29. The Irresistible Henry House by Lisa Grunwald

In 1946, Henry House is an orphan who has just been selected as Wilton College’s newest practice baby.  All across America, colleges have set up practice houses for home economic students to learn about keeping a proper house for their husband, including taking care of a new baby.  Program director Martha Gaines has had many practice babies over the years, but Henry is different and she soon finds herself unable to give him up at the end of the year and take care of a new baby.  Breaking college rules, she adopts Henry, and raises him in the practice house as her own child.  Their lives run smoothly until Henry learns who his birth mother is, and decides he wants to explore the world on his own.  From being an animator for Walt Disney, to working on the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine, and to finally learning to deal with women and his unusual childhood, this fictional account of a most unusual life is an irresistible read.

Grunwald got her idea for the novel by looking at a Cornell web site that studied the history of practice babies.  In fact, Cornell received their first “practice” baby in 1919, and over the next fifty years, hundreds of students helped raise numerous infants at the Cornell practice house.  The Irresistible Henry House is a charming, well-written account about a little known practice in America, as well as a wonderful, historically accurate account of a man struggling to find love and meaning in his life.

28. Blacklands by Belinda Bauer

Unhappiness is all 12-year-old Steven Lamb knows.  He lives with his mother, grandmother, and younger brother in Somerset, England, in a house with tremendous grief.  His family has never gotten over the fact that Steven’s uncle was abducted and probably killed by a notorious child killer, Arnold Avery, who now is in jail and won’t admit to taking the boy years ago.  In order to make his grandmother happy, Steven spends all of his free time out on the moors, or the blacklands, digging, trying to find his uncle’s body so that the family can finally have closure.  When he gets frustrated by his lack of progress, he decides to tempt fate and write to Arnold Avery in jail, which changes everything in Steven Lamb’s life.

This is the type of psychological mystery that slowly sneaks up on a reader and takes their breath away.  Bauer creates a riveting and realistic story that slowly builds in a very believable tension until the horrifying end.  The cat and mouse manipulation between the older, and sinister Avery, and the young and naïve Lamb adds to the growing, sickening tension that readers know is coming.  While the end might be a little over the top, readers can’t help but cheer for Steven Lamb.  With a strong debut, Bauer is definitely a writer to watch.

27. The News Where You Are by Catherine O'Flynn

Life for Frank Allcroft is changing.  He has a loving wife and eight-year-old daughter, Mo, and a successful career as a local news anchor, but around him things are causing him to question his life.  His mother is in a nursing home, living with past memories, and all around his hometown of Birmingham, England, buildings his late architect father build are being demolished.  His on-screen partner and father figure, Phil, who transitioned successfully into primetime television, was killed while out jogging.  Frank needs to know what happened to Phil that fateful day, and along the way discovers his own life is better than he thought.

This sophomore effort by O’Flynn is another winner.  At times funny, and at times sad, it is also an observation on family, friendship, aging, and loss on many levels.  O’Flynn’s stripped down, stark writing works well to show Frank’s struggle to find happiness again.  For a review of O’Flynn’s excellent first book, What Was Lost, please read http://tcplpicks.blogspot.com/2008/11/what-was-lost-by-catherine-oflynn.html

26. Shadow Woman by Ake Edwardson

August in Gothbenburg, Sweden means the hedonistic Gothenburg Party.  While people are partying during the weeklong celebration, there is also growing ethnic tension in the area.  When a woman’s body is found in a local park, with a strange symbol drawn on a draw near her, Chief Inspector Erik Winter has little clues to go by.  He knows that the woman has had a child, but when a neighbor reports a woman and her small daughter missing, the investigation takes a sudden twist.  Where is the dead woman’s daughter?  And how does her death tie into a bank robbery in Denmark that happened years ago?

