A sense of ending - Julian Barnes

A sense of ending - Julian Barnes

Summary: Follows a middle-aged man as he reflects on a past he thought was behind him, until he is presented with a legacy that forces him to reconsider different decisions, and to revise his place in the world.


Booklist Reviews
At once commanding and subtle, Barnes has created a refined novel intensely suspenseful in its emotional complexities and exemplary in its arresting tropes, rhythms, revelations, and musings on the puzzle of time and the mysteries of memory and desire. And how masterfully Barnes induces us, page by page, to revise our perceptions of and feelings toward his ensnared narrator. Cordially divorced and smugly retired, Tony is yanked out of complacency by a perplexing letter. The recently deceased mother of his disastrous first love has inexplicably bequeathed him the diary of a school friend of his who committed suicide. As Tony seeks an explanation, Barnes turns evocative motifs––the way Tony and his friends wore their watches with the faces on the inside of their wrists; the night Tony witnessed the Severn Bore, a powerful tidal surge that reverses the river's flow––into metaphors for how we distort the past and how oblivious we are to the pain of others. Short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, Barnes' sublimely modulated and profoundly disquieting tale of delusion, loss, and remorse ends devastatingly with a crescendo twist. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Barnes is a British author Americans follow with high attention, and this novel secured him the Man Booker Prize. Copyright 2011 Booklist Reviews.

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The lily pond - Annika Thor

The lily pond - Thor, Annika

Summary: Having left Nazi-occupied Vienna a year ago, thirteen-year-old Jewish refugee Stephie Steiner adapts to life in the cultured Swedish city of Gothenburg, where she attends school, falls in love, and worries about her parents who were not allowed to emigrate.



Booklist Reviews
This sequel to the Batchelder Award–winner A Faraway Island (2009) continues the story of the Steiner sisters, refugees being cared for in Sweden while their parents work to escape Nazi-occupied Austria. Now it's 1940, and 13-year-old Stephie is moving to the cultured city of Göteborg to continue her education and board with the wealthy Soderbergs, who, despite offering her a room, view Stephie as a charity case and convenient server for dinner parties. Resilient in spite of her youth, Stephie copes with making new friends, misunderstandings, an unrequited crush, anti-Semitism from some of her teachers, and worries about her parents' worsening situation in Vienna. Although admirable, Stephie is also a believable teen; readers will sympathize as she debates whether to attend a concert she knows her fundamentalist Christian foster mother would forbid. Stephie justifies going, saying her own parents would approve, but her stronger motive is spending time with a handsome, older boy. A compelling look at World War II–era Sweden, this distinguished Holocaust story will resonate. Two more titles, meanwhile, await translation. Copyright 2011 Booklist Reviews.


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A faraway island - Annika Thor

A faraway island - Thor, Annika

Summary: In 1939 Sweden, two Jewish sisters wait for their parents to join them in fleeing the Nazis in Austria, but while eight-year-old Nellie settles in quickly, twelve-year-old Stephie feels stranded at the end of the world, with a foster mother who is as cold and unforgiving as the island on which they live.


Booklist Reviews
"In 1939, Jewish sisters Stephie and Nellie Steiner are evacuated from their home in Nazi-occupied Vienna to an island off the coast of Sweden, where separate foster families take them in. Eight-year-old Nellie adjusts very quickly—learning Swedish, making friends, and enjoying her new foster siblings. Twelve-year-old Stephie has more difficulties—she is tormented by school bullies, must deal with a cold and critical foster mother, and worries about her parents' safety. Thor successfully captures the feel of small-town Sweden circa 1939-40, with its kindly citizens devoted to Christianity and good works who nevertheless harbor latent anti-Semitic views. The translation is mostly smooth, and the use of third-person present tense narration helps distance readers from Holocaust realities while subtly reminding them that child refugees still exist. The first of four volumes featuring the Steiner sisters, this should be popular with fans of Lois Lowry's Number the Stars (1989) and make a good bridge to more visceral memoirs such as Anita Lobel's No Pretty Pictures: A Child of War (1998)." Copyright 2009 Booklist Reviews.

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Some assembly required - Anne Lamott

Some assembly required: a journal of my son's first son - Lamott, Anne

Summary: The author and her son chronicle his first year as a teenage father and her journey as a mother and new grandmother, describing their respective experiences with changing roles, the baby's mother, and poignant family losses.




Booklist Reviews
Lamott burst onto the literary scene in 1993 with Operating Instructions, her achingly honest account of her son Sam's first year of life, endearing herself to single mothers, parents, and even nonparents. She is set to do the same thing now for grandparenthood, as she and Sam explore their first year with Sam's son, Jax. When Sam announced that he and recent girlfriend Amy were about to become parents, Lamott reacted as only Lamott could, with a joyful "Oh, yes!" followed by a fearful "Oh, no!" After all, at fiftysomething, she was too young to be a grandmother, and at 19, Sam was too young to be a father. But tell all that to Jax, who is, of course, the Perfect Baby. That his parents' relationship is less so is a source of constant consternation for Lamott, who tries to fix things in her own inimitable and irritating way. Funny, frantic, and frustrating, Lamott enthusiastically embraces this new chapter in her life, learning that she is a wiser grandparent than parent who, nevertheless, managed to produce one pretty remarkable son. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Best-selling Lamott will delight her avid fans and attract new readers among fellow grandparents as she goes on a national tour and makes media appearances. Copyright 2011 Booklist Reviews.

