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The Trial of True Love
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Jacket Notes:
Bron is a thirty-year-old writer living in London,
a seemingly incurable heartbreaker and dodger of commitment. He is fascinated by
the symbolist artist Paul Marotte and has made the artist the center of a book he
is writing about love at first sight. Bron goes to his friend’ s country house to
work in solitude but encounters the beautiful, enigmatic Flora. Suddenly the theme
of his book takes on a completely new, intensely personal dimension as Bron becomes
dangerously smitten by the aloof beauty. Fast-paced, brilliantly crafted, and intellectually
stimulating, "The Trial of True Love "is a captivating exploration of the nature
of love, its elusiveness, and most of all, the universal human need to find it.
The Opposite House
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Jacket Notes:
In a dazzling follow-up to "The Icarus Girl," Oyeyemi
explores the thin wall between myth and reality through the alternating tales of
two young women and their search for the truth about faith and identity.
REVIEW: Publisher's Weekly 04/09/2007
Oyeyemi returns to the realms of myth and magic in
her second novel, the rewarding and challenging narrative of Maja, a 24-year-old
black Cuban woman whose family fled Castro's revolution for London when she was
seven. Maja has recently moved in with her boyfriend, Aaron, and discovers she is
pregnant with the child she's wanted since she was five years old. And though adjusted
to life in London, she begins to wonder about the country her family left behind.
Coloring her search for a sense of belonging are the gods and goddesses of Santeria,
a fusion of Catholicism and West African Yoruba beliefs.
Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict
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Jacket Notes:
After nursing a broken engagement with Jane Austen
novels and Absolut, Courtney Stone wakes up and finds herself not in her Los Angeles
bedroom or even in her own body, but inside the bedchamber of a woman in Regency
England. Who but an Austen addict like herself could concoct such a fantasy?
Not only is Courtney stuck in another woman's life, she is forced to pretend she
actually is that woman; and despite knowing nothing about her, she manages to fool
even the most astute observer. But not even her love of Jane Austen has prepared
Courtney for the chamber pots and filthy coaching inns of nineteenth-century England,
let alone the realities of being a single woman who must fend off suffocating chaperones,
condomless seducers, and marriages of convenience. Enter the enigmatic Mr. Edgeworth,
who fills Courtney's borrowed brain with confusing memories that are clearly not
her own.
Try as she might to control her mind and find a way home, Courtney cannot deny that
she is becoming this other womanand being this other woman is not without its advantages:
Especially in a looking-glass Austen world. Especially with a suitor who may not
turn out to be a familiar species of philanderer after all.
Heaven's Net Is Wide: The First Tale of the Otori
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REVIEW: Publisher's Weekly 05/28/2007
Set in a brutal and breathtaking feudal Japan, this
lyrical and moving prequel to Hearn's "Tales of the Otori" and also the fifth and
final entry in this epic chronicle of ruthless warlords and ill-fated love, focuses
on the early life of Otori Shigeru, the young heir to the Otori clan. Raised in
a strictly hierarchical society that reveres loyalty and honor, the adolescent Shigeru
witnesses firsthand how treachery and duplicity play an integral role in the deaths
of thousands of Otori warriors, the bloody annihilation of his family and, inevitably,
his complete and utter degradation. As a dispossessed heir, Shigeru finds strength
and retributive inspiration in the teachings of his former mentor, warrior-monk
Matsuda Shingen, and in his illicit relationship with the resourceful Lady Maruyama,
whose life has also been devastated by the Tohan. Equal parts historical fiction,
high fantasy and revelatory Taoist fable, the now complete "Tales of the Otori"
is a saga to be treasured.
Some of Tim's Stories
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Jacket Notes:
From the bestselling author of "The Outsiders," and
the recipient of the first Margaret A. Edwards Award, comes this collection of short
stories.
