The Pirate's Daughter by Margaret Cezair-Thompson (in stock!!)

When I was told the basic premise of The Pirate's Daughter, I wasn't so sure it would be my cup of tea. But this mostly fictional tale of Errol Flynn's dalliances in Jamaica and the difficult life of May, his illegitimate daughter, is remarkably believable and engrossing. The writing dances between Jamaican patois and formal letters, slipping in some truly fine metaphors and landscapes in between. The characters of Flynn and his famous and wealthy friends as well as those of the islanders, in particular May's mother Ida and her kin, are engaging and clearly drawn. This is a book filled with the desire for adventure, unfulfilled romantic intentions, and a bold and startling history.

Run by Ann Patchett (author of Bel Canto and Patron Saint of Liars)

Elegant, intense, and moving, Ann Patchett's latest novel offers immediate intimacy with and empathy for her characters. An adoptive father spends a snowbound night and day with his sons and a young girl whose mother is hosipitalized after pushing his son out of the way of an oncoming car. How she, and her daughter, came to be there and what it means for Doyle's family unfolds as quielty and gently as the snow that falls. Patchett is pure genius.

Caspian Rain by Gina Nahai

The writing in Caspian Rain is so lyrical and flowing that you almost forget just how hard life can be for someone who is doomed to be an outsider. Bahar, who marries above her station, finds that she is isolated from both the family and society she marries into and the family and friends she left behind. Set in Tehran, Iran in a time when Jews lived under a measure of protection afforded by the Shah, Bahar's story and that of her unfortunate family is beautifully told by her daughter. Nahai has written a novel that illuminates a complex society while offering up a very specific and moving story of one woman's desire to maintain her dignity and tenuous standing within a diffident society.

The Sound of Butterflies by Rachael King (in stock!!)

The Piano Tuner, Easter Island, Letters from Yellowstone, The Hungry Tide and nowThe Sound of Butterflies. Our book club loves it when I find them a "grand adventure" to read each year and this one will definitely be on our list. I've only read 4 or 5 books this spring and summer that really made me want to hunker down and read straight through and Rachael King's story certainly did that for me. The Sound of Butterflies engages from the very first page. King's writing style makes smooth sailing for the reader of this historical novel about an amateur naturalist whose voyage to the Amazon leaves him a changed man. More tortuous is the journey his wife must take to find the mystery behind his unnerving transformation. Rich in detail and well-researched.

The Elephanta Suite; Three Novellas by Paul Theroux

A master of the travel narrative weaves three intertwined novellas of Westerners transformed by their sojourns in India, in this startling and satisfying book. Excelletn for fans of VS Naipaul and Rohinton Mistry.

As always, Theroux's writing style is impeccable, the landscapes palpable, the characters clearly and heartbreakingly described. And yet this -- as is the case with so many tales of India - is not an easy read. Where this slim volume of three novellas succeeds most clearly is in its ability to cause discomfort in the reader, the same discomfort and distress that each of the American travelers navigate in their personal transformative journeys with the teeming soul of India as their enigmatic guide.

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga (April 2008) is fresh, brutal, powerful and engrossing. What a distinctive voice! I highly recommend it. (Touches on India's "Electronic City" (Bangalore) that we are introduced to in Theroux's The Elephanta Suite. These two books would make a great pairing.)

Adiga writes in a one-of-a-kind voice in this novel of an Indian Driver who calls himself The White Tiger but who is referred to as Country-Mouse by his peers in the servant class. In an intriguing plot device, our "hero" writes emails to the Premier of China who is scheduled to visit India. In these emails Balram (The White Tiger) wishes to dispel, in advance, the false picture of Modern India that the government will no doubt show the visiting Premier. Balram sets about depicting the true India by telling in nightly installments the story of his own life as he scratches his way up from poverty to entrepreneurship.
Click here to play the NPR interview with the author.

The View From Garden City by Carolyn Baugh; 8/2008; Forge Hardcover

I can just imagine the lively book club discussions that will arise from Carolyn Baugh's The View from Garden City. Through the eyes of an American student living in Cairo we meet a group of Egyptian women, women who endure, who struggle alone and in family groups, who tell their amazing personal stories with grace and grim-good humor. Baugh injects ample descriptions of the city and of local customs, details that allow the reader to feel the stangeness and sprawling scope of the city. Baugh's strength, however, is in unfolding the stories of the women of Garden city as they open their lives and their hearts to the novel's American narrator.

Mudbound; A Novel by Hillary Jordan March 2008

You can feel the salt in your eyes and the sun-baked mud on your arms. You can feel the quiet desperation straining along your shoulders like a drawn bowstring. Hillary Jordan's portayal of sharcropping in the Mississippi Delta in the 1940's is exceptional. A wonderful reading experience.

