Contemporary Books - Page 8

Lush Life: A Novel

Richard Price

Amazon Price: $10.20 List Price: $15.00 Not yet published By: Picador

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 165 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Disappointing, shallow, mean-spirited, and a waste of time 1 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This is an overblown, contrived and thin satire masquerading as social realism. I had high expectations, but I found the book predictable and self-important. Price seems to think he's wiser and more street-smart than any of his characters, but to me the book just showed how limited his vision is, whether he's looking at cops, criminals, poor young Hispanics, hipsters.... He has a good ear for voices but to make a great novel, you also need sympathetic characters and a compelling plot. This is one of those books where I felt really cheated of the time and money I had spent on it.

Editorial Review:

A National Bestseller
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

Lush Life is a tale of two Lower East Sides: one a high-priced bohemia, the other a home to hardship, it's residents pushed to the edges of their time-honored turf. When a cocky young hipster is shot to death by a street kid from the "other" lower east side, the crime ripples through every stratum of the city in this brilliant and kaleidiscopic portrait of the "new" New York.

T Is for Trespass

Sue Grafton

Amazon Price: $19.77 List Price: $29.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Random House Audio Amazon Marketplace: 60 new & used starting at $2.96

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Total reviews: 213 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

tres•pass \'tres-p  s\ n: a transgression of law involving one’s obligations to God or to one’s neighbor; a violation of moral law; an offense; a sin –Webster’s New International Dictionary (second edition, unabridged)

In what may be her most unsettling novel to date, Sue Grafton’s T is for Trespass is also her most direct confrontation with the forces of evil. Beginning slowly with the day-to-day life of a private eye, Grafton suddenly shifts from the perspective of Kinsey Millhone to that of Solana Rojas, introducing listeners to a chilling sociopath. Rojas is not her birth name. It is an identity she cunningly stole, an identity that gives her access to private care-giving  jobs. The true horror of this novel builds with excruciating tension as the listener foresees the awfulness that lies ahead. The wrenching suspense lies in whether Kinsey Millhone will realize what is happening in time to intervene.

T is for Trespass–dealing with issues of identity theft, elder abuse, betrayal of trust, and the breakdown in the institutions charged with caring for the weak and the dependent–targets an all-too-real rip in the social fabric. Grafton takes us into far darker territory than she has ever traversed, leaving us with a true sense of the horror embedded in the seeming ordinariness of the world we think we know. The result is terrifying.

The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel

Diane Setterfield

Amazon Price: $10.20 List Price: $15.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Washington Square Press Amazon Marketplace: 104 new & used starting at $6.89

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 599 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Wonderful read 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

If you are someone who enjoys sitting by the fireplace and reading Jane Eyre, if you simply love literature and words, you will like this novel.

It is the story of a reclusive author who decides she finally wants an authorized biography. Her relationship with the author she picks for the job, the story she tells, and the author's own investigation of the truth of the story, this constitutes the plot.

Character development is excellent, as are the descriptions of the English countryside.

Editorial Review:

Sometimes, when you open the door to thepast, what you confront is your destiny.

Reclusive author Vida Winter, famous for her collection of twelve enchantingstories, has spent the past six decades penning a series of alternate livesfor herself. Now old and ailing, she is ready to reveal the truth about herextraordinary existence and the violent and tragic past she has kept secret forso long. Calling on Margaret Lea, a young biographer troubled by her ownpainful history, Vida disinters the life she meant to bury for good. Margaret ismesmerized by the author's tale of gothic strangeness -- featuring the beautifuland willful Isabelle, the feral twins Adeline and Emmeline, a ghost, a governess,a topiary garden and a devastating fire. Together, Margaret and Vida confront the ghosts that have haunted them while becoming, finally, transformed by the truth themselves.

The Chronicles of Narnia

C. S. Lewis

Amazon Price: $14.95 List Price: $21.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: HarperCollins Amazon Marketplace: 122 new & used starting at $6.00

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1021 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

To Stop ALL The Confusion.. 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

In order to get the intended story of Narnia read them in their theatrical release. At first, i must admitt, that i was confused as to why "they" (movie people and such)would release the 2nd book within the series, The Lion,The Witch and The Wardrobe, before the first, The Magician's Nephew, but afterward i thought of the order into which i was introduced to Narnia. My 2nd grade teacher first read LWW (#2) to us & then Prince Caspian (PC,#4) and so on with the stories containing Lucy and Edmund. Only THEN is it time to see the creation of Narnia, the importance of the lampost and other seemingly insignificant elements.
So i would say that the correct (or less confusing & complicated) order of reading would be 1: LWW (#2); 2: PC (#4); 3: VDT (#5); 4: SC (#6); 5. HHB (#3); 6. MN (#1) 7. LB (#7)

Stories to read again and again 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This is well-written, fun fantasy with a message (though not a preachy one). Enjoyable for middle schoolers and adults, grab something hot to drink and curl up for a fun escape. This is one of those books the movie doesn't spoil. The characters are memorable and believable.

