Showing posts with label new jersey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label new jersey. Show all posts
Jun 1, 2018
Feb 1, 2016
Oct 1, 2015
Girl waits with a gun - Amy Stewart
Summary: Living in virtual isolation years after the revelation of a painful family secret, Constance Kopp is terrorized by a belligerent silk factory owner and fights back in ways outside the norm for early twentieth-century women.
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* In 1914, on a New Jersey farm, the three Kopp sisters—the pugnacious-yet-attractive, six-foot-tall Constance; the flibbertigibbet youngest, Fleurette; and the droll pigeon-keeper, Norma—defy convention by living alone after their mother dies. Self-sufficient and reclusive, Constance and Norma shelter themselves and their little sister from the world until a terrible incident forces them into the limelight. When silk baron Henry Kaufman rams and overturns their buggy with his motorcar, events conspire against the Kopp girls' continued independence. In fact, Kaufman's frightening threats and abuse of his workers put Constance on high alert: she keeps her sisters corralled indoors, fires shots at nighttime intruders, and works with the sheriff to personally bring down the merchant and his thugs. A sheer delight to read and based on actual events, this debut historical mystery packs the unexpected, the unconventional, and a serendipitous humor into every chapter. Details from the historical record are accurately portrayed by villains and good guys alike, and readers will cross their fingers for the further adventures of Constance and Sheriff Heath. For fans of the Phryne Fisher series by Kerry Greenwood, and the Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes mysteries by Laurie R. King. Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.
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Apr 1, 2015
The short and tragic life of Robert Peace - Jeff Hobbs
Summary: Examines "the short life of a talented young African-American man who escapes the slums of Newark for Yale University only to succumb to the dangers of the streets--and of one's own nature--when he returns home"--Amazon.com.
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Rob Peace's father was a very bright drug dealer who served time for murder, leaving Rob in the care of a hardworking mother who wanted more for him than the tough streets of Orange, New Jersey, could provide. Peace started private school in fourth grade, just as his father's trial was beginning, and developed elaborate emotional and psychological strategies to navigate the neighborhood and "Newark-proof" himself. In high school, he undertook ponderous research to prove his father's innocence and eventually won a temporary reprieve on a technicality. His brilliance attracted the attention of a benefactor who made it possible for Peace to go to Yale, where he met and roomed with Hobbs. Peace majored in molecular biophysics and biochemistry, worked in the dining hall and biology lab, and sold drugs on the side. In a whirlwind of travel, philosophizing, and caretaking of others, Peace navigated the clashing cultures of urban poverty and Ivy League privilege, never quite finding a place where his particular brand of nerdiness and cool could coexist. His dreams and his reality collided when he was killed at 30 years of age in a drug dispute. Attending Peace's funeral, Hobbs was struck by the dichotomies of his old roommate's life and set out to offer a full picture of a very complicated individual. Writing with the intimacy of a close friend, Hobbs slowly reveals Peace as far more than a cliché of amazing potential squandered. Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.
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May 1, 2014
Maybe one day - Melissa Kantor
Summary: "Zoe thought that being cut from her ballet program was the worst thing that could hapen, but when her best friend, Olivia, is diagnosed with a life-threatening disease, Zoe quickly learns that not being able to dance is the least of her problems"-- Provided by publisher.
Booklist Reviews
The worst thing ever happens to forever friends Olivia and Zoe when they are cut from their prestigious ballet troupe. Livvie joins other activities, but Zoe is adrift without the one thing that mattered to her. Then Livvie is diagnosed with leukemia, and Zoe's life is fractured once again. She spends as much time as possible with Livvie, while needing to keep up at school and navigating the growing connection between herself and Calvin, Livvie's crush. Kantor ably steers the reader through the intensity of Zoe's brief life-changing experience, weaving in realistic high-school dynamics and Zoe's search for anything to take her mind off her sadness. What she finds is solace by subbing for Livvie at the beginning ballet classes at a community center and kissing Calvin any chance she gets. Though this contemporary cancer story laced with everyday and extraordinary experiences will undoubtedly draw comparisons to that other cancer book, Livvie's cancer story and Zoe's emotionally complex web of friendship, fear, loss, love, pain, have their own appeal, and are well worth reading. Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.
