What a great book season this has been for me!  My rep friend, Tom Leigh at MacMillan sent me this advance copy — did you know I’d get such a kick out of it, Tom?

Set in the early 1800s, and told through the journal entries of a man named Owen Wedgewood, this is a pirate story, a history lesson, and an adventure in culinary delights all rolled into one.

Wedgewood is an artiste.  Highly trained, he works as the personal chef for a wealthy and powerful man. But when that man is murdered in a surgical land strike by a flamboyant red-tressed pirate named Hannah Mabbot, Wedgewood is taken captive onboard the Flying Rose, and is later informed that he would cook for his life, literally.  Captain Mabbot wants him to cook for her on Sundays, “...the finest supper.  You will neither repeat a dish nor serve foods that are in the slightest degree mundane…“

As can be expected, supplies onboard the pirate ship are less than gourmet, and the equipment is worse. The beleaguered Wedgewood despairs of surviving, but sets to the task, and creates a really amazing meal from weevil infested cornmeal, hardtack, jerky, and fresh caught seafood. Meanwhile, he gets to know the crew, including the first mate, Mr. Apple, a giant of a man who spends his free time knitting, the Chinese twins who serve as Mabbot’s bodyguards, the syphilitic cook, the deaf cabin boy, and many more.  He also begins to learn more about Captain Mabbot and the mission the Rose is on — the pursuit of a mysterious pirate named The Fox and eluding the agents of the Pendleton company. Along the way, he also learns something about world politics, religion, and human suffering.

If you follow my reviews, you may know that I do love a good battle scene, and this book does not disappoint!  Flying cannonballs and gunpowder abound, there are bloody battles, bloodless raids, and plenty of booty. There are dastardly villains and dastardly good guys, and a few people that are harder to define. Other action includes bar brawls, underground labrynth chases, men overboard, lost limbs, squalls, and sabotage. So much fun!

But the very best parts of this novel are the cooking scenes.  Week after week the Flying Rose and her crew sail the seven seas in pursuit of the elusive Fox, and Wedgewood outdoes himself with the dishes he brings to Captain Mabbot’s cabin each Sunday.  Other reviewers have compared this part of the story to Scheherazade’s stories, and this is an apt analogy.  As Wedgewood acquires new ingredients like miso paste and fresh papayas, he applies a certain genius to his own kind of alchemy, which Brown describes in exquisite and philosophical details.  He makes bread leavening from scratch, nurtured in a little can he carries on his person at all times, builds equipment from scraps, and even uses a cannonball for a rolling pin . Here is how he prepares an eel that one of the pirates catches for him:

“The eel I handled thus: after cleaning it, I rubbed salt and a little honey into the body cavity and coiled it on the grill of the improvised smoker above a small pile of red-hot embers.These coals I covered with a handful of steeped tea leaves.  The lid I left slightly ajar and returned every ten minutes to add more coals or tea until, with the daylight waning, the eel was finally done.  The honey had caramelized into the meat, which came easily from the bones, As for the smoke: when one has been on the road, tired and rained on, and catches, long before seeing any sign of a house, the faint but unmistakable odor of a chimney and with it the promise of drying off next to a fire–that is the feeling that the tea smoke imparts, not the actual arrival, but the comforting nearness of home.”

I’m not sure how I feel about eel, but I think I’d eat anything this man made!

So, all ye foodies, adventure lovers, and historical-fictionados, this is your must get beach read of the summer!

Thanks, Tom.

review by Annie Leonard

Inferno

Kept under wraps until today, so I haven’t read it yet, but the newest thriller from the author of The Da Vinci Code is out, to much fanfare!!  As before, the hero is Robert Langton, the erudite and adventurous hero of Brown’s previous books.  I’ll keep you posted as to whether it’s as awesome as Code!  Better yet, you let me know!  Write a review, and I’ll post it!

The Guns at Last Light by Rick Atkinson

The long awaited final volume in the Liberation trilogy by Pulitzer Prize winner, Atkinson is finally here.  I’ve been reading this one for a couple of weeks, savoring one incredible, rich, revealing chapter at a time; learning something new in each one – even though I would have thought I knew a little something about WWII in Europe.  This book is amazing, and will forever change the way I look at war in general, and the last World War in particular.  If you haven’t read the first two in the trilogy yet – An Army at Dawn, and The Day of Battle – I’m stocking those as well.  Congratulations, Mr. Atkinson, on a remarkable achievement.  Read more.

