Fiction

The Sacrifice, Joyce Carol Oates' new novel, is based largely on the 1987 Tawana Brawley alleged rape case and the author's 1969 novel, Them, based on the 1967 race riots.  The novel takes place in the fictional Red Rock neighborhood of inner-city Pascayne, New Jersey, in October of 1987.  It centers around a black family:  Sybilla Frye, 15, allegedly gang raped and beaten by white police officers; her mother, Ednetta Frye; and her stepfather, Anis Schutt.  At the center of the story are the manipulative Mudrick twins, Rev. Marus Mudrick and his attorney brother, Byron; and Leopaldo Quarrquan

I have read many pastiches of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, but I think I enjoyed this one the most.  Sherlock Holmes has retired to the country where he keeps bees and takes on the occasional job. One day, while out on the moor, he stumbles across Mary Russell, and they somehow develop a friendship.  Holmes teaches her the art of detection and she becomes an apprentice of sorts. As their relationship develops, Holmes involves her in one of his cases, a kidnapping, and then strange things start to happen to Miss Russell! Mrs. Hudson and Doctor Watson are here in supporting roles.  

Th

I have read many books about the Kennedy assassination, and found Stephen Hunter’s telling from a sniper’s point of view an interesting perspective I hadn’t seen before. Hunter, a retired journalist and creator of the Bob Lee Swagger series, constructs a thought provoking scenario explaining how Lee Harvey Oswald was, in fact, a patsy for the real assassin. Hunter’s main character, Bob Lee Swagger, a decorated former marine sniper, thinks Oswald does not have the mental and physical skills to pull off the assassination. Swagger cites Oswald’s marine corps record and his history of failure at

While the protagonist, Victoria, is incredibly flawed in The Language of Flowers, it is unlikely you will ever feel anger towards her.  Trapped in the uncaring hands of foster care her entire life, she is socially inept, volatile and completely mired in grief and rage. 

After being booted out of foster care at the age of eighteen, Victoria struggles to find a foothold in adult life.  Thanks to a florist, Renata, and a flower vendor, Grant, Victoria finds anchor in her passion, the language of flowers.  While she is busy healing the lives of others through her remarkable talent of arranging

Before heading to the self-help books looking for psychological insight, be aware that reading fiction can also have strong therapeutic benefits. One example is local author Laura Moriarty’s The Rest of Her Life. Moriarty received a degree in social work from KU, which is excellent training for the themes she explores in her novel: social status and crime, parent/child relationships, and cyclical family dynamics. Moriarty’s prose is not clinical or didactic but flows as well as any good fiction storyteller.

Protagonist Leigh Churchill is a junior high English teacher who fights to keep The

Grace has a problem, well several problems to be exact. She’s a liar and she can’t stop lying not only to herself but also to the people with whom she surrounds herself. She’s a thief but again doesn’t see herself as one, at least not at first. She can never be normal, not after what she has put everyone else through. And she is terrified that two men who are about to be set free on parole for robbing a historic mansion back in Garland, Tennessee are going to find her.

Rebecca Scherm writes a fantastic novel about a girl who spins a web of lies in hopes of becoming a better person, the person

I know this is a somewhat older title with a copyright of 2006, but I missed it back then and every year since. Why? Why did I wait SO long to read it? And why can I only give it five stars? I want to give it ten on scale of one to five!

Taylor Markham lives at the Jellicoe boarding school in Australia. She was abandoned in a Seven Eleven on Jellicoe Road by her mother when she was 5. She never knew her father. Five minutes after her mother left, a woman named Hannah who lived by the Jellicoe school and sometimes took the students under her wing, came by and picked her up. Taylor and Hannah

While steampunk as a subculture may be best known for corsets, goggles, and extraneous decorative gears, beneath those trappings is rich fodder for fiction often featuring plucky female protagonists--and publishers have certainly been taking note. Beth Cato's The Clockwork Dagger is one such tale, complex enough to entice existing steampunk fans but approachable enough to those new to the genre.

All the requisite trappings are present here—a spunky heroine, airships, an alternate universe where scientific progress exists alongside older magic. Heroine Octavia is a "medician," a Druidic doctor

Camp Merrie-Seymour for Boys is the home to Ariel and Max for the summer. Six weeks without technology, living in the Jupiter cabin (all the cabins are named for planets) they quickly realize they are different from everyone else at camp. Sent there not to overcome their addiction to technology (the advertise goal of the camp) Max and Ariel are there because their father works for Merrie-Seymour and camp tuition is free for employees. The only ones not obsessed with getting a sweet taste of the internet, the boys of Jupiter quickly begin to win the cabin competition. But when the boys of

Riley MacPherson's older sister, Lisa, committed suicide when Riley was just 2 years old, leaving her family changed forever. Now Riley has returned to her father's home shortly after his death to settle his estate and check on her angry, mentally ill brother. She soon finds evidence that much of her life has been a lie when an acquaintance suggests Riley was adopted. Then she finds evidence that Lisa may have faked her death at age 17 to escape a murder charge. Riley sets out to find the truth, and her sister if she is indeed alive, uncovering more secrets than she could have imagined.

