Thursday, August 11, 2016

debut fiction

The next RART meeting will be Wednesday, October 12th at 9am at the Woodlawn Library and the topic up for discussion will be celebrations!  Bring a book on your favorite holiday and/or holiday cooking and tell us about it!  And hey, if you want to bring a sample of your favorite recipe, no one will be mad ;-)

I am delighted to serve another year as RART moderator and the dates/topics are as follows (venues TBD):

February 8 – Humor/Parody (SPRINGVILLE ROAD)
April 12 – Bookgroup/Popular Fiction
June 14 – Literature in Translation
August 9 – Parenting/Mentoring (HOOVER)
October 11 – Sci Fi/Fantasy/Horror
December 13 – YA Fiction


If your library does not have a subscription to NoveList, you can still sign up for their excellent monthly newsletter: http://www.libraryaware.com/14/Subscribers/Subscribe.  I frequently use the newsletter to create bibliographies and displayes.

At this week’s meeting, we discussed one of my favorites: debut fiction.  It is sometimes said there are no new ideas, but some of these authors are proving the critics wrong!

Security by Gina Wohlsdorf
The first found-footage novel I've ever read and SHE MAKES IT WORK.  Fans of Chelsea Cain, Patricia Cornwell, and Karen Slaughter shouldn't be disappointed by this first effort from a disconcertingly sweet-looking Wohlsdorf.  Language, violence, sex, and various other depravities abound at the brand-new luxury resort, Manderley.  The video cameras catch everything and stop nothing.  I read it by the pool in one sitting, cringing much of the time.
Holley, Emmet O'Neal

Still Life by Louise Penny
Three Pines is an idyllic dream of a small town. Nestled in an isolated area of Quebec, the little village is truly off the grid: cell phone reception drops to one bar or none; your wifi connection refuses to connect; you can’t find your way to Trois Pins on most maps . . . unless you need to be there. Without having supernatural qualities, the town still has a way of attracting to itself the people who really need it in their lives.

However, the peace of this close-knit community is shattered when local artist Jane Neal is found lying dead in the woods with an arrow in her body. Hunting accident? Possibly.  There are plenty of bowhunters in the area who aren’t as careful as they should be. But Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Surêté du Québec doesn’t think this is an accident. All of his experience and intuition tells him that Jane Neal was murdered. As he assembles his team and sets out to solve the case, everyone in the village is looking at their neighbors through different eyes, not knowing which of the people they thought they knew might turn out to be a killer.

I can’t think when I’ve reacted to a mystery series with such grabby-hands anticipation for the next book. Still Life is a fine introduction to a series that just keeps getting better and better. Like many another reader, I’ve fallen hard for Three Pines in general (it would be a lovely vacation getaway spot) and Armand Gamache in particular. Unlike many fictional detectives he is not warped or tormented or saddled with terrible habits; he’s a warm, considerate, middle-aged man who loves his children and adores his wife. He also makes every effort to do right by his co-workers and carefully train the agents under his supervision: according to Gamache, the four sayings that are important for learning wisdom are I was wrong; I'm sorry; I don't know; and I need help. And Gamache doesn’t just say them. He lives them.

While Still Life has some characteristics of a “cozy” mystery, be careful about recommending it to your readers who favor these. There are some brutal aspects to the novel and the series—gory descriptions of murder and attempted murder, foul language, and drug abuse, to name only a few. But if you have (or are) a reader who’s looking for fiction that will grip you and not let go, this is one for the record books. Start at the beginning with Still Life and read in order, for there are some story arcs and character developments that take a while and you’ll miss one of the best aspects of the series unless you let it unfold at its own pace.

See you in Three Pines—if I can find it!

Author Louise Penny:

Mary Anne, BPL Southern History

The Widow by Fiona Barton
When the police started asking questions, Jean Taylor turned into a different woman. One who enabled her and her husband to carry on, when more bad things began to happen...

But that woman’s husband died last week. And Jean doesn’t have to be her anymore.

There’s a lot Jean hasn’t said over the years about the crime her husband was suspected of committing. She was too busy being the perfect wife, standing by her man while living with the accusing glares and the anonymous harassment. 

Now there’s no reason to stay quiet. There are people who want to hear her story. They want to know what it was like living with that man. She can tell them that there were secrets. There always are in a marriage. 

The truth—that’s all anyone wants. But the one lesson Jean has learned in the last few years is that she can make people believe anything…
Shannon, Hoover

Vegetarian by Han Kang
Before the nightmares began, Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary, controlled life. But the dreams—invasive images of blood and brutality—torture her, driving Yeong-hye to purge her mind and renounce eating meat altogether. It’s a small act of independence, but it interrupts her marriage and sets into motion an increasingly grotesque chain of events at home. As her husband, her brother-in-law and sister each fight to reassert their control, Yeong-hye obsessively defends the choice that’s become sacred to her. Soon their attempts turn desperate, subjecting first her mind, and then her body, to ever more intrusive and perverse violations, sending Yeong-hye spiraling into a dangerous, bizarre estrangement, not only from those closest to her, but also from herself. 