Editorial Review:

Beloved by generations for more than 50 years, this classic children's series is now available in a special adult edition.

Home: A Novel

Marilynne Robinson

Amazon Price: $16.50 List Price: $25.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Farrar, Straus and Giroux Amazon Marketplace: 62 new & used starting at $14.24

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 54 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Hundreds of thousands were enthralled by the luminous voice of John Ames in Gilead, Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel. Home is an entirely independent, deeply affecting novel that takes place concurrently in the same locale, this time in the household of Reverend Robert Boughton, Ames’s closest friend. Glory Boughton, aged thirty-eight, has returned to Gilead to care for her dying father. Soon her brother, Jack—the prodigal son of the family, gone for twenty years—comes home too, looking for refuge and trying to make peace with a past littered with tormenting trouble and pain. Jack is one of the great characters in recent literature. A bad boy from childhood, an alcoholic who cannot hold a job, he is perpetually at odds with his surroundings and with his traditionalist father, though he remains Boughton’s most beloved child. Brilliant, lovable, and wayward, Jack forges an intense bond with Glory and engages painfully with Ames, his godfather and namesake. Home is a moving and healing book about families, family secrets, and the passing of the generations, about love and death and faith. It is Robinson’s greatest work, an unforgettable embodiment of the deepest and most universal emotions.

Serena: A Novel

Ron Rash

Amazon Price: $14.99 List Price: $24.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Ecco Amazon Marketplace: 49 new & used starting at $14.94

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Total reviews: 52 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The year is 1929, and newlyweds George and Serena Pemberton travel from Boston to the North Carolina mountains where they plan to create a timber empire. Although George has already lived in the camp long enough to father an illegitimate child, Serena is new to the mountains -- but she soon shows herself to be the equal of any man, overseeing crews, hunting rattle-snakes, even saving her husband's life in the wilderness. Together this lord and lady of the woodlands ruthlessly kill or vanquish all who fall out of favor. Yet when Serena learns that she will never bear a child, she sets out to murder the son George fathered without her. Mother and child begin a struggle for their lives, and when Serena suspects George is protecting his illegitimate family, the Pembertons' intense, passionate marriage starts to unravel as the story moves toward its shocking reckoning.

Rash's masterful balance of violence and beauty yields a riveting novel that, at its core, tells of love both honored and betrayed.

American Wife: A Novel

Curtis Sittenfeld

Amazon Price: $15.60 List Price: $26.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Random House Amazon Marketplace: 61 new & used starting at $14.50

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Total reviews: 129 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

On what might become one of the most significant days in her husband’s presidency, Alice Blackwell considers the strange and unlikely path that has led her to the White House–and the repercussions of a life lived, as she puts it, “almost in opposition to itself.”

A kind, bookish only child born in the 1940s, Alice learned the virtues of politeness early on from her stolid parents and small Wisconsin hometown. But a tragic accident when she was seventeen shattered her identity and made her understand the fragility of life and the tenuousness of luck. So more than a decade later, when she met boisterous, charismatic Charlie Blackwell, she hardly gave him a second look: She was serious and thoughtful, and he would rather crack a joke than offer a real insight; he was the wealthy son of a bastion family of the Republican party, and she was a school librarian and registered Democrat. Comfortable in her quiet and unassuming life, she felt inured to his charms. And then, much to her surprise, Alice fell for Charlie.

As Alice learns to make her way amid the clannish energy and smug confidence of the Blackwell family, navigating the strange rituals of their country club and summer estate, she remains uneasy with her newfound good fortune. And when Charlie eventually becomes President, Alice is thrust into a position she did not seek–one of power and influence, privilege and responsibility. As Charlie’s tumultuous and controversial second term in the White House wears on, Alice must face contradictions years in the making: How can she both love and fundamentally disagree with her husband? How complicit has she been in the trajectory of her own life? What should she do when her private beliefs run against her public persona?

In Alice Blackwell, New York Times bestselling author Curtis Sittenfeld has created her most dynamic and complex heroine yet. American Wife is a gorgeously written novel that weaves class, wealth, race, and the exigencies of fate into a brilliant tapestry–a novel in which the unexpected becomes inevitable, and the pleasures and pain of intimacy and love are laid bare.