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Money, a memoir - Liz Perle

Money, a memoir: women, emotions, and cash - Perle, Liz

Summary: "Long ago, and not entirely consciously, Liz Perle made a quiet contract with cash: she would do what it took to get it--work hard, marry right--but she didn't want to have to think about it too much. This deliberate denial eventually exacted its price, however, when a sudden divorce left Perle with no home, no job, and a four-year-old. She realized she could no longer afford to leave her murky relationship with money unexamined. What she discovered was that almost every woman she knew also subscribed to this code of discretion--even though it laced through their relationships with their parents, lovers, husbands, children, friends, co-workers, and communities. Women who were all too willing to tell each other about their deepest secrets or sexual assets still kept mum when it came to their financial ones. In this book, Perle attempts to break this silence"--From publisher description.

Publishers Weekly Reviews
In spite of women's supposedly massive buying power and growing presence in Fortune 500 boardrooms, many women are still awfully old-fashioned when it comes to cash. Why do they show so little interest in managing investments? Or lie to their partners about what something costs? And what's behind that evil prescription known as "retail therapy"? Perle (When Work Doesn't Work Anymore ) investigates these questions and others in this remarkable sociological study-cum-memoir. She boldly exposes her own financial fears (the book opens as she's confronting a divorce and the reality that she and her four-year-old son will have to sleep on a friend's couch), admitting that, despite her years climbing the corporate ladder (in publishing, incidentally), "there's still that other part of me--the one that wants to reserve the option of depending on someone else." Perle also profiles dozens of everyday women, spotlighting the anxiety, embarrassment and guilt money causes them. Commentary from financial experts, sociologists and others helps demonstrate Perle's thesis: women cannot afford to be ambivalent about money and must learn to separate feelings from finance. Perle's book raises more questions than it answers, which is part of its allure--it'll surely have readers thinking twice before they log on to Bloomingdales.com after a bad day at work. Agent, Richard Pine. (Feb.)


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Handling the undead - John Ajvide Lindqvist

Handling the undead - Ajvide Lindqvist, John

Summary: Mayhem in the Stockholm power grid gives way to the rise of countless zombies, sparking delight in a grandfather who hopes for his grandson's return and horror in a husband who witnesses disturbing changes in his revived wife.



Publishers Weekly Reviews
Swedish horror author Lindqvist moves from vampires (Let the Right One In) to zombies in this gripping, subtle tale. Stockholm is overtaken by the undead after a period of strange weather, and the uprising has surprising consequences for several people, including David, a comedian whose dead wife comes back to life; self-harming psychic teenagers Flora and Elvy; and journalist Gustav Mahler, whose only hope of saving his daughter and himself from grief lies in exhuming his young grandson and hoping the boy will be reanimated. Lindqvist's character-driven narrative is at times slow and confusing, but pop culture references keep the story relevant and interesting. This intelligent look into the psychological side of the undead will entice longtime zombie fans eager for a subversive examination of some of the horror genre's most recognizable monsters. (Sept.)

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The dolphin in the mirror - Diana Reiss

The dolphin in the mirror: exploring dolphin minds and saving dolphin lives - Reiss, Diana

Summary: A leading authority on dolphin intelligence shares scientific information about dolphin creativity, emotions, and communication abilities while advocating for stronger dolphin protection laws.



Choice Reviews
Occasionally, scientists write books on their work, ideas, and life in a way that enlightens and enthralls readers. This is one of those books. Noted dolphin researcher Reiss (psychology, Hunter College, CUNY) has a great subject, as dolphins have fascinated people through the ages. She takes readers from the history of human interactions with dolphins to the modern scientific effort to understand what they are "thinking." The book begins with the fascinating story of the rescue of the humpback whale Humphrey from the river near San Francisco. This is followed by an account of the author's journey of her work with dolphin behavior, inspired by the belief that they were intelligent and by the need to find out how to measure this. Along the way, there are glimpses into the difficult world of research--the early belief that only humans had any useful intelligence, the difficulty of finding funding and locations for studies of large marine animals, and the problem of producing scientific proof and getting work published. Reiss ends by discussing animal and particularly dolphin minds, juxtaposing her respect for them with her efforts to see the slaughter of these animals in Japan stopped. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Academic and general readers, all levels. Copyright 2012 American Library Association.

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East of Eden - John Steinbeck

East of Eden - Steinbeck, John

Summary: This novel, set in the rich farmlands of California's Salinas Valley, follows the intertwined destinies of two families--the Trasks and the Hamiltons--whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel. The story of two brothers, Aron is a clean-cut model student, engaged to be married, the pride of his hardworking father. Cal is a rebellious loner, sternly rejected by his father.

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Fugitive pieces - Anne Michaels

Fugitive pieces - Michaels, Anne

Summary: A young orphan smuggled out of Poland during World War II, poet Jakob Beer comes to understand the extraordinary power of language to destroy, restore, and witness as he struggles to cope with both grief and the healing of memory - (Baker & Taylor)



Booklist Reviews
/*Starred Review*/ Stories of the Holocaust keep surfacing in the minds of writers like bone fragments working their way through skin. Award-winning poet Michaels revisits that monstrous time in her beautiful first novel, a work every bit as haunting as her fellow Canadian Michael Ondaatje's celebrated The English Patient. Michaels' lyrical tale revolves around the life of a young Polish Jew, Jakob Beer, who, after witnessing the murder of his parents, is miraculously rescued by Athos, a Greek geologist. A man of heroic intellect and spirituality, Athos risks his life to bring Jakob to Greece only to find that the tide of evil has even reached those hallowed shores. They immigrate to Canada, and their mentor-disciple relationship deepens as each studious year passes. The earth is sacred to Athos; he finds wisdom in the stony pages of mountain and ravine. Language is holy for Jakob; he becomes a poet whose work, in turn, comforts others. As Michaels, an exquisitely sensual writer, reveals the souls of her extraordinary characters and, like Athos, "applies the geologic to the human," she defines love in its most lasting, resonant, and meaningful manifestations. ((Reviewed February 15, 1997)) Copyright 2000 Booklist Reviews

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Let me in - John Ajvide Lindqvist

Let me in - Lindqvist, John Ajvide

Summary: "Twelve-year-old Oskar is obsessed by the murder that's taken place in his neighborhood. Then he meets the new girl from next door. She's a bit weird, though. And she only comes out at night"--Publisher's description.