Sleeping in Eden by Nicole Baart

For those of our customers who so enjoyed Far From Here (about the wife whose pilot husband disappeared over Alaska, and the secrets she unearthed about his life), here is the newest offering from Iowa native, Baart.  This time the past and the present are on a collision course in Blackhawk, Iowa, when a doctor filling in for the coroner is called to the scene of an apparent suicide, and then finds the body of a young woman buried under the floor of the barn, just below the suicide’s body.  With the atmospheric and beautiful prose we’ve come to love from Baart.  Read more.

Sinners and the Sea: The Untold Story of Noah’s Wife by Rebecca Kanner

This novel is getting lots of buzz, and is being compared to the Red Tent, and it certainly has a beautiful cover!  This is the story of a girl who remains unnamed because of a birthmark, which is seen as the mark of a demon.  When she is nearly too old to be married, her father gives her to a strange old man named Noah.  Yes, that Noah.  And this unnamed, but incredibly strong woman is destined to be the mother of all the generations after the flood.  This is her story.  Read More.

The 5^th Wave by Rick Yancey

If you keep an eye on books in cyberspace, like I do, you’ll find that this one is prompting some serious chatter.  Described as “The Passage meets Enders Game”, this young adult post-apocalyptic is being hailed as the next big thing.   I just lost about 15 minutes as I was writing this up, so no doubt you’ll be getting the report from me on this one!  So, here’s the scenario: Cassie is a girl alone in the world, maybe not the last human on earth, but one of the last, after an alien invasion.  She’s smart, tough, and very afraid, and she has to decide whether or not to trust the few people she encounters, because you never know if someone is really human, or if they are Other.  If you loved Hunger Games, check this one out   Just in time for summer reading!  Read more.

Just Released!

Silken Prey by John Sandford

The 23rd book in Sandford’s Lucas Davenport thriller series set in Minnesota, and Booklist gives it a Starred Review!  This time, Davenport, the lead investigator for Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is asked by the governor to investigate a stash of kiddie porn found on the computer of a Republican political candidate, a grade school friend of the governor.  Then the story is leaked to the press, and the opposing candidate, a beautiful and ruthless woman, begins to gain ground in the polls, and a political operative disappears.  “This is the best [Davenport novel] in a long time. It’s suspenseful, witty, and wise in the ways of modern politics. And the conclusion is darkly unforgettable. A superb thriller.” (Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)  This is one of our best-selling series, so if you love a razor-sharp thriller and haven’t picked up a Sandford yet, now’s a good time!  Filled with politics, crooked cops, dangerous women and plenty of action. By the way, John Sandford is a native Iowan.  Read more.

The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker

This is one of my personal favorites of the year, continuing with my little riff on Middle Eastern fiction, but definitely of more universal appeal. It is the story of two mythical creatures, one anciend and one newborn, one a captive Syrian jinni named Ahmad, and the other Chava, a Golem made of mud by a renegade Rabbi, living among their traditional peoples in the immigrant neighborhoods of New York City a century ago. As they struggle to make sense of the teeming humanity around them, they encounter each other and become unlikely companions. And then an ancient evil begins to stalk them through the streets and workshops of the ethnic enclaves populated by folk with one foot in the old world and one in the new, where everything is shifting, and enemies can hide in plain sight.  I found Ahmad and Chava’s story profoundly moving and suspenseful, sometimes eerie and strange, but at others intimately familiar.  Even if you’re not a fan of the fantasy genre, give this beautifully haunting tale a spot in your reading pile this year.  Read More

Just out in Paperback!

Some of the past year’s best sellers are just out in paperback, including Cheryl Strayed‘s raw memoir Wild : From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, which has been selected for Oprah’s Bookclub, won a Midwest Independent Booksellers Choice Award, and has appealed to many of our customers here at The Next Chapter.

Also out in paperback this week is Bring Up the Bodies, the second part of Hilary Mantel‘s fictional account of Thomas Cromwell’s life after Wolf Hall, and winner of the Man Booker Prize. In the words of New York Times reviewer Janet Maslin, Bring Up the Bodies is “beautifully constructed… The wonder of Mante’l retelling is that she makes these events fresh and terrifying all over again…Sublime.”

If recent history is more your thing, Agent Garbo: The Brilliant, Eccentric Secret Agent who Tricked Hitler and Saved D-Day by Stephan Talty is another new release about master spy Juan Pujol, a Barcelona poultry farmer who posed as a Nazi spy inside of England and “created an imaginary million-man army, invented armadas out of thin air, and borugght a vast network of fictional subagent to life.” He convinced the Germans that Allied forces approaching Normandy were just a feint, and that the real invasion would come at Calais.  This incredible, true story is based on years of research and interviews, and is a pulse-pounding true espionage thriller.