While the popularity of the Stieg Larsson books have more and more people reading Scandinavian mysteries, Ake Edwardson has been writing and winning awards in Sweden for a number of years.  He is one of my favorite Swedish authors because of his complex stories and beautiful settings.  The Shadow Woman is the fifth book in his Erik Winter series to be translated into English, but the second book in the series (an unfortunate occurrence that happens frequently to translated books).  This psychological mystery is enhanced by the stark Swedish setting, and slowly builds tension throughout the book.  For a review of an earlier Erik Winter mystery, check out my review at http://tcpl.org/sarah/2007/03/13-never-end-by-ake-edwardson.html.  For readers of Henning Mankell and Stieg Larsson.

25. Still Missing by Chevy Stevens

Annie O’Sullivan seems to have it all.  She is 32, has a terrific and caring boyfriend, great friends, and is working hard to succeed as a realtor.  During a slow open house, she agrees to show the house to a man who pulls up in a van at the very end.  Suddenly the man who introduces himself as David, kidnaps her and holds her captive for a year in a remote cabin.  Subjected to daily rapes and psychological torture, she ultimately escapes and tells her horrifying story in flashbacks to an unnamed therapist.  Her kidnapper may be dead, but Annie feels a part of her life is still missing, especially since she can’t understand why she was kidnapped.  When the truth slowly comes out, it is a shocking and brutal surprise.

Readers may be surprised to learn that this is Steven’s first book.  While dealing with a difficult subject matter that involves pain and fear, the book is written in a very realistic way, until the ending.  I enjoyed the book until the end, when I was shocked to see how the story turned.  Still, the book is an engrossing, powerful tale of what people do to survive.  For those who like Jodi Picoult, and who have read Room by Emma Donoghue. 

24. Portobello by Ruth Rendell

Portobello Road in London is famous for its outdoor market and numerous shops.  It is also the setting for Rendell’s latest creepy psychological novel and brings a mixture of Londoners violently together.  While walking to the shops one day, Eugene Wren finds an envelope full of cash on the street. Instead of calling the police, he decides to post a “Found” sign in the Portobello neighborhood and question callers to see if they were the ones who dropped it.  A series of coincidences leads to a number of Londoners caught up in violence, and even death, because of these motions.

Rendell is the master of psychological novels that draw people in because of detailed characters and building suspense.  She writes with ease about street people, criminals, and the English upper class, lending credibility to her stories.  While I usually enjoy all of her books, this was a struggle because of repetitive details about main characters and a disjointed story that doesn’t truly come together until the end.  This may have worked better as a short story, something Rendell is also famous for.

23. I Curse the River of Time by Per Petterson

The world is changing in 1989.  Communism is crumbling, and Arvid Jansen’s life is crumbling around him also.  His marriage is ending and he has just learned that his emotionally distant mother is dying of cancer.  When she decides to travel back to Denmark, where she grew up on the coast, Arvid leaves Oslo to follow her there.  Over the next few days, mother and son reminisce about their lives, weaving past with the present.  Arvid especially recalls his decision to leave college, join the Communist party, and spend his life in Communist factories, a decision his mother bitterly opposed.  His struggle to fully commit to communism, and to find purpose in his life while never truly understanding his mother, comes full circle during the Denmark trip.

This is a gorgeously written examination of two lives that are evolving while struggling with what has happened in their past.  Full of melancholy and failures, but also of love and hope, Petterson once again proves he is a writer that draws readers in and then holds them transfixed.  The stark Scandinavian scenery is described in a poetic way that adds to the starkness of the story.  There is a reason that the Los Angeles Times calls him a “master at writing the spaces between people.”  One of the best books I have read this year.

22. Live to Tell by Lisa Gardner

Boston police officer D. D. Warren is back in Gardner’s latest heart-pounding thriller.  A family is found brutally murdered in their Boston-area home, and all clues point to the barely alive father.  But why would he kill his family?  When another family is found dead, and the police end up at a locked-down psychiatric center for young children during their search for the possible killers, new theories begin to trouble Officer Warren.  Could young children, in the grips of severe mental anguish, be the killers?

Gardner tackles a disturbing plot that raises the uncomfortable subject of children capable of extreme acts of violence against their own families.  Yet the subject is never sensationalized, and fits into the overall story she is trying to tell.  Readers will be kept guessing almost to the end in this psychological page-turner.  For fans of Harlan Coben and James Patterson.

