Everything I never told you - Celeste Ng

Everything I never told you - Ng, Celeste

Summary: "Lydia is dead. But they don't know this yet. So begins the story of this exquisite debut novel, about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee; their middle daughter, a girl who inherited her mother's bright blue eyes and her father's jet-black hair. Her parents are determined that Lydia will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue-in Marilyn's case that her daughter become a doctor rather than a homemaker, in James's case that Lydia be popular at school, a girl with a busy social life and the center of every party. When Lydia's body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together tumbles into chaos, forcing them to confront the long-kept secrets that have been slowly pulling them apart. James, consumed by guilt, sets out on a reckless path that may destroy his marriage. Marilyn, devastated and vengeful, is determined to find a responsible party, no matter what the cost. Lydia's older brother, Nathan, is certain that the neighborhood bad boy Jack is somehow involved. But it's the youngest of the family-Hannah-who observes far more than anyone realizes and who may be the only one who knows the truth about what happened. A profoundly moving story of family, history, and the meaning of home, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, exploring the divisions between cultures and the rifts within a family, and uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another"-- Provided by publisher.

Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* A teenage girl goes missing and is later found to have drowned in a nearby lake, and suddenly a once tight-knit family unravels in unexpected ways. As the daughter of a college professor and his stay-at-home wife in a small Ohio town in the 1970s, Lydia Lee is already unwittingly part of the greater societal changes going on all around her. But Lydia suffers from pressure that has nothing to do with tuning out and turning on. Her father is an American born of first-generation Chinese immigrants, and his ethnicity, and hers, make them conspicuous in any setting. Her mother is white, and their interracial marriage raises eyebrows and some intrusive charges of miscegenation. More troubling, however, is her mother's frustration at having given up medical school for motherhood, and how she blindly and selfishly insists that Lydia follow her road not taken. The cracks in Lydia's perfect-daughter foundation grow slowly but erupt suddenly and tragically, and her death threatens to destroy her parents and deeply scar her siblings. Tantalizingly thrilling, Ng's emotionally complex debut novel captures the tension between cultures and generations with the deft touch of a seasoned writer. Ng will be one to watch. Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.

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So, anyway...- John Cleese

So, anyway...- Cleese, John

Summary: In this rollicking memoir, Cleese takes his readers on a Grand Tour of his ascent in the entertainment world, from his humble beginnings in a sleepy English town and his early comedic days at Cambridge University (with future Python partner Graham Chapman), to the founding of the landmark comedy troupe that would propel him to worldwide renown.

“So, Anyway... ambles along in loose fashion, taking its time, stopping to admire the view here and there, dispensing a little social commentary...and otherwise taking the scenic route through a mostly sunny landscape. The effect is a bit like having a long lunch with an amiable, slightly loony uncle. Who also happens to be John Cleese.” —Michael Ian Black, The New York Times Book Review

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The country of Ice Cream Star - Sandra Newman

The country of Ice Cream Star - Sandra Newman

Summary: Enduring a nomadic existence in the aftermath of a disease that kills all humans once they reach the age of twenty, fifteen-year-old Ice Cream Star risks her freedom and life to travel dangerous territory in search of a cure.

Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* In a future America, the population has been decimated by a mysterious disease, leaving only a few tribes governed by youths who dread the fatal sickness known as "posies," which afflicts everyone by their late teens. Ice Cream Fifteen Star lives with her tribe of Sengles in Massa Woods, scavenging abandoned homes and hunting for survival. Their leader, Ice Cream's beloved brother, Driver Eighteen, is already showing posies symptoms. When the Sengles capture a "roo" (a fabled light-skinned foreigner), and Ice Cream learns that he's reached the unattainable age of 30, she secures his promise that he'll help her steal the cure from the roos. But when another roo is spotted nearby, Ice Cream's roo, Pasha, convinces Driver and El Mayor (leader of the industrious Lowells) that the roos are positioning for an invasion, and they must flee. The journey forces the Sengles and Lowells to navigate power, rebellion, and war among unfamiliar civilizations as Ice Cream struggles to secure the cure without sacrificing her humanity or the lives that depend on her. Ice Cream's story, related in patois, is a richly detailed dystopian epic that blends elements of American history, popular culture, and political allegory with romance and thriller pacing. This suspenseful, provocative tale is The Hunger Games meets Lord of the Flies and The Walking Dead, only much, much better. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Could this be the next big book to capture readers all across the age spectrum? Don't bet against it. Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.

