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Love Begins in Winter: Five Stories
by Simon Van Booy
Published 2009 by Harper Perennial
Paperback, English. ISBN: 9780061661471
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Recommended by Tena Hanson
This slim volume of short stories was just the right reading material for a quiet spring day. I thoroughly enjoyed the character development and interactions in each story, which are surprisingly quite different from one to the next. All are written in an engaging style, but with different settings throughout the world and different types of protagonists. It is not a set of "love stories," as the title might suggest, but rather a study in the nuances of human interaction.
The title story is about a famous concert cellist who has all but withdrawn from the world around him. He lives absorbed in his own thoughts, many of which revolve around a childhood friend (the only girl he's ever loved) who died young. He happens to physically run into a woman who is similarly absorbed by a childhood loss and the two find that, surprisingly, they understand each other in ways that no one else can.
These are short stories at their finest, and I would recommend this book to anyone who appreciates the simple craft of writing and values it above a need for suspense or high drama.
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Chasing the Dead
by Joe Schreiber
Published 2006 by Ballantine Books
Hardcover, English. ISBN: 9780345487476
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Recommended by Aimee Clark
Sue is a single mother of an 18 month old girl. One day she gets a phone
call from a strange man, telling her that he has kidnapped her daughter
and her nanny. When she realized that it is true, she descends into a
nightmare. The book is told over the course of one evening of Sue trying
to rescue her daughter. What starts out as a crime drama quickly takes a
supernatural turn, and you have no idea what is going to happen next.
I particularly enjoyed this book as I am both a horror nut and the mother
of a girl the same age. I could relate to how Sue felt if my daughter was
in danger.
This is very fast paced book, and a pretty quick read. If you are looking
for something short, fun, and scary, I highly recommend it.
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Can't Wait to Get to Heaven
by Fannie Flagg
Published 2006 by Random House
Hardcover, English. ISBN: 9781400061266
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Recommended by Betty Naab
This story takes place in Elmwood Springs, Missouri. It combines southern charm with side-splitting hilarity. Mrs. Elner Shimfissle, a high-spirited octogenarian inspired a town to ponder the age-old question: "Why are we here?".
Elner climbs into her tree to pick figs to share with a friend and the next thing she knows she is running into people from her past she never expected to meet. Her accident affects her niece, Norma, her neighbor, Verbena, and her truck driver friend, Luther, who runs his 18-wheeler into a ditch. The whole town is left wondering "What is life all about, anyway?".
If you enjoy a mystery with comedy added, you'll enjoy this book. Check the library shelves for several other books by Fannie Flagg.
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The Secret Life of Bees
Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood Starring Dakota Fanning and Jennifer Hudson
Released in 2009 by Twentieth Century-Fox
DVD-Video, English, 109 minutes.
ISBN: 0024543556329 UPC:
This is a wonderful and touching movie based on author Kidds’ book. It takes place in 1964, the year of the Civil Rights Act, in Sylvan, S.C. Fourteen-year-old Lily is on the lamb with motherly servant Rosaleen, fleeing both Lily's abusive father T. Ray and the police who battered Rosaleen for defending her new right to vote. Lily is also fleeing memories, particularly her jumbled recollection of how, as a frightened four-year-old, she accidentally shot and killed her mother during a fight with T. Ray. Among her mother's possessions, Lily finds a picture of a black Virgin Mary with "Tiburon, S.C." on the back so, blindly, she and Rosaleen head there. It turns out that the town is headquarters of Black Madonna Honey, produced by three middle-aged black sisters, August, June and May Boatwright. The "Calendar sisters" take in the fugitives, putting Lily to work in the honey house, where for the first time in years she's happy. But August, clearly the queen bee of the Boatwrights, keeps asking Lily searching questions. Faced with so ideally maternal a figure as August, most girls would babble uncontrollably. But Lily is a budding writer, desperate to connect yet fiercely protective of her secret interior life. Kidd's success at capturing the moody adolescent girl's voice makes her ambivalence comprehensible and charming. And it's deeply satisfying when August teaches Lily to "find the mother in herself.”
Recommended by Jim Ramsey |
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Fire and Ice
by Julie Garwood
Published 2008 by Ballantine Books
Hardcover, English. ISBN: 9780345500755
Recommended by Ione Frutchey
This is quite an unusual story. It takes place in different locales, but
ties in together in the ending.
Sophie Rose is a journalist. She is tough and determined. She
also is the daughter of a notorious thief that every law person would like to catch. She has worked for the Chicago Sun, but quits when the editor wants her to write an expose on her father and finds a job with a small town newspaper. On her own she struggles without Dad's support. She encounters an obnoxious person who feels he's a story maker with his ego at being a marathon runner, but he disappears and was found in Alaska eaten by a polar bear. Identified by his red running socks.
In the meantime scientist are in the region working with wolves
and trying to develop a drug that will work on humans as well. Greed is the name of the game hiding secrets from one another.
Sophie goes to Alaska accompanied by Jack McAlister and he is an FBI agent who is looking for her father who is tied to the closing of a root beer plant and the loss of the employees retirement money.
I don't want to give away the whole story but I'm sure you will be
amazed how the author ties it together. A good Sunday afternoon read.
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