REVIEW: Publisher's Weekly 01/15/2007
14 connected short-short stories that explore the divergent
lives of two close cousins whose fathers are killed in car accident when the boys
are adolescents. When the cousins are both 25, a drug deal goes wrong: Terry is
imprisoned, while Mike gets away, living a fugitive life in Oklahoma as a bartender
and bouncer. The tales move back and forth in time: "The Sweetest Sound" describes
nine-year-old Mike's being awakened during the night when his father, a war vet,
cries out in his sleep; while "Full Moon Birthday" finds the boys sharing Mike's
first legal drink and a friendly older woman. Later stories delve into Mike's dead-end,
often dangerous job at the bar, and his attempt at striking up a friendship with
his pretty adult-ed instructor.
Life Class
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Jacket Notes:
In this superb new novel, Pat Barker returns to her
most renowned subject: the devastation and psychic damage wrought by WWI on all
levels of British society. In the spring of 1914, a group of young students gather
in an art studio for a life-drawing class. Paul Tarrant and Elinor Brooke are two
components of a love triangle, and at the outset of the war, they turn to each other.
After volunteering for the Red Cross, Paul must confront the fact that life, love,
and art will never be the same for him.
Barker is unrivaled in her ability to convey simple, moving human truths. Her skill
in relaying the harrowing experience of modern warfare is matched by the depth of
insight she brings to the experience of love and the morality of art in a time of
war.
Across the Mystic Shore
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Jacket Notes:
The arrival of a young boy in an upper-middleclass
Bengali household triggers a gripping story of love, desire, and renunciation. Set
in two cities, New Delhi and Varanasi, and full of the sights, scents, and sounds
of India, Across the Mystic Shore explores the entwining lives of four women forced
to confront their past decisions in order to understand their present delusions
and insecurities. Dr. Suroopa Mukherjee teaches English Literature at Delhi University.
The Cairo Diary
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Jacket Notes:
British-occupied Cairo, 1928: Several young children
have disappeared and were then found, horribly mutilated, in the tombs just outside
the city. Panic is spreading among the locals after a cloaked giant is sighted.
Has a ghoul from "One Thousand and One Nights" been brought to life? British inspector
Jeremy Matheson follows the trail of the monster, which takes him into the depths
of underground Cairo, as well as deep into his own tortured past.
Mont-Saint-Michel, 2005: Marion has taken refuge in
the wind-swept and remote monastery located on a spit of land on the west coast
of France. In the wake of a scandal, caused by her own revelations, that is now
reverberating through the French capital, she has been spirited away from Paris
and brought here by the French Secret Service for her own protection. When she finds
a diary dating from 1928 in the monastery library, penned by Jeremy Matheson and
hidden inside the jacket of an Edgar Allan Poe book, she is inexorably pulled into
the past as she follows his investigation. Soon she feels she is being watched,
and taunting notes and riddles urge her to give back what is not hers. Could one
of the brothers or sisters at the monastery be behind this? And who is the old man
Marion befriends?
The two stories intertwine and culminate in an absolutely baffling climax in this
cinematic bestselling thriller from France. Meticulously researched and fast-paced,
"The Cairo Diary" is a stunning mystery.
Austenland
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Jacket Notes:
For every woman whos read "Pride and Prejudice" and
sighed for Mr. Darcy comes a confection of a book from "New York Times"-bestselling
author Shannon Hale.
REVIEW: Publisher's Weekly 02/12/2007
In 32-year-old singleton Jane Hayes's mind, no man
in the world can measure up to Fitzwilliam Darcy-specifically the Fitzwilliam played
by Colin Firth in the BBC adaptation ofPride and Prejudice . Jane is forced to confront
her Austen obsession when her wealthy great-aunt Carolyn dies and leaves her an
all-expenses-paid vacation to Pembrook Park, a British resort where guests live
like the characters in Jane's beloved Austen novels. Jane sees the trip as an opportunity
for one last indulgence of her obsession before she puts it "all behind her-Austen,
men, fantasies, period," but the lines between reality and fiction become pleasantly
blurred as Jane acclimates to the world of Spencer jackets and stringent etiquette
rules, and finds herself torn between the Darcyesque Mr. Nobley and a forbidden
tryst with Pembrook Park's gardener.