Celebrated by critics around the world, The Vegetarian is a darkly allegorical, Kafka-esque tale of power, obsession, and one woman’s struggle to break free from the violence both without and within her.
Shannon, Hoover

The stunning debut novel from bestselling author Bill Clegg is a magnificently powerful story about a circle of people who find solace in the least likely of places as they cope with a horrific tragedy.

On the eve of her daughter’s wedding, June Reid’s life is upended when a shocking disaster takes the lives of her daughter, her daughter’s fiancé, her ex-husband, and her boyfriend, Luke—her entire family, all gone in a moment. June is the only survivor.

Alone and directionless, June drives across the country, away from her small Connecticut town. In her wake, a community emerges, weaving a beautiful and surprising web of connections through shared heartbreak.

From the couple running a motel on the Pacific Ocean where June eventually settles into a quiet half-life, to the wedding’s caterer whose bill has been forgotten, to Luke’s mother, the shattered outcast of the town—everyone touched by the tragedy is changed as truths about their near and far histories finally come to light.

Elegant and heartrending, and one of the most accomplished fiction debuts of the year, Did You Ever Have a Family is an absorbing, unforgettable tale that reveals humanity at its best through forgiveness and hope. At its core is a celebration of family—the ones we are born with and the ones we create.
Shannon, Hoover

Half Bad by Sally Green
In modern-day England, witches live alongside humans: White witches, who are good; Black witches, who are evil; and sixteen-year-old Nathan, who is both. Nathan’s father is the world’s most powerful and cruel Black witch, and his mother is dead. He is hunted from all sides. Trapped in a cage, beaten and handcuffed, Nathan must escape before his seventeenth birthday, at which point he will receive three gifts from his father and come into his own as a witch—or else he will die. But how can Nathan find his father when his every action is tracked, when there is no one safe to trust—not even family, not even the girl he loves?

In the tradition of Patrick Ness and Markus Zusak, Half Bad is a gripping tale of alienation and the indomitable will to survive, a story that will grab hold of you and not let go until the very last page.
Gina, Gardendale

Rush Oh! by Shirley Barrett
1908: It's the year that proves to be life-changing for our teenage narrator, Mary Davidson, tasked with providing support to her father's boisterous whaling crews while caring for five brothers and sisters in the wake of their mother's death. But when the handsome John Beck-a former Methodist preacher turned novice whaler with a mysterious past-arrives at the Davidson's door pleading to join her father's crews, suddenly Mary's world is upended.

As her family struggles to survive the scarcity of whales and the vagaries of weather, and as she navigates sibling rivalries and an all-consuming first love for the newcomer John, nineteen-year-old Mary will soon discover a darker side to these men who hunt the seas, and the truth of her place among them. 

Swinging from Mary's own hopes and disappointments to the challenges that have beset her family's whaling operation,RUSH OH! is an enchanting blend of fact and fiction that's as much the story of its gutsy narrator's coming-of-age as it is the celebration of an extraordinary episode in history.
Maura, Trussville

In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware
What should be a cozy and fun-filled weekend deep in the English countryside takes a sinister turn in Ruth Ware’s suspenseful, compulsive, and darkly twisted psychological thriller.

Sometimes the only thing to fear…is yourself.

When reclusive writer Leonora is invited to the English countryside for a weekend away, she reluctantly agrees to make the trip. But as the first night falls, revelations unfold among friends old and new, an unnerving memory shatters Leonora’s reserve, and a haunting realization creeps in: the party is not alone in the woods.
Samuel, Springville Road

The Swede by Robert Karjel
A thief.
A prisoner.
A man who no longer exists.
At a remote military base on an island in the Indian Ocean, the FBI is trying to get a prisoner to confess. But the detainee, a suspect in an Islamist-inspired terrorist attack in the United States, refuses to talk.
Ernst Grip, a Swedish security officer, has no idea why he’s been dispatched to New York City. The FBI agent he meets on arrival, Shauna Friedman, seems to know a little too much about him. And when he arrives at his real destination, the American authorities have just one question: Is their suspect a Swedish citizen?
In the process of uncovering the prisoner’s true identity, Grip discovers the man’s ties to a group of other suspects—a ruthless American arms dealer, a Czech hit man, a mysterious nurse from Kansas, and a heartbreakingly naïve Pakistani. The closer Grip gets to the truth, the more complicated the deception becomes. Who is real and who is leading a double life?
Samuel, Springville Road

The Immortals by Jordanna Max Brodsky
The city sleeps. Selene DiSilva walks her dog along the banks of the Hudson. She is alone -- just the way she likes it. She doesn't believe in friends, and she doesn't speak to her family. Most of them are simply too dangerous. 