Have You Found Her by Jancice Erlbaum available 02/12/2008 $14.00

Twenty years after she lived at a homeless shelter for teens, Erlbaum went back to volunteer. There she met Sam, a 19-year-old junkie savant whod been surviving alone on the streets since she was 12. Written with startling candor, this is the story of one womans quest to save a girls life. -Publisher Marketing

Erlbaum's memoir of the two years she spent trying to save the life of a young woman she met at a homeless shelter is as fascinating to read as it is frustrating. Have You Seen Her is one of those once in a decade books that you want - in equal measure - to read straight through and to lay aside in frustration. The frustration, of course, mirrors that of the author's as she tries to understand the self-destructive behaviors and tangled weave of lies that feed the relationship. Erlbaum becomes a friend, a would-be counselor, pseudo-mother and true co-dependent as she is pulled between her need for emotional distance and her determination to remain faithful and compassionate. -Laura Hansen

The Animal Dialogues; Uncommon Encounters In the Wild by Craig Childs

Finally, I've found my non-fiction pick of the season. I fell in love with the tenor of this book even before I finished the Author's Notes and Introduction. Occasional MPR commentator and full-time naturalist, Childs (House of Rain), writes vividly about his encounters with wild creatures in language that is immediate, spellbinding and deeply moving. He describes being so in the moment, completely immersed in the natural world of the animals he meets, that he refers to the end of those encounters as "becoming human again". Here is a book for the outdoor enthusiast, the amateur naturalist, the thrill-seeker (yes, there are Canadian whitewater rapids and tales of Alaskan bears), the animal lover, and those of us who feel understanding our animal counterparts can help us "become - authentically - human again."

Skinner's Drift by Lisa Fugard

In this beautiful and brutal debut novel, the new South Africa comes to life with its violent history, as Eva van Rensburg confronts her dying father with a terrible secret from her childhood. This piercing novel with its powerful sense of place, fine-tuned language and clearly drawn cast of characters is an engrossing read. Book Clubs will want to discuss the various viewpoints and how the story might be told differently based on a person's place in that society.

As I began reading Robert Olmstead's Coal Black Horse, I immediately felt as one with the traveler who crosses remote and dusty roads bearing a fateful message. Not since disovering Joe Coomer's The Decatur Road back in the 80's have I found myself so quickly transported by the language of a book and its sure-footed cadence. Olmstead uses language like a seduction, one that lulls both the reader and the main character, fourteen year old Robey, into a waking dream-state. I wanted to ride Olmstead's words hard and fast past the horrors of war and to hold on to the reigns of his story until I was safely back at Robey's mountain home. This is a book, like Elie Wiesel's Night and Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, that everyone should read at some time in their lifetime. (Available in Trade Paperback, May 2008.)

City of Thieves by David Benioff -- Just released!

Benioff writes of harrowing times with amazing gentleness and good humor. A mis-matched pair of prisoners - both accused of minor crimes - are released by a Russian officer in need of a favor. The two unlikely companions join together on an adventure that will take them behind German lines and ally them with a band of resistance fighters. Not once did I forsee how this engaging tale would end.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (September 2008)

In his remarkable debut, Stieg Larsson tops even the disturbing tales of fellow Swede Henning Mankell. This mystery is rich in detail, full of plot twists, and complicated by familial antagonism and deception, yet is cleanly and cleverly told. Larsson tells the story of a financial reporter who takes on a major coporation and loses and while in retreat from his humiliationg defeat is hired by a Swedish Industrialist to write a family history. Blomquist is aided in his research by a disturbed but brilliant young woman who can hack into anyone's life, including Blomqusit's own. Intense and absorbing and at times brutal in its depictions of the dark side of human nature.

The Last Kashmiri Rose by Barbara Cleverly

Every so often we stumble onto a great book we'd missed along the way and wonder how that happened. The Last Kashmiri Rose is just such a book. I've been reading quite a few books that take place in India and neighboring countries recently and this title popped up in one of my book searches. Set in the last days of British rule, here is an old-fashioned thinking man's (or woman's) mystery where crime is solved by interview and intuition and little physical evidence. I am thoroughly looking forward to reading more in this series and you will too. A "New York Times" Notable Book.

Looking ahead: January 2009

A Beautiful Place to Die by Malla Nunn
January 6, 2009 $25.00

A Beautiful Place to Die is a roaring good mystery. Malla Nunn combines issues of race, politics, and small town power struggles in this powerful, provocative, and atmospheric novel. Rural Jacob's Rest, South Africa in the 1950's is held in an uneasy truce between blacks, coloreds and the ruling whites until someone crosses social taboos and a policeman ends up dead. Detective Emmanuel Cooper is sent to investigate and finds himself in a writhing bed of lies and betrayal and ends up fighting not only for the truth but for his life.