Kirkus Reviews
Part revenge fantasy, part horror story and part police investigation gone wrong, this debut vampire novel translated from the Swedish sinks its fangs into fresh territory.It is 1981 in a Stockholm suburb, and 12-year-old Oskar is the epitome of a bully's victim: He's a fat little know-it-all who suffers from incontinence and periodic nosebleeds. His life changes when Eli, an astonishingly beautiful but unkempt girl, and her father Hakan move in next door. With her encouragement, Oskar somehow finds the strength to begin striking back at his tormentors. But Eli is no true child; she is a 220-year-old vampire, and her so-called "father" is actually a pedophile who demonstrates his frighteningly obsessive devotion to Eli by anesthetizing young boys, draining their blood and bringing them back to her when she's too weak to hunt for herself. A blunder by Hakan, Eli's advice to Oskar and the vengeance sought by a friend of one of Eli's victims all inevitably lead to tragedy—or triumph, depending on the perspective. Although it does have its grotesque, over-the-top moments, the book is wonderfully bleak and spare. Unlike Anne Rice's hedonistic bloodsuckers, Lundqvist's vampires are sad, lonely creatures who simply want to survive, taking little pleasure in what is required to do so. If there is one complaint, it is that the author sets the book entirely in the fall, and so cannot exploit the obvious advantages and disadvantages of being a Swedish vampire—24-hour darkness during winter, but midnight sun in summer.Worth taking a bite. Copyright Kirkus 2007 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.


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11/22/63 - Stephen King

11/22/63 - Stephen King

Summary: On November 22, 1963, three shots rang out in Dallas, President Kennedy died, and the world changed. What if you could change it back? The author's new novel is about a man who travels back in time to prevent the JFK assassination. In this novel that is a tribute to a simpler era, he sweeps readers back in time to another moment, a real life moment, when everything went wrong: the JFK assassination. And he introduces readers to a character who has the power to change the course of history. Jake Epping is a thirty-five-year-old high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching adults in the GED program. He receives an essay from one of the students, a gruesome, harrowing first person story about the night fifty years ago when Harry Dunning's father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a hammer. Harry escaped with a smashed leg, as evidenced by his crooked walk. Not much later, Jake's friend Al, who runs the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to 1958. He enlists Jake on an insane, and insanely possible, mission to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination. So begins Jake's new life as George Amberson and his new world of Elvis and JFK, of big American cars and sock hops, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jake's life, a life that transgresses all the normal rules of time.

Booklist Reviews
Like the similarly sprawling Under the Dome (2009), this novel was abandoned by King decades ago before he took another shot, and perhaps that accounts for both novels' intoxicating, early-King bouquet of ambition and swagger. In this distant cousin to The Dead Zone (1979), Jake Epping is living a normal schoolteacher's life when a short-order cook named Al introduces him to a time warp hidden in a diner pantry—leading directly to 11:58 a.m., September 9, 1958. Al's dying of cancer, which means he needs a successor to carry out his grand mission: kill Lee Harvey Oswald so that the 1963 JFK assassination never happens. Jake takes the plunge and finds two things he never expected: true love and the fact that "the obdurate past" doesn't want to change. The roadblocks King throws into Jake's path are fairly ingenious—some of them are outright gut-punches—while history buffs will dig the upside-down travelogue of Oswald's life. This doesn't loom as large as some King epics; on the other hand, did we appreciate It in 1986 as much as we do now? Leave it at this: fans will love it. High-Demand Backstory: King is his own backstory: demand for anything new will be loud. Copyright 2011 Booklist Reviews.


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The shipping news - Annie Proulx

The shipping news - Proulx, Annie

Summary: Surprising transformations take place when a newspaperman's elderly aunt and two daughters decide to move back to their family home on the coast of Newfoundland, in a Scribner's Classic release of Annie Proulx's award-winning novel. - (Baker & Taylor)



Publishers Weekly
Proulx has followed Postcards , her story of a family and their farm, with an extraordinary second novel of another family and the sea. The fulcrum is Quoyle, a patient, self-deprecating, oversized hack writer who, following the deaths of nasty parents and a succubus of a wife, moves with his two daughters and straight-thinking aunt back to the ancestral manse in Killick-Claw, a Newfoundland harbor town of no great distinction. There, Quoyle finds a job writing about car crashes and the shipping news for The Gammy Bird , a local paper kept afloat largely by reports of sexual abuse cases and comical typographical errors. Killick-Claw may not be perfect, but it is a stable enough community for Quoyle and Co. to recover from the terrors of their past lives. But the novel is much more than Quoyle's story: it is a moving evocation of a place and people buffeted by nature and change. Proulx routinely does without nouns and conjunctions--"Quoyle, grinning. Expected to hear they were having a kid. Already picked himself for godfather"--but her terse prose seems perfectly at home on the rocky Newfoundland coast. She is in her element both when creating haunting images (such as Quoyle's inbred, mad and mean forbears pulling their house across the ice after being ostracized by more God-fearing folk) and when lyrically rendering a routine of gray, cold days filled with cold cheeks, squidburgers, fried bologna and the sea.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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The maze runner trilogy - James Dashner

The maze runner trilogy - Dashner, James

Summary: Sixteen-year-old Thomas wakes up with no memory in the middle of a maze and realizes he must work with the community in which he finds himself if he is to escape.



