Friday Fiction: Elizabeth Berg

--by Hanje Richards

For ten years, Elizabeth Berg worked as a registered nurse. In 1985, deciding she would heed the advice of friends and teachers who had always told her that she should be a writer, she began to publish personal essays and short stories in mainstream magazines.

In 1993, her first novel was published.. Eight novels were published subsequently, one each year, all of them national bestsellers and three of them New York Times bestsellers. Berg has also published two non-fiction books as well as a New York Times bestselling collection of short stories called Ordinary Life.

Among the honors Elizabeth Berg has received are The American Library Association's "Best Book of the Year" for two of her novels. She was shortlisted for the American Bookseller's "Book of the Year" for Talk Before Sleep, and the novel was the winner of the AMC Cancer Research Center "Illumminator Award" for shedding light on breast cancer, resulting in increased public awareness and concern.

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In 1997, she was given the NEBA (New England Booksellers Association) award for "body of work." Both the Boston Public Library and the Chicago Public Library have honored her for her literary accomplishments, she is often a keynote speaker at library and other events, and she has been on Oprah three times, once because Open House was a book club selection.

Art of Mending - Laura Bartone anticipates her annual family reunion in Minnesota with a mixture of excitement and wariness. Yet this year’s gathering will prove to be much more trying than either she or her siblings imagined. When her sister Caroline confronts Laura and their brother, Steve, with devastating allegations about their mother, the three have a difficult time reconciling their varying experiences in the same house. But a sudden misfortune will lead them all to face the past, their own culpability, and their common need for love and forgiveness.

Handmaid and the Carpenter - This wonderful novel transports us to Nazareth in Biblical times, where we meet Mary and Joseph – and understand them as never before: young, in love, and suddenly faced with an unexpected pregnancy.

Aided by a great and abiding love, they endure challenges to their relationship as well as threats to their lives as they come to terms with the mysterious circumstances surrounding the birth of their child, Jesus. For Mary, the pregnancy is a divine miracle and a privilege. For Joseph, it is an ongoing test of his faith – in his wife and in his God.

Home Safe - Story of a mother and daughter in emotional transit. Helen Ames – recently widowed, coping with grief, unable to do the work that has always sustained her – is beginning to depend too much on her twenty-seven-year-old daughter, Tessa, meddling in her life and offering unsolicited advice.

Then, Helen is shocked to discover that her mild-mannered and seemingly loyal husband was apparently leading a double life. When a phone call from a stranger sets Helen on a surprising path of discovery, both mother and daughter reassess what they thought they knew about each other, themselves, and what really makes a home and a family.

Joy School - Katie, the narrator, has relocated to Missouri with her distant, occasionally abusive father, and she feels very much alone: her much-loved mother is dead; her new school is unaccepting of her; and her only friends fall far short of being ideal companions.

When she accidentally falls through the ice while skating, she meets Jimmy. He is handsome, far older than she, and married, but she is entranced. As their relationship unfolds, so too does Katie's awareness of the pain and intensity first love can bring.

Never Change - A self-anointed spinster at fifty-one, Myra Lipinski is reasonably content with her quiet life, her dog, Frank, and her career as a visiting nurse. But everything changes when Chip Reardon, the golden boy she adored in high school, is assigned as her new patient.

Choosing to forgo treatment for an incurable illness, Chip has returned to his New England hometown to spend what time he has left. Now, Myra and Chip find themselves engaged in a poignant redefinition of roles, and a complicated dance of memory, ambivalence, and longing.

Open House - Samantha's husband has left her. Her eccentric mother tries to help by fixing her up with dates, but a more pressing problem is money. To meet her mortgage payments, Sam decides to take in boarders. The first is an older woman who offers sage advice and sorely needed comfort; the second, a maladjusted student, is not quite so helpful. Her real work is this: In order to emerge from grief and the past, she has to learn how to make her own happiness. In order to really see people, she has to look within her heart. And in order to know who she is, she has to remember--and reclaim--the person she used to be, long before she became someone else in an effort to save her marriage.

Ordinary Life: Stories - In "Ordinary Life," Mavis McPherson locks herself in the bathroom for a week, shutting out her husband and the realities of their life together — and, no, she isn’t contemplating a divorce. She just needs some time to think, to take stock of her life, and to arrive, finally, at a surprising conclusion.

In "White Dwarf" and "Martin’s Letter to Nan," the secrets of a marriage are revealed with sensitivity and “brilliant insights about the human condition.”
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Range of Motion - This first-person narrative describes an ordinary woman caught up in unusual circumstances. Lainey is a wife/mother/office worker whose life is suddenly changed when her husband is sent into a coma by a freak accident. The only one who believes that he will one day wake up, she visits him daily, bringing him stimulus from everyday life in an attempt to reach him.

Lainey is sustained through her ordeal by the support of two special women: Alice, who lives next door, and Evie, the ghost of the woman who lived in Lainey's house in the '40s.

Talk Before Sleep - Ann and Ruth have always talked as only great friends can — honestly, and about everything: husbands and marriages, sex lives and children, their work, their hopes, their disappointments, and their dreams. For Ann, cautious and conventional, her closeness to the outspoken and eccentric Ruth brings about discovery and liberation, a chance to say whatever she wants and, most important, under the insistent tutelage of Ruth, to become herself.