This

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins is a fast-paced murder mystery with lots of twists and turns throughout. It is July 2013 and Rachel, a middle-aged single woman, commutes by train to London every day. She has memorized everything about the trip, from the stops to the landscape, and has become particularly fascinated by a happy couple she sees almost everyday. But then one day she sees something new and she cannot let it go. And then the rug is pulled out from underneath her when her dreamy couple becomes one of London's most intriguing headlines.

The similarities between this novel to

There is no delicate way to tell a person that he is holding a container full of the incinerated remains of his own body.

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"Grow apart." So often, when two people are asked to explain why their relationship has changed and isn't working out, at least one of them will say that they have simply grown apart. They have grown in different ways so that they have less connection and less in common than they once did. Sometimes it's not so much a matter of growing in different directions as growing at different rates.

Noggin is the ultimate tale of growing at different rates. Travis was dying

Eighty years after German super-soldiers crushed the Allied forces in World War II, Zara works as a maid at a Nazi cadet academy in the Easter American Territories. Zara can't escape the Nazi's constant obsession with the Aryan ideal, with a Japanese father and American mother she doesn't fit in with the occupying forces. Although she can't hide her lineage she can hide another genetic gift from her father, the ability to control wind. If the Fuhrer knew about her ability, she would be eradicated. 

Hiding in the shadows, Zara longs to join the Resistance, and push the Nazis out of her country

Now Charlie’s dead and I’m here in the kitchen—on my way to school, and then to work. It’s my senior year and I still have no idea what I want to do with my life. I am motherless, and in the last year, I lost my best friend twice, fell in love with a guy I shouldn’t have (twice), got beat up by a skinhead Nazi, and had things thrown at me, including beer cans, money, and dog shit.

These elegies aren’t just for the brokenhearted. They are heartbreaking, and they’re really for Mary Murphy. In introducing those who have left, Mary explores her sad, troubled and unforgiving life. She’s sad. She's confused. And she's surrounded by sad and confused people.

The remarkable thing about Mary Murphy is that, in the end, she lives very hopefully. Making these elegies not just for the brokenhearted, not just for her, but for anyone who has struggled and lost. Or struggled and overcome.

Elegies for the Brokenhearted drew me in from the first sentence: “Every family had one and you

Quietly understated, leaving much unsaid under the surface, yet visceral, tangible, and intense--Smith’s storytelling in Ghost Medicine is like his characters.

Troy lives in a remote ranching community at the base of the mountains in the west. The son of a teacher who doesn’t quite fit in, he loves the ranch life and is rarely separated from his Stetson or horse, Reno, yet only wears tennis shoes and t-shirts along with his jeans. The summer before he turns 17, Troy’s mom finally loses her battle with cancer and he runs away on Reno into the mountains, living off the land for a few weeks

Dr. Jack Travis is trouble with a capital “T”.  He runs a free medical clinic for those who can’t afford medical care on the edges of an up and coming posh neighborhood in San Antonio. To support himself and the clinic, he works at several of the surrounding emergency rooms, including Grace Medical. Proximity to a gated community draw controversy to the clinic and Jack defends it and its patients vehemently against attempts to shut them down.

Black River is a debut novel by S. M. Hulse. The Montana landscape is a major player in this story of damage, redemption and forgiveness. Wes Carver returns to Black River with his wife's ashes and a letter from the parole board that a prisoner that held him hostage twenty years ago during a prison riot was being considered for release.

Dancing With Fire literally starts with a bang; an explosion that leaves the Danner girls orphaned and in danger. Kaylin Danner put her dreams on hold when her mother died to help her scientist father raise her two younger sisters. After her father’s biodiesel plant blows up just as he has figured out the formula to efficiently produce this sought-after fuel, events lead her to believe that the explosion and her father’s death may not have been an accident.

Sawyer Scott has been working with Dr. Danner for years as his assistant developing the biodiesel fuel formula. Dr. Danner has been his

In this novel, Marie, a young mother, is a server at an upscale Dallas restaurant.  Some nights the tips border on phenomenal. Yet, she is slowly suffocating under a great, sorrowful blanket of depression. She exists, she suffers, she endures acts of degradation and abuse from men on the off chance that occasionally she will experience something other than sadness and pain. Her daughter is a buoy that she lets go of to sink back into the nasty muck. Love Me Back holds no happy ending, no redemption.  Tierce is excellent, she never takes the focus off Marie even when it sickens us to watch.