Kirkus Reviews
Boys come to the Glade via an empty freight elevator with no memory of how they got there or of their prior lives. This disorientation is made more frightening when they realize that to survive they must lock themselves in every night to avoid the horrors of the Grievers, beings that are part machine, part animal—and altogether deadly. The boys in the Glade send out Runners each day to find a way out through the Maze that surrounds their one patch of safety, with no success. Life goes on until one day the elevator delivers a girl. She brings a message: She is the last child to be sent, and there will be no more deliveries of food or supplies. Now the Glade is cut off, and as the Grievers gather for an all-out attack it's clear that it's now or never—the Maze must be solved. Dashner knows how to spin a tale and make the unbelievable realistic. Hard to put down, this is clearly just a first installment, and it will leave readers dying to find out what comes next. (Science fiction. 12 & up) Copyright Kirkus 2009 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.

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Spoiled - Caitlin Macy

Spoiled: stories - Macy, Caitlin

Summary: A collection of stories examines women in their thirties, educated and successful, who nevertheless struggle to keep their footing in lives for which their mothers never prepared them. - (Baker & Taylor)



Kirkus Reviews
Nine years after her winning debut novel (The Fundamentals of Play, 2000), Macy follows with an impressive, psychologically nuanced collection of stories on class and gender in New York.The stories profile a certain kind of American woman who is upwardly mobile, though not gauche enough to admit it, even to herself. "Christie" has an old-fashioned construction. It's a straightforward character study of a young woman who comes to Manhattan to make good. But soon it becomes clear that the narrator has a grudge against Christie—she is a phony, shallow gold digger. The narrator vows to prune Christie from her circle of acquaintances. That is until she sees her a few years later exiting the luxury building she and her husband have been denied an apartment in. Lunch ensues, the power has shifted and it soon becomes clear that the story's focus is not Christie at all but the narrator. In "Annabel's Mother," Liz becomes fascinated by the girl that plays in the private park across from her building. Annabel is polite and lovely and plays with Liz's toddler Sally, and while this goes on, Liz confides in Annabel's West Indian nanny, Marva. Liz is outraged that Annabel's mother won't loan Marva the money to bring her son to America, and so she offers a loan herself. This is the beginning of many Liz/Marva disappointments. Marva is not grateful enough for the loan, Marva has given Sally a nonorganic doughnut and, worst of all, Marva may like Annabel more than she likes Sally. In "The Red Coat," a newlywed steals the coat of her recently acquired housekeeper (a young, attractive Ukrainian cleaning her way through design school) to both diminish her and gain some of her power. In "Taroudant," a woman honeymooning in Morocco sets the tone for years of what will undoubtedly be an unhappy marriage—she is competitive, dissatisfied and yearning for the kind of unnamed excitement that courts tragedy.  Sophisticated and intelligent, Macy offers the kind of subtlety that turns the ordinary into the sublime.Author tour to Boston, New York, Washington, D.C. Copyright Kirkus 2009 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.


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Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks

Birdsong - Faulks, Sebastian

Summary: In 1910, Stephen Wraysford, a young Englishman, journeys to France on business, becomes embroiled in a series of traumatic events, including a clandestine love affair, and never returns home, only to be trapped amid the horrors of the First World War. 25,000 first printing. - (Baker & Taylor)


Publishers Weekly Reviews
In 1910, England's Stephen Wraysford, a junior executive in a textile firm, is sent by his company to northern France. There he falls for Isabelle Azaire, a young and beautiful matron who abandons her abusive husband and sticks by Stephen long enough to conceive a child. Six years later, Stephen is back in France, as a British officer fighting in the trenches. Facing death, embittered by isolation, he steels himself against thoughts of love. But despite rampant disease, harrowing tunnel explosions and desperate attacks on highly fortified German positions, he manages to survive, and to meet with Isabelle again. The emotions roiled up by this meeting, however, threaten to ruin him as a soldier. Everything about this novel, which was a bestseller in England, is outsized, from its epic, if occasionally ramshackle, narrative to its gruesome and utterly convincing descriptions of battlefield horrors. Faulks (A Fool's Alphabet) proves himself a grand storyteller here. Enlivened with considerable historical detail related through accomplished prose, his narrative flows with a pleasingly appropriate recklessness that brings his characters to dynamic life. (Feb.) Copyright 1995 Cahners Business Information.

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Zahra's paradise - Amir

Zhara's paradise - Amir

Summary: Follows the search for a young Iranian protester who went missing in the aftermath of Iran's fraudulent 2009 elections, a search kept alive by his mother and blogger brother.



Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* In 2009, the world watched as Iran erupted in revolt over the disputed presidential election. And yet, for all the attention paid to the major political players and masses of protesters, it's easy to miss the crucial reality that the ensuing crackdowns happened to individual people, with families, friends, and lives on the line. While this story about a young man and his mother searching in vain for his missing teenage brother—arrested during a protest and swallowed up into the void of the Islamic Republic's sham of a judiciary system—is fictionalized, it still carries with it the weight of documentary, putting a face on the wide-angle CNN panoramas and YouTube videos that captured the world's attention. As Hassan and his mother bounce in vain from hospital to courtroom to prison to cemetery (Zahra's Paradise is the name of a huge graveyard outside of Tehran), they are confronted by doublespeak worthy of Orwell and confounded by a labyrinthine bureaucratic nightmare worthy of Kafka. Khalil's pure, black-and-white cartooning is understated when it needs to be and attention-commanding when it wants to be. Both artistically and thematically, this work is rooted in the finest examples of graphic nonfiction, including Maus (1986), Joe Sacco's comics journalism, and, especially, Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis (2003). An afterword is careful to note that the creators haven't attempted to provide a neutral, even-handed look at Iran's Islamic Republic, but there is no doubting the truth in a mother's tragic words: "It doesn't take much, to lose a child in this country." Copyright 2011 Booklist Reviews.


