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Browsing all posts tagged 'fiction'

Think Local, Read Local!

Title: Surf.com
By: Fred Reiss

Funniest book I've read in a long time, and it takes place in Santa Cruz! You'll recognize many of the character types within our beach town: surfing locals, college students, Silicon Valley transplants, and the people who hang out around the Pacific Garden Mall. Enough zingers to make you laugh ... [Read more]

Posted by pollockl on Dec. 5, 2011
Tags: fiction
1 Comment

Shanghai and Back Again

Title: Dreams of Joy
By: Lisa See

This sequel to Shanghai Girls is every bit as gripping as the original. It picks up right where Shanghai Girls ended in Los Angeles and the reader is quickly transported back to Shanghai along with sisters Pearl and May's daughter Joy who is on a search for her birth father ... [Read more]

Posted by ogradyj on Nov. 1, 2011
Tags: fiction
0 Comments

Homecoming, Family, and Miracles

Title: The Homecoming of Samuel Lake
By: Jenny Wingfield

The Homecoming of Samuel Lake is a remarkable first novel. I was swept into the Moses family reunion and the fabric of their shared lives in 1950's Arkansas from the very first page. I wanted to know all the characters as they shared their everyday lives and their dreams, their ... [Read more]

Posted by ogradyj on Oct. 19, 2011
Tags: fiction
0 Comments

Old Friends and Terrorists

Title: The Weekend
By: Bernhard Schlink

On the face, The Weekend is a novel about a reunion at an isolated German estate of old friends who haven't seen each other for years. They are brought together to greet Jorg who has been in prison for 24 years for unspecified acts of terror. Each guest has a ... [Read more]

Posted by ogradyj on Oct. 12, 2011
Tags: fiction, audiobook
0 Comments

But Wait! There's More!

Title: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1.
By: Harriet Elinor Smith, Editor.

Dear Mr. Clemens, So nice to hear from you! As always, I enjoyed reading your recollections of work as a cub pilot on the Mississippi, and the amusing stories of life on the never ending lecture circuit. I’m so sorry about your daughter Suzy passing away; she sounds like such ... [Read more]

Posted by pollockl on Sept. 14, 2011
Tags: fiction, non-fiction, history, biography, travel
0 Comments

Seville Quartet

Title: The Ignorance of Blood
By: Robert Wilson

Robert Wilson’s The Ignorance of Blood not only ends Inspector Jefe Javier Falcón Seville quartet, but more importantly, completes the full recovery cycle of the protagonist’s troubled life. Javier Falcón’s troubled life is revealed in the first part of the quartet, The Blind Man of Seville (2003). While investigating the ... [Read more]

Posted by Hui-Lan on June 23, 2011
Tags: fiction, mystery
0 Comments

Right from the start

Title: The Tiger's Wife
By: Tea Obreht

Once in a while, what sounds like hype is just the facts, ma'am, just the facts. Tea Obreht's highly touted The Tiger's Wife is an astonishing first novel. It has the resonance of myth, a story we've always known. Its poetry is restrained, its magic natural. It's exciting to contemplate ... [Read more]

Posted by curious on June 16, 2011
Tags: fiction
0 Comments

Madensky Square - A year in the Life

Title: Madensky Square
By: Eva Ibbotson

Eva Ibbottson was known to me only as an author of children's books. After her recent death I decided to try some of her books for adults. Madensky Square has the same charm as her fanciful books for young people. Madensky Square takes place in pre World War I Vienna. ... [Read more]

Posted by ogradyj on June 9, 2011
Tags: fiction
1 Comment

Finding Roseanna

Title: Roseanna
By: Maj Sjöwall

After purchasing the complete set of Martin Beck mysteries on audio for the library, I found my curiosity piqued by the lasting charm of the series by Maj Sjöwall and her husband Per Wahlöö. During the period of 1965 to 1975, the couple wrote one 30-chapter mystery every year. The ... [Read more]

Posted by Hui-Lan on May 12, 2011
Tags: fiction, mystery
0 Comments

In the Name of Blue Demon

Title: City of Fear
By: David Hewson

Rome was under siege in the heat of tourist season and on the eve of the G8 summit. In the name of the Blue Demon to revive Etruscan civilization, a group of terrorists started a series of deadly attacks on the city’s officials and people, the presidential palace, the conference, ... [Read more]