Over the years, the women have shared recipes, quilting patterns, child care, delicate and dangerous secrets. Each rests secure in the knowledge that they will be friends forever. Then, something happens that will change their lives forever, and the women begin to share something more profound than either of them might have predicted.

True to Form - Katie Nash is thirteen years old in 1961, and she's facing a summer full of conflict. Her father has enlisted her in two care-taking jobs — baby-sitting for the rambunctious Wexler boys and, equally challenging, looking after Mrs. Randolph, her elderly, bedridden neighbor. To make matters worse, Katie has been forcibly inducted into the "loser" Girl Scout troop, compliments of her only new friend Cynthia's controlling mother.

Her only saving grace is a trip to her childhood hometown in Texas to visit her best friend Cherylanne. But people and places change — and Cherylanne is no exception. When an act of betrayal leaves Katie wondering just what friends are really for, she learns to rely on the only one left she can trust: herself.

Until the Real Thing Comes Along - Patty Murphy is facing that pivotal point in a woman's life when her biological clock ticks as insistently as a beating heart. Will she find Mr. Right and start a family? But Patty is in love — with a man who is not only attractive and financially sound, but sensitive and warmhearted. There's just one small problem: He is also gay.

Against her better judgment, and pleas from family and friends, Patty refuses to give up on Ethan. Every man she dates ultimately leaves her aching for the gentle comfort and intimacy she shares with him. But even as she throws eligible bachelors to the wayside to spend yet another platonic night with Ethan, Patty longs more and more for the consolation of loving and being loved. In the meantime she must content herself with waiting — until the "real thing" comes along. . .

What We Keep - Ginny Young is on a plane, en route to see her mother, whom she hasn't seen or spoken to for thirty-five years. She thinks back to the summer of 1958, when she and her sister were young girls. A series of dramatic events — beginning with the arrival of a mysterious and sensual next-door neighbor — divided the family, separating the sisters from their mother.

Moving back and forth in time between the girl she once was and the woman she's become, Ginny at last confronts painful choices that occur in almost any woman's life, and learns surprising truths about the people she thought she knew best.

Year of Pleasures - Betta Nolan moves to a small town after the death of her husband to try to begin anew. Pursuing a dream of a different kind of life, she is determined to find pleasure in her simple daily routines. Among those who help her in both expected and unexpected ways are the ten-year-old boy next door, three wild women friends from her college days, a twenty-year-old who is struggling to find his place in the world, and a handsome man who is ready for love. The Year of Pleasures is about acknowledging the solace found in ordinary things: a warm bath, good food, the beauty of nature, music, friends, and art.

Insider’s Guide to the Library: Oversize Books

--by Hanje Richards

The problem, of course, with oversize books is that they are too large to fit on the regular shelves. However, they are not too large for you to check out and enjoy at home!

At the top of the stairs on the third floor, there is a shelving unit for oversize books, many of which are art and photography books, but they cover many other subjects as well.

These lovely books that don’t fit on the regular shelves in their sections are available to our patrons as books that can be checked out for three weeks.

If you have trouble finding the oversize books shelves, just ask at the Circulation Desk and we will point you in the right direction.

Insider’s Guide to the Library: Where Did Diana Gabaldon Go (…and Why)?

--by Hanje Richards & Peg White

As much as we try to retain the feel and flavor of our historic library, the more we find that at least some things must change. For instance, we acquire new materials regularly, and that means we need to find the space for them once they’re removed from our “New Books” displays.

Recently, we discovered that an area in the Fiction section needed some attention, because our volunteer shelvers had no more room to put books by authors whose last names begin with “G.” So, we started looking at books in that area (as well as “F” and “H”) with an eye toward making more space.

A great deal of thought and discussion went into what to do about the crowding. One solution (among many) was to reassess the placement of books by several authors, including Diana Gabaldon (about whom I did a recent blog post).

Her books legitimately belong in the Fiction section (since they are not Non-Fiction), but often – and just as legitimately – they are found in Fantasy (just as Andrew Greeley books can often be found in either Fiction or Mystery).

So… In an effort to make more room on the “G” shelves and to introduce the Gabaldon titles to some new readers, we decided to move them to the Fantasy section (and, by the way, some of Greeley to Mystery!).

Now, if you are looking for Gabaldon’s time travel series – Breath of Snow and Ashes, Dragonfly in Amber, Drums of Autumn, Fiery Cross, Lord John and the Private Matter, Outlander, and Voyager – you will find them shelved in Fantasy.

Her latest, An Echo in the Bone, is currently shelved on the New Titles Shelf near the circulation desk but will eventually be shelved in Fantasy with the rest of the titles.

Still not sure what’s where? Don’t be shy; just ask at the Circulation Desk!

Friday Fiction: Colum McCann: 2009 National Book Award Winner

--by Hanje Richards

Colum McCann (born February 28, 1965) is an Irish writer of literary fiction. He holds a BA from the University of Texas, is married with three children, and teaches fiction at CUNY Hunter College's Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing.

In 2009, McCann was awarded the National Book Award for Let the Great World Spin, a dazzlingly rich vision of the pain, loveliness, mystery, and promise of New York City in the 1970s.