In the predawn calm, Selene finds the body of a young woman washed ashore, gruesomely mutilated and wreathed in laurel. Her ancient rage returns. And so does the memory of a promise she made long ago -- when her name was Artemis. 
Samuel, Springville Road

Gold Fame Citrus by Claire Vaye Watkins
In 2012, Claire Vaye Watkins’s story collection, Battleborn, swept nearly every award for short fiction. Now this young writer, widely heralded as a once-in-a-generation talent, returns with a first novel that harnesses the sweeping vision and deep heart that made her debut so arresting to a love story set in a devastatingly imagined near future:

Unrelenting drought has transfigured Southern California into a surreal, phantasmagoric landscape. With the Central Valley barren, underground aquifer drained, and Sierra snowpack entirely depleted, most “Mojavs,” prevented by both armed vigilantes and an indifferent bureaucracy from freely crossing borders to lusher regions, have allowed themselves to be evacuated to internment camps. In Los Angeles’ Laurel Canyon, two young Mojavs—Luz, once a poster child for the Bureau of Conservation and its enemies, and Ray, a veteran of the “forever war” turned surfer—squat in a starlet’s abandoned mansion. Holdouts, they subsist on rationed cola and whatever they can loot, scavenge, and improvise.

The couple’s fragile love somehow blooms in this arid place, and for the moment, it seems enough. But when they cross paths with a mysterious child, the thirst for a better future begins. They head east, a route strewn with danger: sinkholes and patrolling authorities, bandits and the brutal, omnipresent sun. Ghosting after them are rumors of a visionary dowser—a diviner for water—and his followers, who whispers say have formed a colony at the edge of a mysterious sea of dunes.

Immensely moving, profoundly disquieting, and mind-blowingly original, Watkins’s novel explores the myths we believe about others and tell about ourselves, the double-edged power of our most cherished relationships, and the shape of hope in a precarious future that may be our own.
Jon, Avondale

The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi
In the near future, the Colorado River has dwindled to a trickle. Detective, assassin, and spy, Angel Velasquez “cuts” water for the Southern Nevada Water Authority, ensuring that its lush arcology developments can bloom in Las Vegas. When rumors of a game-changing water source surface in Phoenix, Angel is sent south, hunting for answers that seem to evaporate as the heat index soars and the landscape becomes more and more oppressive. There, he encounters Lucy Monroe, a hardened journalist with her own agenda, and Maria Villarosa, a young Texas migrant, who dreams of escaping north. As bodies begin to pile up, the three find themselves pawns in a game far bigger and more corrupt than they could have imagined, and when water is more valuable than gold, alliances shift like sand, and the only truth in the desert is that someone will have to bleed if anyone hopes to drink.
Jon, Avondale

Twenty-year-old Skyler saw the incident out her window: Some sort of metallic object hovering over the Golden Gate Bridge just before it collapsed and a mushroom cloud lifted above the city. Like everyone, she ran, but she couldn't outrun the radiation, with her last thoughts being of her beloved baby brother, Dorian, safe in her distant family home. 

Flash forward to a post-incident America, where the country has been broken up into territories and Muslims have been herded onto the old Indian reservations in the west, even though no one has determined who set off the explosion that destroyed San Francisco. Twelve-year old Dorian dreams about killing Muslims and about his sister—even though Dorian's parents insist Skyler never existed. Are they still shell-shocked, trying to put the past behind them . . . or is something more sinister going on?

Meanwhile, across the street, Dorian's neighbor adopts a Muslim orphan from the territories. It will set off a series of increasingly terrifying incidents that will lead to either tragedy or redemption for Dorian, as he struggles to prove that his sister existed—and was killed by a terrorist attack.

Not on Fire, but Burning is unlike anything you're read before—not exactly a thriller, not exactly sci-fi, not exactly speculative fiction, but rather a brilliant and absorbing adventure into the dark heart of an America that seems ripped from the headlines. But just as powerfully, it presents a captivating hero: A young boy driven by love to seek the truth, even if it means his deepest beliefs are wrong.
Jon, Avondale

Fiend by Peter Stenson
 When Chase first sees the little girl in umbrella socks disemboweling the Rottweiler, he's not too concerned. As a longtime meth addict, he’s no stranger to such horrifying, drug-fueled hallucinations.  
   But as he and his fellow junkies soon discover, the little girl is no illusion. The end of the world really has arrived. And with Chase’s life already shattered by addiction, the apocalypse might actually be an opportunity—a last chance to hit restart, win back the love of his life, and become the person he once dreamed of being. 
   That is, if the darkness inside him doesn't destroy everything—again.
Jon, Avondale