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Apr 3, 2014
Careless people - Sarah Bartlett Churchwell
Summary: An investigation into the inspiration behind F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece traces his parties and quarrels at the side of Zelda amid the scandals and milestones of 1922 before a brutal double murder in New Jersey set the stage for what was to become an American classic. - (Baker & Taylor)
Kirkus Reviews
The Great Gatsby floats on a limpid river fed by myriads of autobiographical, cultural and historical tributaries. Churchwell (American Literature and Public Understanding of the Humanities/Univ. of East Anglia; The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe, 2004, etc.) has written an excellent book on a novel that remains a favorite in English courses in American high schools and colleges. Surprisingly, she even manages to find fresh facts that escaped previous scholars, including one of F. Scott Fitzgerald's own published comments about his novel, a book that, as Churchwell notes, neither sold well nor received uniformly favorable reviews. Churchwell weaves together a variety of strands: a summary of the novel (including its earlier drafts), a biographical account of the years Fitzgerald was working on the novel (including the time he and Zelda were living and partying in Great Neck, near the novel's setting), and an account of a sensational New Jersey murder case in 1922 (the year that Gatsby takes place), an investigation that resulted in arrests and a trial but no convictions. Churchwell also digs deeply into the architecture of the novel--looking, for example, for the relevance of specific details Fitzgerald mentions. She also examined Simon Called Peter, a novel that Nick Carraway picks up early in Gatsby; she read countless New York newspaper and magazine files looking for items in 1922 that may have found their way into the novel (car wrecks, wild parties and the like). She haunted the rich Fitzgerald archives at Princeton and elsewhere and, employing the clarity of hindsight, chides most of the early critics who missed what Fitzgerald was up to. At times, Churchwell attempts Fitzgerald's lyrical style--one chapter-ending sentence alludes to "the vagrant dead as they scatter across our tattered Eden"--she's earned the right to play on his court. Prodigious research and fierce affection illumine every remarkable page. Copyright Kirkus 2013 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.
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Sep 1, 2012
New Jersey noir - Joyce Carol Oates
Summary: Sitting between the great cities of New York and Philadelphia, New Jersey has been by tradition a heavily "organized" Mafia state, as it was at one time a northern outpost of the Ku Klux Klan, with a concentration of members in Trenton, Camden, Monmouth County, and South Jersey . . . In such ways, the most civilized and "decent" among us find that we are complicit with the most brutal murderers. We enter into literally unspeakable alliances--of which we dare not speak except through the obliquities and indirections of fiction, poetry, and visual art of the sort gathered here in New Jersey Noir.
Publishers Weekly Reviews
Oates's introduction to Akashic's noir volume dedicated to the Garden State, with its evocative definition of the genre, is alone worth the price of the book. While few of the 19 selections qualify as outstanding, highlights include Lou Manfredo's "Soul Anatomy," in which a politically connected rookie cop is involved in a fatal shooting in Camden; S.J. Rozan's "New Day Newark," in which an elderly woman takes a stand against two drug-dealing gangs; and Jonathan Santlofer's "Lola," in which a struggling Hoboken artist finds his muse. Two stories reflect historical events. In Bradford Morrow's "The Enigma of Grover's Mill," Orson Welles's infamous broadcast of The War of the Worlds changes the life of one local family, while in Barry N. Malzberg and Bill Pronzini's "Meadowlands Spike," a man's confession details the end of Jimmy Hoffa. Poems by C.K. Williams, Paul Muldoon, and others—plus photos by Gerald Slota—enhance this distinguished entry. (Nov.)
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