Let the Great World Spin - In the dawning light of a late-summer morning, the people of lower Manhattan stand hushed, staring up in disbelief at the Twin Towers. It is August 1974, and a mysterious tightrope walker is running, dancing, leaping between the towers, suspended a quarter mile above the ground. In the streets below, a slew of ordinary lives become extraordinary in bestselling novelist Colum McCann’s stunningly intricate portrait of a city and its people.

Corrigan, a radical young Irish monk, struggles with his own demons as he lives among the prostitutes in the middle of the burning Bronx. A group of mothers gather in a Park Avenue apartment to mourn their sons who died in Vietnam, only to discover just how much divides them even in grief. A young artist finds herself at the scene of a hit-and-run that sends her own life careening sideways. Tillie, a thirty-eight-year-old grandmother, turns tricks alongside her teenage daughter, determined not only to take care of her family but to prove her own worth.

Weaving together these and other seemingly disparate lives, McCann’s powerful allegory comes alive in the unforgettable voices of the city’s people, unexpectedly drawn together by hope, beauty, and the “artistic crime of the century.” Let the Great World Spin captures the spirit of America in a time of transition, extraordinary promise, and, in hindsight, heartbreaking innocence.

Dancer - The erotically charged story of the Russian dancer Rudolf Nureyev as told through the cast of those who knew him: Anna Vasileva, Rudi's first ballet teacher, who rescues her protégé from the stunted life of his provincial town; Yulia, whose sexual and artistic ambitions are thwarted by her Soviet-sanctioned marriage; and Victor, the Venezuelan street hustler, who reveals the lurid underside of the gay celebrity set. Spanning four decades and many worlds, from the horrors of the Second World War to the wild abandon of New York in the eighties, Dancer is peopled by a large cast of characters, obscure and famous: doormen and shoemakers, nurses and translators, Margot Fonteyn, Eric Bruhn, and John Lennon. And at the heart of the spectacle stands the artist himself, willful, lustful, and driven by a never-to-be-met need for perfection.

Fishing the Sloe-Black River: Stories - The short fiction of Colum McCann documents a dizzying cast of characters in exile, loss, love, and displacement. There is the worn boxing champion who steals clothes from a New Orleans laundromat, the rumored survivor of Hiroshima who emigrates to the tranquil coast of Western Ireland, the Irishwoman who journeys through America in search of silence and solitude. But what is found in these stories, and discovered by these characters, is the astonishing poetry and peace found in the mundane: a memory, a scent on the wind, the grace in the curve of a street.

Songdogs - With unreliable memories and scraps of photographs as his only clues, Conor Lyons follows in the tracks of his father, a rootless photographer, as he moved from war-torn Spain, to the barren plains of Mexico, where he met and married Conor's mother, to the American West, and finally back to Ireland, where the marriage and the story reach their heartrending climax. As the narratives of Conor's quest and his parents' lives twine and untwine, McCann creates a mesmerizing evocation of the gulf between memory and imagination, love and loss, past and present.

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This Side of Brightness - At the turn of the century, Nathan Walker comes to New York City to take the most dangerous job in the country. A sandhog, he burrows beneath the East River, digging the tunnel that will carry trains from Brooklyn to Manhattan. In the bowels of the riverbed, the sandhogs — black, white, Irish, Italian — dig together, the darkness erasing all differences. Above ground, though, the men keep their distance until a spectacular accident welds a bond between Walker and his fellow sandhogs that will both bless and curse three generations.

The Ten Non-Fiction Books I Wish I Had Read in 2009

--by Hanje Richards

This is the time of year when lots of publications and celebrities and authors publish their lists. Top Ten Books of 2009. Top 100 Books of 2009. Top 10 Books of The Decade. You get the idea. Usually these are books that the creator of the list has read, studied, considered carefully, based on statistics, sales and marketing and so on and so forth.

I decided that my list would be a little different. My list is about the Ten Books I Wish I Had Read in 2009 (Non-Fiction edition).

You read that correctly. I didn’t read these books. I didn’t study them. I didn’t check their sales or circulation figures. I just remember looking at them and thinking, “I Would Really Like to Read That Book This Year.”

It is really hard for me to narrow my list to ten in the Non-Fiction category. I always WANT to read more Non-Fiction than I do. I always check out more Non-Fiction than I can or will possibly read. But, I am fascinated by so many things that I keep adding titles to my list, keep checking them out, keep adding them to my piles. And, sometimes I even read some of them!
The Ten Books I Wish I Had Read in 2009 (Non-Fiction)

1. Assassination Vacation (Sarah Vowell)
Sarah Vowell exposes the glorious conundrums of American history and culture with wit, probity, and an irreverent sense of humor. With Assassination Vacation, she takes us on a road trip like no other — a journey to the pit stops of American political murder and through the myriad ways they have been used for fun and profit, for political and cultural advantage.

From Buffalo to Alaska, Washington to the Dry Tortugas, Vowell visits locations immortalized and influenced by the spilling of politically important blood, reporting as she goes with her trademark blend of wisecracking humor, remarkable honesty, and thought-provoking criticism.

