KINGS OF THE EARTH by Jon Clinch

The aging Proctor brothers are semi-literate farmers in upstate New York.  They live in a single room in their filthy, freezing farmhouse and share a bed as they have since childhood.  When one brother dies, another is suspected of his murder.  Told in the various voices of the brothers, their parents and sister, neighbors, and police, this fascinating novel is based on the actual story of the Ward brothers (a documentary was made about them, called “My Brother’s Keeper”).

You won’t be able to put it down!

SOMETHING IS OUT THERE By Richard Bausch

 

Bausch is a prize-winning author of short fiction as well as novels.  His new collection can be called love stories, because they are about relationships:  marriages, affairs, parents and children.  They are also about danger;  his characters experience physical and emotional fear, and sometimes the fear of discovery. 

Beautiful writing and intelligent observations – you’ll find them here.  Happy endings?  Probably not.

BIO Caldwell, Gail: LET’S TAKE THE LONG WAY HOME

A lovely elegy for her friend, Caroline Knapp:  fellow Bostonian, writer, dog lover.  You might also try Caldwell’s earlier memoir, A STRONG WEST WIND.

AMERICAN TALIBAN by Pearl Abraham

 

 

John Jude Parish lives the teenaged American dream:  tall and handsome, a surfer and skateboarder, he is living at the beach house owned by his  indulgent parents.  He has been accepted at Brown but decides to delay his college entrance and undertake a year of independent study.  Sufi poetry leads to the study of Arabic;  he makes Muslim friends and eventually travels to Pakistan.  Readers will see similarities to the true story of  John Walker Lindh in this absorbing account of a young man’s dangerous journey.

616.85 Frost and Steketee: STUFF: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things

Are you a collector, as so many people are?  What distinguishes the collector from the hoarder?  A readable, enlightening discussion of this fascinating syndrome.

 

 

 

 

 

For a fictional look at hoarding, try HOMER & LANGLEY by E.L. Doctorow;  the story is based on the real-life Collyer brothers of New York.