Save room for pie: food songs and chewy ruminations - Roy Blount Jr.

Belgravia - Julian Fellowes

LaRose - Louise Erdrich

Reporting always - Liliana Ross

Britt-Marie was here - Fredrik Backman

The art of fielding - Chad Harbach

The power of habit - Charles Duhigg

The secret history - Donna Tartt

The secret history - Tartt, Donna

Summary: Richard Papen, a relatively impoverished student at a New England college, falls in with an exclusive clique of rich, worldly Greek scholars and soon learns the dreadful secret that keeps them together. Reprint - (Baker & Taylor)



Publishers Weekly Reviews
Tartt's much bruited first novel is a huge (592 pages) rambling story that is sometimes ponderous, sometimes highly entertaining. Part psychological thriller, part chronicle of debauched, wasted youth, it suffers from a basically improbable plot, a fault Tartt often redeems through the bravado of her execution. Narrator Richard Papen comes from a lower-class family and a loveless California home to the ``hermetic, overheated atmosphere'' of Vermont's Hampden College. Almost too easily, he is accepted into a clique of five socially sophisticated students who study Classics with an idiosyncratic, morally fraudulent professor. Despite their demanding curriculum (they quote Greek classics to each other at every opportunity) the friends spend most of their time drinking and taking pills. Finally they reveal to Richard that they accidentally killed a man during a bacchanalian frenzy; when one of their number seems ready to spill the secret, the group--now including Richard--must kill him, too. The best parts of the book occur after the second murder, when Tartt describes the effect of the death on a small community, the behavior of the victim's family and the conspirators' emotional disintegration. Here her gifts for social satire and character analysis are shown to good advantage and her writing is powerful and evocative. On the other hand, the plot's many inconsistencies, the self-indulgent, high-flown references to classic literature and the reliance on melodrama make one wish this had been a tauter, more focused novel. In the final analysis, however, readers may enjoy the pull of a mysterious, richly detailed story told by a talented writer. 75,000 first printing; BOMC and QPB selections. (Sept.) Copyright 1992 Cahners Business Information.

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How to retire the cheapskate way - Jeff Yeager

How to retire the cheapskate way - Yeager, Jeff

Summary:The popular blogger outlines strategies for retiring earlier and enjoying a more fulfilling retirement, demonstrating frugal spending practices while providing coverage of topics ranging from health care to travel.

Kirkus Reviews
Retirement may be a long way off for many, but according to Yeager (The Ultimate Cheapskate's Road Map to True Riches, 2007, etc.), there is never a better time to start thinking and preparing for that moment than the present. Full of practical advice and numerous stories of "cheapskates" who have retired early, this book prompts readers to reexamine how they spend their money. Believing that it's not how much money you make, but how you spend what you do have that makes the difference between an early retirement, free of debt, or a later one, full of money woes, the author gives simple and sound advice on how to live frugally. Covering topics such as health insurance, Medicaid and investing, Yeager hammers home the need to spend less and save more, whether by packing a bag lunch or forgoing that new car. On Social Security, he writes that readers should "NEVER PLAN to retire on your Social Security benefit alone--it's only designed to replace 30-40 percent of most people's preretirement income." Checklists help determine what makes a person happy, whether items can be sold or donated to charity, and what health risks older people encounter and how to prevent them. For those who want to continue to work past retirement, Yeager offers a long inventory of self-employment ideas. The ultimate goal is to determine what a person "really, really wants" out of life and then work toward that goal without faltering. Much of this information is not new, but by gathering it in one place, the author makes it much easier to step down from work debt-free. Useful information on frugality and retirement. Copyright Kirkus 2012 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.

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Red notice - Bill Browder

Red notice - Browder, Bill

Summary: "A real-life political thriller about an American financier in the Wild East of Russia, the murder of his principled young tax attorney, and his dangerous mission to expose the Kremlin's corruption"--Amazon.com.
A reaHife political thriller about an American-born financier in the Wild East of Russia, the murder of his principled young attorney, and his dangerous mission to expose the people responsible in the Kremlin. Bill Browder started out his adult life as the Wall Street maverick whose instincts led him to Russia just after the breakup of the Soviet Union, where he made his fortune. Along the way he exposed corruption, and barely escaped with his life. His Russian lawyer wasn't so lucky: he ended up in jail, where he was tortured to death. That changed Browder forever. He saw the murderous heart of the Putin regime hand has spent the last half decade on a campaign to expose it. Because of this, he became Putin's number one enemy. A financial caper, a crime thriller, and a political crusade, Red Notice is the story of one man taking on overpowering odds to change the world.--From publisher description.

Booklist Reviews
Browder was a successful businessman, a pioneering investor in the emerging market that was Russia after the collapse of the Soviet empire. In the 1990s, savvy investors were seeking out his hedge fund as a way to get in on astonishingly undervalued, newly privatized businesses in Russia. But along with privatization came the oligarchs, powerful Russians who took control of previously government-operated entities. After operating successfully for years, Browder ran afoul of the oligarchs and the government. He was suddenly persona non grata, expelled from Russia, leaving his company at the mercy of a tax scam—$230 million in fraud committed by Russian government officials. From London he fought back, with help from Russian colleagues, including an attorney who uncovered the criminal enterprise and was eventually murdered. Browder offers a harrowing tale of corrupt business and political tactics, traceable all the way to President Putin, and the long struggle for justice that could have cost him his life. This is a revealing thriller of Russian financial and political corruption. Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.