Other books by Sarah Vowell that I would like to read one day: The Wordy Shipmates; Take The Cannoli: Stories From The New World; and The Partly Cloudy Patriot.

2. Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction (David Sheff)
“What had happened to my beautiful boy? To our family? What did I do wrong?” Those are the wrenching questions that haunt every moment of David Sheff’s journey through his son Nic’s addiction to drugs and tentative steps toward recovery. Before Nic Sheff became addicted to crystal meth, he was a charming boy, joyous and funny, a varsity athlete and honor student adored by his two younger siblings. After meth, he was a trembling wraith who lied, stole, and lived on the streets. David Sheff traces the first subtle warning signs: the denial, the 3 A.M. phone calls (is it Nic? the police? the hospital?), the rehabs. His preoccupation with Nic became an addiction in itself, and the obsessive worry and stress took a tremendous toll. But as a journalist, he instinctively researched every avenue of treatment that might save his son and refused to give up on Nic.

3. Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking has Undermined America (Barbara Ehrenreich)
Americans are a “positive” people — cheerful, optimistic, and upbeat: this is our reputation as well as our self-image. But more than a temperament, being positive, we are told, is the key to success and prosperity.

With the mythbusting powers for which she is acclaimed, Ehrenreich exposes the downside of America’s penchant for positive thinking: On a personal level, it leads to self-blame and a morbid preoccupation with stamping out “negative” thoughts. On a national level, it’s brought us an era of irrational optimism resulting in disaster. This is Ehrenreich at her provocative best — poking holes in conventional wisdom and faux science, and ending with a call for existential clarity and courage.

Other books by Barbara Ehrenreich that I hope to read include Nickel And Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America and The Snarling Citizen: Essays.

4. The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart Of American Power (Jeff Sharlet) They insist they are just a group of friends, yet they funnel millions of dollars through tax-free corporations. They claim to disdain politics, but congressmen of both parties describe them as the most influential religious organization in Washington. They say they are not Christians, but simply believers.

Behind the scenes at every National Prayer Breakfast since 1953 has been the Family, an elite network dedicated to a religion of power for the powerful. Their goal is "Jesus plus nothing." Their method is backroom diplomacy. The Family is the startling story of how their faith — part free-market fundamentalism, part imperial ambition — has come to be interwoven with the affairs of nations around the world.

Jeff Sharlet is a visiting research scholar at New York University's Center for Religion and Media. He is a contributing editor for "Harper's" and "Rolling Stone" and the editor of "TheRevealer.org."

5. Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution — and How It Can Renew America (Thomas L. Friedman)
Friedman explains how global warming, rapidly growing populations, and the astonishing expansion of the world’s middle class through globalization have produced a planet that is “hot, flat, and crowded.” In this Release 2.0 edition, he also shows how the very habits that led us to ravage the natural world led to the meltdown of the financial markets and the Great Recession. The challenge of a sustainable way of life presents the United States with an opportunity not only to rebuild its economy, but to lead the world in radically innovating toward cleaner energy. And, it could inspire Americans to something we haven't seen in a long time — nation-building — by summoning the intelligence, creativity, and concern for the common good that are our greatest national resources.

6. How I Write: The Secret Lives of Authors (Dan Crowe)
Have you ever wondered about the creative process of your favorite authors? Ever wondered who loves money more than life? What doors the secret keys unlock? What old lady wears fur jackets? Who needs to punch a boxing ball before work?

With primary evidence from the very private lives of those contemporary authors that are lingering on the doorstep of the literary canon, How I Write is an editorial powerhouse of more than sixty original features by Jonathan Franzen, Jeffrey Eugenides, Joyce Carol Oates, Rick Moody, Will Self, Nicole Krauss, and many others. Letters, photographs, drawings, even candy wrappers, phone bills, and other scattered mementos are strikingly presented in this smartly designed volume. Using the same research team that previously published the unknown letters of Hunter S. Thompson, Charles Dickens's notebook, Harold Pinter's blues lyrics, and a nude shot of Alan Ginsberg, How I Write offers unpublished and unseen material illuminating the secret lives of authors.

7. In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto (Michael Pollan)
Pollan shows us how to change the American way of eating, one meal at a time. Pollan proposes a new answer to the question of what we should eat that comes down to seven simple but liberating words: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. Pollan's bracing and eloquent manifesto shows us how we can start making thoughtful food choices that will enrich our lives, enlarge our sense of what it means to be healthy, and bring pleasure back to eating.

Other books by Michael Pollan that I wish I had read in 2009 are: Botany of Desire; Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals; Place Of My Own: The Architecture Of Daydreams; and Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education.

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8. My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey (Jill Bolte Taylor)
On December 10, 1996, Jill Bolte Taylor, a thirty-seven- year-old Harvard-trained brain scientist, experienced a massive stroke in the left hemisphere of her brain. As she observed her mind deteriorate to the point that she could not walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of her life — all within four hours — Taylor alternated between the euphoria of the intuitive and kinesthetic right brain, in which she felt a sense of complete well-being and peace, and the logical, sequential left brain, which recognized she was having a stroke and enabled her to seek help before she was completely lost. It would take her eight years to fully recover.