For fans of Naomi Novik‘s Temeraire series, the wait for the 7th installment is over!  Crucible of Gold is now out in paperback, and this time Will Laurence and his faithful dragon Temeraire come out of retirement in Australia to fight Napoleon’s forces once again, this time in South America! This series is alternate history fantasy at its most entertaining, and although it’s aimed at adults, it is a great choice for teens transitioning out of the children’s section.

This week, I’m especially enchanted with three new titles, each, as it happens, celebrating a different aspect of creativity.  Creativity is such a wonderful aspect of existence, and for me, it’s the fuel that keeps me going.  So, here are these three inspiring books:

The New Persian Kitchen by Louisa Shafia

Cooking is such an intimate art, the act of taking raw foods and preparing them with love into nourishment for friends and family.  I picked this cookbook out from the lists of forthcoming books with a particular friend and customer in mind, one who has family ties to the Persian community.  It’s a beautiful cookbook and sounded like a fresh approach to traditional, so I thought she might like it.  When it came, I found myself immediately drawn in. Shafia intruduces the book, gives a bit of history, and then has this to say “In general, you’ll find that the recipes here emphasize whole grains and gluten-free flours, use minimal amounts of oil and fat, and call for alternatives to white sugar. …”  Sounds like the way I’m trying to eat.  Then I started reading the recipes, and the overwhelming impression was that this cookbook was a must-have for me as I figure out how to use all the fantastic produce in my summer CSA box from Blue Gate Farms!  So, fellow CSA-ers, and the rest of you too, take at look at this delightful new cookbook up and bring a little exotic flair to your summer!  Read More.

The Artful Parent: Simple Ways to Fill Your Family’s Life with Art & Creativity by Jean Van’t Hul

Van’t Hul defines artful activity as any that’s ful of art, beauty and creativity.  She writes, “As parents, there are innumerable ways we can make our family life more artful.  While painting, drawing, and other traditional art-making methods are obvious choices, many other activities can also be considered artful…” These other activities include science experiments, nature walks, baking, and planning a party.  This is compact for an art project book and has page after page of great project ideas using mostly common household art supplies and other products like dish soap, clothes lines, etc.  The photographs throughout show darling, normal children in the midst of their creative process as well as a bunch of great display ideas.  My kids are mostly too old for these projects, but I sure enjoyed reading this one, and will delight in passing it along to the younger families who stop by. Read More

Patchwork, Please : Colorful Zakka Projects to Stitch and Give, by Ayumi Takahashi

This darling little bit of inspiration has clear, easy to follow instructions for sewing up a variety of Zakka projects, which loosely translates to useful objects for the home, using some of those scraps that we sewers have giant stashes of.  Starting with some basic materials lists and instructions, there are sections for the Kitchen, the  Home, for Kids, for Crafts, and for Going Places.  Projects include really cute variations on the basic trivet, the pin cushion, the totebag, and even a tea-bag caddy!  It’s a good thing my sewing machine is already set up, because I’m going home to sew!  Read More

These are selected by Annie, Tresa and Diane, especially to appeal to our customers.  We don’t pretend that these are necessarily the most important books of the season, or that these will all become classics, but they are all great reads we hope will keep you entertained and enriched for the next few months at least!  Enjoy!

Love Anthony , Lisa Genova

Gallery Books, $16.00, Fiction

By the author of Still Alice and Left Neglected comes another tour-de-force exploring the inner workings of the human mind. This is the moving story of one family’s struggle with the realities of parenting a child with autism, and the support they get from the community around them.  When the child dies young, his mother, who has struggled to connect with him, is left to pick up the pieces of her life and find hope again. After reading this remarkable story, especially those passages told from the child’s perspective, you will see autism in an entirely new light.  Read More

The Promise of Stardust , Priscille Sibley

William Morrow, $15.99, Fiction

The story of a successful and loving, but childless, couple and the tragedy that shatters their world, leaving a wife on life support, and a family to grapple with questions of life and death in the face of a political and media frenzy.  Full of questions about the boundaries of decency and the public versus the private world.  Moving and thought provoking, great for fans of Jodi Picoult.  Read More

Calling Invisible Women, Jeanne Ray

Broadway Books, $14.00, Fiction

A delightful read about Clover, a middle aged former reporter, wife and mother who wakes up one morning to discover she’s invisible–truly invisible!  What would you do?  Have you ever felt invisible to your family and the world around you?  Would you retreat and hide, unsure of your new role? Or would you set out to change the world? As Clover grapples with this problem, she learns she is not alone in her invisibility, and that she may just have what it takes to change the world for all the Invisible Women!  Read More