Posted by Hui-Lan on May 5, 2011
Tags: fiction, mystery
0 Comments

Mistress of the Art of Death

Title: Mistress of the Art of Death..
By: Ariana Franklin

In twelfth century Cambridge, tensions are high between the local townsfolk and the Jewish population, suspected of murdering and disfiguring four children. King Henry II has requested aid of an expert in reading the dead from the Salerno School of Medicine in Italy. He is attempting to shelter the Jews, ... [Read more]

Posted by Ginger L. on March 31, 2011
Tags: fiction, mystery
0 Comments

Soul food

Title: Soul Mountain
By: Xingjian Gao

Whether or not the Nobel Committee was looking for an excuse to honor a Chinese writer, they did this one right. Soul Mountain has the intense clarity of mountain light, so sharp it hurts -- and exhilarates. It is also, unexpectedly perhaps, extremely funny, and at times raunchy. It exercises ... [Read more]

Posted by curious on Jan. 6, 2011
Tags: fiction
0 Comments

When Two Brothers Love the Same Woman

Title: Nemesis
By: Jo Nesbo

Harry Hole is not an unfamiliar detective inspector to many Scandinavian mystery readers in Santa Cruz. The redbreast (2006) begins with Harry and his partner Ellen on surveillance detail. Oslo happens to be the scene of an international summit meeting. The devil's star (2005) finds Harry taking on a murder ... [Read more]

Posted by Hui-Lan on Dec. 30, 2010
Tags: fiction, mystery
0 Comments

The Tale of a Literary Rat

Title: Firmin
By: Sam Savage

Firmin is the story of a rat--a literate, philosophical, and, yes, very melancholy rat. He is born, the runt of the litter, in the basement of a Boston bookstore, and from a very early age begins feeding his physical and intellectual hunger with the books that surround him. He lives ... [Read more]

Posted by fatorangecat on Dec. 23, 2010
Tags: fiction
0 Comments

Beguiled

Title: Temples of Delight
By: Barbara Trapido

Barbara Trapido is quicksilver. Her prose beguiles. Her plots twine. Her characters dart. Sadly, SCPL owns only three of her seven books, five of which are linked, although not linearly. Start with the Mozartean Temples of Delight, then read her first two books, Brother of the More Famous Jack and ... [Read more]

Posted by curious on Dec. 16, 2010
Tags: fiction
0 Comments

Halley's Comet 1910

Title: The Whistling Season
By: Ivan Doig

The setting is 1910 in Marias Coulee, CO and a family consisting of a widower and his three young sons are in desperate need of a housekeeper so the father answers an ad from the weekly newspaper that begins "Can't Cook But Doesn't Bite." Thus begins the memory of an ... [Read more]

Posted by wolnerb on Oct. 24, 2010
Tags: fiction, large print
0 Comments

Short Stories You Must Read

Title: Interpreter of Maladies
By: Jhumpa Lahiri

A well-written short story is a precious pearl and in this collection, you have a delicate string of pearls. Jhumpa Lahiri's collection, Interpreter of Maladies, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2000 and the PEN/Hemingway Award. Lahiri writes about people who are balancing the cultures and values of India and the ... [Read more]

Posted by Ruby Boggs on Oct. 7, 2010
Tags: short stories, fiction
0 Comments

The End is Coming?

Title: Good Omens
By: Terry Pratchett

Discworld’s Terry Pratchett and Sandman’s Neil Gaiman teamed up to develop one of Gaiman’s short story ideas into an engaging funny novel about Armageddon. If you are familiar with either of these authors, you are not surprised. Yes, strictly speaking, the Divine Plan does seem to be developing as written ... [Read more]

Posted by Ruby Boggs on Sept. 23, 2010
Tags: fiction, fantasy
3 Comments

Such A Pretty Face

Title: The Wife's Tale
By: Lori Lansens

On the eve of her Silver Anniversary, Mary Gooch is 43-years old and weighs in at 302 pounds. Except for a brief period in high school when she is slender, carefree, and infected with an intestinal parasite, Mary has been uncontrollably hungry, victim of a monster, The Obeast, a term ... [Read more]

Posted by Wildruby on Sept. 16, 2010
Tags: fiction
0 Comments

Melting Pot of Gods and Goddesses

Title: American Gods
By: Neil Gaiman

American Gods offers an answer to the question: What happens to the gods of different cultures when their followers emigrate to the United States? Do the gods follow them? Do they have influence here? How do Norse gods get along with Aztec gods? Gaiman describes the journey of Shadow, traveling ... [Read more]

Posted by Ruby Boggs on Sept. 2, 2010
Tags: fiction, fantasy
2 Comments

Moving to Brooklyn?

