Book News and New Book Reviews
Just a sampling of our new materials (right side)!
by Jim Butcher (Get the Book)
Harry Dresden, the Chicago PI and professional wizard, has been having a pretty weird time of it lately. In 2012's Ghost Story, Harry is trapped between life and death but on the trail of his own killer all the same; after discovering that killer's shocking identity, he decides to let himself pass into death. But Queen Mab has other ideas, and that's where the latest episode in the Dresden Files novels picks up the story. Mab, who has wanted Harry to be her hatchet man for a long time, has a job for him several jobs, actually, a sort of shopping list of evil deeds, beginning with murder. Harry, basically a good man, doesn't take killing lightly, especially when his intended victim happens to be immortal. Harry thinks there must be a reason why Mab wants this particular immortal killed at this particular time, and when he hits up some sources back in Chicago, he figures out she's probably setting him up but why? By this point, more than a dozen novels into the series, Butcher is pretty much assuming that if you're reading the latest Dresden novel, you're familiar with the ones that came before it. Readers coming to the novel without any previous experience might feel like they've tuned into an epic, multicharacter TV miniseries about halfway through, but fans of the Dresden Files, who have a lot invested in Harry, will be lining up to see whether he escapes his death as slickly as he did last time. Butcher remains the gold standard for urban fantasy. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The Dresden Files started slowly as a paperback original series but eventually built an audience and moved to hardcover. From there, it was a short jump to becoming the quintessential urban fantasy. --Booklist
For the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, here is a collection of writings that charts our nation's long, heroic confrontation with its most poisonous evil. It's an inspiring moral and political struggle whose evolution parallels the story of America itself. To advance their cause, the opponents of slavery employed every available literary form: fiction and poetry, essay and autobiography, sermons, pamphlets, speeches, hymns, plays, even children's literature. This is the first anthology to take the full measure of a body of writing that spans nearly two centuries and, exceptionally for its time, embraced writers black and white, male and female. Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, Phillis Wheatley, and Olaudah Equiano offer original, even revolutionary, eighteenth century responses to slavery. With the nineteenth century, an already diverse movement becomes even more varied: the impassioned rhetoric of Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison joins the fiction of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Louisa May Alcott, and William Wells Brown; memoirs of former slaves stand alongside protest poems by John Greenleaf Whittier, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Lydia Sigourney; anonymous editorials complement speeches by statesmen such as Charles Sumner and Abraham Lincoln. Features helpful notes, a chronology of the antislavery movement, and a16-page color insert of illustrations. (Get the Book)
by Sabrina Jeffries (Get the Book)
Pierce Waverly, the rakehell Earl of Devonmont, is annoyed when he arrives at his country estate to learn that his estranged mother is not at death's door, as he'd been led to believe by a letter from his mother's new companion. Pierce has no intention of staying, especially not for the holidays. But vicar's widow Camilla Stuart is determined to bring Pierce and his mother together-even if it means giving in to his initially outrageous demands of nightly "entertainments." A caring heroine determined to do the right thing and an emotionally wounded hero unable to forgive struggle to learn the truth in this complex story that juxtaposes the warmth of the holiday season with a dark undercurrent of closely guarded secrets, impossible choices, and deep regret. VERDICT Sharply witty, deliciously sexy, and infinitely endearing, this holiday gem strikes an emotional chord that will resonate with fans long after the book has been closed. Jeffries's first hardcover release, it serves as a bridge between her recent "Hellions of Halstead Hall" quintet and a new series that is slated to begin next spring.
by Oliver Burkeman (Get the Book)
This is a self-help book for cynics. Guardian feature writer Burkeman (Help!) makes the compelling observation that even with the mass production of books on attaining happiness, the collective mood has failed to rise. It has, if anything, fallen. Burkeman's aim is to endorse a "negative" path to happiness, a route in which happiness is no longer the final destination because serenity is not a fixed state, and trying so hard to be happy is part of what makes us so miserable. Burkeman balances the ideas of the deepest thinkers, thoughts on mortality, and his own foray into Buddhist meditation with tremendously funny anecdotes about the antics of motivational convention attendees and his humiliating attempts at stoicism on the London subway. The version of "happiness" that emerges has no clear set of steps, rather a calm (yet admirably comical) shift from the happy human being to the human who is, simply, being. None of this is new, but Burkeman's ability to present sentiments in fresh, delightfully sarcastic packaging will appeal to the happy, the unhappy, and those who have already found a peaceful middle ground. --Publishers Weekly
by Karen Robards (Get the Book)
Set in St. Louis, this spellbinding novel of romantic suspense from bestseller Robards (The Last Victim) stars Samantha "Sam" Jones, a 23-year-old single mother, who struggles to make ends meet by working nights repossessing cars while taking classes for EMT certification during the day. Her mundane life goes terribly askew after she finds an injured man in the trunk of a BMW she's repossessing. Before she can decide what to do, she's assaulted and thrown into the trunk with the man. In a fight for survival, Sam and her trunk mate, who turns out to be an undercover FBI agent, Danny Panterro, must seek a way to outwit their captors, members of a drug cartel. Sam's fiery determination to stay alive and keep her four-year-old son safe is the perfect match for Danny's tenacity as an undercover agent. Sensual love scenes help propel the novel toward its explosive conclusion. --Publishers Weekly