Benediction , Kent Haruf

Knopf, $25.95, Fiction

The new, beautifully written novel from the beloved and bestselling author of Plainsong and Eventitide, set once again in Holt, Colorado. In Benediction, Haruf follows ‘Dad’, a dying man through his quiet last days, as he reflects on the ties that bind people together, and observes all the wonderful small things about life in a small town. But make no mistake, this is not a book about dying, it is a book about living told in the luminous prose fans of Haruf have come to love. Read More

Ordinary Grace, William Kent Krueger

Atria, $24.99, Mystery

A departure from Krueger’s usual thriller fare, this is a coming of age story about a two boys in the early 1960s whose childhoods come to an abrupt end as death visits their small town — first with the death of a young boy, then with their happening upon the body of a hobo, and most terribly, the brutal murder of the beautiful older sister of the main character.  As they grapple with death and what it does to their own families, they must also learn what ripples it will leave in their community. Ordinary Grace is an unforgettable novel about discovering the terrible price of wisdom and the enduring grace of God.  Read More

Ghana Must Go , Taiye Selase

Penguin Press, $25.95, Fiction

Kwaku Sai is dead. A renowned surgeon and failed husband, he succumbs suddenly at dawn outside the home he shares in Ghana with his second wife. The news of Kwaku’s death sends a ripple around the world, bringing together the family he abandoned years before.  This novel teaches us so much about the lives of immigrants to America, and the cultural differences that we all grow up with that shape how we see the world and what we believe is wrong or right. This one with stay with me for weeks!   Read More.

Birdseye: The Adventures of a Curious Man, Mark Kurlansky

Doubleday Books, $15.95, Biography

This lively biography from the author of Cod and Salt follows the life and times of Clarence Birdseye, the man who developed the process for fast freezing food, and founded the company that still bears his name.  But not only did Birdseye forever changed the way we preserve, store, and distribute food, and the way we eat, but his insatiable curiosity let him to invent solutions to a wide variety of problems, and to a rich life full of family and perpetual discovery. This is a vibrant and affectionate narrative reveals Clarence Birdseye as a quintessential “can-do” American., Read More

After Visiting Friends: A Son’s Story

Michael Hainey, Scribner, $26.00, Memoir

This memoir that reads like a thriller is the account of a man’s search for the truth about what happened to his father forty years ago,  when he was found dead in Chicago.  Filled with familiar places, and set against the backdrop of the newspaper industry of the Midwest, it is a son’s relentless quest to uncover what really happened, and an account of a mother’s love and sacrifices, and how families create and bury secrets.  Read More.

Rage Against the Dying , Becky Masterman

Minotaur, $24.99, Mystery/Thriller

Retired FBI agent, Brigid Quinn’s experiences in hunting sexual predators have left her with memories she wishes she didn’t have and lethal skills she hopes never to need again. But the past intervenes when a man confesses to the worst unsolved case of Brigid’s career. We definitely hope to see more of this feisty white-haired heroine and her riveting adventures!  Read More

Evidence of Life , Barbara Taylor Sissel

Mira Books, $14.95, Mystery/Thriller

After a woman’s husband and daughter disappear during a weekend camping trip, she mounting evidence that her husband had secrets, and she will not rest until she solves the mystery of what happened to them.  For fans of Anita Shreve, this is a taut psychological thriller that cuts to the heart of a woman’s fears. Read More

The Yard, Alex Grecian

Putnam, $16.00, Mystery

Set during the early days of Scotland Yard’s Murder Squad, just after Jack the Ripper’s rampages, during the height of the Victorian era, this tale of murder and suspense is a satisfying first entry in a new series.  Readers get to know the hard-working cops that patrol the streets of London, their families, and the murderer who is stalking them and killing the police-men one by one. Readers also get glimpses of the emerging science of forensics, as law enforcement begins to use the advancements of science in their sleuthing.  The first in what promises to be a great new series of historical mysteries!  Read More

The Maid and the Queen : The Secret History of Joan of Arc, Nancy Goldstone

Penguin, $16.00, History

You may think you know the story of Joan of Arc, the simple medieval peasant girl who led the French army to victory against the invading English, but was later tried for heresy and burned as a witch.  But, as Goldstone carefully lays out, that is not the whole story.  Joan, or Jeanne D’Arc as she was known, did lead an army, but she was much more than a simple peasant, and she was supported by Yolande of Aragon Queen of Sicily, one of her time’s most influential politicians.  This is the tale of two powerful women set against a complex backdrop of shifting alliances and a world where women had to work behind the scenes to control their own destinies.  Not a light read, but one of those fascinating and satisfying books that change the way you look at history. Read More