The Archivist's Story by Travis Holland

It is not uncommon for us at Bookin' It as a group or in pairs to enjoy the same book or style of book. Examples abound...we ALL loved Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen (who wouldn't?)and both Maryjude and I chose Pine Island Paradox as a book we wanted to share (me as a staff pick and Maryjude with her Spiritality Book Discussion Group) and Donna and I can't get enough of some of our favorite mystery writers such as Ian Rankin and Henning Mankell. Here is another title Donna and I both thought worthy of sharing with you -- our customers and fellow readers. See Donna's review in her staff picks. NOW AVAILABLE in trade paperback!

The Archivist's Story - a review from Publisher's Weekly Staff Top Picks of 2007 ---

Moscow 1939; Soviet Russia in all its totalitarian glory. Two pages in, and I'm walking the snowy streets of Moscow filled with paranoia and the terror of life under Stalin. This first novel, with its flawed hero assigned to authenticate a manuscript confiscated from the imprisoned Isaac Babel, has the clout of those 19th-century Russian classics. —Louisa Ermelin

The Naming of the Dead by Ian Rankin; An Inpector John Rebus Mystery Novel

Classic Rankin with plenty of the sights and sounds of Edinburgh and Inspecotr Rebus thumbing his nose at his superiors yet again. This time John and Siobhan dig into a possible diplomatic suicide at the G8 Conference as well as a series of murders connected only by a Sexual Predator Alert Website. Sibohan, distracted by the presence of her parents who are in town for a Feed the Hungry March, juggles loyalties at the same time she strives to keep John from sinking both their careers.

Prayer of the Dragon by Eliot Pattison; A Detective Shan Mystery

It is good to see Eliot Pattison and his Detective Shan back in proper form after a somewhat dissappointing outing in Beautiful Ghosts which seemed to push the series too far to the mass market thriller side of things. Here we have the deeply thoughtful and yet still gripping storytelling that first propelled the series forward in Skull Mantra and Water Touching Stone. As a bonus, we have an intriguing study of the link between the ancient Tibetans and the Navajo peoples of North America. The switch to a new publsher (SOHO Crime) has been a good one for fans of Shan. Available now..

On March 18, Prayer of the Dragon author Eliot Pattison was interviewed on PRI’s The World to discuss the situation in Tibet. Listen to the interview at: http://www.theworld.org/node/16735

“This novel taught me more about Tibet—modern and ancient—than I had managed to learn elsewhere. . . . It’s a powerful picture of courage in the face of tyranny.”—The Washington Post

Lost by Michael Robotham is positively cinematic! London Detective Inspector Vincent Ruiz finds himself on the out-and-out with his peers as he races to save the life of a child missing three years. Her presumed killer has long since been convicted, yet new evidence indicates he may have been wrongly accused. Against his superiors wishes DI Ruiz attempts to deliver the ransom...with disastrous results. Having devoured this one whole during my short vacation, my hardest decision now is whether to go back and read Robtham's debut "Suspect" or .....

....move straight away to his latest thriller, the well-reviewed "Night Ferry" released in hardback this summer.

Review quotes for "Suspect: "
"Readers will forget their own jobs, meals and families while they race to find out which one of his targets the killer actually hits before he's brought down." --"Kirkus Reviews" (starred review) .

Review quotes for "Night Ferry : "A gripping thriller and a searing tale of the search for redemption, "The Night Ferry" is Michael Robotham’ s finest novel yet.

In a Dark House by Deborah Crombie This complex tale may be Crombie's best since Dreaming of the Bones which was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and one of the 100 Best Crime Novels of the Century. In this outing, Duncan Kincaid and his former partner, Gemma Janes, find their seperate cases coming together in one intricate puzzle as they search for a London arsonist and clues to the identity of an apparent fire victim.

Water Like A Stone by Deborah Crombie There is so much to love in this new Ducan Kindcaid/Gemma James mystery. First off, we get to meet more of Duncan's family and see Duncan and Gemma "at ease" on their Christmas holiday away from London. Second, we get to go inside those fascinating 7 foot wide narrowboats that ply the English interior by canal. I love a good travelougue tucked into my fiction reading. And the mystery satisfies, too! Now available in paperback; $7.99.

Crombie's latest in hardback,Where Memories Lie, has just arrived in Hardback. I'm about a third of the way through....thank heavens there is a holiday weekend on the way for me to catch up on my reading. Crombie's mystery novels deserve to be read staight through in one big gulp!