Book Buzz

Family secrets seem to be the common denominator in the books our patrons have particularly enjoyed this month.

winter peopleJennifer McMahon’s The Winter People is set in a ghostly old house in Connecticut. Family secrets are revealed when a daughter searching for her missing mother finds an old diary hidden in the floorboards of her mother’s bedroom.

The House We Grew Up In by Lisa Jewell explores the impact of a past tragedy on the previously idyllic lives of a family.

Readers are still looking for books similar to Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn and Rosamund Lupton’s books, Sister and Afterwards been recommended as good follow ups.  Sister explores a woman’s search for the killer of her sister, while Afterwards deals with a mother’s efforts to protect her daughter after they are both almost killed in a mysterious fire.

escapeHe’s Gone by Deb Caletti has also been suggested as a readalike for Gone Girl. It’s about a wife who wakes up in the morning after drinking too much wine at a party the night before to find that her husband has mysteriously disappeared.

Highly praised by many of our patrons, David Baldacci’s latest book The Escape also has a family connection.  John Puller, the hero from previous Baldacci books, is on a search for his brother who has escaped from a high security military prison.

Jodi Picoult’s newest book Leaving Time is about a daughter searching for a missing mother with the help of a psychic, a private detective and her mother’s old journals.

Perhaps it is true that families provide the best plotlines for compelling fiction.    

Author interviews

rosie effect (1)If you enjoyed The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion, you’ll be happy to know there’s a sequel, The Rosie Effect.  Don Tillman, a socially awkward professor with Asperger’s, set out in the first book to find a wife using a detailed questionnaire to weed out unsuitable prospects. He meets Rosie, a former graduate student who is searching for her biological father; she most certainly does not meet the stringent requirements but Don is intrigued by her. The Rosie Project humorously recounts their unexpected romance, and The Rosie Effect is the story of Rosie and Don as a couple. Read an interview with Graeme Simsion at Book Page, and an NPR review of The Rosie Effect here. And if you like your books turned into movies, The Rosie Project has been optioned by Sony Pictures!

If you’re more interested in historical fiction, the Huffington Post has an interview with Lalita Tademy, the author of Citizen’s Creek, about a former slave who becomes the first black Creek Indian chief. Tademy’s first book Cane River was a NY Times bestseller and an Oprah Book Club pick.

Read an NPR interview with historian Eric Foner, the author of Gateway to Freedom: the Hidden History of the Underground Railroad. Foner focuses on New York as an important part of the underground railroad, as slaves were brought from the south through Philadelphia to upstate New York, New England and Canada.  According to Foner, “The Underground Railroad was interracial. It’s actually something to bear in mind today when racial tensions can be rather strong: This was an example of black and white people working together in a common cause to promote the cause of liberty.”

News Round-up

The number one print bestseller of 2014
The number one print bestseller of 2014

Publisher’s Weekly has a list of the Bestselling Books of 2014. Topping the list, The Fault in our Stars by John Green, followed by the newest Diary of a Wimpy Kid, The Long Haul by Jeff Kinney.  In the top 10, 6 titles sold over a million print copies in 2014. The only adult title to sell more than one million copies was Killing Patton, by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard (#1 on the current NYT Bestseller List).

Moving on to 2015!

For a look at 2015 movie tie-ins, take a peek at Popsugar’s list of 38 Books Becoming Movies this Year. Dark Places by Gillian Flynn, Insurgent, by Veronica Roth, Paper Towns by John Green, and Me Before You by Jojo Moyes are just some of the titles you’ll see in theaters. Casting popular books can be tricky and is oftentimes very disappointing – you know how you feel when the characters you love are played by the wrong actors!  Let’s hope Hollywood gets all of these right!

Soon, you’ll hear people talking about The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. It’s the story of a commuter who becomes fascinated with a couple she sees on the train every day, making up names for them and fantasizing about their lives. Then she sees something shocking and the story becomes what Goodreads calls “A compulsively readable, emotionally immersive, Hitchcockian thriller.” Read an interview with author Paula Hawkins at BookPage.