Seven Locks, Christine Wade

Atria, $15.00, Historical Fiction

With a haunting and utterly unique voice, this is the story of a wife and mother living in a Dutch community in the Catskill Mountains on the eve of the American Revolution.  She cares little for what her neighbors think, but when her husband abandons her to care for their farm and children alone, she must depend on her community, and her own hard work for survival.  This novel gives voice not only to a hidden corner of history, but also to the common citizens who were buffeted by the winds of war and politics during the early years of your nation’s history.  If you like historical fiction, don’t miss this one! Read More

The Aviator’s Wife, Melanie Benjamin

Delacorte Press, $26.00, Historical Fiction

This novel goes inside the private world of the very public figures of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, and will change the way you look at fame, at aviation, and even at history.  Beautiful and riveting, this story gives us an inside look at what it was like to be a wife and mother during the early decades of the 20^th century, at a crossroads of women’s rights and responsibilities within the family, at a juncture of fame and fortune, and during the crisis of a family caught in the middle of it all.  Read More

Mary Coin, Marisa Silver

Blue Rider Press, $26.95, Historical Fiction

Most of us have seen the iconic photograph taken by Dorothea Lange of a woman and her children during the dustbowl years of the Great Depression.  This is the story inspired by the photograph of this Native American migrant worker and mother of six. It is also the story of the photographer who captured the image, and a man, decades later, who tries to find the truth of the story.  This is Diane’s pick for best book of the year!  Read More

Orphan Train, Christina Baker Kline

William Morrow, $14.99, Fiction / Historical Fiction

This is the story of a 9 year old Irish immigrant girl who was among the thousands of children shipped west from New York in the late 19th and early 20th centuries on what became known as the Orphan Trains.  These children were parceled out to any families who would take them in states like Kansas and Iowa, and often faced lives of servitude and abuse at the hands of their new ‘parents’.  This is also the story of a modern-day troubled teenager who is just aging out of the Foster Care system, and is given the choice to do community service to recompense for her crime.  To meet her obligation, she goes to help an elderly woman clean out her attic, and the two find they have a great deal in common as they sift through the memories of a lifetime. Read More

The Weight of Small Things, Sherri Wood Emmons

Kensington, $15.00, Fiction

When an old love resurfaces in her life, asking for her help in keeping his non-profit children’s shelter open, a woman must decide if she will help him, thus facing the choice she made decades ago. Moving and thought provoking, this story explores the weight of those decisions we all carry with us as we move through life. Read More

The Truth About Love and Lightning , Susan McBride

William Morrow, $14.99, Fiction

A freak tornado brings a magical man to the walnut farm where Gretchen lives with her twin sisters. It’s as if he fell from the sky, landing in the millions of walnuts dropped by the storm.  This mystery man has no memory of who he is or how he got there, but something seems very familiar.  With Gretchen’s daughter Abby arriving simultaneously to the farm, pregnant and unmarried, all is a bit unnerving for Gretchen.  Are these events about to reveal her 40 year old secret?  Read More

The Fate of Mercy Alban, Wendy Webb

Voice, $15.99, Gothic Suspense

For fans of the classics from Phyllis Whitney and Daphne DuMaurier, a quintessential Gothic Romance from award-winning novelist Webb. This is a spine-tingling modern-day haunted house story set on Lake Superior, with all the elements a good gothic should have, including a mysterious house, a beautiful heroine, an enigmatic love interest, forgotten stories, and the retainers that know them all. Webb has woven a suspenseful mystery that skillfully skirts the boundary between what is paranormal and what is psychological., Read More

Alif the Unseen, G Willow Wilson

Grove Press, $16.00, Fantasy

A sort of Arabian Nights meets Harry Potter in which a young computer hacker in an unnamed Arab emirate shields his clients–dissidents, outlaws, Islamists, and other watched groups–from surveillance and tries to stay out of trouble. He goes by Alif. He is in love with a woman out of reach of his social status, and when she is betrothed to his arch enemy, the Government computer mastermind known as The Hand of God, he is betrayed, sending Alif on the run through the streets of the city along with his neighbor, a young woman whose face he has not seen since they were children and she took the veil.  Deeper than it’s adventurous spirit may seem, this was one I could not put down, and that has stayed with me for months!  Read More

The River of No Return, Bee Ridgeway

Dutton, $27.95, Fantasy / Historical Fiction

This romp in time has it all!  There’s a dashing hero, several feisty heroines, some really nasty bad guy, plenty of mystery, suspense, humor and romance as Ridgeway navigates her eminently plausible route along the River of Time filled with paradoxes and switchbacks. For readers of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander and Deborah Harkness’ Discovery of Witches.  Read More

To complicate the situation, he loves a girl, which, as we all know, is a risky business, and this love proves to be the catalyst that propels him into danger, out of the isolated bedroom where he does his coding, and through the streets of his city, which are populated by veiled women, haughty turbaned royals, and a cast of mysterious creatures who are not quite human.