21. The Postcard Killers by James Patterson

Young couples are disappearing in cities around Europe, including Paris, Rome, Copenhagen,  Frankfurt, and Stockholm.  When their bodies are found, they are staged in elaborate displays of famous works of art that correspond to museums in that city.  NYPD Detective Jacob Kanon knows this only too well, since his daughter was one of the victims in Rome.  Kanon travels to Europe hunting the only clue he has about the killings, a postcard is send to a city newspaper shortly before a murder.  When Swedish reporter Dessie Larsson receives a postcard, Kanon knows they have little time before a new couple is found.

This new thriller from Patterson has him co-writing with Liza Marklund, a popular Swedish journalist and crime writer who is set to have her first English-translated book appear in the US in February 2011.  The story has a great premise, and short chapters hook readers into reading just one more chapter before stopping for the night, but the writing is stiff and clumsy.  In other hands, this could have been a great mystery.  Here’s hoping Marklund’s new mystery on her own is better.

20. Audrey Wait by Robin Benway

What if you were the inspiration of a popular song?  When 16-year-old Audrey decides to break up with her boyfriend, Evan, she has no idea he is going to write a song about it and perform it with his band.  When record executives happen to hear it at a show, the song becomes an overnight sensation, and Audrey is suddenly famous – for the wrong reason in her opinion.  Instead of normal high school stuff and her boring job at an ice cream shop, she is now fighting off paparazzi, finds herself in gossip magazines, and dealing with jealous classmates.

While written for teens, this is a light, fun read that works well for adults also.  Audrey is a likeable character trying her hardest to have a normal life in not very normal circumstances, and the characters of her best friend and her parents are very realistic too.  A fun, charming look at fame.

19. Faithful Place by Tana French

French has a habit of writing books about characters she has introduced in her previous books.  Her latest offering, Faithful Place, showcases this talent the best.  Frank Mackey grew up in a violent, alcohol-fueled house in Faithful Place.  He and his childhood girlfriend, Rosie, knew that the only way they could escape to a better life would be to take the ferry to England and not look back.  When Rosie doesn’t meet him on the planned night, he assumes she has left him, so moves on with his life and becomes a policeman.  Now an undercover police who still stays away from Faithful Place, Frank finds himself back in his childhood territory when Rosie’s suitcase, and then remains, are found in the house where they were supposed to meet that fateful night.

More of a psychological exploration than a mystery, French continues to gain strength as a writer with each book.  From bitter sibling rivalry that has never disappeared, to the long but never forgotten memories of a first love, French uses classic themes to draw her characters out.  My review for French's first book, In the Woods, can be read at http://tcpl.org/sarah/2007/07/36-in-woods-by-tana-french.html

18. This Must be the Place by Kate Racculia

When Arthur Rook’s wife, Amy, dies in a freak accident on the movie set she is working on, he suddenly realizes how little he knew about his mysterious wife.  Searching through her belongings, he stumbles across a shoebox full of childhood memorabilia and a cryptic postcard to her best friend, Mona, which Amy never sent.  Arthur flees Hollywood and his confusion about losing his young wife, to the quaint upstate New York town of Ruby Falls, where Amy grew up.  Hoping to learn more about his wife, he moves into the boarding house run by Amy’s childhood best friend, Mona, and her teenage daughter, Oneida, who are themselves mysteries in their hometown because Mona has never disclosed who Oneida’s father was after she and Amy ran away as teenagers and Mona came back to town with an infant. Arthur soon realizes that maybe childhood secrets aren’t meant to be exposed.

In this debut novel by Racculia, a writer who grew up in Syracuse and uses the area in her book, Amy’s world is slowly uncovered by everyone who knew her.  The truth about who Oneida’s parents are is easy to guess, but doesn’t distract from the story.  Through vivid characters that you grow attached to you, this quirky yet complex novel perfectly explores grief, love, humor, and hope and makes readers wish Racculia would write more in the years to come.