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The razor's edge - W. Somerset Maugham

The razor's edge - W. Somerset Maugham

Summary: Larry Darrell is a young American in search of the absolute. The progress of his spiritual odyssey involves him with some of Maugham's most brilliant characters - his fiancée Isabel whose choice between love and wealth have lifelong repercussions, and Elliott Templeton, her uncle, a classic expatriate American snob. Maugham himself wanders in and out of the story, to observe his characters struggling with their fates. - (Random House, Inc.)

Reviews
“[Maugham is] a great artist . . . a genius.” –Theodore Dreiser

“[Maugham’s] excessively rare gift of story-telling . . . is almost the equal of imagination itself.” –The Sunday Times (London)

“It is very difficult for a writer of my generation, if he is honest, to pretend indifference to the work of Somerset Maugham. . . . He was always so entirely there.” –Gore Vidal

“Maugham remains the consummate craftsman. . . . [His writing is] so compact, so economical, so closely motivated, so skillfully written, that it rivets attention from the first page to last.” –Saturday Review of Literature

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Oracle bones - Peter Hessler

Oracle bones: a journey between China's past and present - Hessler, Peter


Summary: "[This book] tells the story of modern-day China and its growing links to the Western world as seen through the lives of a handful of ordinary people"--Dust jacket.



Booklist Reviews
Hessler, who has lived in China for the past nine years and is the Beijing correspondent for the New Yorker, has written a fascinating and frequently moving account of life in modern China as seen through the eyes of an eclectic group of people, including a minority Uighur, who operates on the fringe of legality, a factory worker, a teacher, a film director, and a scholar who was destroyed by the Cultural Revolution. All of them seem to function as outsiders as they struggle to cope with a nation that is undergoing monumental change. Hessler seamlessly interweaves their stories with the broader context of Chinese contemporary events, and he ties those events effectively with examinations of history, archaeological excavations, and the Chinese struggle to redefine national identity. This is an important and informative work offering a unique perspective on where China may be headed. ((Reviewed April 15, 2006)) Copyright 2006 Booklist Reviews.


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The ten, make that nine, habits of very organized people. Make that ten : the tweets of Steve Martin - Steve Martin

The ten, make that nine, habits of very organized people. Make that ten : the tweets of Steve Martin - Martin, Steve

Summary: With over 2.2 million followers (a number growing by the day), and a now famously uncanny ability to pack 140 characters with a maximum amount of humor and wit, Steve Martin has defined what it means to be a celebrity in today's world of social media. Martin's tweets have been covered by personal blogs, major news outlets, and everything in between, and this collection brings his funniest, most memorable messages--and hilarious responses from followers--together for avid followers and offline fans alike. - (Hachette Book Group)


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Operation mincemeat - Ben Macintyre

Operation mincemeat - Ben Macintyre

Summary: From the acclaimed author of "Agent Zigzag" comes an extraordinary account of the most successful deception--and certainly the strangest--ever carried out in World War II, one that changed the prospects for an Allied victory. The purpose of the plan--code named Operation Mincemeat--was to deceive the Nazis into thinking that Allied forces were planning to attack southern Europe by way of Greece or Sardinia, rather than Sicily, as the Nazis had assumed, and the Allies ultimately chose.

Kirkus Reviews
The exciting story of the ingenious British ruse that distracted the Nazis from the Allied Sicilian invasion.Although the invasion finally took place July 10, 1943, allowing the Allied forces an initial foothold into the German "Fortress Europe," the trick that kept the Nazis from fortifying Sicily took place months before. The dead body of a British major, "William Martin," had been hauled in on April 30 by fishermen off the port of Huelva, Spain, a pro-German outpost, his briefcase full of top-secret letters by British officers detailing the invasions of Greece and Sardinia and sure to land in the eager hands of the Germans. In fact, the body was a plant, a suicide victim actually named Glyndwr Michael. He had been plucked from a morgue in London, kept on ice for a few months, dressed in a well-used British Navy uniform, stocked with identification, fake official letters and correspondence from his father and fiancée "Pam," and slipped into the Spanish waters by a British submarine. London Times writer at large Macintyre (Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal, 2007, etc.) skillfully unravels this crazy, brilliant plan by degrees. The "corkscrew minds" at British Navy Intelligence, headed by John Godfrey and his assistant, Ian Fleming (yes, of James Bond fame), put forth the germ of the idea, which was then developed to its fantastic implementation by RAF flight officer Charles Cholmondeley and Lt. Commander Ewen Montagu, first under the code name "Trojan Horse," then the more prosaic "Operation Mincemeat." The author's chronicle of how the last two intelligence officers lovingly created an entire personality for "Major Martin" makes for priceless reading. Astoundingly, as Winston Churchill noted exultantly, the Nazis swallowed the bait "rod, line and sinker."Macintyre spins a terrific yarn, full of details gleaned from painstaking detective work. Copyright Kirkus 2010 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.


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Ubik - Philip K. Dick

Ubik - Dick, Philip K.

Summary: Glen Runciter's anti-psi security agency hires out its talents to block telepathic and paranormal crimes. But when its special team tackles a big job on the moon, something goes terribly wrong, and Runciter is seemingly killed. Now, his mourning employees are receiving bewildering messages from their boss on toilet walls, traffic tickets, product labels, and even U.S. coins.

Review
'One of the most original practitioners writing any kind of fiction, Dick made most of the European avant-garde seem like navel-gazers in a cul-de-sac' - Sunday Times 'My literary hero' -- Fay Weldon 'For everyone lost in the endlessly multiplicating realities of the modern world, remember: Philip K. Dick got there first' -- Terry Gilliam

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Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children - Ransom Riggs

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children - Riggs, Ransom

Summary: After a family tragedy, Jacob feels compelled to explore an abandoned orphanage on an island off the coast of Wales, discovering disturbing facts about the children who were kept there.