Praise for American Wife

“Curtis Sittenfeld is an amazing writer, and American Wife is a brave and moving novel about the intersection of private and public life in America. Ambitious and humble at the same time, Sittenfeld refuses to trivialize or simplify people, whether real or imagined.”
–Richard Russo

“What a remarkable (and brave) thing: a compassionate, illuminating, and beautifully rendered portrait of a fictional Republican first lady with a life and husband very much like our actual Republican first lady’s. Curtis Sittenfeld has written a novel as impressive as it is improbable.”
–Kurt Andersen

Double Cross (Alex Cross Novels)

James Patterson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 180 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Not his best work 3 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Double Cross (Alex Cross Novels)
I have read all of this series, my boyfriend got me hooked on them. He is an excellent writer, however I do not enjoy reading a book that has this much violence in it. Yes, I'm sure these situations exist, but I read to escape the stresses and horrors of everyday life not be immersed in it as this book does. The story is not that plausible for a real detective either and I found myself reading and saying oh come on, that wouldn't happen in real life. He has reached too far on this one and I won't be buying another in this series if it has the same type of violence that this once contains.

Editorial Review:

Just when Alex thought his life was calming down into a routine of patients and therapy sessions, he finds himself back in the game--this time to catch a criminal mastermind like no other.


A spate of elaborate murders in Washington D.C. have the whole East Coast on edge. They are like nothing Alex Cross and his new girlfriend, Detective Brianna Stone, have ever seen. With each murder, the case becomes increasingly complex. There's only one thing Alex knows: the killer adores an audience.


As victims are made into gruesome spectacles citywide, inducing a media hysteria, it becomes clear to Alex that the man he's after is a genius of terror--and he's after fame. The killer has the whole city by its strings--and he'll stop at nothing to become the most terrifying star that Washington D.C. has ever seen.

Angels & Demons: A Novel (Robert Langdon)

Dan Brown

Amazon Price: $10.88 List Price: $16.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Washington Square Press Amazon Marketplace: 42 new & used starting at $4.40

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Total reviews: 2203 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Da Vinci Code comes the explosive thriller that started it all.

An ancient secret brotherhood. A devastating new weapon of destruction. An unthinkable target. When world-renowned Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to his first assignment to a Swiss research facility to analyze a mysterious symbol -- seared into the chest of a murdered physicist -- he discovers evidence of the unimaginable: the resurgence of an ancient secret brotherhood known as the Illuminati...the most powerful underground organization ever to walk the earth. The Illuminati has now surfaced to carry out the final phase of its legendary vendetta against its most hated enemy -- the Catholic Church.

Langdon's worst fears are confirmed on the eve of the Vatican's holy conclave, when a messenger of the Illuminati announces they have hidden an unstoppable time bomb at the very heart of Vatican City. With the countdown under way, Langdon jets to Rome to join forces with Vittoria Vetra, a beautiful and mysterious Italian scientist, to assist the Vatican in a desperate bid for survival.

Embarking on a frantic hunt through sealed crypts, dangerous catacombs, deserted cathedrals, and the most secretive vault on earth, Langdon and Vetra follow a 400-year-old trail of ancient symbols that snakes across Rome toward the long-forgotten Illuminati lair...a clandestine location that contains the only hope for Vatican salvation.

Critics have praised the exhilarating blend of relentless adventure, scholarly intrigue, and cutting wit found in Brown's remarkable thrillers featuring Robert Langdon. An explosive international suspense, Angels & Demons marks this hero's first adventure as it careens from enlightening epiphanies to dark truths as the battle between science and religion turns to war.

Infinite Jest

David Foster Wallace

Amazon Price: $12.23 List Price: $17.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Back Bay Books Amazon Marketplace: 56 new & used starting at $10.77

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 357 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Hysterically sad and tragically funny 5 out of 5 stars.
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I'm a big fan of David Foster Wallace, a once-in-a-generation artist who, unfortunately for the rest of us, recently committed suicide. His death hit me surprisingly hard, considering I'd never met the man. As a personal tribute, I picked up his masterpiece again for a third read.

It's a sprawling work of genius, hysterically sad and tragically funny, about the pursuit of happiness and the difficulties of communication. Set in a near future world where the years are corporate-sponsored and America handles its garbage by catapulting it onto land we forced Canada to accept as a "gift," the novel is too big and brilliant to be summed up. All I can say is that if the length (1079 pages) and complexity (scores of characters, 100 pages of footnotes, deeply recursive language) don't scare you, then reading it can change the way you think about fiction. It's not everybody's taste, but it thoroughly blows my mind.

Rest in peace, brother.

Editorial Review:

In a sprawling, wild, super-hyped magnum opus, David Foster Wallace fulfills the promise of his precocious novelThe Broom of the System.Equal parts philosophical quest and screwball comedy, Infinite Jest bends every rule of fiction, features a huge cast and multilevel narrative, and questions essential elements of American culture - our entertainments, our addictions, our relationships, our pleasures, our abilities to define ourselves.