17. Dead Like You by Peter James

Detective Superintendent Roy Grace is finally moving on with his life.  His wife, Sandy, disappeared ten years ago, and he has fallen in love again and is about to be a father for the first time.  Life is suddenly going smoothly, until a series of brutal rapes take place in Brighton that are very similar to rape cases he was working on right before his wife went missing.  In 1997, one of the victims was never found, and Roy always thought that the rapist accidently committed murder, but could never prove it.  Could the new cases help him finally solve the decade old case?

As with James’s other novels, Dead Like You is full of fast pacing, action, and intrigue.  The thriller moves easily between the past cases and the present cases, effectively building up drama.  Although a long book, readers easily get caught up with the cases and the pages fly by.  An international bestselling author from England, Peter James deserved to be better known to US mystery readers.

16. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philp K. Dick

An influential post-apocalyptic novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was written in 1968 and was the basis for the cult classic 1982 movie Blade Runner, by Ridley Scott.  Set in San Francisco in 2021, World War Terminus has left the planet devoid of almost all life except for humans and some pets.  The ownership of pets is highly coveted by the remaining humans, and extremely expensive, so many turn to owning electric animals.  Richard Deckard owns one of those electric animals, and is also a bounty hunter called to “retire” androids that have escaped from Mars and have returned to Earth.  Since the androids have become increasingly like humans, Deckard must use skillful questioning to determine if they have empathy, one of the last traits that distinguishes humans from androids.  The novel offers readers a reflection on the meaning of human life, the role of artificial intelligence, our responsibility for the environment, and what is real or artificial.

15. Arcadia Falls by Carol Goodman

When Meg Rosenthal’s husband dies unexpectedly from a heart attack, she is left not only emotionally devastated, but financially ruined. Her easy life on Long Island suddenly is over for her and her teenage daughter, Sally, and it isn’t until she is offered a teaching job in Arcadia Falls that life begins to feel normal again. Arcadia School is tucked away in rural upstate New York and has a mysterious past, especially since it was started by a lesbian couple, Lily Eberhardt and Vera Beecher, who were famous painters and fairy tale authors before their love took a tragic turn and Lily fell off a cliff on school property. Within a few days of the new school year, a student falls off of the same cliff during a pagan festival, and soon hidden secrets, ghost sightings, and more deaths occur.

Goodman’s seventh novel again takes her back to what she writes best – wonderfully atmospheric, gothic novels that have some mystery woven into them. Her setting on the creepy, isolated school campus, especially when a snow storm paralyzes the area at the end, adds to the growing tension of the story. The role of fairy tales in our culture adds an interesting side story that ends up becoming more central to the book as it moves on, all with great results.

14. A Year of Mornings: 3191 Miles Apart by Maria Alexandra Vettese

A table with a basket of eggs. A field of daisies. A cat curled into a ball on an unmade bed. A rainy street in Portland. A child’s sock discarded on a floor. A half-eaten grapefruit. These are just some of the beautiful and quiet images in this book based on the popular blog, 3191, that documented the lives of two women who live 3191 miles apart from each other (one in Portland, Maine and the other in Portland, Oregon).

Every morning, before their days became busy, bloggers Maria Alexandra Vettese and Stephanie Congdon Barnes took pictures of how they were spending their morning. Each posted one picture for every weekday for one year without discussing what they would be taking pictures of. At the time of the project, they had only met each other in person once, but had maintained an online friendship and a shared love of photography and solitude.

The resulting book captures 236 images of their views of early morning life. What becomes apparent quickly is how similar their photos are, sometimes eerily so, with matching breakfast shots, or pictures that share the same use of color. The photos are intimate, quiet, and striking to look at. If you are looking for a chance to unwind and spend some quiet alone time with a book, this is a perfect solution. Highly recommended for those who like to read books based on blogs, those who like photography, or are looking for something different to read.