For Taylor, her stroke was a blessing and a revelation. It taught her that by "stepping to the right" of our left brains, we can uncover feelings of well-being that are often sidelined by "brain chatter." Taylor provides a valuable recovery guide for those touched by brain injury and an inspiring testimony that inner peace is accessible to anyone.

9. Truth & Beauty: A Friendship (Ann Patchett)
Ann Patchett and the late Lucy Grealy met in college in 1981 and, after enrolling in the Iowa Writer's Workshop, began a friendship that would be as defining to both of their lives as their work. In Grealy's critically acclaimed memoir, Autobiography of a Face, she wrote about losing part of her jaw to childhood cancer, years of chemotherapy and radiation, and endless reconstructive surgeries. In Truth & Beauty, the story isn't Lucy's life or Ann's life, but the parts of their lives they shared. This is a portrait of unwavering commitment that spans twenty years, from the long winters of the Midwest, to surgical wards, to book parties in New York. Through love, fame, drugs, and despair, this is what it means to be part of two lives that are intertwined ... and what happens when one is left behind.

This is a tender, brutal book about loving the person we cannot save. It is about loyalty, and being lifted up by the sheer effervescence of someone who knew how to live life to the fullest.

10. What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures (Malcolm Gladwell)
In What the Dog Saw, Gladwell brings together, for the first time, the best of his writing from "The New Yorker" over the past decade.

Here is the bittersweet tale of the inventor of the birth control pill and the dazzling inventions of the pasta sauce pioneer Howard Moscowitz. Gladwell sits with Ron Popeil, the king of the American kitchen, as he sells rotisserie ovens, and divines the secrets of Cesar Millan, the "dog whisperer" who can calm savage animals with the touch of his hand. He explores intelligence tests and ethnic profiling and "hindsight bias" and why it was that everyone in Silicon Valley once tripped over themselves to hire the same college graduate.

I have actually read these books by Malcolm Gladwell: The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference; Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking; and Outliers : The Story of Success.

If any (or all!) of these titles sound interesting to you, too, you can find them at the Copper Queen Library.

"Insider’s Guide to the Library"

--by Hanje Richards

"Insider’s Guide" is a new feature on the blog. Watch for entries that will make it even easier for you to find what you're looking for at the Copper Queen Library! We will share with you where to find various collections... how to locate information on various topics... when it's most likely you can get a computer without waiting... and so much more!

Our first "Insider’s Guide" tip: At the top of the stairs on the third floor, in front of the Young Adult room, we now have a display area for titles that are mentioned in our blog. When appropriate, we will have printed copies of the blog posts for your reading pleasure – and the books on the display are all available for check out!

(Another "Insider’s Guide" tip: All items found in displays around the library, including the display near the front desk, are available for check out.)

The Ten Fiction Books I Wish I Had Read in 2009

--by Hanje Richards

This is the time of year when lots of publications and celebrities and authors publish their lists. Top Ten Books of 2009. Top 100 Books of 2009. Top 10 Books of The Decade. You get the idea. Usually, these are books that the creator of the list has read, studied, and considered carefully, based on statistics, sales and marketing, and so on and so forth.

I decided that my list would be a little different. My list is about the Ten Books I Wish I Had Read in 2009.

You read that correctly. I didn’t read these books. I didn’t study them. I didn’t check their sales or circulation figures. I just remember looking at them and thinking, “I Would Really Like to Read That Book This Year.” (My reasons are added in parentheses after the annotations.)

The Ten Books I Wish I Had Read in 2009 (Fiction)

1. Her Fearful Symmetry (Audrey Niffenegger)

When Elspeth Noblin dies of cancer, she leaves her London apartment to her twin nieces, Julia and Valentina. These two American girls never met their English aunt, only knew that their mother, too, was a twin, and Elspeth her sister.

The girls move to Elspeth's flat, which borders Highgate Cemetery in London, and come to know the building's other residents. As the girls become embroiled in the fraying lives of their aunt's neighbors, they also discover that much is still alive in Highgate, including – perhaps – their aunt, who can't seem to leave her old apartment and life behind.

Niffenegger weaves a captivating story in Her Fearful Symmetry about love and identity, about secrets and sisterhood, and about the tenacity of life – even after death.

(Because I really loved her first novel, Time Traveler’s Wife)

2. Last Night In Twisted River (John Irving)
In 1954, in the cookhouse of a logging and sawmill settlement in northern New Hampshire, an anxious twelve-year-old boy mistakes the local constable’s girlfriend for a bear. Both the twelve-year-old and his father become fugitives, forced to run from Coos County – to Boston, to southern Vermont, to Toronto – pursued by the implacable constable.

In a story spanning five decades, Last Night in Twisted River – John Irving’s twelfth novel – depicts the recent half-century in the United States as “a living replica of Coos County, where lethal hatreds were generally permitted to run their course.” What further distinguishes Last Night in Twisted River is the author’s unmistakable voice – the inimitable voice of an accomplished storyteller.

(Because John Irving is one of the voices of my generation, and I was affected by The World According to Garp and The Cider House Rules and other Irving novels.)

3. Little Bird of Heaven (Joyce Carol Oates)
Set in the mythical small city of Sparta, New York, this is a searing, vividly rendered exploration of the mysterious conjunction of erotic romance and tragic violence in late-twentieth-century America.

