Read All About It
news & more from the White Mountain Library
May 18 2010
New Books
Posted by in New Items
Set in 1932, bestseller Winspear’s endearing seventh Maisie Dobbs novel (after 2009’s Among the Mad) centers on Michael Clifton, a young American cartographer during the Great War, whose remains turn up in a French field. Evidence suggests to Maisie that Michael, rather than dying in a shell blast, was murdered. Michael’s parents arrive in London with letters from an unnamed English nurse that raise disturbing questions about the nurse’s relationship with their son. The plucky inquiry agent embarks on a search for this woman, following a trail that leads to Chatham, home of the School of Military Engineering, which Michael attended. There she learns about the vital role that cartography played in the war. At times, subplots involving socialite James Compton, a frustrated suitor, and the family problems of Maisie’s assistant, Billy Beale, slow the pace. As often in this winning series, the action builds to a somewhat sad if satisfying conclusion
Coming-of-age can happen at any age. Joy Harkness had built a university career and a safe life in New York, protected and insulated from the intrusions and involvements of other people. When offered a position at Amherst College, she impulsively leaves the city, and along with generations of material belongings, she packs her equally heavy emotional baggage. A tumbledown Victorian house proves an unlikely choice for a woman whose family heirlooms have been boxed away for years. Nevertheless, this white elephant becomes the home that changes Joy forever. As the restoration begins to take shape, so does her outlook on life, and the choices she makes over paint chips, wallpaper samples, and floorboards are reflected in her connection to the co-workers who become friends and friendships that deepen. A brilliant, quirky, town fixture of a handyman guides the renovation of the house and sparks Joy’s interest to encourage his personal and professional growth. Amid the half-wanted attention of the campus’s single, middle-aged men, known as “the Coyotes,”and the legitimate dramas of her close-knit community, Joy learns that the key to the affection of family and friends is being worthy of it, and most important, that second chances are waiting to be discovered within us all.
All-new action in the #1 New York Times bestselling urban fantasy series – When mechanic and shapeshifter Mercy Thompson attempts to return a powerful Fae book she’d previously borrowed in an act of desperation, she finds the bookstore locked up and closed down. It seems the book contains secret knowledge-and the Fae will do just about anything to keep it out of the wrong hands. And if that doesn’t take enough of Mercy’s attention, her friend Samuel is struggling with his wolf side-leaving Mercy to cover for him, lest his own father declare Sam’s life forfeit. All in all, Mercy has had better days. And if she isn’t careful, she might not have many more to live…
Gross’ latest thriller starts with a crime that isn’t supposed to happen—the murder of a family who live in a storybook town in Connecticut. The murder is almost written off as a burglary gone bad by the local police force, but Ty Hauck, a former lieutenant with the force (and a former NYPD detective), now an investigator for a global-securities firm, is drawn to the case when he learns that the murdered woman is a former lover of his. The male victim, Mark Glassman, was the chief equities trader at a top investment bank. Hauck has the motivation and the expertise to connect the dots on a case whose blood doesn’t just collect around the victims but also pools into a global terrorist conspiracy. Gross’ pace and plotting move nicely from shock to shock. James Patterson fans (Gross coauthored five thrillers with him), old hands at focusing on plot not style, will find much to enjoy here.
Inspired by a real-life Wyoming game warden’s encounter with sinister mountain-man twin brothers, Edgar-winner Box’s outstanding 10th Joe Pickett novel (after Below Zero) takes Pickett into darker territory than ever before. Pickett’s eerie last patrol as a temporary game warden in a remote mountainous area turns into a savage brush with death, followed by a crisis of conscience that drives the decent Pickett back into the same mountains to rescue Diane Shober, an Olympic runner who vanished there-and to bring Caleb and Camish Grim, twin brothers suspected of poaching (and maybe worse) to justice. Box inexorably builds Joe’s harrowing personal quest into a complex meditation on human greed and government corruption. A lone black wolf, possibly Box’s symbol for the wilderness within and without the human soul, tracks Joe throughout this terrible, beautiful tale of courage and compassion and culpability.
Southern flower Miss Julia re-materializes in her droll 11th adventure, and this time out, the busybody is as busy as ever: she wraps up some business from Miss Julia Delivers the Goods by making sure thrice married rogue Mr. Pickens settles down with Hazel Marie, who is pregnant with their twins. She also contends with the return of rival doyenne Francie Pitts and puts on her detective hat to clear the name of her friend and hired help, Etta Mae Wiggins, who’s accused of burglary and assaulting Francie. Meanwhile, Sam, Julia’s long-suffering husband, has the audacity to suggest marriage counseling. Worse, the shrink is a man from her past—Dr. Fred Fowler, a Christian psychologist with thirty years of experience in rekindling the flame of Christ-like love in limping marriages. Can feigning the flu save her from a confrontation and, gasp, rekindle their passion? And does Francie have designs on Sam? Ross answers these questions in trademark tart fashion. Series fans will have a ball, but those unfamiliar should definitely start with an earlier volume.
Intense police inspector Gunnarstranda and his easygoing aide, Frank Frolich, tackle the murder of recovering drug addict Katrine Bratterud in Dahl’s entertaining third crime thriller featuring the Oslo cops to be made available in English (after The Man in the Window). Bratterud’s nude, raped body turns up the morning after a party given by Annabeth s of the Vinterhagen Rehabilitation Centre and her husband, Bjorn Gerhardsen. It seems Bratterud came to the party with one boyfriend, left the party to meet another boyfriend, then went off on her own. Everyone has secrets to hide, and the two detectives have to contend with planted evidence, false confessions, red herrings, and, perhaps, a spurious connection to an unsolved murder decades earlier. Despite modern forensics, Gunnarstranda and Frolich rely on old-fashioned interview techniques, dogged comparisons of stories and time lines, to unravel the lies in a whodunit full of psychological insights.
In Goodwillie’s debut novel (after his memoir, Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time), an incisive depiction of radicalism’s seductive roots, the central characters are a good girl gone bad and a would-be journalist turned blogger who wants to do good. Paige Roderick, laid off from her think tank job and devastated by the Iraq War death of her beloved brother, is an easy mark for a shadowy cabal of home-grown terrorists who recruit her from the ranks of weekend environmental warriors. Separately, Aidan Cole, a failed journalism student turned Manhattan gossip blogger, is drawn into her radical orbit (and into a romance) by a phantom from America’s radical past: a former member of the Weather Underground. Part political thriller and part on-the-run love story, Goodwillie’s glimpse of the lapsed idealism that might be fueling America’s subversive underground falls somewhere between Bret Easton Ellis’s Glamorama and John Updike’s Terrorist. The mix of mocking the jaded hip-the Gawker-like blogging empire that Aidan works for serves as a frequent punching bag-and exploring cultural and social unrest results in a comic and unsettling two-pronged dissection of a subset of contemporary America.