Title: Brooklyn Follies
By: Paul Auster

"I was looking for a quiet place to die." Why would anyone want to read a book that begins with that sentence I asked myself. Fortunately, I read the next few pages and was hooked. This is not a book about death and dying; this is a book about the ... [Read more]

Posted by wolnerb on Aug. 30, 2010
Tags: fiction, large print
0 Comments

"The 'Real' Maids of Jackson, Mississippi."

Title: The Help
By: Kathryn Stockett

Ms. Stockett has a true ear for dialogue, a gift for developing her characters and for creating a fast pace in this remarkable novel, but it's her understanding of the hearts and minds of women that has made this a direct hit for me. The setting is 1962, in Jackson, ... [Read more]

Posted by pollockl on Aug. 26, 2010
Tags: fiction, audiobook
1 Comment

Smiley's Honor-bound Labor

Title: The Honourable Schoolboy
By: John LeCarre

Recently, I have re-read John Le Carré’s The Honourable Schoolboy, and gained some deeper understanding of George Smiley, a unique British character who plays an essential and indispensible role whenever a crisis occurs, but is forever forgotten by bureaucratic machines for any career promotions or advancement, despite every single victory ... [Read more]

Posted by Hui-Lan on Aug. 19, 2010
Tags: fiction
1 Comment

Well-Crafted Short Stories

Title: Links - A Short Story Collection
By: Kaylia Metcalfe

I am really impressed with how well-crafted these stories are. As a good short story should, these show the reader vivid snapshots of the lives of the characters. Like a gourmet tasting menu, Links provides bite-sized samples of complex flavors of people and life, which are emotionally resonant, and authentic. ... [Read more]

Posted by leer on Aug. 5, 2010
Tags: short stories, fiction
0 Comments

Looking Back, Youth

Title: The Price of Love and Other Stories
By: Peter Robinson

Inspector Alan Banks is a familiar character to many of Peter Robinson’s readers. He is mostly known as an experienced, persistent but sometimes lone detective. We can see his career growing from Gallows View (1987) to All the Colors of Darkness (2009). However, what was he like before joining the ... [Read more]

Posted by Hui-Lan on July 29, 2010
Tags: short stories, fiction, mystery
0 Comments

Jeepers Creepers It's Everywhere

Title: Creepers
By: Joanne Dahme

Ivy is everywhere. It seems to want to overtake the whole house. And no matter how much they try to pull it out and tear it off the walls it won't be eradicated. Courtney and her family move to their new home in remote Murmur, Massachusetts and the spookiness begins. ... [Read more]

Posted by ogradyj on July 15, 2010
Tags: fiction, mystery, young adult
0 Comments

Take a Break with the Bachelor Brothers

Title: Bachelor Brothers' Bed & Breakfast
By: Bill Richardson

Ever wanted to just get away to a place where everyone can relax and read? The Bachelor Brothers' Bed and Breakfast is the place for you. Set on an unnamed island somewhere off Vancouver Island, check out this B & B for your next retreat. Middle aged twin brothers, Virgil ... [Read more]

Posted by ogradyj on July 1, 2010
Tags: fiction
0 Comments

Munchkins, Winkies, and Winged Monkeys

Title: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
By: L. Frank Baum

Be sure you get the edition with W.W. Denslow's illustrations throughout. This is not an e-book: you can point and click all you want, but nothing will happen, except in your imagination. It does not include a sound card; you will have to provide your own musical accompaniment. The intention ... [Read more]

