HOT off the
Press:
|
|
||
by Finzzzz
First, a little background on me. After
graduating from college, I joined the staff at
Lauriat’s Books, a New England chain of bookstores.
I managed several of their stores before going back to
school to get my degree in education and a career in
teaching. Bookselling still being in my blood, I joined
the staff part-time at Jabborwocky Books, a small
independent bookstore in Newburyport, Massachusetts. See
us here: http://shop.townonline.com/shop/j/jabberwockybooks/ (an old site which
will soon be updated) Besides getting a generous
discount, I get many advanced reading copies and enjoy
talking with customers about books. My favorite genres
are mysteries and thrillers and this column will be
skewed that way. However, I would be delighted to get
your opinion on books that you have read and would love
to see featured here. Please E-Mail me at Finzzzz@aol.com . November’s Featured Books
November Book Club If Oprah can do it, so can I! Welcome to November’s Book Club. Here’s how I envision this working: I’ll give everyone a book to read for the month. Your assignment is to read the book and let me know what you thought about it. With your permission, I’ll post some responses here next month. If more people are interested, perhaps we could hold a discussion group on the book on either AIM or an AOL chat room. Just let me know. If you have any ideas for book club books E-Mail me.
Till next month....Support your
local independent bookstore. |
|||
|
|||
What happens when you make one error in
judgement and that one mistake just snowballs on you?
That's the premise of Bill Eidson's latest book. From the
jacket: "McKenna is a good man mad with grief, who
blames himself for the death of his teenage daughter.
He's given up his house and business, bought a boat, and
sailed away with his wife Caroline--only to continuously
fight with her, sending her away. So he has to take on a
new crewman to sail back to Boston, and he picks Tom
Cain, who is pure evil. When Cain is about to be caught
smuggling diamonds by the Coast Guard, he convinces
McKenna to lie to save him . . . for a share. McKenna
does, and finds himself bound by chains of murder. First
he has to kill the murderous Cain to survive. And then
the people Cain cheated come after McKenna. And Caroline.
The tension mounts and the body-count grows." This
was an exciting edge of your seat thriller. Eidson
manages to throw in everything but the kitchen sink: a
believable protagonist forced to face his dark side, car
chases, shootouts, art heists, dirty dealings, double
crosses, and a brother/sister villainous combo you
wouldn't believe! Set in my hometown of Newburyport,
Massachusetts, I think you'll really enjoy this thriller.
In my favorite mystery of the year,
British author Val McDermid takes us back to an England
of the early 60's to visit a series of child kidnappings.
Detective Inspector George Bennett is haunted by the
disappearance of schoolgirl Alison Carter. It appears she
has been murdered yet no body has been found. As Bennett
probes deeper into this mystery, he comes to know the
residents of Alison's hometown of Scardale, an insular
community where most are related. Here, suspects abound,
one is caught and convicted, but the mystery doesn't end
there, it will haunt George Bennett for the rest of his
life. Did the wrong man hang for this heinous crime?
Twists and turns abound and McDermid's prose is
hauntingly beautiful. If you enjoy PBS mysteries such as
the "Prime Suspect" series you may want to
check this book out.
Tom Savage (The
Inheritance) is back with a book just as thrilling. Mark
Stevenson is a New York writer who has just published a
thinly disguised novel based on a series of killing by
"The Family Man", a serial killer responsible
for the deaths of five families across the country. This
"Family Man' stopped suddenly without being
apprehended. While winning accolades for his book from
the publishing world, Stevenson is contacted by
"Scavenger", who apparently knows what happened
tot he real killer. WHat follows is a bizzare scavenger
hunt that takes Stevenson from crime scene to crime scene
in a macabre game full of so many plot twists and turns.
Leave a couple hours for this book you will not want to
put it down!!
In one of my favorite novels of the
year, Jonathan Lethem (Girl in Landscape) takes the
classic detective novel and turns it on its ears. Lionel
Essrog, "Freakshow" to his friends, is a
"detective" who works for small time Brooklyn
mobster Frank Minna. Minna rescued Lionel and a few of
his friends from a Brooklyn orphanage when the quartet
were teenagers and now they do odd jobs for the mob boss
under the cover of a detective agency/limo serice.
Freakshow is afflicted with Tourette’s Syndrome and
has a way of words that is extremely intriguing. When
Minna is found fatally stabbed, it is up to Freakshow to
become a real detective and solve the murder in order to
set things right both in his head and in the real world.
Lethem’s play on words as he gets us into the mind
of Lionel is a tour-de-force of creative writing and his
plot deftly weaves us through a maze of Mafia hit men,
Zen Buddhists, Japanese businessmen, and Polish giants. A
thoroughly enjoyable read!