Cornell professor emeritus Liam Connor’s mysterious leap to his death puzzles his daughter Maggie and his research partner Jake Sterling. But soon it becomes evident that Connor’s clandestine research into bioweapons is the key to whoever drove Connor to his death. Jake and Maggie are forcibly drawn into a race to find out who is after the professor’s secret research. A compelling, irresistible story that will appeal to fans of Michael Crichton.
Jill
This is a wonderfully atmospheric historical mystery set in 1780s England, at the time of the anti-Catholic riots. When Harriet Westerman finds a dead body on her Sussex estate, she enlists the help of her neighbor, Gabriel Crowther, to find the killer. Crowther happens to be a retired doctor who studies corpses, and pretty soon he has plenty of them to study in Sussex. The dead all seem to be connected to another Sussex estate, Thornleigh Hall, and there are many suspects. Meanwhile, Alexander Adams, the heir to Thornleigh Hall, is murdered in London. It seems likely that the killings are related, but who arranged for them?
Jill
In The Third Miracle – An Ordinary Man, A Medical Mystery and A Trial of Faith, Colorado author and journalist Bill Briggs does an amazing job of telling the story of handyman Phil McCord who worked at a convent in Indiana and had a mysterious eye ailment after having cataract surgery. One cold day he was walking across the grounds and soon found himself inside the chapel. He prayed to Mother Theodore Guerin and God for help in having a cornea transplant or just help with this ailment. The next morning, his eye was so much better that the doctors were perplexed. They did not understand it.
But the Sisters of the Convent said it was the intervention of Mother Theodor Guerin who they had been championing to become a saint. McCord soon regained his 20/20 sight. The Catholic Church was investigating alleged miracles that Mother Guerin was said to have been part of and 100 years from the first alleged miracle – this one took place.
Briggs interviewed McCord, the nuns and explored the rigorous court drama and what he called almost a CSI Vatican way of how they name saints. The book reads like a mystery novel complete with drama, amazing characters like Mother Theodore and Phil McCord, the Church and the Vatican. Think – Erik Larsen Devil in the White City – The Third Miracle will capture your attention and is hard to put down.
Lisa
The Uncoupling is a book about sex. Or rather, it’s a book about no sex. In the sleepy suburban town of Stellar Plains, New Jersey, a spell has come over the women who work at the local high school. They feel an icy chill and they suddenly no longer have any desire to engage in sex. The very thought is repulsive. This cold wave happens to coincide with the staging of that year’s school play, Lysistrata, the ancient Greek comedy where the women of Athens decide to withhold sex until their men stop fighting the Peloponnesian War.
If you can let yourself embrace this magically-realistic premise, Wolitzer’s story puts an interesting spin on how sex and our love or hate of it can affect a relationship. The spell knows no bounds and we hear from, among others, a formerly passionate spouse; a teen in the thrall of new love; a disaffected partner resentful of hurtful remarks; and a serial-dating single. These different voices give the story a well-rounded perspective. As the characters exam their sex lives, they examine their whole lives and their place in each relationship. They consider intimacy at all its levels. Wolitzer’s writing style is easy to read and she is spot on with describing certain elements of high school life and suburban living.
The ending of the story is, perhaps, a bit predictable and heavy on the mystical, but the body of the story is entertaining and thought-provoking enough to carry the reader through.
Laura J.
Once again Colorado’s Sandra Dallas has written a wonderful historical novel. The Bride’s House is set in Georgetown, Colorado. It’s the story of three generations of women who live there. It starts out during the 1880s mining boom and bust and continues past WWII. Three strong-willed women are the main characters: Nealie, the red-headed runaway; her daughter Pearl, the intelligent, business-minded, lonely one and Nealie’s granddaughter, Susan, who is the first one who attends a university. The other main character is The Bride’s House. It’s more than three love stories. It is a history of the area, of women, and it’s about secrets and how secrets harm families, loves and friendships. Sandra does excellent research on all her books. It was a joy to read. The Bride’s House is really located in Georgetown, but it isn’t open to the public.
Lisa
Julia Glass won the 2002 National Book Award for Three Junes. In this her fourth novel, she writes a funny, moving and thought provoking story revolving around a curmudgeonly 70-year-old retired Harvard librarian. Percy Darling’s wife, Poppy, died suddenly 30 years ago. Now, his staid, solitary lifestyle changes dramatically when he allows his older daughter, Clover, to renovate his barn and turn it into Elves and Fairies, a preschool for the wealthy families who live in their suburb outside Boston.