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Silver screen fiend - Patton Oswalt

Silver screen fiend: Learning about life from an addiction to film - Oswalt, Patton

Summary: "Between 1995 and 1999, Patton Oswalt lived with an unshakable addiction. It wasn't drugs, alcohol or sex: it was film. After moving to L.A., Oswalt became a huge film buff (or as he calls it, a sprocket fiend), absorbing classics, cult hits, and new releases at the New Beverly Cinema. Silver screen celluloid became Patton's life schoolbook, informing his notion of acting, writing, comedy, and relationships. Set in the nascent days of L.A.'s alternative comedy scene, Oswalt's memoir chronicles his journey from fledgling stand-up comedian to self-assured sitcom actor, with the colorful New Beverly collective and a cast of now-notable young comedians supporting him all along the way"-- Provided by publisher.

Booklist Reviews
Readers who know Oswalt only for his supporting role on the television sitcom The King of Queens might be surprised to learn that he was one of the early proponents of alternative comedy, a style of stand-up comedy that rejects the traditional setup-and-punch-line structure in favor of a more free-form, unpredictable approach. Some readers might also be surprised at how accomplished a writer he is; this fine book, set during his early years in Los Angeles (the mid- to late-1990s), is downright impossible to put down. When the author, then a young stand-up comedian, first moved to L.A., his goal was to become a film director; the best way to accomplish that, he thought, was to immerse himself in movies, old and new, classic and unknown. At the same time, needing to pay his bills, he developed his "performance comedy" and—even as he still dreamed of making his own movies—found himself building a career on the big and small screens. Fans of Oswalt's earlier memoir, Zombie Spaceship Wasteland (2011), are pretty much guaranteed to enjoy this one; but, because it's set at a different stage in the author's life, and because it deals with the L.A. comedy scene, it could find itself a whole new set of readers. Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.

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The paying guests - Sarah Waters

The paying guests - Waters, Sarah

Summary: It is 1922, and London is tense. Ex-servicemen are disillusioned, the out-of-work and the hungry are demanding change. And in South London, in a genteel Camberwell villa, a large silent house now bereft of brothers, husband and even servants, life is about to be transformed, as impoverished widow Mrs Wray and her spinster daughter, Frances, are obliged to take in lodgers.

Library Journal Reviews
Frances Wray is a woman of limited opportunities stuck in genteel poverty in an England that has not quite recovered from World War I. When she and her mother begin renting out half of their house to the Barbers, the change is disruptive. The Barbers are lower class, a little noisy, and tacky. Leonard sometimes says off-color things to Frances; Lilian is pretty but unhappy. Something is off about the Barbers' marriage, but a part of Frances relishes the change. As Frances and Lilian grow closer, she finds Lilian more attractive and their lives begin to mesh. But when a crisis comes, will each woman be able to see it through? And what does it mean morally if they do? Can love really conquer everything? Moody and atmospheric, this latest from three-time Booker Prize finalist Waters (The Little Stranger) has a rich historical setting in which you can feel the smallness of middle-class English life. But neither Frances nor Lilian is terribly sympathetic, and it's hard to root for them. But perhaps that is the point. Waters keeps you guessing until the very end. VERDICT For fans of complex historical crime fiction with a strong sense of dread. [See Prepub Alert, 3/10/14.]—Devon Thomas, Chelsea, MI

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About a boy - Nick Hornby

About a boy - Nick Hornby

Summary: Will trades his lack of enthusiasm toward children for a date with a truly beautiful woman and single mother in a comic, incisive novel about modern romance by the author of the international best-seller High Fidelity. - (Baker & Taylor)