Posted by Tirantes on May 20, 2010
Tags: fiction
1 Comment

Amish Thriller Debut

Title: Sworn to Silence
By: Linda Castilloa

As a 14-year old Amish girl, Kate Burkholder survived a brutal rape by a serial murderer dubbed The Slaughterhouse Killer. Some years later, Kate left Painters Mill, Ohio, parting with her family and the Amish way of life. Returning at thirty-years of age as the new Chief of Police, Kate ... [Read more]

Posted by Wildruby on May 13, 2010
Tags: fiction, mystery
0 Comments

Big Bend mystery national park

Title: Borderline
By: Nevada Barr

Borderline is Nevada Barr’s fifteenth novel about a talented woman Park Ranger named Anna Pigeon. This mystery is fast-paced, engrossing and exciting to read. The author, through her character, Anna, interweaves many insights regarding the meaning of life, aging, death and the hereafter. Ms. Pigeon is trying to cope with ... [Read more]

Posted by downingp on May 6, 2010
Tags: fiction, mystery, travel
0 Comments

In the Land of Snow and Ice

Title: Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name
By: Vendela Vida

Clarissa Iverton is twenty-eight when her devoted father dies unexpectedly. Uncovering her birth certificate from her father's belongings, Clarissa learns that her biological father is registered as a Sami priest that her mother married in Lapland in a previous life. As Clarissa’s mother disappeared 14-years before, abandoning her and a ... [Read more]

Posted by Wildruby on April 8, 2010
Tags: fiction
0 Comments

Saluki hippies

Title: ...In the highlands since time immemorial
By: Joanna Ostrow

The drawback to reading and loving Joanna Ostrow’s lovely, quirky first novel is the letdown when you discover that this is all you’ll get. No, Ostrow didn’t die young or suffer a public meltdown; following the considerable success of ...In the highlands she talked about working on a second book, ... [Read more]

Posted by curious on March 18, 2010
Tags: fiction
2 Comments

Simulacrums and Secret Agents

Title: Atmospheric Disturbances
By: Rivka Galchen

When psychiatrist Leo Liebenstein’s beloved wife, Rema, is replaced by a double, Leo sets off on a journey to find the real Rema. His search takes him to Buenos Aires, then Patagonia, as Leo considers all physical and metaphysical possibilities for her disappearance. In desperation, Leo seeks the help of ... [Read more]

Posted by Wildruby on March 9, 2010
Tags: fiction
0 Comments

Icelandic Clashes

Title: Arctic Chill
By: Arnaldur Indridason

Arctic Chill opens with the stabbing death of Elias, a half-Thai and half-Icelandic boy of ten. Paralleled with Elias’ death is the murder case of a new wife by her unfaithful husband. Unlike his previous four mysteries, Arnaldur’s fifth book is haunted by a series of polemic clashes. Apart from ... [Read more]

Posted by Hui-Lan on Feb. 5, 2010
Tags: fiction, mystery
0 Comments

Justice and Atonement and Capital Punishment

Title: Change of Heart
By: Jodi Picoult

Change of Heart is a thought provoking and compelling novel about religion, murder, incest, organ donation, and the death penalty. As the characters in the book reevaluate their beliefs and feelings about these issues, the reader is compelled to do the same. Picoult skillfully weaves together a story of all ... [Read more]

Posted by ogradyj on Jan. 11, 2010
Tags: fiction, audiobook
1 Comment

Sleuthing Fun in San Francisco

Title: Revenge of the Spellmans
By: Lisa Lutz

Everybody's favorite thirty-something, Guinness-drinking private investigator with a checkered past is back in this third installment of the Spellman mysteries. Isabel Spellman continues to entertain as only she can in this heavily footnoted, case file format mystery set in San Francisco. Isabel's court-ordered therapy, insomnia, and secret new digs, along ... [Read more]

Posted by Abbey on Jan. 2, 2010
Tags: fiction, mystery
1 Comment

A Swede in Zambia

Title: The Eye of the Leopard
By: Henning Mankell

Henning Mankell, the creator of Kurt Wallander mysteries, does not restrict himself just to the boundaries of Sweden, his native country. By working as director at Teatro Avenida in Maputo, Mozambique since 1985, he has truly made Africa his second home. The Eye of the Leopard has shown us a ... [Read more]