The Savage Detectives
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Jacket Notes:
Bolano traces the hidden connection between literature
and violence in a world where national boundaries are fluid and death lurks in the
shadow of the avant-garde. "The Savage Detectives" is a dazzling original, the first
great Latin American novel of the 21st century.
REVIEW: Publisher's Weekly 12/11/2006
This novel-the major work from Chilean-born novelist
Bolaño (1953-2003) here beautifully translated by Wimmer-will allow English speaking
readers to discover a truly great writer. In early 1970s Mexico City, young poets
Arturo Belano (Bolaño's alter ego and a regular in his fiction) and Ulises Lima
start a small, erratically militant literary movement, the Visceral Realists, named
for another, semimythical group started in the 1920s by the nearly forgotten poet
Cesárea Tinajero. The book opens with 17 year-old Juan García Madero's precocious,
deadpan notebook entries, dated 1975, chronicling his initiation into the movement.
The Long Walk Home
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Jacket Notes:
Set in a small, lovely mountain town in North Wales,
this is the story of a man and a woman struggling with the agonizing complexities
of fidelity--to a spouse, to a moral code, to themselves, and to a passionate love
neither thought would ever come again.
Meet Me in Venice
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REVIEW: Publisher's Weekly 05/21/2007
In this globe-spanning, intrigue-filled thriller from
veteran bestseller Adler, an American antiques dealer working in Paris, 38-year-old
Precious "Preshy" Rafferty, is drawn into a scheme that also ensnares a cousin she's
never met in person, Shanghai antique dealer Lily Song. Lily owns a fabulous, super-expensive
necklace that Lily's business associate, Mary-Lou Chen, is out to steal. It's the
job of Mary-Lou's paramour, American businessman Bennett Yuan, to find a buyer.
As the suspense builds, Lily and Preshy must travel to Venice to meet and, among
other things, protect the fortune Preshy is due to inherit from her Aunt Grizelda.
Adler remains as adept as ever at making her various locales come to life and doesn't
disappoint in keeping the mystery surrounding the necklace, and the two cousins,
swirling
A Woman in Jerusalem
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Jacket Notes:
A victim of a suicide bombing lies nameless in a hospital
morgue, and a Jerusalem newspaper accuses her employer of "gross negligence and
inhumanity." Overwhelmed by guilt, her employer entrusts the task of identifying
and burying the victim to another employee. As the facts of the woman's life take
shape, the employee yields to feelings of regret and atonement.
A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers
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Jacket Notes:
Drawing on her diaries written upon her initial arrival
in London, Guo creates this story to match her own steadily improving English. Freshly
humorous, sexy, and poignant, this debut novel is an utterly original story about
language, identity, and the cultural divide.
The Cleft
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Jacket Notes:
In this fascinating and beguiling novel, Lessing envisions
a mythical society free from sexual intrigue, jealousy, and petty rivalries--essentially,
a society free from men. Lessing confronts the troublesome particulars of how gender
affects every aspect of peoples existence.
The Reincarnationist
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REVIEW: Publisher's Weekly 07/09/2007
Best known as an author of erotic thrillers, Rose delves
into religious myth and past-life discovery in her well-paced ninth novel. In present-day
Rome, a terrorist bomb explosion triggers flashbacks of pre-Christian Italy in photographer
Josh Ryder. Josh experiences the memories as Julius, a pagan priest defending the
sacrosanct monuments of his gods and the life of his vestal virgin lover against
the emperor-mandated onslaught of Christianity in A.D. 391. Six months later, Josh
has teamed with the Phoenix Foundation, an institute specializing in past-life memories
in children, to explore a newly excavated tomb that may contain pagan memory stones
that incite past-life regressions and will, by proving the existence of reincarnation,
challenge the church. The stakes rise after it becomes clear that dangerous outside
forces also want the stones.