When a young wife and mother named Zoe Kruller is found brutally murdered, the Sparta police target two primary suspects, her estranged husband, Delray Kruller, and her longtime lover, Eddy Diehl. In turn, the Krullers' son, Aaron, and Eddy Diehl's daughter, Krista, become obsessed with each other, each believing the other's father is guilty.

(Because I have a goal of reading every Joyce Carol Oates novel, which is a daunting task, and because one of my Top Ten Novels Of All Time is Blonde, a brilliant novel based on the life – and inner life – of Marilyn Monroe.)

4. Little Giant of Aberdeen County (Tiffany Baker)
When Truly Plaice's mother was pregnant, the town of Aberdeen joined together in betting how record-breakingly huge the baby would ultimately be. The girl who proved to be Truly paid the price of her enormity; her father blamed her for her mother's death in childbirth and was totally ill equipped to raise either this giant child or her polar opposite sister Serena Jane, the epitome of feminine perfection. When he, too, relinquished his increasingly tenuous grip on life, Truly and Serena Jane are separated – Serena Jane to live a life of privilege as the future “May Queen” and Truly to live on the outskirts of town on the farm of the town sad sack, the subject of constant abuse and humiliation at the hands of her peers.

(Because it has a great title and a great cover and, contrary to popular belief, sometimes you can judge a book by its cover!)

5. South of Broad (Pat Conroy)
Against the sumptuous backdrop of Charleston, South Carolina, South of Broad gathers a unique cast of sinners and saints. After Leo's older brother commits suicide at the age of thirteen, the family struggles with the shattering effects of his death, and Leo, lonely and isolated, searches for something to sustain him. Eventually, he finds his answer when he becomes part of a tightly knit group of high school seniors that includes friends Sheba and Trevor Poe, glamorous twins with an alcoholic mother and a prison-escapee father; hardscrabble mountain runaways Niles and Starla Whitehead; socialite Molly Huger and her boyfriend, Chadworth Rutledge X; and an ever-widening circle whose liaisons will ripple across two decades - from 1960s counterculture through the dawn of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s.

(Because Pat Conroy kissed me on the cheek in a bookstore in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1985. And because The Prince of Tides is on my Top Ten Novels Of All Time list.)

6. Still Summer (Jacqueline Mitchard)
In high school, Olivia, Tracy, and Holly had been known as The Godmothers, and their friendship has endured throughout the ensuing decades. Now, with the death of Olivia's husband, a wealthy Italian Count, and her return to America, the friends decide to reunite on a luxury cruise in the Caribbean. Along with Tracy's college-aged daughter and a two-man crew, they begin their journey uneventfully, enjoying the sun and the warm, clear waters of the Caribbean.

Then, a series of devastating events unfolds, leaving the women crewless, starving, and terrified. Almost overnight, what was meant to be a blissful vacation devolves into a desperate fight for survival, as they soon find themselves battling the elements, a horrifying attack by drug traffickers, and their own frailties. It is at once a story about the bonds of friendship, the love between mothers and their children, and the strengths we don't know we possess until we are faced with our own mortality.

(Because, years ago, I read her Deep End of the Ocean and thought it was good. I have lost track of her in the meantime.)

7. Story of Edgar Sawtelle (David V. Wroblewski)
Born mute, speaking only in sign, Edgar Sawtelle leads an idyllic life with his parents on their farm in remote northern Wisconsin, where for generations, the Sawtelles have raised and trained a fictional breed of dog. But with the unexpected return of Claude, Edgar's paternal uncle, turmoil consumes the Sawtelles' once peaceful home. When Edgar's father dies suddenly, Claude insinuates himself into the life of the farm – and into Edgar's mother's affections.

Grief-stricken and bewildered, Edgar tries to prove Claude played a role in his father's death, but his plan backfires – spectacularly. Forced to flee into the vast wilderness lying beyond the farm, Edgar comes of age in the wild, fighting for his survival and that of the three yearling dogs who follow him.

(Because someone told me it was good.)

8. Third Angel (Alice Hoffman)
In The Third Angel, Hoffman weaves a magical and stunningly original story that charts the lives of three women in love with the wrong men: Headstrong Madeleine Heller finds herself hopelessly attracted to her sister’s fiancé. Frieda Lewis, a doctor’s daughter and a runaway, becomes the muse of an ill-fated rock star. And beautiful Bryn Evans is set to marry an Englishman while secretly obsessed with her ex-husband. At the heart of the novel is Lucy Green, who blames herself for a tragic accident she witnessed at the age of twelve, and who spends four decades searching for the Third Angel – the angel on earth who will renew her faith.

(Because I have been a fan of Alice Hoffman since I found her first book on a remainder table in 1982.)

9. Wolf Hall (Hilary Mantel) Winner of the 2009 Man Booker Prize
England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope – and most of Europe – opposes him.

Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell. Cromwell is a wholly original man, a consummate politician, hardened by his personal losses, implacable in his ambition. But Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps him break the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph?

(Because in the last year I have become fascinated by this period in history, and because I like really fat books!)