Veda lives in India and is a classical (Bharatanatyam) dancer. She lives and breathes dance, has for as long as she can remember. She plans to make dancing her career, despite her mother continually pushing her toward engineering. She is amazingly talented and has just won first place in a major competition. After the competition, the bus taking the competitors back home crashes. She wakes in the hospital with her right leg missing below the knee. Talk about a strong female protagonist! This girl simply will not give up! She is determined to dance again with her artificial leg, even when her

Mistakes made when Annie Black was a 20-year-old American living in London have come to haunt her decades later with very real, devastating consequences. Annie and those affected by her choices endure desire, love, rejection, and forgiveness as they work through the repercussions of choices made years ago. The novel flips back and forth between present-day events occurring in San Francisco and past events that occurred in Annie’s life while she was in Europe.  A melancholy, but enjoyable book. 

In a phone call that changes her life, Rachel Milligan learns that the parents of her 7-year-old niece, Holly, have had a tragic accident while on vacation.  Believing she is the only living guardian left to take care of the little girl, Rachel is shocked when Holly's custody is awarded to Lydia, a distant Amish aunt. Rachel complies with the court order and takes Holly to her new family. However, she hopes to convince Lydia to let the child stay with her. As Christmas approaches, Rachel's fantasy begins to fall apart when family secrets come out in the little Amish community. The story takes

Refusing to leave her parents and her sister behind, Lenka stays with them in Czechoslovakia to face the uncertainty of life for Jews during WWII. Lenka’s new husband, Josef, leaves for the safety of America without her. Lenka receives news that the ship carrying Josef was torpedoed by a German U-boat and Josef is dead.  Unbeknownst to Lenka, however, Josef lives and is searching for her. Lenka and her family are first sent to live and work in Terezin (a Jewish ghetto) and then to Auschwitz. Josef is mistakenly told Lenka was killed in the gas chamber at Auschwitz.  Each thinking the other is

Over the top! There's just no better way to describe Angelmaker. 



The core plot is nothing new: A cautious lead character gets swept into a wild adventure that transforms him into a bold hero ... but with a lot more bells, whistles, and mechanical bees. It's a fun fantastical story, plus you get to figure out the connections among clockmakers, British secret intelligence, the gangster underground, elite craftsmen and plans to end the world as we know it. Take a gander at the book trailer. See what I mean?!



The ordinary Joe Spork is our hero, forced to intervene in a plot set to motion

Chick lit grows up in this smart, insightful, and honest look at life as a middle-aged woman.  And it’s not the same middle age our mothers experienced.

Katie, newly divorced with two kids, finds that on-line dating is no less messy and confusing than marriage. Annie, who really didn’t know her Jewish boyfriend of six years would never marry her, is going to make her own dreams come true. Well, mostly. Maxine, perfect on the outside, not so much on the inside, seeks solace from her stale marriage in the most unlikely places. And Claudia, tired of her husband’s double life – the real one and

I'll devour tasty literary fiction like any book-loving foodie, and Delicious! mixes in equal parts history, mystery and human interest for a full-bodied novel. Add to that an all-but-forgotten library that cryptically hides a series of old letters between unexpected pen pals, and you've got the cherry on top for this Librarian reviewer! 

The story opens with Billie Breslin trying to land a job at the world-renowned culinary magazine Delicious! On the surface she's just taking the first steps in a budding career, but soon it becomes obvious she's moved across the country to avoid facing

Woodrell does an admirable job painting realistic, detailed, and vibrant characters.  Alma Dunahew works as a maid in West Table, Missouri for a wealthy family.  After her sister, along with 42 members of the town, are killed in an explosion at the local dance hall, Alma spends her life campaigning for and championing the truth.  This novel about a town ripped apart by tragedy, and the effect this tragedy has on the town throughout multiple generations, echoes former greats like Winesburg, Ohio and The Scarlet Letter.  I personally found the non-linear chronology sometimes hard to follow, but

A Hundred Pieces of Me is a bittersweet and inspiring story of loss, love, forgiveness, and finding what is important in life. Gina Bellamy has been through many struggles, and newly single, finds herself on her own. A divorcee and cancer survivor, Gina just wants to rebuild her life after her marriage falls apart. Starting from scratch in a tiny apartment, she decides to keep only one hundred things; one hundred pieces of herself. Dog-lovers will love the part that Buzz, Gina’s adopted rescue greyhound, plays in her path to healing. I highly recommend this book, and look forward to reading

Remember that time your Dad told you the implant in your brain didn’t just control your seizures, but that it had “something extra”? Me neither. But it’s a day Owen Gray will never forget.

You see, Owen is a medical Amp. Amps have Neural Autofocus Brain Implants; Reggies have none. Doctors have been implanting people young and old for eight years to cure things like ADD, Downs Syndrome, and traumatic brain injury. These implants irreversibly change neural circuits, and some Reggies now claim Amps are less-than-human. Discrimination and targeted hate-crimes ensue. Add in a zealous Senator, and