February New Popular Books

The following new books have been added this month to the Popular Reading Collection located next to the circulation desk.   These books and any other titles currently checked out can be placed on hold.
See a staff member at the circulation desk for assistance.

 

Shadow Music, by Julie Garwood
The Venetian Betrayal, by Steve Berry
Hand of Evil, by J. A. Jance
Plum Lucky, by Janet Evanovich
The Senator's Wife, by Sue Miller
Touchstone, by Laurie R. King
Beverly Hills Dead, by Stuart Woods
The Appeal, by John Grisham
The Purrfect Murder, by Rita Mae Brown
Sizzle and Burn, by Jayne Ann Krentz



This Month's Great Escapes
by Bill McCleary  



Play Dirty, by Sandra Brown

Griff Burkett is fresh out of prison.  Formerly the star quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys, Griff has served five years for taking a large payoff to intentionally lose a foot ball game—and not just any game, either!  This game would have taken the Cowboys to the Super Bowl.  Now that he’s out and back in Dallas, Griff pretty much has no assets left—and no job, either.  And, with his notoriety, it’s unlikely he’ll find a good job.  My first question is why doesn’t he head to DC?—where he would be warmly welcomed!—but maybe probation is keeping him in Dallas.  He does have one appointment, with the super rich husband and wife team of Foster and Laura Speakman.  They run SunSouth Airlines and they have a proposition for Griff.  Several years ago Foster was paralyzed in a car accident and now cannot father children.  For a large payment and total secrecy, he wants Griff to take his place and get Laura pregnant—and he wants it done the old-fashioned way.  Griff balks at the idea at first but he doesn’t have any other prospects on the horizon, Laura is a knockout, and it’s a ton of money—so he agrees.  And, as you can guess, that’s just the beginning of mucho complications.  This was fairly entertaining but for most of the book Griff is not a sympathetic character—even for a Redskins fan!—and Ms. Brown just barely manages to redeem him at the end.


On Chesil Beach, by Ian McEwan

McEwan is the author of the wonderful novel, Atonement, and a number of other praised works.  His latest is a short novel of about two hundred pages and it’s easily read in one or two sittings—even for a slow reader like me.  We’re in England and its July of 1962.  It’s sort of the lull before the storm of the turbulent 60s to come.  Florence and Edward, both barely into their twenties, have just gotten married and now they have arrived at a hotel on Chesil Beach to start their honeymoon.  Both are virgins and they are each, in their own way, struggling with complex feelings as they approach the time for the consummation of their marriage.  But, before we get there, McEwan takes us back to some events from their childhoods so we get to know each of them as individuals—and then he shows us their first meeting and courtship.  By the time their intimate dinner is over and they apprehensively head to the bedroom, we’re hoping for the best—but prepared for the worst.  Could go either way.  An enjoyable, little novel—wish it had been a bit longer. 


Bones to Ashes, by Kathy Reichs

Tempe Brennan, the forensic anthropologist who divides her time between Charlotte and Montreal, has just started her Montreal rotation when she is given the skeleton of a young girl to investigate.  The bones were discovered in Acadia, Canada, and they immediately trigger memories for Tempe of her youth, when she knew a girl from Acadia, Evangeline, who used to spend summers with her family at the same beach town as Tempe.  They were friends for several years and then Evangeline disappeared.  Tempe tried to contact her in Canada but she was never able to discover what happened to Evangeline—or the rest of her family.  Although it seems extremely remote, could these bones be those of Evangeline?  While Tempe is trying to find answers, she is also working with police detective Andrew Ryan, her on again off again lover, on a number of cases of missing and dead teenage girls--and she's starting to think it's possible that these current cases could relate to the bones that might be of her long ago friend.  With this novel the cases were a little too complicated for my taste but I liked the flashbacks to Tempe’s past.


A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini

With The Kite Runner, Hosseini told the unforgettable story of two boys growing up in war-torn Afghanistan.  In his latest novel, also set in Afghanistan, the focus is on two girls.  Mariam, just five years old as the story begins, is the illegitimate child of a rich Herat businessman—who has three wives and ten legitimate children.  His wives don’t want Mariam to live with them—let alone her mother--so she and her mother have been banished to live in a one room hovel in a remote area outside of town.  Her father visits her once a week and supports Mariam and her mother but he continues to keep them isolated—until Mariam, now fifteen,  forces a confrontation.  Unfortunately for Mariam, provoking her father and his wives results in her being made to marry a much older man, a shoe maker named Rasheed,  in the far away city of Kabul.  Meanwhile, on the same street in Kabul where Mariam is now living and trying to cope with the increasingly abusive Rasheed, Laila is having a much happier childhood.  Yes, her mother is sometimes strange, moody, and takes to her bed but her father, a teacher, is loving and kind.  And, most importantly, Laila has the deep friendship of Tarik, a neighborhood boy two years older.  By the time they enter their teens, they have fallen in love and formed an unbreakable bond.  Then war, which has been a sometimes distant, sometimes close presence in all of their lives, directly intervenes and forever changes the future for Laila and Mariam.   I try to avoid reading reviews of a book I am likely to read and review myself because I don’t want to be influenced by what someone else thinks and I also believe that many reviewers tell too much of the story but I do remember catching a snippet of a review for this novel.  The reviewer—I think it might have been Jonathan Yardley—asked rhetorically whether Hosseini’s new book was as good as his first. He answered that it was better.  They are both extraordinary novels and it's hard to say which is better but the latest had a much more satisfying ending for me—and it’s definitely one of the very best books I’ve read recently. 





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Revised Jan. 29, 2008

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