Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

Porto Vergona, Italy, 1962.  Young Pasquale Tursi has come home from university in Florence after the death of his father to care for his mother in their tiny fishing village on the Italian coast.  He dreams of making his father's tiny hotel over into an elegant pensione that wealthy American tourists will flock to.  It is one morning, Pasquale standing waist deep in the bay, tossing rocks to build up the breakwall so the waves will not wash away his tiny beach, that the lovely American actress appears from the sea.  From the set of Cleopatra in Rome, Dee Moray is frail, dying, and has been sent to Porto Vergogna to wait for a man.  Pasquale is instantly in love.

Hollywood, California.  Present day.  Claire Silver is contemplating quitting her job as chief development assistant to legendary Hollywood producer Michael Deane.  Once a force to be reckoned with, Michael is a washed up relic of golden age Hollywood, and Claire spends her days listening to terrible movie pitches.  But when an elderly Italian man turns up on the lot, looking for an American actress he last saw in Italy fifty years ago, Claire believes she may have found the story she's been waiting for.

Beautiful Ruins is a tangle of interconnected stories that unfold across time and over continents that offers a glimpse at the extraordinary lives of ordinary people.  Wry, funny, heartbreaking and brutally honest, this engrossing novel will have you craving a trip to the sun-soaked cliffs of the Italian seacoast.  Stretching from the second World War to the nerve-racking and more than slightly ridiculous production lots of modern Hollywood, this surprising adventure is at its heart an epic love story you definately want in your beach bag this summer!

Friday, July 27, 2012

On Black Sisters Street by Chika Unigwe

Four Nigerian women who have come to Antwerp to work in the red light district share living quarters on Zwartesusterstraat.  Although prostitution itself is legal in Belgium, they are powerless economic refugees who are in the country illegally and deeply in debt to the pimp who recruited them.  When one of these women is murdered, the others begin to confide in each other. Each has her own unique background and reason for being there. Each has her own hopes and plans for a better future. This is a story of women in dreadful circumstances who must make impossible choices. Those who loved Little Bee by Chris Cleave will also be enthralled by On Black Sisters Street.

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Mr. g by Alan Lightman

Mr g, a supreme being who lives in the Void with his Aunt Penelope and Uncle Deva, decides to create a universe. He begins by creating time, space, matter and three laws to govern them. Sitting back to enjoy the resulting developments, he sees that they are good. However, his pride of accomplishment is disrupted by the disturbing visits of a previously unknown being, Belhor. Belhor stops by periodically to argue philosophical points such as: free will, good and evil, suffering, predestination and immortality. Although he finds Belhor annoying, Mr g enjoys these debates. So, they continue their discussions for eons until the ever-changing universe expands to the point that it can no longer support life.  Mr g is a well-written book which makes physics and philosophy enjoyable to the layman and may be of particular interest to those interested in the recently discovered “god particle.”

Friday, July 20, 2012

Heading Out to Wonderful by Robert Goolrick

It’s the summer of 1948 in rural Virginia.  Charlie Beale has just arrived in town and quickly endears himself to the townspeople with his good looks, baseball talent, and butchering skills.  He becomes a second father to the owner’s son, Sam, and soon meets the teenage wife of Boaty Glass, the richest man in town.  Charlie becomes obsessed with her and heads down a path of destruction that changes the town forever.    This gothic tale of secrets and lies will entertain you.  Check out Robert Goolrick’s first novel, The Reliable Wife, from the library, too!

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker

What would happen if the rotation of the Earth slowed down, stretching the days by minutes, then hours?  If a single day grew to over 50 hours long?

Julia is 11 years old when the slowing begins.  At first, the change is hardly noticeable - the streetlights come on too early, the sun sets a bit later than it should.  But then the birds begin to die - gravity is stronger, and airborne things have a harder time staying airborne.  First the grass dies, then the trees - with 20, then 30 hours of sun, followed by the long dark of night, crops cannot grow without greenhouses and sunlamps.  The magnetic field of the Earth disturbed, the whales can no longer navigate, and there are mass beachings.

As the rotation disintegrates, so does everyday life.  Julia's best friend Hannah, a Mormon, moves to Utah to wait for the end with her family.  Her science teacher vanishes, and her piano teacher, always a free spirit, is suddenly distrusted by Julia's mom.  People stockpile huge amounts of canned food and water.  Her parents drift apart, her mother affected by a mysterious illness simply called The Syndrome.  And as society splits between clock time and real time, the 24-hour day implemented by the government makes strangers of friends and neighbors.  Eerie, unsettling, and utterly compelling, this perfectly paced dystopian novel is one of this summer's must-reads!

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

The Invisible Ones by Stef Penney

Private Investigator Ray Lovell is hired by a father to find his missing daughter, Rose. Complicating the case is the fact that the woman has been missing for seven years and her family and her husband’s family are mistrustful gypsies who seem determined to withhold information.  No one has an answer as to why Rose would abandon her chronically ill child or how she, without friends or money, could disappear so completely, or why, for seven years, neither family has reported her missing. Half-gypsy himself, Lovell doggedly searches for the missing woman but the case is made more mysterious by a poisoning, a fire, a death and another disappearance.  Lovell’s persistence finally pays off leading him to two shocking conclusions in The Invisible Ones.

Friday, July 6, 2012

Dissolution by C J Sansom

History! Mystery! Dissolution is a well-written book that will satisfy the fans of both genres.  The first in a series of mysteries set in Tudor England, it combines the historical problems encompassing King Henry VIII’s dissolution of the English monasteries with a murder investigation. Matthew Shardlake, a lawyer and King’s Commissioner, is sent by Thomas Cromwell to a monastery in southern England to investigate the murder of the previous commissioner.  This official had been sent by Cromwell to investigate corruption in the monastery.  Proof of corruption would lead to certain dissolution, so suspicion falls on every monk living there. Before he is done, Shardlake is investigating multiple murders and finds his own life is in danger. This series will appeal to fans of Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, although it portrays Thomas Cromwell in an entirely different light.