In case you missed it, a NY Times interview with Anthony Doerr, the author of current bestseller All the Light We Cannot See. Set in WWII, it’s about a blind French resistance fighter and a German soldier and their struggle for survival in occupied France.

New Year, New Books!

Newly cataloged history books, look for them on the New Shelf in the cafe area.
Newly cataloged history books, look for them on the New Shelf in the cafe area.

Happy New Year!

What’s in store for January 2015?  We’re always adding to our non-fiction collection and this month we have a few new titles for fans of English history.  If you enjoyed Hilary Mantel’s fictional portrayal of Thomas Cromwell in the bestsellers Wolf Hall and Bringing up the Bodies, you may be interested in a new biography, Thomas Cromwell: the Untold Story of Henry VIII’s Most Faithful Servant by Tracy Borman. It’s always fun to fact check historical fiction! Thomas Cromwell is reviewed here by Book Page.

Going back a few hundred years before Cromwell, The Greatest Knight: the Remarkable Life of William Marshal, the Power Behind Five English Thrones, is the story of a 12th century knight who lived during turbulent and violent times. William Marshal served five English kings including Henry II, Richard the Lionheart, and the queen Eleanor of Aquitaine.  You can read a review here.

For American history readers:  America 1844: Religious Fervor, Westward Expansion, and the Presidential Election That Transformed the Nation, by John Bicknell, is about a critical year in our nation’s history. According to Library Journal, “The intersections of religious movements with national politics will be of interest to many readers.”

Many of our favorite fiction writers have books coming out in the next couple of months. There is, of course, a new James Patterson, Private Vegas, due out in January. Also this month, The Empty Throne by Bernard Cornwell, the 8th book in the Saxon Tales series. See more titles coming in January here, and place your holds.

In the next couple of months look for Prodigal Son by Danielle Steel, The Stranger by Harlan Coben and Wicked Charms: a Lizzy and Diesel novel by Janet Evanovich and Phoef Sutton.

Happy reading!

News round-up

judy blumeWe think of her as a children’s author, but Judy Blume also writes adult fiction. “In the Unlikely Event” will be published in June 2015, and is Ms. Blume’s first adult novel since “The Summer Sisters” in 1998.

The New York Times profiled Laura Hillenbrand, the author of Unbroken and Seabiscuit, who researched and wrote two bestsellers while battling chronic fatigue syndrome.  Enormously popular with MPL patrons, Unbroken is currently in its 186th week on the best seller list.

Refinery29 has an interesting end of the year list, “The Best Literary Moments of 2014,” a “cheat-sheet of some of the notable moments of the past year in literature.”

RIP Norman Bridwell, who died last week at the age of 86. Bridwell’s classic children’s picture books about Clifford the big red dog and Emily Elizabeth have been favorites since 1963.

Book buzz

This month’s Book Buzz is a mixed bag.

Our patrons are excited about Wally Lamb’s new book We Are Water.   In typical Lamb fashion, the novel deals with a present day event, in this case the marriage of two women, to explore the past events and secrets of a Connecticut family.  The relationship between two women, of vastly different classes and characters, is also the focal point of Sarah Waters’ new book The Paying Guests which is set in post-World War I London.

Last year’s Man Booker Prize winner, The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton, was highly praised by one of our patrons as something “she just had to discuss with someone.”   Set in the New Zealand Gold Rush of the 1860’s, it is in the Dickensian tradition of epic tales, and the interlocking stories and shifting narrative perspectives make it a truly unique novel.

For those who have read Bill Bryson’s One Summer, previously recommended in Book Buzz, and which prominently features the amazing life of Charles Lindbergh, a good follow up would be The Aviator’s Wife by Melanie Benjamin.  It is a fictional account of the life of Anne Morrow Lindbergh who, despite her husband’s fame, remains a shadowy figure.

On a lighter note, one of our patrons found The Happiest People in the World by Brock Clarke to be laugh out loud funny.  This madcap story features a Danish man who is hidden by the CIA in the depths of upstate New York.

Lastly, fans of Jodi Picoult will be glad to know that her new book Leaving Time, which has the diverse themes of elephant behavior and missing mothers, is, according to several patrons, as riveting as her previous books.