Kirkus Reviews
The originality and fun spilling over in Hornby's acclaimed debut, High Fidelity (1995), run deep and strong through this second novel, as a playboy pretends he's a single dad so he can date single moms, but finds his fantasies warped by the real needs of an unusual 12-year-old boy. Set for life in London with royalties from a sappy Christmas song his father wrote, Will Lightman does nothing all day except be cool--something he does extremely well. And he chases women, with intermittent success. When chance throws a beautiful mom his way, he makes the most of the opportunity, even though she dumps him because she thinks he's ready for commitment and she isn't. No matter: He joins a single parents' group, inventing a toddler named Ned, and is well on the way to another conquest when frizzy-haired loner Marcus and his depressive hippie mother Fiona intervene. They all meet on the day Fiona tries to kill herself, and while Will's really just a friendly bystander, Marcus, in desperation, seizes on him as the solution to their problems. He follows Will to see where he lives, and, after quickly seeing through the toddler ruse, takes to barging in on his ``friend'' nearly every day after school. While hardly in agreement with this turn of events, Will is still enough of a boy himself to recognize that the lad needs a hand, and finds himself caring enough to buy Marcus cool sneakers, which are promptly stolen by the gang at school who harass Marcus daily. But Will provides the key that gives Marcus a first girlfriend, and then is repaid in kind when he meets another beautiful mom, falls in love, and persuades Marcus to act as his son to keep her from getting away. Far more than just boys will be boys, this has the right mix of hilarity and irrepressible characters to attract a wide audience: an upbeat, unqualified success. (First serial to the New Yorker; Book-of-the-Month Club featured alternate selection; author tour) Copyright 1998 Kirkus Reviews

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My Struggle - Karl Ove Knausgård

My Struggle - Knausgård, Karl Ove

Summary: An autobiographical novel focuses on a young man trying to make sense of his place in the disjointed world that surrounds him.




Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Between 2009 and 2011, Norwegian novelist Knausgaard published a six-volume series entitled Min Kamp ("My Struggle"), a chronicle of the narrator's life, from boyhood to fatherhood. Called a "confessional novel," the series garnered critical acclaim, numerous awards, record sales, and a great deal of controversy due to its intensely autobiographical nature (friends and family publicly denounced the books). Clocking in at nearly 500 pages apiece, the first two installments focus on Karl Ove's strained relationship with his dying father, an overbearing schoolteacher, and Karl's fledgling romance with Linda, who would become his second wife. In Book Three, Karl Ove recounts his boyhood years on Tromøy, an island in southern Norway, during the 1970s and 1980s. Young Ove's adventures are extraordinarily humdrum. He and his brother, Yngve, play sports, chase girls, and discover rock music, but the ever-present tension between the boys and their taskmaster father begins to illuminate the dysfunctional family depicted in Book One. Notable for his meticulous attention to the quotidian details of everyday life, Knausgaard's pared-down style and plainspoken narrator manage to propel these long books, concerned less with sustaining plot than with the accumulation of tiny intensities and candid disclosures, which makes for strangely engaging, compulsively page-turning prose

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Then We Came to the End - Joshua Ferris

Then We Came to the End - Ferris, Joshua

Summary: The remaining employees at an office affected by a business downturn spend their time competing for the best office furniture left behind and enjoying secret romances, gossip, elaborate pranks, and frequent coffee breaks, while trying to make sense of their only remaining "work," a mysterious pro-bono ad campaign.



Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Anyone who has ever logged time in a gray cubicle with cloth walls that wouldn't hold tacks will be astounded at the accuracy of this first-novel portrait of the workplace demimonde. Set in an unnamed advertising firm in Chicago, it grabs readers on the very first page like an executive assistant who can't wait to share the latest HR rumors. The firm is laying off employees, and as the quirky staff-cum-family alternately turns to and turns on one another, the reader plays eavesdropper to the unnamed narrator (who speaks in the first-person plural). He (or she) documents Benny's wild adventures with an inherited totem pole; the full catalog of Marcia's relentlessly eighties hairdos; Jim's lame but earnest ad pitches; Joe's inflexible professionalism; office leader Lynn's breast cancer; and the riotous yet painful mental breakdowns of not one but three pink-slipped workers. At their final gathering, the coworkers discover that their intimacy is a function only of proximity; no number of e-mails, lunches, or phone calls can substitute for the binding power of office walls. While the prose veers off into amusing tangents, like an associate trying to waste as much of an unproductive afternoon as possible, the author always returns to the story at hand. It's a 375-page, 3-martini-lunch of a novel, and you'll have it read by quitting time.