10. Year of the Flood (Margaret Atwood)
A dystopic masterpiece and a testament to her visionary power.

The times and species have been changing at a rapid rate, and the social compact is wearing as thin as environmental stability. Adam One, the kindly leader of the God's Gardeners – a religion devoted to the melding of science and religion, as well as the preservation of all plant and animal life – has long predicted a natural disaster that will alter Earth as we know it. Now it has occurred, obliterating most human life.

Meanwhile, gene-spliced life forms are proliferating: the lion/lamb blends, the Mo'hair sheep with human hair, the pigs with human brain tissue. As Adam One and his intrepid hemp-clad band make their way through this strange new world, Atwood’s characters will have to decide on their next move. They can't stay locked away . . .

Sequel to Oryx and Crake, Atwood’s 2003 novel.

(Because I read Oryx and Crake so I feel compelled to read the sequel, and because I have had a love-hate relationship with Margaret Atwood for years.)

Friday Fiction: Anne Rice: Queen of the Damned?

--by Hanje Richards

(Biography From the Official Anne Rice Website at annerice.com)

One of America's most celebrated authors, Anne Rice is known for weaving the natural and supernatural worlds together in epic stories that both entertain and challenge readers. Her books are rich tapestries of history, belief, philosophy, religion, and compelling characters that examine and extend our physical world beyond the limits we perceive.

Rice lives and works in California. Her life experiences and intellectual inquisitiveness provide her with constant inspiration for her work.

Anne Rice Fact File:

1. Born Howard Allen O’Brien on October 4, 1941, Anne chose the name “Anne” when she entered the first grade at St. Alphonsus Grammar School. She attended Catholic schools until 1958 when her family moved from New Orleans to Richardson, Texas.

2. In 1972, Stan and Anne Rice lost their daughter, Michele, to leukemia just before her fifth birthday.

3. Christopher Rice, born to them in 1978, seemed a gift from God in that both of his parents stopped their heavy drinking when given another chance at parenthood.

4. Anne wrote Interview with the Vampire while the couple still lived in Berkeley, California, just before Christopher’s birth, and has written over 28 novels.

5. In New Orleans in 1989, Stan and Anne bought the Garden District Greek Revival house that would become the setting for five or six of Anne’s novels. This home was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream for Anne, who had passed the beautiful house frequently in her early years, going to and from her parish church of St. Alphonsus from her home on St. Charles Avenue.

6. Anne returned to the Catholic Church in 1998, and in 2002 consecrated her writing entirely to Christ, vowing to write for Him or about Him. She remains passionately loyal to the readers of her earlier works.

7. Stan Rice died in 2002 within four and a half months of being diagnosed with brain cancer.

8. In 2005, after completing Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, Anne left Louisiana and her beloved city of New Orleans to live in California. Within months of her departure, Hurricane Katrina devastated the area.

9. Anne now lives and works in the California desert, a few hours drive from her son, Christopher, who lives and works in West Hollywood.

Here is a list of some Rice titles owned by the Copper Queen Library in various formats (print, CD, cassette). Information in parentheses following a title indicates the series to which that title belongs (e.g., Angel Time is part of the "Songs of the Seraphim" series).

Angel Time (SONGS OF THE SERAPHIM) Anne Rice's newest work, this novel opens in the present. At its center: Toby O’Dare—a contract killer of underground fame on assignment to kill once again. A soulless soul, a dead man walking, he lives under a series of aliases—just now: Lucky the Fox—and takes his orders from “The Right Man.”

Into O’Dare’s nightmarish world of lone and lethal missions comes a mysterious stranger, a seraph, who offers him a chance to save rather than destroy lives. O’Dare seizes his chance and is carried back through the ages to thirteenth-century England. In this primitive setting, O’Dare begins his perilous quest for salvation, a journey of danger and flight, loyalty and betrayal, selflessness and love.

Blackwood Farm (VAMPIRE/MAYFAIR CROSSOVER Anne Rice fuses her two uniquely seductive strains of narrative -- her Vampire legend and her lore of the Mayfair witches -- to give us a world of classic deep-south luxury and ancestral secrets.

Welcome to Blackwood Farm. This is the world of Quinn Blackwood, a brilliant young man haunted since birth by a mysterious spirit. When Quinn is made a Vampire, losing all that is rightfully his and gaining an unwanted immortality, his doppelgänger becomes even more vampiric and terrifying than Quinn himself.

As the novel moves backward and forward in time, from Quinn’s boyhood on Blackwood Farm to present day New Orleans, from ancient Athens to 19th-century Naples, Quinn seeks out the legendary Vampire Lestat in the hope of freeing himself.

Blood and Gold, Or, The Story of Marlus (VAMPIRE CHRONICLES) Once a proud Senator in Imperial Rome, Marius is kidnapped and forced into that dark realm of blood, where he is made a protector of the Queen and King of the vampires. Through his eyes we see the fall of pagan Rome to the Emperor Constantine, the horrific sack of the Eternal City at the hands of the Visigoths, and the vile aftermath of the Black Death. Restored by the beauty of the Renaissance, Marius becomes a painter, living dangerously yet happily among mortals. But it is in the present day, deep in the jungle, when Marius will meet his fate seeking justice from the oldest vampires in the world. . . .