Wilson proves a worthy successor to Scheherazade with a story that pays homage to the Arab Spring and the Arabian Nights, and also paints a loving portrait of an Islam that is founded not on the more familiar themes of jihad and oppression, but on Godliness and learning.

I read Alif the Unseen as part of what is turning out to be a bit of a meditation on Middle Eastern culture. I also read, and highly recommend the forthcoming The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker, and the mystery series set in Saudi Arabia by Zoe Ferraris, including Finding Nouf and City of Veils. These first three built my understanding of that part of the world, and helped me understand the complexity of Alif the Unseen better.

review by Annie Leonard

Boy + Bot

by Ame Dyckman, illustrated by Dan Yaccarinio, Alfred A. Knopf, 2012

Great for the younger kids, especially boys, with simple, evocative text, bright pictures, and a fun subtext in the illustrations that will entertain adults also.  This is a sweet story about friendship despite differences.

It’s Milking Time

by Phillis Alsdurf, illustrated b Steve Johnson and Lou Fancher, Random House, 2012

Regional and laden with tradition, the luminous rendering of morning and evening light in the illustrations sets this one apart.  The story gives older children a sense of the work and love that goes into the milk they drink.

The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse

An Aesop Fable retold and illustrated by Helen Ward, Templar books, 2011

This is our pick for the most gorgeous illustrations we’ve seen this year!  The tale is a familiar favorite, and again, the subtext of the illustrations is what really enthralled me – the country scenes are lush and magical in contrast with the coarser finery of the city scenes.  A treasure!

The Night Santa Got Lost : How NORAD Saved Christmas

by Michael Keane, illustrated by Michael Garland,  Regnery Publishing Co., 2012

‘Tis the season, not only to celebrate Christmas’s spirit of giving as exemplified by Santa Claus and his reindeer, but also the work and sacrifices of our nation’s military services.  In a fun redux of ‘Twas the Night before Christmas, we learn about the year that Santa got lost in a storm and how all the branches of the military, including some of the lesser known ones, pitch in to help Santa complete his important annual mission.

Because Amelia Smiled

By David Ezra Stein, Candlewick Press, 2012

We love this book, both for the message and the illustrations. With fun, bright pictures that give plenty of opportunity to find details with your child, this simple story shows how something as simple as a smile, can change the world!  Global and fun.

 Chapter Books

Bliss

By Kathryn LIttlewood, Katherine Tegen Books, 2012

My daughter’s favorite of the year! Bliss is a sweet (in more ways than one) middle grade novel about a very special family who runs a bakery in a small town.  The twist is that some of their recipes are magical, things like Stone Sleep Snickerdoodles and Singing Gingersnaps that are baked to help the people around them.  A touch of young romance, pesky younger siblings, plenty of adventure, and a dusting of magic make this a sure hit.

The One and Only Ivan

By Katherine Applegate, illustrated by Patricia Castelao, Harper, 2012

This just moved me!  Told in spare prose from the point of view of Ivan, the gorilla, who lives in a mall side-show zoo, this will make you think about what it means to be human, and about how we treat other creatures.  Ivan is an artist, he is also wise and compassionate, and he helps his friends, the other animals at the mall, weather the changes that are coming.  Ivan will make you cry, and then he’ll make you cheer, and ultimately, I think he’ll make you a better ape.

The Hero’s Guide to Saving your Kingdom

By Christopher Healy, illustrated by Todd Harris, Walden Pond Press, 2012

This is a fast-paced, funny, different, and definitely memorable take on fairy tale classics.  Remember all those fairy tale heroes?  The ones named Prince Charming, or sometimes just ‘The Prince’ who saved Rapunzel and Sleeping Beauty and Snow White?  Well, here is the story of four of these heroes, imperfect princes and their four improbable princesses, on a mission to save their kingdoms from an evil plot!

Non Fiction

Brothers at Bat
The True Story of an Amazing All-Brother Baseball Team

By Audrey Vernick, illustrated by Steven Salerno, Clarion Books 2012

Great Story and pictures.  This is the true story of a New Jersey family with enough sons to field an entire, winning, baseball team!  As the years go by, six of them go to fight overseas in WWII, and luckily, they all come home to play baseball again, raise their families, and eventually to be inducted in to the Baseball Hall of Fame!

