrown into chaos as factions quarrel over the object's meaning, and scientists and the military question its authenticity and motives. Hugo and Nebula award winner Brin (Startide Rising; The Postman) returns to grand-scale sf with a tale that challenges the definition of humanity, the purpose of life, and the mystery of existence. -VERDICT Featuring memorable characters and masterly storytelling, Brin's latest novel provides food for thought and entertainment. Fans of Vernor Vinge and Arthur C. Clarke, as well as Brin's own sizable fan base, will enjoy this multidimensional story. --Library Journal
by Thomas Watson (Get the Book)
A thriller on par with the legendary All the President's Men, the story of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation and British phone hacking scandal makes for political drama at its finest. Hickman, the reporter for The Independent who pursued the story; and Watson, a relentless Labour Party Parliament member who helped lead the government investigation that toppled the nearly 170-year-old News of the World, have produced a gripping account that will likely be a go-to source in years to come. News of the World reporters hacked voicemail messages of royals, actors, and soccer notables to drive newspaper sales in the hyper-competitive world of the tabloid press. Led by Rupert Murdoch, the paper's executives exerted enough pressure on police and politicians to foil years of investigations. An elaborate cover-up that passed off the hacking as the work of a "rogue reporter" and a private investigator was initially successful, but what ultimately undid the tabloid and brought down top execs like Rebekah Brooks were the revelations that reporters deleted voicemails of a murdered teenager, deceiving police and her family into thinking that she might still be alive. Anyone interested in the media scandal of the decade and its reverberations across the pond won't be able to put this book down. --Publishers weekly
by Hilary Mantel (Get the Book)
Mantel's Wolf Hall (2009) took the literary world by storm and was quickly seen as an exceptional interpretation and depiction of Henry VIII's times and troubles as relayed through the career of Thomas Cromwell, the king's all-powerful secretary and chief task-enforcer. This new novel, the second installment of a planned Cromwell trilogy, can easily stand next to its predecessor as a major achievement in historical fiction. Mantel now tells the story of the fall of Anne Boleyn, Henry's second wife. As the novel opens, Queen Anne has enjoyed her exalted title for only a short time, but already the winds of change are blowing through the court. The king is tired of her (she hasn't produced a male heir, and her unpleasant personality is wearing thin) and finds lady-in-waiting Jane Seymour a much fresher face. Consequently, Secretary Cromwell, the king's enforcer, steps in, drawing the battle lines between himself and Queen Anne. The conflict will be deadly and, for the reader, edge-of-the-seat gripping. Like its predecessor, this is a rigorous read. One must get used to Mantel's intricate storytelling, and inattention will quickly derail one's grasp of events. Mantel's seductive, almost hypnotic, style is both formal, which is appropriate to the time, and exquisitely fluid, while beautifully articulated dialogue serves the story well, lending depth to characterizations and advancing the rich plot. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Mantel's previous novel won the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and appeared on best-seller lists; anticipation for the sequel is high. --Booklist
by Ray Greene Huling (Get the Book)
"If we mean to change our ways, how will we do it? How will we make our food and our system of food production healthy, sustainable, and secure? How will we make them, in a word, sane? Who will do this work?"  Ray Huling knows the hard realities of shell fishing. His father and grandfathers were shell-fishermen on Rhode Island's Narragansett Bay, laborers in an age-old trade. As a third generation quahauger, the industry is his life, and the drive to keep it sustainable is what makes up his family history. In Bullrakers , Huling answers these pressing questions and delivers a moving portrait of the men and women who work the waters of the Atlantic coast in the harsh environment of the shellfishing industry. Huling argues that any successful sustainable food enterprise will likely resemble shell fishing in Rhode Island, an industry which has existed sustainably for over 150 years, with its complex system of governance, its fierce and obsessive workforce, and its conflicts within communities and between generations. This thought provoking book sets the complexities of sustainable food production against a heartwarming story of one family's enduring years of work on the seas. (Summary)
by Karin Slaughter (Get the Book)
The fourth entry in Slaughter's Georgia series moves between 1975 and the present day. Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent Will Trent is livid when his boss, Amanda Wagner, keeps him off their latest case. But Amanda has her reasons, and they go back to the 1970s, when Amanda and Evelyn Mitchell were rookies and among the first women hired in the Atlanta Police Department. Despised by their male colleagues, they are treated with the utmost disdain. Sent to take a rape complaint at Techwood Homes, a roach-infested housing project, the two discover that three prostitutes have gone missing, and no one seems to care. Amanda, who still cooks and cleans for her father, a longtime police commander, at first thinks that Evelyn, who is quick with a retort, is somewhat scandalous, but the two bond over their increasingly dangerous investigation, which is continually being stymied by both cops and criminals. And what they discover about what has been done to the missing prostitutes fuels their ire and their ambition. Providing a fascinating backward glance at sexual politics in the workplace as well as a grisly look at a brutal sexual predator, Slaughter delivers another riveting, pulse-pounding crime novel. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: National media attention, including a tie-in with the Save the Libraries campaign, will help launch author Slaughter's twelfth thriller onto the best-seller lists. --Booklist