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How about never --is never good for your? - Robert Mankoff

How about never --is never good for your?: my life in cartoons - Mankoff, Robert

Summary: "Memoir in cartoons by the longtime cartoon editor of The New YorkerPeople tell Bob Mankoff that as the cartoon editor of The New Yorker he has the best job in the world. Never one to beat around the bush, he explains to us, in the opening of this singular, delightfully eccentric book, that because he is also a cartoonist at the magazine he actually has two of the best jobs in the world. With the help of myriad images and his funniest, most beloved cartoons, he traces his love of the craft all the way back to his childhood, when he started doing funny drawings at the age of eight. After meeting his mother, we follow his unlikely stints as a high-school basketball star, draft dodger, and sociology grad student. Though Mankoff abandoned the study of psychology in the seventies to become a cartoonist, he recently realized that the field he abandoned could help him better understand the field he was in, and here he takes up the psychology of cartooning, analyzing why some cartoons make us laugh and others don't. He allows us into the hallowed halls of The New Yorker to show us the soup-to-nuts process of cartoon creation, giving us a detailed look not only at his own work, but that of the other talented cartoonists who keep us laughing week after week. For desert, he reveals the secrets to winning the magazine's caption contest. Throughout, we see his commitment to the motto "Anything worth saying is worth saying funny." "-- Provided by publisher.

Booklist Reviews
Mankoff was close to earning a PhD in psychology when he finally admitted that cartooning was his true calling. He developed his distinctive "dot" style as a vehicle for his heady sense of humor, had his first cartoon published in the New Yorker in 1977, and has been serving as the magazine's cartoon editor since 1997. In a witty mix of memoir and New Yorker cartoon history exuberantly illustrated with New Yorker cartoons past and present, Mankoff discusses his mother's complicated influence ("Humor thrives on conflict"), how his psychology background helps him understand what makes cartoons funny or thought-provoking, and why he created the Cartoon Bank, which transformed the profession. He also unveils the magazine's cartoon selection process under editors William Shawn, Tina Brown, and David Remnick and describes his own rigorous assessment of 1,000 cartoons a week. Other cartoonists describe their working methods, and Mankoff even offers inside information on the New Yorker's devilishly difficult Cartoon Caption Contest, which the late great movie critic Roger Ebert won in 2011 "after 107 tries." A cartoon lover's feast. Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.

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Crampton Hodnet - Barbara Pym

Crampton Hodnet - Pym, Barbara

Summary: A novel featuring a pair of farcical romances captures early versions of the author's famous clergymen and excellent women, the original Miss Doggett and Jessie Morrow from Jane and Prudence, and a distinctly Oxford cast of characters.



Kirkus Reviews
Barbara Pym, in the 1940s, considered Crampton Hodnet too dated to be published. But now it is the book's very datedness--it is set in Oxford in the 1930s--that provides much of its charm. And in this early manuscript Pym introduced character types she would develop more fully later in her career...A funny and fast-moving book, Crampton Hodnet will delight Pym lovers as well as provide an enlightening introduction for those unfamiliar with an author who has been compared by many with Jane Austen. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews

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David and Goliath - Malcolm Gladwell

David and Goliath: underdogs, misfits, and the art of battling giants - Gladwell, Malcolm

Summary: Drawing upon examples from the world of business, sports, culture, cutting-edge psychology and an array of unforgettable characters around the world, the author of The Tipping Point, Blink and Outliers looks at the complex and surprising ways in which the weak can defeat the strong, how the small can match up against the giant, and how our goals (often culturally determined) can make a huge difference in our ultimate sense of success.

Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Gladwell's best-sellers, such as The Tipping Point (2000) and Outliers (2008), have changed the way we think about sociological changes and the factors that contribute to high levels of success. Here he examines and challenges our concepts of "advantage" and "disadvantage" in a way that may seem intuitive to some and surprising to others. Beginning with the classic tale of David and Goliath and moving through history with figures such as Lawrence of Arabia and Martin Luther King Jr., Gladwell shows how, time and again, players labeled "underdog" use that status to their advantage and prevail through the elements of cunning and surprise. He also shows how certain academic "advantages," such as getting into an Ivy League school, have downsides, in that being a "big fish in a small pond" at a less prestigious school can lead to greater confidence and a better chance of success in later life. Gladwell even promotes the idea of a "desirable difficulty," such as dyslexia, a learning disability that causes much frustration for reading students but, at the same time, may force them to develop better listening and creative problem-solving skills. As usual, Gladwell presents his research in a fresh and easy-to-understand context, and he may have coined the catchphrase of the decade, "Use what you got." Copyright 2013 Booklist Reviews.