13. The Pull of the Moon by Diane Janes

Kate Mayfield is just trying to lead a quiet, uneventful life away from public scrutiny. A retired schoolteacher, she is leading that sort of life until the day she receives a letter from a dying woman from her past requesting to see Kate. Over thirty years ago, during the long, hot summer of 1972, Kate had a very different life – a life she doesn’t want to remember.

The summer of 1972 starts out as the ultimate summer getaway. Kate’s parents think she is in France with a girlfriend, but actually she is spending it nearby in an isolated country house with her new boyfriend, Danny Ivanisovic, and his university friend, Simon. While at the beach one day, they meet a young woman named Trudie, who quickly offers to spend the summer with them. What the group doesn’t know is that Trudie has run away from home and is missing from her family. As tension among the four heats up because of the changing group dynamics, a terrible accident that the group must hide ends up destroying all those involved. When Danny’s mother reaches out to Kate to find out what really happened that summer, the mysteries begin to unravel.

Janes does a great job switching back and forth from Kate’s present life to Kate’s mysterious past. The building tension in the group adds to the mystery of what will happen to everyone, and a side story of a murder of a fellow student of Danny and Simon ties into the story neatly in the end. Perfect for readers who like Donna Tartt and Ruth Rendell, this is a great debut suspense novel.

12. Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven by Susan Jane Gilman

A map of the world on an IHOP placemat leads two young women on a frightening trip in Gilman’s latest memoir. In 1986, Susan Jane Gilman has just graduated from college and doesn’t know what to do with her life. One night, she and a distant friend, Claire, are drunkenly talking about traveling around the world once they see the placemat. They decide to start their world-wide journey in China, which has just opened up to tourists. Little do they know the drama that awaits them.

Once in China, Susan quickly realizes that the two are in over their heads. What starts off as an innocent rite of passage quickly deteriorates into an ultimately scary attempt to get out of the country. The women are confused as to where they are going, travel is hindered by delayed transportation, they are constantly hungry, and they are monitored at all times because they look so different from everyone else. Susan also realizes that she doesn’t know Claire as well as she should have probably known her before she agreed to travel around the world with her – as the trip progresses Claire becomes more and more paranoid, sick, and mentally ill. When she jumps off a bridge in a possible suicide attempt and the military police get involved, Susan realizes that she must quickly get Claire back to the United States.

Gilman does an excellent job in portraying the claustrophobic feeling of being on a doomed trip, trapped in a foreign country with a person she doesn’t know very well that clearly needs medical and psychiatric help. Even though her world-wide trip was cut short and most would agree was disastrous, Gilman surprises everyone, including herself, by traveling again shortly after she comes back to the U.S. Part travel memoir, part cautionary tale, this personal account of a trip gone wrong is ultimately uplifting.

11. Secrets of Eden by Chris Bohjalian

On the day that Alice Hayward is baptized by Reverend Stephen Drew in a Vermont pond, she is killed by her abusive husband in their home. What originally looks like a normal open and shut case of murder and suicide soon divides the small town of Haverill, Vermont and casts guilt on three different people. Did Alice’s husband, who was a successful small town business owner with a nasty temper and a history of abusing Alice, strangle her then shoot himself? Was the quiet Reverend Drew as innocent as he initially appeared, especially when Alice’s diaries show an affair between the two? Why was the famous author Heather Laurent, herself having been involved in a famous domestic abuse case when her father killed her mother and then himself, suddenly in town at the time of the murders?

Bohjalian, author of thirteen novels, including Midwives, returns to bestseller territory in this compelling new tale. The novel takes turns being narrated by different characters, including Reverend Drew, the hard-nosed Deputy State’s Attorney Catherine Benincasa, and the angel loving New Age author, Heather Laurent. Each section gives readers a different take on that fateful summer evening when the Hayward family violence erupts, including how much their teenage daughter, Katie, knew and saw. Bohjalian tackles some serious subjects that would be perfect for book discussion group topics, such as faith, truth, and domestic abuse and his expert character development will leave some readers guessing until the final pages. Highly recommended for those who love Jodi Picoult.