Publishers Weekly Reviews
Riggs's atmospheric first novel concerns 16-year-old Jacob, a tightly wound but otherwise ordinary teenager who is "unusually susceptible to nightmares, night terrors, the Creeps, the Willies, and Seeing Things That Aren't Really There." When Jacob's grandfather, Abe, a WWII veteran, is savagely murdered, Jacob has a nervous breakdown, in part because he believes that his grandfather was killed by a monster that only they could see. On his psychiatrist's advice, Jacob and his father travel from their home in Florida to Cairnholm Island off the coast of Wales, which, during the war, housed Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. Abe, a Jewish refugee from the Nazis, lived there before enlisting, and the mysteries of his life and death lead Jacob back to that institution. Nearly 50 unsettling vintage photographs appear throughout, forming the framework of this dark but empowering tale, as Riggs creates supernatural back stories and identities for those pictured in them (a boy crawling with bees, a girl with untamed hair carrying a chicken). It's an enjoyable, eccentric read, distinguished by well-developed characters, a believable Welsh setting, and some very creepy monsters. Ages 12–up. (June)

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Les miserables - Victor Hugo

Les miserables - Hugo, Victor

Summary: Story of Valjean, the ex-convict who rises against all odds from galley slave to mayor, and the fanatical police inspector who dedicates his life to recapturing Valjean.
A favorite of readers for nearly 150 years, and the basis for one of the most beloved stage musicals ever, this stirring tale of crime, punishment, justice, and redemption pulses with life and energy. Hugo sweeps readers from the French provinces to the back alleys of Paris, and from the battlefield of Waterloo to the bloody ramparts of Paris during the uprising of 1832.

First published in 1862, this sprawling novel is an extravagant historical epic that is teeming with harrowing adventures and unforgettable characters. In the protagonist, Jean Valjean, a quintessential prisoner of conscience who languished for years in prison for stealing bread to feed his starving family, Les Misérables depicts one of the grand themes in literature–that of the hunted man. Woven into the narrative are the prevalent social issues of Hugo’s day: injustice, authoritarian rule, social inequality, civic unrest.

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Does the noise inside my head bother you? - Steven Tyler

Does the noise inside my head bother you?: a rock 'n' roll memoir - Tyler, Steven

Summary: The frontman of the classic rock band Aerosmith tells his story, including his rise to rock stardom in the 1970s, the band's drop in popularity, and their comeback in the late 1980s and 1990s.



Reviews
“Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll…gets a booster shot of head-spinning authenticity in Steven Tyler’s brash memoir Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?...a frank, full, and colorful accounting of the band’s tumultuous history.” (USA Today )

“Tyler’s memory for detail makes for good reading.” (Detroit News )

“One of the book’s charms is Tyler’s lack of guilt or regret for anything in his life…Music fans will enjoy Tyler’s remembrances of the New York scene, dating from clubs like The Scene and Max’s Kansas City.” (New York Daily News )

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The swerve - Stephen Greenblatt

The swerve: how the world became modern - Greenblatt, Stephen

Summary: In this book the author transports readers to the dawn of the Renaissance and chronicles the life of an intrepid book lover who rescued the Roman philosophical text On the Nature of Things from certain oblivion. In this work he has crafted both a work of history and a story of discovery, in which one manuscript, plucked from a thousand years of neglect, changed the course of human thought and made possible the world as we know it. Nearly six hundred years ago, a short, genial, cannily alert man in his late thirties took a very old manuscript off a library shelf, saw with excitement what he had discovered, and ordered that it be copied. That book was the last surviving manuscript of an ancient Roman philosophical epic, On the Nature of Things, by Lucretius, a beautiful poem of the most dangerous ideas: that the universe functioned without the aid of gods, that religious fear was damaging to human life, and that matter was made up of very small particles in eternal motion, colliding and swerving in new directions. The copying and translation of this ancient book, the greatest discovery of the greatest book-hunter of his age, fueled the Renaissance, inspiring artists such as Botticelli and thinkers such as Giordano Bruno; shaped the thought of Galileo and Freud, Darwin and Einstein; and had a revolutionary influence on writers such as Montaigne and Shakespeare and even Thomas Jefferson.

Booklist Reviews
Literary scholar Greenblatt focuses on Lucretius, ancient Roman author of the brilliant and beautiful didactic poem On the Nature of Things, which challenged the authority of religion, and papal counselor and book hunter Poggio Bracciolini, whose recovery of a copy of the subversive text a millennium and a half later added momentum to the Renaissance and shaped the world we call modern. Lucretius, Greenblatt reminds, was a radical figure very much ahead of his time. Many of his insights—for example, that everything is made of invisible particles of matter that are constantly in motion—have been borne out by modern science. Others, such as the idea that religions are defined by cruelty and superstition, remain hotly controversial to this day. Vatican humanist Bracciolini, about whom we know quite a bit more, if not quite enough, may in the end be the more interesting personality. He knew what he had found, but did he know what it meant? Do we? A fascinating, intelligent look at what may well be the most historically resonant book-hunt of all time. Copyright 2011 Booklist Reviews.

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Makers - Cory Doctorow

Makers - Doctorow, Cory

Summary: What happens to America when two geeks working from a garage invent easy 3D printing, a cure for obesity, and crowd-sourced theme parks? Lawsuits against Disney are only the beginning in this major novel of the booms, busts, and further booms in store for America in the age of open source and its hero/hacker culture.


