Here are a few of our current staff and customer favorites:
THROUGH BLACK SPRUCE by Joseph Boynton
A Cree Indian man and his niece, tell each other their lives’ secrets while he travels in the unconscious world of a coma. 15.00 Penguin
THE WOMEN by T.C. Boyle
Fiction about the women in the life of Frank Lloyd Wright as told by a Japanese man who was Wright’s apprentice. 16.00 Penguin
SONATA FOR MIRIAM by Linda Olsson
Love, loss, grief and secrets are the themes of this wonderful second novel by the author of Astrid and Veronika. Adam Ankar lives in New Zealand where he has raised his daughter alone. His life contains several mysteries involving both his father and his daughter. Suddenly, in the course on one day, his life is forever changed as events occur which cause him to explore his past. As Adam unravels the mysteries from his past, he learns things that help him in his present difficult circumstances. The novel looks at the cost of making judgments about withholding information from others “for their own good”. Adam learns that only when he possesses the whole truth about his life is he released from the past and able to chart his own future. 15.00 Penguin
THE LEGEND OF COLTON H. BRYANT by Alexandra Fuller
He was just an ordinary kid growing up in Wyoming. His interests were typical -- horses, trucks, hunting, hanging out with friends. He lived his life full out, impulsively and without slowing down. His motto was mind over matter – “if I don’t mind it doesn’t matter” and his attitude was all about "cowboying up". And yet, he touched those around him with his purity of spirit and love of his family and friends. His father and grandfather had both worked in the oil fields and in part because he most wanted to become exactly like his father, Colton went to work there, too. And it was there he died at 26 due in part to the reluctance of the drilling company to spend money for required safety equipment.
Fuller, who is best know for her memoir, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood, has written this beautiful and sad true story about the real modern day west. Her portrayal of Colton is moving and gripping. Her ability to tell his story leaves the reader moved and as heartbroken as if Colton were your own loved one. 15.00 Penguin
DIVISADERO by Michael Ondaatje
Delayed gratification. That's what this book was for me. Since its publication a year ago, I've been eyeing it and wanting to immerse myself in the beautiful place that I knew the author would create with his words. But there were so many other books that "needed" to be read in the meantime. But finally I got to it and did go off into his words for a lovely couple of days.
The novel is about three people who spend their youth together and wind up in separate and distant lives. But Ondaatje doesn't just narrate. The idea of this book is given in its title. Divisadero is the Spanish word for division and it is derived from the word divisar, which means to gaze at something from a distance. So a divisadero can be a height, a point from which you look at something far into a distance. And that is what the author does with his characters. He gives us their lives but approached from various aspects, the present, the past and even the pasts of those who come into the main characters' lives. And they, in turn, view their own lives and the world around them with great detail and with varying perspectives. Set in northern California, Nevada and France, the story is about life's traumas, the perils of love, the beauty of interpersonal attachments and the impact all of these events have on the directions our lives take. $13.95 Vintage
THE STORY OF EDGAR SAWTELLE by David Wroblewski
This first novel is an amazing tale. It is one of those wonderful reads which are best undertaken without too much knowledge about what is to come. But I will give you just a bit of the story to entice you. Edgar is a mute boy living with his parents in rural northern Wisconsin. His family has for generations bred and trained a line of dogs. On this farm, where communication by hand signals and signs are part of everyday life, Edgar lives a happy life and thrives among his canine companions. But then an estranged uncle reappears and events occur which lead to a complete upheaval of Edgar's life. With amazing insights into the minds of dogs and interesting descriptions of the dog training techniques used by the Sawtelles, the plot evolves along with the portrayal of the connections between humans and animals. In turns suspenseful and thoughtful, Edgar's story reads like an ancient epic all the way to its exciting conclusion. $16.99 paperback, Ecco Books
THE GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATO PEEL PIE SOCIETY by Mary Ann
Shaffer and Annie Barrows