10. Lullaby by Clair Seeber

Jess Finnegan is finally more relaxed about being a new mother to her eight-month-old son. On a lazy summer afternoon, she and her husband take the baby to the Tate Museum, where the day quickly changes their lives. After getting separated from her husband and son, Jess thinks they are still in the museum, yet after a few hours of not seeing them, realizes that something horrible has happened. Her husband’s cell phone is mysteriously answered, then switched off, and when she arrives back to their home, no one is waiting for her. Her husband is found later, severely beaten and unconscious in the hospital, with their son still missing.

This debut thriller from a British journalist starts out with a great plot and lots of intrigue and speculation, but it eventually grows outlandish. Possible kidnappers include the brother of Jess, who mysteriously appears after years of drug abuse and being estranged from the family. The Finnegan’s nanny, a young French woman, suddenly might have been having an affair with Jess’s husband and when pictures of her and the family’s young son are found, suspicions point to her. Add a cold, calculating ex-wife into the story, and unfortunately the book begins to meander. While the beginning is suspenseful and the modern London setting perfectly described, hopefully Seeber will use more realistic characters, such as a mother who seems truly upset at having her son go missing, in her next mysteries.

9. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Re-reading favorite or special books is very important to me when I think of what books I want to read in the future. While I love exploring new books and authors, as well as keeping up with certain authors and series that I have fallen in love with, some books always call me back. Lolita is a prime example, and a book I read every year, without fail. It is also a book that I find something new with every time I read or listen to it.

When Humbert Humbert meets naïve widow, Charlotte Haze, his sexual obsession with young girls, or nymphets as he calls them, finally is fulfilled. Her daughter, Dolores, or Lolita, quickly becomes his only focus, so much so that he marries Charlotte just to be near Lolita. When Charlotte finds out his true intentions, she tries to expose his secret by mailing letters showing his devious behavior, yet is killed on the way to the mailbox. Humbert is now Lolita’s only relative and their cross country journey after her mother’s death begins their tortured affair.

While the Village Voice called Lolita “three hundred pages of sex in the head”, this brilliant novel is fully of comic observations on American society and beautiful language that allows readers to feel a range of emotions while reading it. Tragic, haunting, original, amusing, horribly sad, and often misunderstood, this is a classic that deserves to be essential reading for those who love literature.

This is what I thought of the book in 2007 when I read it: http://tcpl.org/sarah/2007/11/64-lolita-by-vladimir-nabokov.html

8. Lunch in Paris: a Love Story, With Recipes by Elizabeth Bard

Bard is working as a journalist in London and taking weekend trips to Paris when she meets her future husband, Gwendal. Besides a physical attraction to Gwendal (Bard famously writes on the first page that she slept with her husband halfway through their first date), she also is slowly growing in love with the famous city. She is soon spending more and more time in Paris spending leisurely afternoons at cafes and the street markets, and when Gwendal puts her name on the gas bill for his Parisian apartment, she knows that she is meant to live there.

Part love story and part food story, this book comes complete with relevant recipes at the end of each chapter. Bard starts out as an unsure American living in a foreign city with no job, no heat during the winter, and cooking on a tiny two-burner stove, and progresses into a wife that helps her husband grieve over the death of his beloved father and bring their two different families together. A quick, fun read for those who liked Amanda Hesser’s Cooking for Mr. Latte and the traveling writings of Peter Mayle and Frances Mayes, or lovers of everything French.

7. Shadow Tag by Louise Erdrich

Irene America is struggling in life. She is trying to complete her doctorate thesis about the painter George Catlin, while raising her family of three children, and dealing with her demanding, jealous, and possessive husband, Gil. Gil is somewhat famous for his increasingly raw and brutal portraits of Irene, and while he realizes that his wife doesn’t love him anymore, he cannot let her and their family go. Both Irene and Gil are alcoholics and their children are caught in the middle of constant fighting, hitting, and other abuses. When Irene realizes that Gil is reading her diary, she starts a new, hidden diary that she keeps locked in a bank deposit box where she writes her true feelings about her life and dissolving marriage, and manipulates her other diary writings to manipulate Gil into leaving her and their children.