Unbored : The Essential Field Guide to Serious Fun

By Joshua Glenn and Elizabeth Foy Larsen, Bloomsbury 2012

Crammed with many hours’ worth of fun and knowledge, a bit like the ‘Tell Me More’ series I remember from my own child hood, or the Dangerous Book for Boys. Full of projects, suggestions for civic involvement, science experiments, history, social skills, arts, crafts, recipes, and a “Manifesto of Doing” that exhorts readers to Do what you love, develop expertise, express yourself without words, interrogate grownups, get mobile, fix stuff, make money, and share what you know”.  This one WILL be under our tree this year!

Classic

The Black Stallion

By Walter Farley, originally published in 1941

This is the one I’ve read countless times –  pulse pounding adventure, shipwrecks, accidents, horse races and above all, the most fabulous black horse a child could ever dream about.

The asymmetries in “Love and Other Delusions” are profound, and help establish the fundamental drama of the piece. Alice is a privileged thirty-year old teacher who seduces one of her students, an intelligent, handsome, engaging, eighteen-year old. Danny is from a hardscrabble background. He steals from the theatre he works in to support his ill father, as well as a younger brother and sister. Their mother abandoned them long ago. And in walks Alice, beautiful, well off, confident, but older. Not quite their mother’s age, but close enough, with the lovers age gap proportionately decreasing over the next few decades and the affair less startling as the story unfolds.

Alice ultimately loses her job because of the relationship, despite the fact that her long suffering husband Peter is the Dean of the department of the school where she works. Or maybe because of it. Who knows? Fortunately for Alice, she doesn’t really need the work, since Peter loves her and will support her, and while he must be heartbroken about her affair not only with Danny, but with apparently many other men, he never finds it in himself to leave her. In fact, for over twenty years, he lovingly hand rolls her cigarettes, a singular gift. Not exactly like handing the keys to your car to your drunk wife and sending her on a beer run, but with its own implications for the story. We never really get to know him–is he so in love that he will forgive her anything, or is he the most significant of her enablers? Or maybe he has his own indiscretions?

We also learn that Alice and Peter may have a reason as to why both of them behave the way they do, a nearly unspeakable tragedy, which incidentally, deserves not much more than a mention in the story, but still pervades it. Enablers abound in their lives. Friends, past and future lovers, and those of us who sit idly by and watch our friends self-destruct, thinking it none of our business, whether it is or not.

Both Alice and Danny are powerful personalities, both flawed, yet more powerful than those around them. Danny’s younger sister has one moment, but perhaps the only one of note before she fades to oblivion. His younger brother wanders in and out of the story, and while we hope he doesn’t get hurt, we don’t really know if he does or in what way. For one of her class and time, Alice of course has a therapist with her own flaws, which maybe are not so much her own, but perhaps of her profession. She too has an indiscretion on her hands, and interestingly enough, these women share a bit of regret, if not so much guilt. Kathy struggles, for all the right reasons, but fails, as she was likely doomed to. Yet another asymmetry.

But who, actually, is Kathy? She too, has an ineffectual husband, which may reflect, actually a broader societal condition. Does anyone actually have an effectual husband anymore, given that the state of what constitutes “manhood” is in such transition? While contemporary American society wouldn’t say it actually likes ineffectual men, it recognizes feet of clay when it sees them, and if it doesn’t see them, it will likely do its best to create them for you.

Danny too has his own flaws, his own indiscretions, his own affairs, and most vulgarly, thievery of a variety of sorts. But what is theft? Does theft relate only to the material of our world? Theft involves breaking an agreement with respect to private property; adultery is breaking an agreement with respect to sexual exclusivity. Maybe in the end Danny rises above both kinds of theft, maybe not. But really, it’s tough to like a thief who steals material things. Ironically, it’s easier to look the other way when the thief steals not money, but promises. But really, would you rather have your wife steal a car, or sleep with your neighbor? The former gets her jail time, and while the latter may be devastating, everyone involved will most likely construct some sort of rationalization that is eventually publicly acceptable. Adulterers rewrite their lives every day, yet a car thief is always a car thief.