Library Journal Reviews
After winning acclaim and awards for his YA novel Little Brother, Locus Award winner Doctorow (Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom) returns to adult sf. His latest involves a corporate executive who funds high-tech microprojects—they cost thousands of dollars instead of millions—a pair of inventors who can make anything out of anything, and a blogger who chronicles their careers. Doctorow isn't Pollyannesque about the effects of rapid technological change: change of such scope and force is often devastating—boom followed by bust, then boom again, then bust. The ending of this well-written, well-conceived novel is bittersweet. VERDICT In speculative fiction, too often the ideas outrun the writing, but not here. Doctorow's novel features a good, modest story, appealing characters, and extremely interesting ideas that will appeal to his fans and sf aficionados as well as readers interested in cogitating on the social consequences of cybertechnology's near-exponential growth. Enthusiastically recommended.—David Keymer, Modesto, CA

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Madman Atomica! - Michael Allred

Madman Atomica! - Allred, Michael

Summary: This over-sized hardcover collection contains the complete Madman Atomic Comics series, The Atomics series, and the many now-out-of-print one-shots, plus a huge pile of extras, pin-ups, and rarities! Collects Madman Atomic Comics #1-18, The Atomics #1-16, Madman King-Sized Super Groovy Special, and the It Girl and Mr. Gum One-Shots.


Review from the Graphic Novel Reporter

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Absolute identity crisis - Brad Meltzer

Absolute identity crisis - Meltzer, Brad

Summary: New York Times best-selling novelist Brad Meltzer (The Inner Circle, The Book of Fate) unleashed a murder mystery featuring some of the biggest pop icons in the world: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and the rest of the Justice League. The most talked-about and successful miniseries of 2004, IDENTITY CRISIS is a graphic novel written by Meltzer with art by Rags Morales and Michael Bair. The book delivers murder, betrayal, intrigue and an inventive look at the world of superheroes, fantastic powers and secret identities.

When the spouse of a JLA member is brutally murdered, the entire superhero community searches for the killer, fearing their own loved ones may be the next targets. Before the mystery is solved, a number of long-buried secrets will threaten to divide the heroes before they can bring the mysterious killer to justice. IDENTITY CRISIS is an all-too-human look into the lives of superheroes, and the terrible price they pay for doing good.

Publishers Weekly
This seven-issue miniseries by bestselling author Meltzer (The Zero Game) was both wildly popular and reviled, and the collection shows that both views have merit. It does knock the rust off scores of DC characters while opening avenues to explore post-9/11 morality. On the other hand, it trashes the roles of characters whom readers have come to consider old friends and tampers outrageously with years' worth of continuity. The story begins shockingly when the wife of the minor super hero Elongated Man is brutally murdered. Things get increasingly serious as other members of the Justice League of America find that their loved ones are targets. The super villains are a lot nastier than they used to be; the heroes, meanwhile, are forced to admit that they could have been responsible for some of what's gone wrong when they started tampering with the minds of villains who deserved it or even fellow heroes who merely disapproved of the idea. This makes familiar heroes more morally ambiguous;more human;and the old, easy trust is lost, with long-term consequences still to be revealed in future DC story lines. In the meantime, Meltzer's script and Bair's inking of Morales's penciled art serves the realistic aspect of the characters very well, making this book a genuine comics landmark. (Sept.)

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Riddley Walker - Russell Hoban

Riddley Walker - Hoban, Russell

Summary: After the death of his father, twelve-year-old Riddley Walker is given his father’s role of “connexion man”. As “connexion man,” he is responsible for giving prophetic interpretations for traveling puppet shows. These shows not only serve as a religious ceremony, but also as a government propaganda tool. After some unexpected turn of events Riddley is soon “running with the wild dogs who have inexplicably befriended him, heading down darkened roads into an explosive mixture of danger, intrigue, and forbidden knowledge”.


Reviews
"A hero with Huck Finn's heart and charm, lighting by El Greco and jokes by Punch and Judy.... Riddley Walker is haunting and fiercely imagined and—this matters most—intensely ponderable." —Benjamin DeMott, The New York Times Book Review

"This is what literature is meant to be." —Anthony Burgess

"Russell Hoban has brought off an extraordinary feat of imagination and style.... The conviction and consistency are total. Funny, terrible, haunting and unsettling, this book is a masterpiece." —Anthony Thwaite, Observer

"Extraordinary... Suffused with melancholy and wonder, beautifully written, Riddley Walker is a novel that people will be reading for a long, long time." —Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book World

"Stunning, delicious, designed to prevent the modern reader from becoming stupid." —John Leonard, The New York Times

"Highly enjoyable... An intriguing plot... Ferociously inventive." —Walter Clemons, Newsweek

"Astounding... Hoban's soaring flight of imagination is that golden rarity, a dazzlingly realized work of genius." —Jane Clapperton, Cosmopolitan

"An imaginative intensity that is rare in contemporary fiction.' —Paul Gray, Time

Riddley Walker is a brilliant, unique, completely realized work of fiction. One reads it again and again, discovering new wonders every time through. Set in a remote future in a post-nuclear holocaust England (Inland), Hoban has imagined a humanity regressed to an iron-age, semi-literate state—and invented a language to represent it. Riddley is at once the Huck Finn and the Stephen Dedalus of his culture—rebel, change agent, and artist. Read again or for the first time this masterpiece of 20th-century literature with new material by the author.


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Lunatics - Dave Barry

Lunatics - Barry, Dave

Summary: An uproarious tale told in alternating voices follows the stories of a pet shop owner and a curmudgeon who find themselves on the run from police, terrorists, and a pizza chain mascot.