Symptoms of Being Human by Jeff Garvin
A sharply honest and moving debut perfect for fans of The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Ask the Passengers.
Riley Cavanaugh is many things: Punk rock. Snarky. Rebellious. And gender fluid. Some days Riley identifies as a boy, and others as a girl. But Riley isn't exactly out yet. And between starting a new school and having a congressman father running for reelection in über-conservative Orange County, the pressure—media and otherwise—is building up in Riley's life.
On the advice of a therapist, Riley starts an anonymous blog to vent those pent-up feelings and tell the truth of what it's reallylike to be a gender fluid teenager. But just as Riley's starting to settle in at school—even developing feelings for a mysterious outcast—the blog goes viral, and an unnamed commenter discovers Riley's real identity, threatening exposure. And Riley must make a choice: walk away from what the blog has created—a lifeline, new friends, a cause to believe in—or stand up, come out, and risk everything.
From debut author Jeff Garvin comes a powerful and uplifting portrait of a modern teen struggling with high school, relationships, and what it means to be a person.
Holley, Emmet O'Neal

The Killing Gift by Bari Wood (Light Source is also excellent.)
This is more than a novel about a lonely woman who becomes the quarry of an obsessed detective. It is more than a gripping psychic suspense story that holds the readers right down to the last sentence. It reaches into the subconscious; the core of violence and aggression in all of us. It explores the question that most civilized people ask themselves: What would I do if I had the power to kill just by thinking about it?
Mondretta, Leeds

Work Like Any Other by Virginia Reeves
In this astonishingly accomplished, morally complicated, “exceptional and starkly beautiful debut” (Kevin Powers, National Book Award–nominated author of The Yellow Birds), a prideful electrician in 1920s rural Alabama struggles to overcome past sins and find peace after being sent to prison for manslaughter.

Roscoe T Martin set his sights on a new type of power spreading at the start of the twentieth century: electricity. It became his training, his life’s work. But when his wife, Marie, inherits her father’s failing farm, Roscoe has to give up his livelihood, with great cost to his sense of self, his marriage, and his family. Realizing he might lose them all if he doesn’t do something, he begins to use his skills as an electrician to siphon energy from the state, ushering in a period of bounty and happiness. Even the love of Marie and their child seem back within Roscoe’s grasp.

Then a young man working for the state power company stumbles on Roscoe’s illegal lines and is electrocuted, and everything changes: Roscoe is arrested; the farm once more starts to deteriorate; and Marie abandons her husband, leaving him to face his twenty-year sentence alone. Now an unmoored Roscoe must carve out a place at Kilby Prison. Climbing the ranks of the incarcerated from dairy hand to librarian to “dog boy,” an inmate who helps the guards track down escapees, he is ultimately forced to ask himself once more if his work is just that, or if the price of his crimes—for him and his family—is greater than he ever let himself believe.
Mondretta, Leeds

Soulless by Gail Carriger
Alexia Tarabotti is laboring under a great many social tribulations. First, she has no soul. Second, she's a spinster whose father is both Italian and dead. Third, she was rudely attacked by a vampire, breaking all standards of social etiquette. 

Where to go from there? From bad to worse apparently, for Alexia accidentally kills the vampire -- and then the appalling Lord Maccon (loud, messy, gorgeous, and werewolf) is sent by Queen Victoria to investigate. 

With unexpected vampires appearing and expected vampires disappearing, everyone seems to believe Alexia responsible. Can she figure out what is actually happening to London's high society? Will her soulless ability to negate supernatural powers prove useful or just plain embarrassing? Finally, who is the real enemy, and do they have treacle tart?
Kelly, Springville Road

Nightshifted by Cassie Alexander
Nursing school prepared Edie Spence for a lot of things. Burn victims? No problem. Severed limbs? Piece of cake. Vampires? No way in hell. But as the newest nurse on Y4, the secret ward hidden in the bowels of County Hospital, Edie has her hands full with every paranormal patient you can imagine-from vamps and were-things to zombies and beyond...
Edie's just trying to learn the ropes so she can get through her latest shift unscathed. But when a vampire servant turns to dust under her watch, all hell breaks loose. Now she's haunted by the man's dying words-Save Anna-and before she knows it, she's on a mission to rescue some poor girl from the undead. Which involves crashing a vampire den, falling for a zombie, and fighting for her soul. Grey's Anatomy was never like this...
Kelly, Springville Road

GENERAL DISCUSSION:

Fans of the Netflix series, Stranger Things, might enjoy Brian K. Vaughan’s (Saga series) latest series, Paper Girls!

This fall, Hoover Library will be hosting a skyping session with Siobhan Fallon, author of You Know When the Men are Gone, a short story collection about military families.  Keep your eyes on their calendar!

What are YOU reading?