Other characters whose stories unfold and intertwine with Percy’s are his other daughter Trudy, a renowned Boston oncologist; her son Robert, a premed student at Harvard who gets involved with an eco-terrorism group; and Sarah, whose son Ricco attends Elves & Fairies and to whom Percy forms an attachment. Others include Ira, Ricco’s gay teacher and Celestino, a Guatemalan gardener, who Percy meets while Celestino is tending Percy’s neighbor’s garden.
I would recommend this book to discussion groups and to readers who enjoy Elizabeth Berg, Joyce Carol Oates and Anne Tyler.
Allison
I listened to the audio version of this suspenseful noir thriller with elements of the paranormal. The story takes place in 1935 during the Great Depression. A group of CCC workers are on a train headed to the Florida Keys to build a bridge when Arlen Wagner sees impending doom. He tries to get the workers to get off the train when it stops at a station. Only one of the men, young Paul Brickhill, hears the warning in Arlen’s voice and gets off the train. When the immense Labor Day hurricane of 1935 destroys the Keys Paul and Arlen are alive, but find themselves in great danger when they arrive at the Cypress House. This is a gritty story of good and evil and Koryta does a great job describing the suffocating atmosphere at the lodge, caused not only by the weather but by raw human emotions.
Allison
Covering a span of roughly 100 years Galore tells the many stories of two sparring families in fictional Paradise Deep, (a purposefully ironic name), as they literally weather the abundance and deprivations, both physical and emotional, that life in 19th century Newfoundland affords. This wonderfully cyclical story begins with the emergence of a man from the belly of a beached whale and proceeds through six generations of equally quirky characters.
Award-winning author Michael Crummey wanted to infuse the book with folklore and was even drawn to the title Galore, because of “lore” being in the word. There are stories galore, characters galore and folktales in abundance–a term, the book reminds us, that can be both positive and negative. As the characters scrabble to eke out an existence and fight against the tide of inevitability, they both glory in and suffer from abundances both good and bad. While the story mostly makes a forward progression, the unpredictable jumps in time can be challenging, but also add to the spontaneous and quirky feel of the narrative.
The story does not rely on a central protagonist, so our allegiance is blown from one family member to another like the gale-force winds that come driving in from the sea, but that also means that we have the opportunity to attach ourselves to several powerful characters throughout this family saga.
Crummey says he admires both Jane Smiley’s novel, Greenlanders and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, and he has done a marvelous job of creating a new work that simultaneously captures a culture and unfurls a history of family feuds.
Like the rugged and rocky landscape of Newfoundland, Galore isn’t easy to navigate (thank goodness for the family tree), but the rewards for persistence are breathtaking.
Laura
In a small Pennsylvania town in 1968, Lynnie, a developmentally disabled young woman, and Homan, a deaf African-American man, fall in love at The Pennsylvania State School for the Incurable and Feebleminded. Determined to escape the horrific conditions at the Home, they run away and seek refuge at the home of Martha, a retired schoolteacher.
When the school officials catch up with them, Homan escapes into the woods; just before Lynnie is captured and returned to the school she gives her newborn daughter into Martha’s keeping with the words, “Hide her.”
So begins the forty year journey of Lynnie, Homan, Martha and baby Julia as each has to overcome incredible challenges.
Readers who loved The Help will find the same rich and well defined characters plus insight into the deplorable conditions at some institutions in the 1960s. Rachel Simon is the author of the book Riding the Bus With My Sister that was made into a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie. It was based on her own story of her life with her developmentally disabled sister so this topic is very near to her heart.
This is one of those books you can give to anyone who says, “I just want a good book to read.” Your book club will want to read this one!
Dedra
Mary Doria Russell is a fine writer and I would recommend anything she has written. Doc is a novel based on the life of Doc John Henry Holliday. I’ve always had a fascination with Doc Holliday – maybe because he spent the end of his days in Glenwood Springs, maybe because he was ill with TB for so long and still a larger than life character.
Russell brings readers the story of Doc as a boy in Georgia, who probably should have never survived birth, but did thanks to the efforts of his mother – a woman who faced life’s problems head on with courage. Thanks to his surgeon uncle and his mother’s care, tutoring and love, John Henry had a sense of who he was and where he came from, and he did become a dentist. He had TB by the time he was 21 and moved West for the drier climate. He met a prostitute, Kate, who was also a survivor and feisty. This is about their time in Dodge, with the Earps, Bat Masterson and many you’ll recognize from the films about the Wyatt Earp.
Russell’s careful research and beautiful writing will help readers know and understand a more realistic Doc Holliday and not the one we all know from dime store novels and movies. It is out in early May. She’ll be at the Tattered Cover Book Store in mid-May.
Lisa