The island of Guernsey is one of the channel islands located between England and France. During World War II, it was occupied by the Germans for five years. This little known bit of history is explored in this novel written as a series of letters to and from the main character, Juliet Ashton. Juliet achieved a modest amount of fame as a writer for a series of articles she wrote for a British newspaper about her experiences in London during the war. Now in the years following the war, she is searching for a new writing project. When she is contacted by a member of a literary society on the small island, she begins a correspondence which will change her life. The literary society was originally formed as a ruse to prevent the Germans from arresting some of the islanders caught out past curfew. But is has evolved into a true book group with wide ranging literary interests. Through this group Juliet learns of the experiences they had under the occupation and decides to go to the island to do research for a book. There she becomes swept up in the lives of the people she had been corresponding with and through them she finds a resolution to her post war malaise. Filled with charming characters, heartbreaking stories of life under occupation and examples of the strength of the human spirit, this little novel was both delightful and heartwarming. $14.00 paperback, The Dial Press
BACK TO WANDO PASSO by David Payne
An aging rock and roll star with marital trouble returns home to the south to try to find his true self and work out his life's problems. Off his medications, his delusions become entwined in the past history of the plantation house where he is living. The novel moves back and forth between the story in the present and the story of the former owners during the Civil War. Full of convoluted family ties and dysfunctions, numerous other difficulties and with a little voodoo thrown in, this strangely philosophical novel is very compelling. $14.95 Harper
LEGEND OF COLTON H. BRYANT by Alexandra
Fuller
From the bestselling author of Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight and Scribbling the Cat, the unforgettable true story of a boy who
comes of age in the oil-fields and open plains of Wyoming; a heartrending
story of the human spirit that lays bare where it is that wisdom truly resides. $15.00 paperback, Penguin
AWAY by Amy Bloom
Panoramic in scope, Away is the epic and intimate story of young Lillian Leyb, a dangerous innocent, an accidental heroine. When her family is destroyed in a Russian pogrom, Lillian comes to America alone, determined to make her way in a new land. When word comes that her daughter, Sophie, might still be alive, Lillian embarks on an odyssey that takes her from the world of the Yiddish theater on New York's Lower East Side, to Seattle's Jazz District, and up to Alaska, along the fabled Telegraph Trail toward Siberia. All of the qualities readers love in Amy Bloom's work-her humor and wit, her elegant and irreverent language, her unflinching understanding of passion and the human heart-come together in the embrace of this brilliant novel, which is at once heartbreaking, romantic, and completely unforgettable. $14.00 Random House
EXCELLENT WOMEN by Barbara Pym
Excellent Women is one of Barbara Pym's richest and most amusing high
comedies. Mildred Lathbury is a clergyman's daughter and a mild-mannered
spinster in 1950s England. She is one of those "excellent women,"
the smart, supportive, repressed women who men take for granted. As Mildred
gets embroiled in the lives of her new neighbors-anthropologist Helena Napier
and her handsome, dashing husband, Rocky, and Julian Malory, the vicar next
door-the novel presents a series of snapshots of human life as actually,
and pluckily, lived in a vanishing world of manners and repressed desires. $13.95 Penguin
Young Reader Recommendations
CHAINS by Laurie Halse Anderson
A young adult novel set in New York City during the Revolutionary War. A young slave girl owned by British loyalists is asked to spy on her owners by the slave boy of rebels. An interesting look at this war for freedom from the perspective of one whose freedom is not being considered. 6.99 Atheneum
INCARCERON by Catherine Fisher explores worlds within worlds. Incarceron is a living prison designed to be a perfectly controlled environment for those considered criminal or just unwanted in the “real” world. But things have deteriorated over time both inside Incarceron and outside where a family has established dominance over the world and has engineered a fake society of courts and royalty mimicking the 18th century. When a girl on the outside establishes communication with a boy on the inside the worlds collide. 17.99 Dial
THE 13TH REALITY by James Dasher features a geeky boy who teams up with a snotty, but precocious Italian girl and a defensive and moody Japanese boy to save the world from forces from another reality. 7.99 Simon & Schuster