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Republican Gomorrah - Max Blumenthal

Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement That Shattered the Party - Blumenthal, Max

Summary: An intimate, investigative portrait of how the purveyors of the politics of personal crisis and redemption brought down the GOP--and why they're still calling the shots for the party. Offers a look at the powerful players, such as Karl Rove and Howard Ahmanson, and the political and personal problems they have dealt with that will impact the future of the Republican Party in a post-Bush world.


Book News Review
In this book, journalist Blumenthal suggests that recent scandals involving prominent right-wing politicians are no accident. Instead, he suggests, they are evidence for the accuracy of social psychologist Erich Fromm's theory that the sexual and moral anxieties of fear-ridden people make them more susceptible to the appeal of authoritarian belief systems. Based on extensive interviews with right-wing leaders and activists, Blumenthal's book succeeds at being more than a lurid accounting of sexual escapades and immoral behavior, clearly showing how "the personal is political" in a way that the coiner of that phrase probably never intended. This book will appeal to readers interested in current U.S. politics

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The Boys in the Boat - Daniel Brown

The Boys in the Boat : Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics - Brown, Daniel

Summary: Traces the story of an American rowing team from the University of Washington that defeated elite rivals at Hitler's 1936 Berlin Olympics, sharing the experiences of their enigmatic coach, a visionary boat builder, and a homeless teen rower.



Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* If Jesse Owens is rightfully the most famous American athlete of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, repudiating Adolf Hitler's notion of white supremacy by winning gold in four events, the gold-medal-winning effort by the eight-man rowing team from the University of Washington remains a remarkable story. It encompasses the convergence of transcendent British boatmaker George Pocock; the quiet yet deadly effective UW men's varsity coach, Al Ulbrickson; and an unlikely gaggle of young rowers who would shine as freshmen, then grow up together, a rough-and-tumble bunch, writes Brown, not very worldly, but earnest and used to hard work. Brown (Under a Flaming Sky, 2006) takes enough time to profile the principals in this story while using the 1936 games and Hitler's heavy financial and political investment in them to pull the narrative along. In doing so, he offers a vivid picture of the socioeconomic landscape of 1930s America (brutal), the relentlessly demanding effort required of an Olympic-level rower, the exquisite brainpower and materials that go into making a first-rate boat, and the wiles of a coach who somehow found a way to, first, beat archrival University of California, then conquer a national field of qualifiers, and finally, defeat the best rowing teams in the world. A book that informs as it inspires. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.

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Miles away - Miles Morland

Miles away: a walk across France - Morland, Miles

Summary: At the age of forty-five, Miles Morland resigned from his highly paid job (spent largely "shouting down a phone") as head of the London office of a leading Wall Street firm, and took a walk across France with his wife, Guislaine. Neither of them was accustomed to strolling more than the distance between a restaurant and a waiting taxi, but in France they walked 350 miles through the foothills of the Pyrenees, from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic.
The planning of the route, Miles's mania for maps and guidebooks, Guislaine's practice walks around the Serpentine and the purchasing of what they thought was the right equipment set the tone for what develops into a highly entertaining account of the pleasures and agonies of walking the best part of twenty miles a day in the heat of a southern summer.
Along the way Miles frequently looks back with relief, and often with hilarity, on the life from which he has escaped. Their leisurely progress past farmyards and along riverbanks, when their only deadline is to reach the next village in time for a long lunch in the shade of a plane tree, is in telling contrast to the extraordinary pressures of life in the City in the 1980s, pressures that had led Miles and Guislaine to get divorced - and then to remarry each other.
Miles Away is the story of a walk, a relationship and an abrupt change of lifestyle: accepting a lower standard of living in return for an improvement in the quality of life. Many people dream of doing what Miles Morland did. This book shows not only that it is possible, but that the rewards can be immeasurable. - (Blackwell North Amer)

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Gallows thief - Bernard Cornwell

Gallows thief - Cornwell, Bernard

Summary: When Waterloo veteran Rider Sandman returns home to England from the war, he finds his country rife with corruption and injustice, and takes a job investigating the case of a painter sentenced to hang for a murder he did not commit. - (Baker & Taylor)


Library Journal Reviews
Disgraced by his father's suicide and impoverished by the debts that drove him to it, Capt. Rider Sandman, late of His Majesty's 52nd Regiment of Foot, has been forced to sell his commission to support his mother and sister. Desperate to earn a living but with no skills besides soldiering and cricket, he has come to London in search of a job. When the Home Secretary offers him temporary employment investigating a sensational murder, he accepts it as easy money. All he has to do is elicit a confession from the young artist accused of raping and murdering the Countess of Avebury during her portrait sitting. But when Sandman visits him in Newgate, the artist defends his innocence so vehemently that Sandman begins to have his doubts. Unwillingly, he is drawn into an investigation that not only risks his life but introduces him to the darkest secrets of several aristocratic families. As with his popular Richard Sharpe novels (Sharpe's Trafalgar) and his Arthurian trilogy, "The Warlord Chronicles," Cornwell is superb at weaving the ambience and issues of the day (this time Regency England) with a gripping plot and a memorable character. Readers will hope to see more. Cynthia Johnson, Cary Memorial Lib., Lexington, MA Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

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