While bleak and heartbreaking, Erdrich’s newest novel is also a gripping, emotional tale of a family gone wrong. Native American beliefs and culture are present throughout the short novel, as customary in most of Erdrich’s novels. Most readers probably will realize that someone is not going to make it out of the marriage alive, but the end is still shocking when readers finally get to that point. A tale of love, control, frustration, and survival make this a mesmerizing read.

6. Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? by Martin Luther King, Jr.

Written in 1967, when King isolated himself in Jamaica to focus on his writing, this is Martin Luther King, Jr.’s last book. Out of print for over ten years, it has been finally reissued by Beacon Press and will be part of a new King Legacy series that will re-print some of King’s books. Although often contained in compendiums, the book was frequently cut of two chapters, leaving readers without a true feeling for the book until now.

Some readers may struggle with the dated phrases and language in Where Do We Go from Here, but that is quickly overcome by the universal messages that continue to resonate today. Topics such as the rise of black power, the continuing struggle against racism, poverty, fair wages, protests against the Vietnam War (and war in general), and militarism, are just as relevant now as they were in 1967. While focusing on struggles, the book is also optimistic and hopeful for a better future for all.

Look for a community-wide discussion of this title this spring in the Ithaca Community. Copies will be distributed to local libraries, book discussion groups, organizations, churches, and more, so that our community can come together to learn from this important work.

5. The Book of Fires by Jane Borodale

The sights, sounds, and smells of a gritty London in 1752 come alive in Borodale’s enchanting debut. Agnes Trussel is 17 and living with her impoverished family in the English countryside of Sussex. Her mother is downtrodden with numerous children that she can barely feed, and her father is constantly drinking and out of work. When Agnes discovers she is pregnant by a village boy that she has no desire of marrying, she knows she must flee her family before she disgraces them. A chance discovery of a dead neighbor and a secret stash of coins helps Agnes to London, where she takes a job with a fireworks maker, Mr. Blacklock. While fearful of her employer finding out about her pregnancy and theft, Agnes can’t help but get drawn into Blacklock’s quest to put color into fireworks.

Borodale does a marvelous job at creating a creeping sense of foreboding and tension about what will happen to Agnes and her child. Agnes is a sympathetic character and readers will soon be caught up with her plight, which Borodale neatly sums up at the end. For anyone who has walked along the Thames, Borodale’s description of a crowded and loud area full of busy markets, rotting food, rowdy pubs, and crime will make people see it the area it used to be. Details about the world of pyrotechnics of the time were fascinating and add to the historic feel of the novel. Highly recommended for fans of historical fiction.

4. The 13th Hour by Richard Doetsch

Sitting in the Byram Hills Police Department, Nick Quinn knows that he didn’t just kill his wife, Julia, in their upscale home. The only problem is that the police have an antique gun with his fingerprints all over it and gun powder was found on his hands. When a mysterious man enters the police interrogation room and offers Nick a pocket watch, and a chance to turn back the previous twelve hours of the day, Nick knows he has a chance to save his wife.

Readers must suspend belief a lot in this time travel suspense story. The premise is a great one, and at the hands of a more skilled writer, this book would have been fun to read. There are great setups to the story, including a town in disarray after a plane crash where all on board are killed, and some truly frightening bad cop villains, but readers also have to suffer through some hokey dialogue and convenient justifications on how Nick can suddenly have access to cell phones, computers and more when the town is without power. New Line Cinema have purchased the film rights, so this may be coming to a movie theatre soon, where I have a feeling it would work better.

3. The Blackberry Farm Cookbook by Sam Beall

Perched in the hills of Tennessee’s Smoky Mountains, Blackberry Farm is one of the leading small hotels and restaurants in America. With 9,000 acres and a working farm, the inn has been noted since the 1990’s as the leaders of “Foothills Cuisine” and cutting edge Southern cooking. While famed cookbook author Molly O’Neill writes in her introduction to this cookbook that “Foothills Cuisine” means the flavors and cooking of the mountainous south, Blackberry Farm also believes in artisanal food, extensive research, commitment to local and heirloom produce, as well as seasonal eating. Since most of us can’t afford the average $1,000 - $4,000 nightly stay at the Farm, this cookbook gives readers a glimpse of their stunning creations.