Blood Canticle (VAMPIRE/MAYFAIR CROSSOVER) Blackwood Farm is alive with the comings and goings of the bewitched and the bewitching. Among them is the ageless vampire Lestat, vainglorious enough to believe that he can become a saint, weak enough to fall impossibly in love.

Gripped by his unspeakable desire for the mortal Rowan Mayfair and taking the not so innocent, new-to-the-blood Mona Mayfair under his wing, Lestat ventures to a private island off the coast of Haiti. There, Mona and the Mayfairs share an explosive, secret blood bond to another deathless species: a five-thousand-year-old race of Taltos, strangers held in the throes of evil itself.

Christ the Lord: Out Of Egypt (THE LIFE OF CHRIST) A novel about the early years of Jesus, based on the Gospels and on the most respected New Testament scholarship.

The book’s power derives from the passion its author brings to the writing and the way in which she summons up the voice, the presence, the words of Jesus who tells the story.

Interview With the Vampire (VAMPIRE CHRONICLES) Here are the confessions of a vampire. Hypnotic, shocking, and chillingly erotic, this is a novel of mesmerizing beauty and astonishing force--a story of danger and flight, of love and loss, of suspense and resolution, and of the extraordinary power of the senses.

Memnoch The Devil (THE VAMPIRE CHRONICLES) Rice has made a career out of humanizing creatures of supernatural horror, and in this fifth book of her Vampire Chronicles she requests sympathy for the Devil. The bulk of the novel is a retelling of the Creation story from the point of view of the fallen angel, who blames his damnation on his refusal to accept human suffering as part of God's divine plan.

Merrick (VAMPIRE/MAYFAIR CROSSOVER) Talbot, a vampire familiar to Rice readers, though now inhabiting a different body, relates this eerie tale about an "octoroon of exceptional beauty" named Merrick, a Mayfair witch with whom he has been obsessed for an eternity.

Pandora (NEW TALES OF THE VAMPIRES) The novel opens in present-day Paris in a crowded café, where David meets Pandora. She is two thousand years old, a Child of the Millennia, the first vampire ever made by the great Marius. David persuades her to tell the story of her life.

Pandora begins, reluctantly at first and then with increasing passion, to recount her mesmerizing tale, which takes us through the ages, from Imperial Rome to eighteenth-century France to twentieth-century Paris and New Orleans.

Servant of the Bones In a new and major novel, the creator of fantastic universes of vampires and witches takes us now into the world of Isaiah and Jeremiah, and the destruction of Solomon's Temple, to tell the story of Azriel, Servant of the Bones.

He is ghost, genii, demon, angel--pure spirit made visible. He pours his heart out to us as he journeys from an ancient Babylon of royal plottings and religious upheavals to Europe of the Black Death and on to the modern world. There he finds himself, amidst the towers of Manhattan, in confrontation with his own human origins and the dark forces that have sought to condemn him to a life of evil and destruction.

Vampire Armand (VAMPIRE CHRONICLES) We go with Armand across the centuries to the Kiev Rus of his boyhood - a ruined city under Mongol dominion - and to ancient Constantinople, where Tartar raiders sell him into slavery. And in a magnificent palazzo in the Venice of the Renaissance we see him emotionally and intellectually in thrall to the great vampire Marius.

As the novel races to its climax, moving through scenes of luxury and elegance, of ambush, fire, and devil worship to nineteenth-century Paris and today's New Orleans, we see its eternally vulnerable and romantic hero forced to choose between his twilight immortality and the salvation of his immortal soul.

Vampire Lestat (VAMPIRE CHRONICLES) (FIC RIC) Once an aristocrat in the heady days of pre-revolutionary France, now Lestat is a rock star in the demonic, shimmering 1980s. He rushes through the centuries in search of others like him, seeking answers to the mystery of his terrifying existence. His story, the second volume in Anne Rice's best-selling Vampire Chronicles, is mesmerizing, passionate, and thrilling.

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Violin This novel moves across time and the continents, from nineteenth-century Vienna to a St. Charles Greek Revival mansion in present-day New Orleans to the dazzling capitals of the modern-day world, telling a story of two charismatic figures bound to each other by a passionate commitment to music as a means of rapture, seduction, and liberation.

At the novel's center: the struggle between a uniquely fascinating woman, Triana--who once dreamed of becoming a great musician--and the demonic fiddler Stefan, tormented ghost of a Russian aristocrat, who begins to prey upon her.

But Triana understands the power of the music perhaps even more than does Stefan--and she sets out to resist Stefan and to fight not only for her sanity but for her life. The struggle draws them both into a terrifying supernatural realm where they find themselves surrounded by memories, by horrors, and by overwhelming truths.

Vittorio, the Vampire (NEW TALES OF THE VAMPIRES) Educated in the Florence of Cosimo de' Medici, trained in knighthood at his father's mountaintop castle, Vittorio inhabits a world of courtly splendor and country pleasures--a world suddenly threatened when his entire family is confronted by an unholy power.

In the midst of this upheaval, Vittorio is seduced by the beautiful and sinister vampire Ursula--setting in motion a chilling chain of events that will mark his life for eternity. Against a backdrop of the wonders--both sacred and profane--and the beauty and ferocity of Renaissance Italy, Anne Rice creates a passionate and tragic legend of doomed young love and lost innocence.