This is a charming and whimsical look at the favorite books of a wide selection from today's creative community. Editor La Force contacted and interviewed notables from the worlds of food (Alice Waters, Mark Bittman), music (Patti Smith), books (Junot Diaz, Mary Karr, Malcolm Gladwell), movies (Judd Apatow, Mira Nair), and fashion (Kate and Laura Mulleavy of Rodarte), among others, and each sent a list of their favorite books along with their thoughts on what their shelves revealed. For some, their reading is often focused on their work, but for others, like Rosanne Cash, "I was one of those kids who asked my mom to drop me at the library on Saturdays. That was where I spent my weekends." These intimate glimpses are accompanied by Mount's painted representations of each contributor's bookshelves. VERDICT This book will be a pleasure for anyone who loves books, reading, and memoirs as it is both a quick peek into the reading lives of others and a source of new reading ideas. --Library Journal. (Get the Book)
by Hank Fillippi Ryan (Get the Book)
Boston TV reporter Jane Ryland's refusal to give up her source for a story accusing supermarket mogul Arthur Vick of making promises to call-girl Sellica Darden results in her station losing a million-dollar defamation suit, and Jane losing her job. With a little help from her pal, Detective Jake Brogan, Jane now labeled Wrong Guy Ryland lands a spot on a newspaper, working for a former competitor, sharing a desk, and getting the soft assignment of interviewing the wife of U.S. senatorial candidate Owen Lassiter. But the biggest local news, which is being covered by Jane's deskmate, involves the recent deaths of two young women whose bodies are found in the river; when the third such victim is Darden, Vick becomes a viable suspect in what seem to be a string of serial murders. With the Senate race heating up, Jane is looking for the other woman in Lassiter's life, while Jake is after the Bridge Killer. Ryan, an investigative reporter for Boston's NBC affiliate, knows her way around politics at high levels, and she uses that knowledge to fashion a revenge-fueled plot that twists and turns at breakneck speed. Political skulduggery and murder make a high-octane mix in this perfect thriller for an election season. --Booklist
by Jessica Valenti (Get the Book)
When her daughter was born at 28 weeks, leaving mother and child dangerously ill, Valenti felt enormous disappointment and a sense of failure. Not only had she missed a "good birth" resulting in a full-term healthy baby and happy family, her expectations surrounding the experience, the elation and bonding she had been societally conditioned to encounter, were unfulfilled. In this, her fourth book--a politicized, anti-What to Expect When You're Expecting--the high-profile, third-wave feminist takes an intense and scathing look at charged contemporary parenting issues, moving beyond "mommy wars" and breast-is-best militants to show just how much the current American ideal of parenting fails to match reality. With post-partum panic past, and her child thriving, Valenti probes accepted practices and questions the pervasive philosophy of modern mothering, with its many fallacies and assumptions including: alarming pre-conception and pregnancy advisories; whether women are naturally better parents; and if mothering is the hardest job in the world. Valenti pointedly reveals how trading a career for staying at home with the kids, the myth of the "perfect mother," and the death of the nuclear family damaged more women than society will acknowledge. Occasionally, a reader may be unsure whether Valenti is airing her own grievances or those of mommy-bloggers and the media; but that aside, this timely volume, which should generate much controversy, is a call for much-needed change and may unite a new generation of moms. --Publishers Weekly
by Michael Connelly (Get the Book)
At his core, Harry Bosch is a cop with a mission to tip the scales of justice toward the side of murder victims and their survivors. The scales can never be righted, of course, even by solving the cases Bosch is assigned in the Open Unsolved Unit of the LAPD. That is especially true in the 20-year-old murder of Danish journalist Anneke Jesperson, who was killed during the L.A. riots of 1992. What was Jesperson, a white woman, doing in South Central L.A. in the aftermath of the riots? As usual, Bosch faces not only the seeming impossibility of reconstructing a crime that has been cold for two decades but also the roadblocks imposed by the bureaucrats at the top of the LAPD. But Bosch has never met a roadblock he wasn't compelled to either barge through or cannily avoid. Harry is such a compelling character largely due to his fundamentally antiestablishment personality, which leads to chaos as often as to triumph, but also because his unswerving work ethic reflects not simply duty but also respect for the task before him. Harry does it right, even or especially when his bosses want something else entirely. That's the case this time How would it look if a white cop made headlines by solving the riot-related murder of a white woman? Better to let it slide. In real life, we all let things slide, but in life according to Bosch, nothing slides. We like Harry, as we like many other fictional crime solvers, because he never stops, but we love him because he has the scars to prove that never sliding is no easy thing. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Connelly's twenty-fifth book appears in his twentieth year of publishing, an anniversary that his publisher has been celebrating throughout 2012 with various Year of Connelly promotions, all leading up to the publication of The Black Box. --Booklist
