Escape from Camp 14 by Blaine Harden

Shin Dong-hyuk is the only person known to have escaped a North Korean prison camp who was born there.  His experiences are unique because he was not exposed to the outside world or the rest of North Korea and their worship of their “Dear Leader”.  Shin’s road to a normal life has been difficult and is still ongoing but Escape from Camp 14 is an inspirational book and will hopefully bring more awareness to the atrocities being committed by the North Korean government.

Stay Close by Harlan Coben

Megan is a suburban soccer mom who has kept her stripper past a secret from her husband.  Ray is a talented photographer whose promising future was destroyed by one ill-fated night.  Jack is a detective obsessed with a missing persons case from seventeen years ago that he is still no closer to solving.  These three lives intersect with explosive consequences. This page-turning read is full of the twists and turns Harlan Coben is known for - check out Stay Close @the library!

Sacre Bleu: A Comedy d'Art by Christopher Moore

This dark tale starts with the suicide of Vincent Van Gogh and introduces readers to the lives of the Impressionist painters in Paris.  Based on the painters’ documented lives and personalities Moore weaves history with fantasy in an intriguing way.   All of the events are tied together by the Colorman, who has produced the “Sacred Blue” during human history.  Color paintings are interspersed throughout the text, giving the reader a feel for the artists’ work.   Check out the gorgeous Sacre Bleu @the library!

Overseas by Beatriz Williams

When investment banker Kate Wilson first lays eyes on the legendary and devastatingly handsome Wall Street hedge fund billionaire Julian Laurence after a business meeting, she feels strangely and inexplicably as though she already knows him.  Still, Kate knows she should be cautious with her heart - British billionaires don't fall in love with bankers from Wisconsin.  But Julian's relentless pursuit of Kate's love has a much deeper, more impossible story behind it.  The modern Julian Laurence bears an astonishing resemblence to Captain Julian Laurence Ashford, a British aristocrat and famous poet who was killed in France during World War I, his body never recovered.  With enough romance, passion and enduring love to make your heart sing and your fingertips tingle, Beatriz Williams' first novel is also a fast-paced mystery packed with historical detail.  If you're a hopeless romantic looking for another dashing, debonair gentleman to shelve alongside Mr. Darcy, you'll want to put Overseas at the top of your summer reading list!

Overseas will be published on May 10, 2012.  This review was based on a review copy sent by the publisher.

Wife 22 by Melanie Gideon

Alice is many things, a wife, mother, and feeling a bit trapped in her life. Her husband seems distant, her kids are growing up, and she is quickly coming up to the age where her own mother passed away.

It's during this year she receives an odd e-mail request: to participate in a study on the state of marriage in the 21st century. Assigned to Researcher 101 and renamed Wife 22, she now has to answer questions about her life and marriage, how they started and the current state. As her life seems to fall apart around her, Alice can not help but feel connected to Researcher 101, and starts to develop feelings for him.

Wife 22 will make readers take pause, look at their life and wonder what kind of freedom really comes with being 100% honest.

Wife 22 will be published on May 29th, 2012. This review is based on a review copy sent from the publisher.

The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker

Paul Chowder is suffering from writer’s block as he tries to compose an introduction to his poetry anthology, Only Rhyme.  On the verge of a nervous breakdown, he turns to other endeavors (badminton, housecleaning, floor installation, beading), while he ruminates on what he knows about poetry. This book is a combination of novel and essay on rhyme and meter and the lives of modern poets. Don’t let this description discourage you. After you’ve read this book, you too will love poetry and want to move into Paul’s neighborhood and meet Roz and Victor and Nan and Smacko the dog.  Celebrate National Poetry Month and pick up The Anthologist @the library!

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain

Hadley Richardson Hemingway tells the story of her marriage to Ernest Hemingway and their life in Paris in the 1920s. They meet and marry in Chicago but eventually settle in Paris so Ernest can pursue his writing career. Hadley, a bit older and more traditional than Ernest, has difficulty fitting into the fast and loose life styles of the expatriate American writers who form their social circle in Paris. Skiing in Germany, bullfights and festivals in Spain, and sun and sea on the Riviera sound wonderful, but they are actually shallow pleasures. Eventually she cannot save her marriage from the pressures of the modern age and a modern woman.  If you enjoy fictionalized accounts of famous historical artists and authors, check out The Paris Wife @the library!

The Flight of Gemma Hardy by Margot Livesey

Taken in by her uncle after the drowning death of her widowed father, Gemma was three when she was torn from her idyllic life by the sea in a small fishing village in Iceland and removed to Scotland.  Though kind and generous, Gemma's uncle died when she was ten, leaving her with her cold, unloving aunt and spoiled cousins.  Packed off to Claypoole School as a scholarship student, Gemma became a working girl, barely finding time for lessons between preparing meals and scrubbing floors for the other students.  When the school closes just before Gemma can sit exams, she finds a job as an au pair in the Orkneys - the mysterious, handsome, and hugely wealthy Mr. Sinclair is looking for a governess for his niece, the precocious, incorrigible Nell.  Gemma feels as though she has at last found a home with Nell and Mr. Sinclair - but how long can it last?

This lovely, lonely novel is an homage to Jane Eyre, set against the barren, rocky beaches of the Orkney Islands and the volcanoes and geysers of Iceland instead of the haunting moors of Yorkshire.  Just as full of longing for love and family as the original, The Flight of Gemma Hardy follows a tough, iron-willed heroine on her quest for a home and into the deepest reaches of the human heart.