Kirkus Reviews
A novel for those who love one-liners, outrageous characters and loopy plots. Jeffrey Peckerman has a beef—plenty of them, in fact, but his initial one involves what he views as an unfair offsides call at his 11-year-old daughter's soccer game. The ref who makes the questionable call is Philip Horkman, owner of a pet store incongruously called The Wine Shop (because his in-laws, the Wines, funded his business venture). And thus begins one of the strangest buddy novels of this or any century. The hapless characters begin a hate-hate relationship that literally takes them around the globe, starting with an escaped lemur, an insulin pump and the misapprehension that Peckerman and Horkman are members of al-Qaeda trying to blow up the George Washington Bridge. To escape, they make their way onto a cruise ship about to leave New York harbor, only to discover that it's clothing optional. Horkman starts to fall in love with a nun (after all, she's not wearing her habit) and plunges overboard to save her when she's swept away in a storm. From here events get even goofier, as the two opponents land in Cuba (and co-lead a revolution), then go to Mozambique (and are captured by pirates), thence to Yemen (where they are rescued by the Mossad), afterwards to Beijing (and lead a protest in Tiananmen Square), and finally to California, where they meet Donald Trump at the Republican National Convention and where Horkman, despite being a Democrat, is nominated for president. (Later, Peckerman becomes the Democratic nominee, but his obscenity-laced speeches are the despair of his handlers.) Throughout their romp around the world they're constantly at each other's throats, either literally or metaphorically, Horkman's prissiness playing off of Peckerman's crude cynicism. An antidote, if one is needed, to gritty urban realism. Copyright Kirkus 2011 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.


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Dead end in Norvelt - John Gantos

Dead end in Norvelt - Gantos, John

Summary: In the historic town of Norvelt, Pennsylvania, twelve-year-old Jack Gantos spends the summer of 1962 grounded for various offenses until he is assigned to help an elderly neighbor with a most unusual chore involving the newly dead, molten wax, twisted promises, Girl Scout cookies, underage driving, lessons from history, typewriting, and countless bloody noses.

Library Media Connection
The town of Norvelt, Pennsylvania was founded in 1934 to provide out-of-work miners with affordable housing. By 1962, when this story takes place, the town is in decline. Jack's summer plans are thwarted when his mother places him under "house arrest," allowing him only to help arthritic Miss Volker. She dictates obituaries and historical facts to Jack who types them up and takes them to the newspaper office. When Miss Volker is accused of poisoning the women who died that summer, Jack sets out to clear her name. This is an interesting coming of age story. The town of Norvelt does exist, and author Jack Gantos did live there as a child. The town is populated by a series of eccentric characters who contribute to the humor of the story, and the relationship that develops between Jack and Miss Volker rings true. Gantos fans will find this one of his best works. Charlotte Decker, Librarian and Educational Reviewer, Cincinnati, Ohio [Editor's Note: Available in e-book format.] RECOMMENDED ¬ 2011 Linworth Publishing, Inc.

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Moby-duck - Donovan Hohn

Moby-duck: the true story of 28,800 bath toys lost at sea, and of the beachcombers, oceanographers, environmentalists, and fools--including the author--who went in search of them - Hohn, Donovan

Summary: When the author heard of the mysterious loss of thousands of bath toys at sea, he figured he would interview a few oceanographers, talk to a few beachcombers, and read up on Arctic science and geography. But questions can be like ocean currents: wade in too far, and they carry you away. His accidental odyssey pulls him into the secretive world of shipping conglomerates, the daring work of Arctic researchers, the lunatic risks of maverick sailors, and the shadowy world of Chinese toy factories. This work is a journey into the heart of the sea and an adventure through science, myth, the global economy, and some of the worst weather imaginable. With each new discovery, he learns of another loose thread, and with each successive chase, he comes closer to understanding where his castaway quarry comes from and where it goes.

Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Like Bill Bryson on hard science, or John McPhee with attitude, journalist Hohn travels from beaches to factories to the northern seas in pursuit of a treasure that mystifies as much as it provokes. His quest is to determine what happened to a load of 28,800 Chinese manufactured plastic animals in a container that fell off a ship en route to Seattle in 1992. Hohn's inquiry leads him to 10 Little Rubber Ducks (2005), children's author Eric Carle's idealized board-book version, and also to the plastic-strewn beaches of an Alaskan island, a Hong Kong toy fair, and the Sesame Street origins of the rubber duck's popularity. By turns thoughtful, bemused, or shocked, Hohn finds the story growing beyond his wildest visions as he learns about the science of ocean currents and drift and the lure of cheap plastic in a consumer culture that has dangerously lost its way. The resulting book is a thoroughly engaging environmental/travel title that crosses partisan divides with its solid research and apolitical nature. Rubber ducks as harmless, ubiquitous symbols of childhood? Not anymore, not by a long shot. This dazzles from start to finish. Copyright 2010 Booklist Reviews.

UCSB Reads


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For the win - Cory Doctorow

For the win - Doctorow, Cory

Summary: A group of teens from around the world find themselves drawn into an online revolution arranged by a mysterious young woman known as Big Sister Nor, who hopes to challenge the status quo and change the world using her virtual connections.



Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Doctorow is indispensable. It's hard to imagine any other author taking on youth and technology with such passion, intelligence, and understanding. Although perhaps less urgent than Little Brother (2008), this effort is superior in every other aspect: scope, plot, character, and style. Set in the near future and in locations across the globe (though primarily China and India), the story involves a sweeping cast of characters making a living—if you want to call brutal conditions and pitiful wages a "living"—in such virtual-game worlds as Svartalfheim Warriors and Zombie Mecha. Many of them, like 15-year-old Mala (known by her troops as "General Robotwalla"), endure physical threats from their bosses to farm virtual gold, which is then sold to rich First World gamers. Then these brilliant teens are brought together by the mysterious Big Sister Nor, who has a plan to unionize and bring these virtual worlds—and real-world sweatshops, too—to a screeching halt. Once again Doctorow has taken denigrated youth behavior (this time, gaming) and recast it into something heroic. He can't resist the occasional lecture—sometimes breaking away from the plot to do so—but thankfully his lessons are riveting. With it's eye-opening humanity and revolutionary zeal, this ambitious epic is well worth the considerable challenge. Copyright 2010 Booklist Reviews.

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