Looking for good mysteries?

Julie reads more mysteries than anyone I know, and she likes to discover new authors. Try these two she recommends.

An Unquiet Grave by P.J. Parrish
Mystery, suspense, thrills, chills.this book has it all! When a cemetery connected to a deserted sanitarium is dug up for relocation and one of the caskets contains rocks, Louis Kincaid steps in to investigate. Winner of the Thriller and the Shamus awards, An Unquiet Grave is not for the squeamish but it's one that once you start it, you just can't put it down! I know I'll be reading more of P.J. Parrish.
See P.J. Parrish's website for more information.


The Janissary Tree by Jason Goodwin
This historical mystery takes place in 1830 Istanbul, the Ottoman Empire.
Our detective is Investigator Yashim, one of the court eunuchs. Yashim leads us on a tour of the city, introducing us to the culture, charms and treachery of that particular place and time while solving the mystery of 4 murdered soldiers. This was a fascinating and exotic read and the winner of the Edgar Award best novel.
Jason Goodwin's website

Follow Your Bliss!

The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner

The author, an NPR correspondent, set off on a trip around the world searching for answers to what makes people happy and where they are the happiest. Armed with information compiled by serious researchers, he visited happy countries like Iceland (yes Iceland!) and unhappy ones like Moldova, where distrust and lack of hope have left people certifiably miserable. Interviewing and observing as he went, Eric discovered a world of different attitudes and perspectives but many common themes to achieving a blissful existence. This was an enjoyable and enlightening book; reading it was truly a happy experience!

Eric Weiner's website
Interview with Eric Weiner

Reviewed by Judie

Try these mysteries

Wife of Moon by Margaret Coel

Murders on the Arapaho reservation in Colorado stemming from a murder 100 yrs. before, solved by a lawyer and a priest. Exciting, with sympathetic characters.


Summer of the Big Bachi by Naomi Hirahara

Bachi: “when you snap…at your wife, and then trip…on a rock in the driveway.” Sins from 1945 in Hiroshima come back to haunt a group of Japanese living in L.A. With sympathetic and complex characters.


Slip of the Knife by Denise Mina

The ex-boyfriend of a Glaswegian journalist is murdered. It looks like an IRA execution, but is it? Confronting numerous roadblocks, Paddy Meehan investigates while trying to keep her son from danger. A complex and exciting read.

Julie

First Lines

I love opening a book and finding a first sentence that startles me or makes me smile. The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff begins with this line: “The day I returned to Templeton steeped in disgrace, the fifty-foot corpse of a monster surfaced in Lake Glimmerglass.” Doesn’t that make you want to know who is speaking, why he or she has been disgraced and what happened to the monster? Templeton is modeled on Cooperstown, NY, the author’s home town. I’ve been to Cooperstown, which is on a lake - Otsego, not Glimmerglass, although the state park across the lake from Cooperstown is called Glimmerglass. There is a legend that a monster lurks in the depths!
Read this delightful interview with Lauren Groff.
Another favorite first line is this one from This is not Civilization by Robert Rosenberg: “The idea of using porn films to encourage the dairy cows to breed was a poor one.” The idea was the brainstorm of Anarbek Tashtanaliev, manager of a cheese factory that makes no cheese in a village in Kyrgyzstan. Anarbek is one of the most endearing fictional characters I have met. When Peace Corps worker Jeff Hartig is posted to Anarbek’s village, he is overwhelmed with hospitality. Jeff later moves on to work in Istanbul, where Anarbek travels there to ask a favor from the American. This is a sweet and melancholy novel about cultural alienation, responsibility, compassion and good intentions gone awry.

Do you have a favorite first line? Share it by writing a comment.
Suzanne

Down River by John Hart

If you’ve read all of James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux novels
try Down River by John Hart

I listened to the excellent audio version of Down River on compact disk read by Scott Sowers. It’s a knotty thriller about family misunderstandings, betrayal and deception. The story is told in the first person by Adam Chase, who’s returned to his home town in North Carolina after five years in exile in New York City. He left his home after being acquitted of capitol murder in the death of a high school classmate and has returned only because a friend contacted him asking for help. Now that friend has disappeared. Everyone in town remembers him, and not favorably. Most of them shun him because they think he was guilty of the murder and got off because of family influence. Chase is estranged from his family, and his re-entry into their lives is complicated and uncomfortable. The plot is complex and has a touch of the Southern gothic about it. It’s Hart’s second novel, and he’s a promising writer. I was struck by how much the voice of the book’s narrator is like James Lee Burke’s protagonist Dave Robicheaux. I don’t mean to make Hart sound like he’s copying Burke; he’s written an original story with an appealing and complicated main character. Sowers’ narration is excellent. I grew up in the South, and he gets the accents just right.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

I saw the movie The Diving Bell and the Butterfly this past weekend. The film is based on the memoir by Jean-Dominique Bauby, who at age 42 was paralyzed by a stroke. As a result of brain damage, he could move only one eyelid. The movie is the account of how he dictated his book. The book is the basis for this film. It’s a surprising and complex movie. It’s not about limitations, about being physically incapacitated. It’s about learning to live after a huge loss and about the relationships that sustain us. The tenderness between Bauby and his aging father is particularly well-portrayed, as is that between him and his young son. At one of the major turning points in the movie, Bauby says in spite of his lost faculties, he has two things left. I won’t tell you what they are; you’ll have to see the movie. I plan to read the book, and maybe see the movie again – it’s that good! Julian Schnabel, who directed the movie, is a kind of Renaissance man and an artist, and his artistry and imagination are evident in the movie. How many people could make a riveting movie about a man who can do nothing except blink one eye?
Suzanne

Watch the movie trailer

Favorites of the Library’s Nonfiction Book Group

The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan
John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath told of the Okies who fled the Dust Bowl. Timothy Egan recounts the stories of those who stuck out the hard times, refusing to leave their land. He begins with the history of the settlement of an area one explorer called “a desolate waste of uninhabited solitude.” Real estate speculators enticed settlers to fictitious towns. Settlers came to this area called No Man’s Land for lack of a better place to live, because they had hope and because they believed the soil could never be used up. A combination of natural and man-made disasters - hailstorms, plagues of locusts, severe cold and heat, and worst of all the “moving earth”, the dust storms that blackened the sky—made their lives a day-to-day struggle.


Supercapitalism by Robert Reich
“Of all the nations of the world, America is assumed to best exemplify the idea that capitalism and democracy go hand in hand,” Reich says in the introduction. He also believes that rampant free-market capitalism has become bloated and has weakened our democratic system. Why do consumers expect corporations to be socially responsible, Reich asks, when they purchase the cheapest goods, regardless of where or under what conditions they were produced? Corporations do not exist to be socially responsible; they are in business to increase stockholder profits. Reich’s suggestions for strengthening democracy include the elimination of the corporate income tax and removing corporate cash from politics.


Nixon and Mao: The Week that Changed the World by Margaret Macmillan
In 1972, traveling to China was “like going to the moon.” President Nixon’s decision to go to China posed several risks. Conservative Republicans opposed any diplomatic overtures by Americans to that steadfastly Communist country. Furthermore, Nixon would be humiliated if Mao refused to meet with him. Kissinger was dispatched on a secret advance trip, which even the State Department did not know about, to appraise the receptiveness of the Chinese. This is a fascinating look behind the scenes at the banquets, the competing egos of the Chinese and American officials, and the wrangling over the wording of the final joint communiqué.