The cookbook is arranged in four sections – summer, fall, winter, and spring. Each section has numerous recipes, and sometimes numerous recipes for one dish (there are five recipes for fried chicken, and three for barbecue sauce – peach, blackberry, and coffee barbecue sauce). Interspersed among the recipes are not only pictures of the food, but beautiful photos of the Farm and Tennessee area. Old fashioned, family-style recipes that are historic and not seen in other cookbooks are included, such as the addicting sounding Apple Stack Cake and Skillet Slaw. Many recipes including blackberries are also included for blackberry fans. Due to the fantastic photography included, this is a large cookbook, more oversized than most, and retails higher than most cookbooks. Think of this as more than a cookbook, but also as a coffee table-style art book of the South. Highly recommended for those who love to read and collect cookbooks.

2. Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell

On a cold winter night outside of Ystad, Sweden, a horrific crime is committed against an elderly couple. When police get to the scene, Johannes Lovgren has been beaten and stabbed, and his wife, Maria, has a noose tied with an unusual knot around her neck. Later at the hospital, she murmurs the word “foreign” before she dies, which leads police to think the crime was linked to foreign murderers. Racist hate messages grow in the area, and suddenly a Somali at a refugee camp is shot. Are the crimes connected?

Kurt Wallander is the detective who is in charge of solving the crimes in Henning Mankell’s first Wallander mystery series. Wallander is a striking character, who wrestles with his own personal demons including a failed marriage, a distant daughter who has tried to commit suicide, and a father struggling with the beginning stages of dementia. He struggles not only with trying to solve the murders of the Lovgrens, but with the news that Johannes Lovgren was not the simple farmer that everyone thought he was. Hidden wealth and long buried family secrets could have tempted someone to kill Johannes.

Throughout this skilled thriller, the beautiful and sparse setting of a Swedish winter is always present, drawing readers into a different world. Mankell’s writing about isolation and sadness is extremely effective in describing Wallander’s background, and Mankell also brings attention to refugee and hate crime problems in modern Sweden.

I am a huge fan of Swedish and Norwegian novels, but for some strange reason had never read Mankell. It wasn’t until I saw the Wallander television series that I got hooked and wanted to read them. I definitely plan to finish the books and for those interested in the television version, the Library owns the DVDs. If you enjoy Swedish mysteries, other authors to try are Ake Edwardson, Hakan Nesser, Asa Larsson, and Mari Jungstedt.

1. Stitches by David Small

Now an award-winning children’s illustrator and author, David Small grew up in a claustrophobic and terrifying family. His mother, Elizabeth, didn’t know how to express her rage at her family, and instead took to not talking to them. His father, Edward, was a Detroit physician who decided to “cure” David’s numerous sinus problems with x-rays. When he was eleven, a growth was detected on his neck, but a doctor told his parents that it was probably just a cyst. At fourteen, he went in for surgery to have it removed, and later found out that he had actually had cancer (a fact hidden by his parents for years) which may have been caused by his father exposing him to so many x-rays. He also couldn’t speak because some of his vocal cords had been removed.

Small tells his heartbreaking story in graphic novel, or comic book, format. The stark black and white drawings ooze with his anger, confusion, and hurt for his family. I have to admit that I am not a fan of graphic novels, but this doesn’t matter because his story is so powerful and compelling that you actually forget how you are reading his life story. It isn’t until he is fifteen, and starts to see a therapist, that Small’s life begins to change for the better. While most of the graphic novel explores his early life, he does write about leaving his family at the age of 16 and resolving issues with his mother later in life.

I read this when it first came out a few months ago and couldn’t stop thinking about it, so I decided to read it again. I don’t think Small’s story is over, and would love to see another book that details his later years and how he became a successful artist. Highly recommended, especially if you have never tried a graphic novel before.