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Bring up the bodies - Hilary Mantel

Bring up the bodies - Mantel, Hilary

Summary: Depicts the downfall of Anne Boleyn at the hands of Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell as Anne and her powerful family fight back while she is on trial for adultery and treason. - (Baker & Taylor)


Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Mantel's Wolf Hall (2009) took the literary world by storm and was quickly seen as an exceptional interpretation and depiction of Henry VIII's times and troubles as relayed through the career of Thomas Cromwell, the king's all-powerful secretary and chief task-enforcer. This new novel, the second installment of a planned Cromwell trilogy, can easily stand next to its predecessor as a major achievement in historical fiction. Mantel now tells the story of the fall of Anne Boleyn, Henry's second wife. As the novel opens, Queen Anne has enjoyed her exalted title for only a short time, but already the winds of change are blowing through the court. The king is tired of her (she hasn't produced a male heir, and her unpleasant personality is wearing thin) and finds lady-in-waiting Jane Seymour a much fresher face. Consequently, Secretary Cromwell, the king's enforcer, steps in, drawing the battle lines between himself and Queen Anne. The conflict will be deadly and, for the reader, edge-of-the-seat gripping. Like its predecessor, this is a rigorous read. One must get used to Mantel's intricate storytelling, and inattention will quickly derail one's grasp of events. Mantel's seductive, almost hypnotic, style is both formal, which is appropriate to the time, and exquisitely fluid, while beautifully articulated dialogue serves the story well, lending depth to characterizations and advancing the rich plot. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Mantel's previous novel won the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and appeared on best-seller lists; anticipation for the sequel is high. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.

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Life after life - Kate Atkinson

Life after life - Atkinson, Kate

Summary: "What if you could live again and again, until you got it right? On a cold and snowy night in 1910, Ursula Todd is born to an English banker and his wife. She dies before she can draw her first breath. On that same cold and snowy night, Ursula Todd is born, lets out a lusty wail, and embarks upon a life that will be, to say the least, unusual. For as she grows, she also dies, repeatedly, in a variety of ways, while the young century marches on towards its second cataclysmic world war. Does Ursula's apparently infinite number of lives give her the power to save the world from its inevitable destiny? And if she can -- will she? Darkly comic, startlingly poignant, and utterly original -- this is Kate Atkinson at her absolute best"-- Provided by publisher.

Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* In a radical departure from her Jackson Brodie mystery series, Atkinson delivers a wildly inventive novel about Ursula Todd, born in 1910 and doomed to die and be reborn over and over again. She drowns, falls off a roof, and is beaten to death by an abusive husband but is always reborn back into the same loving family, sometimes with the knowledge that allows her to escape past poor decisions, sometimes not. As Atkinson subtly delineates all the pathways a life or a country might take, she also delivers a harrowing set piece on the Blitz as Ursula, working as a warden on a rescue team, encounters horrifying tableaux encompassing mangled bodies and whole families covered in ash, preserved just like the victims of Pompeii. Alternately mournful and celebratory, deeply empathic and scathingly funny, Atkinson shows what it is like to face the horrors of war and yet still find the determination to go on, with her wholly British characters often reducing the Third Reich to "a fuss." From her deeply human characters to her comical dialogue to her meticulous plotting, Atkinson is working at the very top of her game. An audacious, thought-provoking novel from one of our most talented writers. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Atkinson's publisher is pulling out all the stops in marketing her latest, which will no doubt draw in many new readers in addition to her Jackson Brodie fans. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.

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Orange is the new black - Piper Kerman

Orange is the new black - Kerman, Piper

Summary: A compelling, often hilarious, and unfailingly compassionate portrait of life inside a woman's prison. Follows the author's incarceration for drug trafficking, during which she gained a unique perspective on the criminal justice system and met a varied community of women living under exceptional circumstances.


Booklist Reviews
Just graduated from Smith College, Kerman made the mistake of getting involved with the wrong woman and agreeing to deliver a large cash payment for an international drug ring. Years later, the consequences catch up with her in the form of an indictment on conspiracy drug-smuggling and money-laundering charges. Kerman pleads guilty and is sentenced to 15 months in a federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut. Entering prison in 2004—more than 10 years after her crime—Kerman finds herself submerged in the unique and sometimes overwhelming culture of prison, where kindness can come in the form of sharing toiletries, and an insult in the cafeteria can lead to an enduring enmity. Kerman quickly learns the rules—asking about the length of one's prison stay is expected, but never ask about the crime that led to it—and carves a niche for herself even as she witnesses the way the prison system fails those who are condemned to it, many of them nonviolent drug offenders. An absorbing, meditative look at life behind bars.

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