But rising above it all is the story. Cast this story in another time and place, in the middle of a war perhaps, or at a pivotal historical moment, Baker’s storytelling would have been easier, if not more profound. Set instead in modern St. Augustine and Atlanta, places where theaters, park benches, cell phones and credit cards work as significant props to the plot, his chore is more difficult, and likely more meaningful. Why? Because the drama is created by the characters, not by external forces. As such, it becomes internal to us as well, because of likely shared experiences with the protagonists. Most of us are not identifiable cogs in the engine of history, but all of us hope that we would rise to the challenges if we were, as do the great characters of literature. Contrastingly, we, and those around us, live lives full of indiscretion, lies and lust, if not adultery. Or thievery. Cause then is the matter of our own hand, not the product of great historical forces beyond us. Which is, of course, more real. And common to us all. Baker’s gift then is that he creates not only a story of Alice, Danny, Kathy and Peter, but a story of ourselves. Like our players in the play, our lives are sticky–no–doughy. Doughy with thorns. And we recognize the places where the characters find themselves, geographically, emotionally, and if we’re lucky, physically. We also recognize their decisions, and even if we don’t necessarily agree with them, we can empathize. Baker writes well enough that their pain is our pain, their joy ours, and their seductions familiar and even titillating, even if uncomfortable.

Literary name dropping is an easy way out of a description of an author’s work in familiar literary terms, but a convenient crutch when I need one here. Drieser comes to mind at times–especially in “An American Tragedy;” Flaubert when I see resemblances between Alice and Emma Bovary, and not to go overboard, the interactions and settings here remind me of the suburban worlds of Updike and Irving.

There is another element to Baker’s work that I recognize in at least one of his other books–”A Good Man,” and that element is how he weaves in and out of clarity and opacity. The clarity is in the richness of description, of characterization, and of language. And just when you start to think you know what is going on, boundaries become fuzzy, nearly opaque. Time becomes a character, and characters blend in and out of each other, and it’s difficult to tell who is who, and when and where we are. And when Love and other Delusions is at its very best, we ARE Alice, or maybe another character, because those of us who are old enough to have been around the block a time or two and have taken and or given our share of lumps, share her story. Or his story. Or at least a part of it. Maybe we are her story. And we may not like it. But we know we aren’t alone. And with respect to love, is it indeed the delusion Baker asserts in his title? The cynic says of course it is. No question. The romantic replies, maybe. But what better does the world have to offer? Most of us will take love when we can get it–and its delusions. As did Alice.

Reviewed by Robert Leonard, Author of “Yellow Cab”

A couple of years ago, I devoured Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead, by Sara Gran. Claire DeWitt is an edgy private investigator who follows clues in her dreams, is a devotee of a mysterious dead French detective, and has a down and dirty approach to finding out what happened to a prominent New Orleans prosecutor, who disappeared during the Storm. She haunts the streets around the missing man’s home, she makes friends with teenaged delinquents and drug dealers. She listens in the missing man’s empty house, testing the wind for whispers of clues.  Her methods are fascinating.

Aside from great characters, Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead gave me a glimpse of what really happened as the storm raged and the levies broke, and the people scrambled for safety.  It was the most genuine rendering of the disaster that I’ve seen, and gave me a new layer of understanding over my substrate of impressions and preconceptions.

I read a whole lot of books in my line of work, but this mystery juxtaposed a fresh style with a really dirty story, and has proven to be one has stayed with me in some surprising ways. Read it!

Set almost entirely in The City, as Stockholm is known, this is the story of a callow young bureaucrat named Emil with a penchant for playing cards, who is told to marry —  or lose his cozy position as a customs inspector.  One night at the gambling tables, Emil encounters a mysterious older woman named Mrs. Sparrow, who pulls him into a web of intrigue and danger swirling around a mystical spread of cards called the Octavo, that will, she tells him, help find the wife he needs.  “Any event,” Mrs. Sparrow says, “that may befall the Seeker – any event—can be connected to a set of eight people. And the eight must be in place for the event to transpire.”

As Emil returns each night to learn what the next card in his Octavo might be, the reader is given illustrations of the cards and their layout, one card at a time.  And as Emil races to identify each of the eight players in his Octavo – identities with labels like ‘The Seeker, , The Magpie, and The Prize, he engages, perhaps for the first time, in something larger than his own interests, and must decide how far he is willing to go to get what he wants. Glittering scenes of fabulous wealth are juxtaposed with hints of the desperate lives of most Swedes at the time, and we are pulled with Emil into a sometimes bewildering maelstrom of politics, hatred, and desperation mixed with heady romance, fine art, and honor.   Will the Octavo turn out to be a real construct, or is the mysterious Sparrow using Emil for her own purposes?  Will he find the connection he seeks, or will he be tricked into committing treason?

With lush settings, finely drawn characters, and a darkening plot that involves refugees from the violence in France, fabulously expensive custom wrought fans, poisons, Kings, maids, and runaways, this was a most entertaining foray into a piece of history I knew nothing about. And it also had me wondering who my own Octavo might be.