Posted by Hui-Lan on Dec. 9, 2009
Tags: fiction
1 Comment

The Summer Everything Changed

Title: Out Stealing Horses
By: Per Petterson

The beautiful, spare prose of this short novel helps create an atmosphere and characters that will be remembered long after the last page has been turned. Set in Norway, the story moves back and forth in time--from the summer of 1948 to the present. The narrator, aging widower Trond Sander, ... [Read more]

Posted by fatorangecat on Nov. 20, 2009
Tags: fiction
0 Comments

Tale of Two Sisters

Title: Shanghai Girls
By: Lisa See

Sometimes I think I am the only person who didn't enjoy Lisa See's earlier novel Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. For this reason I was reluctant to try Shanghai Girls, but I found myself with a copy in my hands and decided to give it a chance. I'm glad ... [Read more]

Posted by Abbey on Nov. 1, 2009
Tags: fiction
1 Comment

Midwifery on Trial

Title: Midwives
By: Chris Bohjalian

Reading this book was my first taste of Chris Bohjalian and it leaves me hungry for more. The story is told by Connie, who is fourteen the fall of her mother's trial. Her mother, Sibyl Danforth, is charged with manslaughter for the death of a mother in a home birth ... [Read more]

Posted by Abbey on July 27, 2009
Tags: fiction
0 Comments

A Wild Romp Through the French Quarter!

Title: A Confederacy of Dunces
By: John Kennedy Toole

This book made laugh so hard that I literally cried. Ignatius J. Reilly is one of the most colorfully hilarious characters I have ever come across. This is the best tour through the French Quarter that I could ever possibly take, without actually going there, especially with a paradoxically intelligent ... [Read more]

Posted by Jean Poole on June 3, 2009
Tags: fiction
3 Comments

Like Reading an Episode of "The Wire"

Title: Lush Life
By: Richard Price

Reading Lush Life is like reading an extended episode of HBO's series "The Wire." Not coincidentally, Price writes for the series and was recently nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award for his writing on the show. The novel starts with the murder of a young screenwriter and bartender ... [Read more]

Posted by Abbey on June 1, 2009
Tags: fiction
0 Comments

Cathedrals, Fog and Gothic Suspense

Title: The Unburied
By: Charles Palliser

If your brain is ready for a workout, you might want to try this intricately plotted atmospheric thriller set in Victorian England. It is a framed story--a mystery within a mystery wrapped in yet another mystery. And it has all of the elements you might expect in this genre: missing ... [Read more]

Posted by fatorangecat on April 29, 2009
Tags: fiction, mystery
0 Comments

Six Degrees of Separation in London

Title: London Bridges
By: Jane Stevenson

An affectionate homage to the classic English detective story, London Bridges is set in 1990s London. Its plot centers on a treasure lost in the Blitz and newly discovered by an unscrupulous lawyer, who is tempted by greed into a series of crimes leading to murder. A diverse cast of ... [Read more]

Posted by Gigi on April 27, 2009
Tags: fiction
0 Comments

Perfect Book for a Long Flight

Title: Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
By: Dai Sijie

This is a lovely funny book which can easily transport you from a cramped seat in economy to an elegantly constructed world in China. Set in the Chinese countryside during the Cultural Revolution, Sijie tells us the story of two city boys sent to be re-educated by poor peasants in ... [Read more]

Posted by Ruby Boggs on April 6, 2009
Tags: fiction
0 Comments

Correspondence from the German Occupation

Title: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
By: Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

Upon a strong recommendation and kind provision of the book, I started to embark on the reading of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. However I had a slow start. For some reason, I was deterred by its format consisting of letters or correspondence between the protagonist Juliet ... [Read more]

Posted by Hui-Lan on Feb. 17, 2009
Tags: fiction, history
6 Comments

Short Stories in a Northern Setting

Title: Island: The Complete Short Stories
By: Alistair MacLeod

Modern Library named Canadian author Alistair MacLeod one of the greatest writers in the English language since 1950. After spending some time with this collection of stories, it is clear why. These short stories, set for the most part in the stark but evocative landscape of Cape Breton Island, are ... [Read more]

Posted by fatorangecat on Oct. 31, 2008
Tags: short stories, fiction
3 Comments