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Browsing all posts tagged 'fiction'
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
0 Comments
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
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 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
0 Comments
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
5 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
2 Comments
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