Indie Bestsellers - Fiction
Adult Fiction
Hardcover
When forty-seven-year-old high school teacher Caelum Quirk and his younger wife, Maureen, a school nurse, move to Littleton, Colorado, they both get jobs at Columbine High School. In April 1999, Caelum returns home to Three Rivers, Connecticut, to be with his aunt who has just had a stroke. But Maureen finds herself in the school library at Columbine, cowering in a cabinet and expecting to be killed, as two vengeful students go on a carefully premeditated, murderous rampage. Miraculously she survives, but at a cost: she is unable to recover from the trauma. Caelum and Maureen flee Colorado and return to an illusion of safety at the Quirk family farm in Three Rivers. But the effects of chaos are not so easily put right, and further tragedy ensues. While Maureen fights to regain her sanity, Caelum discovers a cache of old diaries, letters, and newspaper clippings in an upstairs bedroom of his family's house. The colorful and intriguing story they recount spans five generations of Quirk family ancestors, from the Civil War era to Caelum's own troubled childhood. Piece by piece, Caelum reconstructs the lives of the women and men whose legacy he bears. Unimaginable secrets emerge; long-buried fear, anger, guilt, and grief rise to the surface. As Caelum grapples with unexpected and confounding revelations from the past, he also struggles to fashion a future out of the ashes of tragedy. His personal quest for meaning and faith becomes a mythic journey that is at the same time quintessentially contemporary—and American.
The Hour I First Believed is a profound and heart-rending work of fiction. Wally Lamb proves himself a virtuoso storyteller, assembling a variety of voices and an ensemble of characters rich enough to evoke all of humanity.
From Publishers WeeklyThe entertaining third installment of bestseller Maguire's Wicked Years series, a revisionist chronicle of L. Frank Baum's classic The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, examines the tragically misunderstood life of the Cowardly Lion before and after his adventures with Dorothy and company. As all-out war looms between the Munchkinland guerrillas and the emperor of Oz's Emerald City soldiers, Brrr the lion, now working as an imperial spy, must somehow glean invaluable information from a crone named Yackle before she dies. But during his interrogation of the irritable oracle, Brrr, the proverbial loner and outsider, uncovers insights into his own mysterious past—and finally begins to understand what it feels like to belong. As usual, the author mixes some relatively weighty existential themes—the search for self, faith, redemption—into his whimsical story line. Newcomers to Maguire's Oz should probably begin with Wicked, the first entry in this darkly enchanting saga. 11-city author tour. (Oct. 14) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Paperback
The wildly inventive "New York Times"-bestselling author of "You Suck!" offers this modern take on "King Lear." It's 1288, and the king's fool, Pocket, and his dimwit apprentice, Drool, set out to clean up the mess Lear has made of his kingdom.
In her first novel in nine years, "New York Times"-bestselling author Kingsolver tells the story of Harrison William Shepherd, an unforgettable protagonist whose search for identity takes readers to the heart of the 20th century's most tumultuous events.
Pub Date: Mar 1, 2010
One hangover-headache morning, Ig Perrish gropes his forehead and discovers a pair of knobby, pointed protuberances. As he proceeds to stumble through the day, person after person he encounters, including the nurse and doctor he consults about the horns, tell him things about their desires and intentions that they should keep to themselves, and whenever he touches someone, he instantly knows their darkest secrets. Most disconcerting, he finds out that virtually everyone thinks that, lack of evidence notwithstanding, he really did sexually assault and murder his lover since high school, Merrin Williams, almost exactly a year ago. Only his brother, Terry, a TV talk-show star, doesnt, but that, Ig learns through his special powers, is because Terry knows Merrin was killed by someone near and dear to her and Ig both. Ig determines on making the culprit die as painfully as Merrin died. Hills a terrific descriptive writer, and realistic dialogue comes easily to him, but those skills dont help this diffuse revenge caper move as crisply as it ought to, and they dont compensate for the cookie-cutter sameness of its characters. Except for Ig and the Merrin, everyone in Igs little world is a covert creep seething with mean spirits; although hes becoming steadily more demonic, Ig himself is the nicest guy around. Worst, the big-showdown climax comes off as splatter-movie farcical after the longueurs of the preceding 300-plus pages.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)
Adult fiction
This first-in-a-trilogy is a frilly valentine to Manhattan's picturesque West Village, starring a boisterous and charmingly contentious Italian-American family. Valentine Roncalli, adrift after a failed relationship and an aborted teaching career, becomes an apprentice to her 80-year-old grandmother, Teodora Angelini, at the tiny family shoe business. While Valentine struggles to come up with a financial plan—and shoe design—to bring the Old World operation into the 21st century, her brother, Alfred, is pushing Gram to retire and sell her building for $6 million. It's not all business for Valentine, of course: handsome and sophisticated Roman Falconi, owner and chef at a posh restaurant, is vying for her heart. Bestselling Trigiani channels ambition and girl-power, but is surprisingly reserved—and retro—when it comes to romance: [O]ur relationship has to build slowly and beautifully in order to hold all the joy and misery that lies ahead, thinks Valentine. Still, this genteel and lush tale of soles and souls has loads of charm and will leave readers eager for the sequel. (Feb.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Pub Date: Feb 1, 2010
When Irene America discovers that her husband has been reading her diary, she begins a secrets Blue Notebook, as much the truth about her life and her marriage as the Red Diary is a farce. Alternating between these two records, "Shadow Tag" is an eerily gripping novel.
From Publishers WeeklyIf you've ever wondered what your dog is thinking, Stein's third novel offers an answer. Enzo is a lab terrier mix plucked from a farm outside Seattle to ride shotgun with race car driver Denny Swift as he pursues success on the track and off. Denny meets and marries Eve, has a daughter, Zoë, and risks his savings and his life to make it on the professional racing circuit. Enzo, frustrated by his inability to speak and his lack of opposable thumbs, watches Denny's old racing videos, coins koanlike aphorisms that apply to both driving and life, and hopes for the day when his life as a dog will be over and he can be reborn a man. When Denny hits an extended rough patch, Enzo remains his most steadfast if silent supporter. Enzo is a reliable companion and a likable enough narrator, though the string of Denny's bad luck stories strains believability. Much like Denny, however, Stein is able to salvage some dignity from the over-the-top drama. (May) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Adult Mystery
In this latest installment in the "New York Times"-bestselling series, Maisie Dobbs must unravel a case of wartime love and death--an investigation that leads her to a doomed affair between a young cartographer and a mysterious nurse.
Oprah's Book Club #62
From Publishers WeeklyStarred Review. A literary thriller with commercial legs, this stunning debut is bound to be a bestseller. In the backwoods of Wisconsin, the Sawtelle family—Gar, Trudy and their young son, Edgar—carry on the family business of breeding and training dogs. Edgar, born mute, has developed a special relationship and a unique means of communicating with Almondine, one of the Sawtelle dogs, a fictional breed distinguished by personality, temperament and the dogs' ability to intuit commands and to make decisions. Raising them is an arduous life, but a satisfying one for the family until Gar's brother, Claude, a mystifying mixture of charm and menace, arrives. When Gar unexpectedly dies, mute Edgar cannot summon help via the telephone. His guilt and grief give way to the realization that his father was murdered; here, the resemblance to Hamlet resonates. After another gut-wrenching tragedy, Edgar goes on the run, accompanied by three loyal dogs. His quest for safety and succor provides a classic coming-of-age story with an ironic twist. Sustained by a momentum that has the crushing inevitability of fate, the propulsive narrative will have readers sucked in all the way through the breathtaking final scenes. (June) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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