THE BROKEN TEAGLASS: Coded clues hidden in the files of a dictionary publishing company. Charm, mystery and a quirky romance.
IN SEARCH OF THE ROSE NOTES: Childhood friends play detective when a beloved babysitter disappears. Years later, they are forced to revisit the past.
Henry, star college shortstop with a confidence problem, is at the center of this engaging novel; other appealingly flawed characters include teammates, the college president, and his daughter. A captivating story whether or not you are a baseball fan.
MR. PIP: on a war-torn island, a teacher reads Great Expectations aloud in this celebration of imagination.
HAND ME DOWN WORLD: A woman – anonymous, adrift, unknowable – undertakes a dangerous, lonely journey to find the child that was stolen from her.
SISTER: Bee doesn’t believe that her sister Tess committed suicide, and she decides to solve the murder herself. This twisty story is told as a long letter from Tess to Bee.
AFTERWARDS: A suspicious fire leaves a mother and daughter unconscious, but they are able to leave their injured bodies and follow family, police, and suspects, keeping us updated on the action. A tricky mystery wrapped in a moving family story.
Take a look at Susan Hill’s series featuring Chief Superintendent – and artist – Simon Serailler, who solves puzzles in the cathedral town of Lafferton. You’ll want to read them in order, as characters in addition to Simon are developed from book to book; in each, Hill balances various plot lines, and part of the fun is to see them eventually connect. Terrific writing.
Beginning in Iowa in 1973 and ending in Iowa in 2003, this story follows four siblings through their own family’s upheavals and also the national turmoil, from Vietnam to Iraq. Thompson uses illuminating details to describe the American conflict between wanting to move on and wanting to be home.
Trillin: humorist, essayist, biographer, novelist, poet, observer of human nature, eager eater. This wonderful book collects and sorts the very best of everything. Smart and tart, Trillin is a delight to read.
Performance artists Camille and Caleb Fang have always used their children as actors in the scenes of chaos they create in order to record public reaction. The children, now grown, return home and their parents disappear. Life or art?
Witty and thought-provoking, this book examines the history and purposes of gossip. Epstein balances scholarship and humor as he has with his other titles, including SNOBBERY, AMBITION and ENVY.
These thirteen stories describe, as one reviewer said, “the hapless, the hopeless, and the helpless.” Boston-area author Almond varies his tone from hilarious to dark in these ironic tales of alienated characters.
Some years ago, Schwartz wrote RESERVATION ROAD, about a hit-and-run accident and its impact on the two families involved. NORTHWEST CORNER begins twelve years later: the at-fault driver is out of prison and is suddenly contacted by the son he hasn’t seen in all that time. Is history repeating itself?
When Arthur Scott moves his family from 1960’s Detroit to small-town Kansas, he is returning to the scene of an old mystery. Long-buried secrets and new problems come to light; the harshness of farm life adds to the suspense.
Her latest novel, CALEB’S CROSSING, is fiction about an actual person: little is known about the real Caleb except that he was a member of the Wampanoag tribe, lived on Martha’s Vineyard, and graduated from Harvard in 1665. Also try MARCH (about the father of the famous fictional LITTLE WOMEN) and PEOPLE OF THE BOOK (history unfolds via tiny clues caught in an ancient book).
Instead of appearing in divorce court, Kelly checks into the hotel where her relationship with Michael began twenty years ago. Meanwhile, Michael and his much-younger girlfriend are waiting to hear that the divorce is final. Both replay the marriage in this brief, touching novel. Butler’s other books include HAD A GOOD TIME (stories imagined from the messages on his own postcard collection) and A GOOD SCENT FROM A STRANGE MOUNTAIN (stories about Vietnamese immigrants).
In eight episodes, this brief novel tells the story of a Wyoming rancher, his wife, and their two sons. The bitterness of Wyoming winters, the cycle of life and death, the love for family and the land are all explored in clear, lovely language.
In one, a clairvoyant correspondent; in the other, a beheaded bride. In both, Dave Gurney, former star NYPD detective, uneasily retired in the Catskills with an unhappy wife. Suspense, clever plotting, great characters. A terrific new writer.
Dorothy Woodruff and her best friend, Rosamund Underwood, were two well-connected young women: graduates of Smith College, Class of 1910, they took the Grand Tour but soon tired of society life; so they traveled to the snowy Colorado mountains to teach in an isolated schoolhouse. A story of finding independence, charmingly told.
McNeal has written two quietly powerful novels set in Nebraska. The first, GOODNIGHT NEBRASKA, tells the story of long-time residents of and a newcomer to the small town of Goodnight. His new book, TO BE SUNG UNDERWATER, is about a woman who has traveled far from her Nebraska roots but revisits an old relationship at a crucial time in her life. Both books remind us that the ordinary events of daily lives can add up to something extraordinary.
North Carolina, 1954: Jubie Watts, thirteen, feels closer to the family’s maid than to her distant parents. A road trip deeper into the South awakens Jubie to racial intolerance in this sensitive debut novel.
California cardiologist Peter Scanlon takes his teenaged daughter with him when he accepts a position at a clinic in Nepal. At first horrified by the local conditions, they eventually begin to adapt. When Peter is sent to a remote clinic near the Chinese border, they become caught up in civil war. A fast-paced story that combines an exotic setting, family drama, and adventure.
Here is evidence of the value of reading to a child: the author, at age nine, and her father agreed that he would read aloud to her for 100 nights. What they came to call “The Streak” eventually ended only when Alice moved into her college dormitory. A touching, often funny, story about the power of literature and family love.
Camp counselors expecting to work with children are surprised when the first campers are developmentally disabled adults. One counselor is called upon to prevent a crime, with shocking results that extend into the future. A character-driven novel, beautifully written.
Born in 1899, the introspective White was more comfortable with animals than with people. When he and his wife bought a farm in Maine, he became interested in orb spiders, and a classic was born. A wonderful read for all who love Charlotte, Wilbur, and Zuckerman’s barn.
The subtitle of this mystery is “A Tale of Bindlestiffs and Blood”. A young man leaves home in post-World War I North Dakota, gets mixed up in a murder, and is soon being chased by both criminals and lawmen. The mystery is fine, but the characters, the descriptions of the lonely wheatfields, and the tension between old and new (the threshing machine is modernizing the harvest) add depth to the story.
When their mother becomes ill, the three daughters of a Shakespearean scholar return home with plenty of baggage. The family constantly drops quotes from the Bard; the narration is in the first person plural voice of the sisters; there is lots of humor in this story about siblings learning to communicate.
Whether in a novel such as ARTHUR & GEORGE, short story collections (PULSE, THE LEMON TABLE), or memoir (NOTHING TO BE FRIGHTENED OF), Barnes writes with wit, elegance, and perception. His most recent novel, THE SENSE OF AN ENDING, won the 2011 Man Booker Prize.
The author, an editor at Paris Review, agrees to his wife’s wish to buy a convenience store for her Korean immigrant parents. Now deeply in debt, Howe and his wife live in the basement of his in-laws’ Staten Island home; he keeps his day job on the Upper East Side while working the night shift at the Brooklyn store. An often uproarious account of the customers and his own dilemmas, the book is also concerned with family relationships and success.
Young English teacher Madeline doesn’t come from the same privileged background as many of her students at New England’s Armitage Academy. When a star student is found dead, the mystery begins; so does the tension between the elite school’s administration and the town police.
How does the impeccable Henry Cage become involved with a random act of violence and its consequences? This melancholy debut novel explores the theme of chance and its intrusion into even the most cautious of lives.
Bauer’s debut, BLACKLANDS, is the story of a young boy who enters into a dangerous correspondence with a serial killer. The same boy appears in DARKSIDE, but here the main character is a young policeman struggling with personal and professional pressures. Both are set in the isolated English village of Shipcott. Atmospheric, suspenseful, memorable.
The acclaimed novelist tells his disturbing family story: after their parents’ divorce, he and his siblings lived in poverty. Enraged and easily provoked, Dubus became an aggressive fighter; eventually he found redemption through writing. This is a powerful, sorrowful story.
Teenaged Margo flees her toxic family and undertakes a river journey in this darkly powerful novel. She’s a wildly original heroine determined to live on her own terms.
Not your average private investigator, Claire uses some unusual detection methods to solve a crime in atmospheric New Orleans. A fine mystery, planned as the first in a new series.
Memoirist, novelist, essayist, author of short stories and stories for children; in any form, Fox is a master of concise language and telling details.
When young Will finally strikes back at his abusive father, he is sentenced to two years at Colorado’s Swope Ranch Boys Reformatory.
He bonds with three other boys, but they cannot defend each other from the evil and corruption around them. A dark and powerful debut novel.
This collection of nine stories features privileged young women in New York, whose lives of apparent success mask their insecurities. Smooth writing and clever variations on the author’s theme.
Conventional, dutiful Karen meets and is mesmerized by free spirit Biba. They share a bohemian, self-indulgent summer that ends with death. Ten years later, we see a very different Karen. A haunting, atmospheric first novel.
A father writes a (book-length) letter to his estranged daughter, hoping for her understanding and telling her the events of his life: he is orphaned, he falls in love with his adopted cousin, she falls in love with someone else. This heartbreaking story is set in Nova Scotia during World War II. Norman has been nominated twice for the National Book Award.
On Caribou Island, on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula, Gary is building a cabin where he and his wife can live in their retirement. Thirty years of disappointment and rage surface in this darkly compelling dissection of a doomed marriage.
