The Mystery Writers Of America

BEST NOVEL Winner:

The Last Child by John Hart

Nominees:

The Missing by Tim Gautreaux

The Odds by Kathleen George

Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston

Nemesis by Jo Nesbø

A Beautiful Place to Die by Malla Nunn

BEST FIRST NOVEL BY AN AMERICAN AUTHOR winner:

In the Shadow of Gotham by Stefanie Pintoff
Nominees:

The Girl She Used to Be by David Cristofano

Starvation Lake by Bryan Gruley

The Weight of Silence by Heather Gudenkauf

A Bad Day for Sorry by Sophie Littlefield

Black Water Rising by Attica Locke

BEST FACT CRIME Winner:

Columbine by Dave Cullen

BEST CRITICAL/BIOGRAPHICAL

The Lineup: The World’s Greatest Crime Writers Tell the Inside Story of Their Greatest Detectives edited by Otto Penzler

This year, 20 books were longlisted for the Prize, including Kathryn Stockett’s The Help. Although The Help didn’t make the shortlist, Americans Barbara Kingsolver and Lorrie Moore’s books did.

The 2010 Orange Prize For Fiction shortlist:

The Very Thought of You by Rosie Alison  …available soon at the Library.
England, 31st August 1939: the world is on the brink of war. As Hitler prepares to invade Poland, thousands of children are evacuated from London to escape the impending Blitz. Torn from her mother, eight-year-old Anna Sands is relocated with other children to a large Yorkshire estate which has been opened up to evacuees by Thomas and Elizabeth Ashton, an enigmatic childless couple. Soon Anna gets drawn into their unravelling relationship, seeing things that are not meant for her eyes – and finding herself part-witness and part-accomplice to a love affair, with unforeseen consequences.

The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
Born in the United States, reared in a series of provisional households in Mexico—from a coastal island jungle to 1930s Mexico City—Harrison Shepherd finds precarious shelter but no sense of home on his thrilling odyssey. Life is whatever he learns from housekeepers who put him to work in the kitchen, errands he runs in the streets, and one fateful day, by mixing plaster for famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. He discovers a passion for Aztec history and meets the exotic, imperious artist Frida Kahlo, who will become his lifelong friend. When he goes to work for Lev Trotsky, an exiled political leader fighting for his life, Shepherd inadvertently casts his lot with art and revolution, newspaper headlines and howling gossip, and a risk of terrible violence.

Meanwhile, to the north, the United States will soon be caught up in the internationalist goodwill of World War II. There in the land of his birth, Shepherd believes he might remake himself  in America’s hopeful image and claim a voice of his own. He finds support from an unlikely kindred soul, his stenographer, Mrs. Brown, who will be far more valuable to her employer than he could ever know. Through darkening years, political winds continue to toss him between north and south in a plot that turns many times on the unspeakable breach—the lacuna—between truth and public presumption.

Black Water Rising by Attica Locke
Jay Porter is hardly the lawyer he set out to be. His most promising client is a low-rent call girl and he runs his fledgling law practice out of a dingy strip mall. But he’s long since made peace with not living the American Dream and carefully tucked away his darkest sins: the guns, the FBI file, the trial that nearly destroyed him. Houston, Texas, 1981. It is here that Jay believes he can make a fresh start. That is, until the night in a boat out on the bayou when he impulsively saves a woman from drowning—and opens a Pandora’s box. Her secrets put Jay in danger, ensnaring him in a murder investigation that could cost him his practice, his family, and even his life. But before he can get to the bottom of a tangled mystery that reaches into the upper echelons of Houston’s corporate power brokers, Jay must confront the demons of his past.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years, and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe opposes him. The quest for the king’s freedom destroys his adviser, the brilliant Cardinal Wolsey, and leaves a power vacuum. Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell. Cromwell is a wholly original man, a charmer and a bully, both idealist and opportunist, astute in reading people and a demon of energy: he is also a consummate politician, hardened by his personal losses, implacable in his ambition. But Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps him break the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph?

A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore
As the United States begins gearing up for war in the Middle East, twenty-year-old Tassie Keltjin, the Midwestern daughter of a gentleman hill farmer—his “Keltjin potatoes” are justifiably famous—has come to a university town as a college student, her brain on fire with Chaucer, Sylvia Plath, Simone de Beauvoir. Between semesters, she takes a job as a part-time nanny. The family she works for seems both mysterious and glamorous to her, and although Tassie had once found children boring, she comes to care for, and to protect, their newly adopted little girl as her own. As the year unfolds and she is drawn deeper into each of these lives, her own life back home becomes ever more alien to her: her parents are frailer; her brother, aimless and lost in high school, contemplates joining the military. Tassie finds herself becoming more and more the stranger she felt herself to be, and as life and love unravel dramatically, even shockingly, she is forever changed.

The White Woman on the Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey   …to be released in the US in June, 2010
When George and Sabine Harwood arrive in Trinidad from England George instantly takes to their new life, but Sabine feels isolated, heat-fatigued, and ill at ease with the racial segregation and the imminent dawning of a new era. Her only solace is her growing fixation with Eric Williams, the charismatic leader of Trinidad’s new national party, to whom she pours out all her hopes and fears for the future in letters that she never brings herself to send. As the years progress, George and Sabine’s marriage endures for better or worse. When George discovers Sabine’s cache of letters, he realises just how many secrets she’s kept from him – and he from her – over the decades. And he is seized by an urgent, desperate need to prove his love for her, with tragic consequences

For distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life the winner is: Tinkers by Paul Harding.
The finalists were:
Love In Infant Monkeys by Lydia Millet and
In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniel Mueenuddin

For a distinguished and appropriately documented book on the history of the United States the winner is: Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed.
The finalists were:
Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City by Greg Grandin and
Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 by Gordon S. Wood

For a distinguished and appropriately documented biography or autobiography by an American author the winner is: The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T.J Stiles.
The finalists were:
Cheever: A Life by Blake Bailey and
Woodrow Wilson: A Biography by John Milton Cooper Jr.

For a distinguished and appropriately documented book of nonfiction by an American author that is not eligible for consideration in any other category the winner is: The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy by David E. Hoffman.
The finalists were:
How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities,” by John Cassidy and
The Evolution of God,” by Robert Wright

The Award is presented annually with the objective of promoting excellence in world literature. It is open to novels written in any language and by authors of any nationality, provided the work has been published in English or English translation. The shortlist of 8 titles was selected from a total of 156 novels nominated by 163 public library systems in 123 cities worldwide. Click here to see a copy of Fiction Matters, the newsletter of the IMPAC Dublin Award including the list of nominated novels.

The short listed titles are:

1. The Twin by Gerbrand Bakker (Dutch)

2. The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery (Moroccan / French)

3.  In Zodiac Light by Robert Edric (British)

4. Settlement by Christoph Hein (German)

5. The Believers by Zoë Heller (British).

6. Netherland by Joseph O’Neill (Irish)

7. God’s Own Country by Ross Raisin (British)

8. Home by Marilynne Robinson (American)

* Two of the shortlisted titles are first novels, The Twin by Gerbrand Bakker and God’s Own Country by Ross Raisin.

* The 2010 shortlist is a real mix of books. Some of them are very well known and have already received awards, e.g. Marilynne Robinson received the Orange Prize for Home, Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland was long listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2008; two are first novels, and one, Settlement by Christoph Hein, published in the USA, has not previously been seen in the bookshops in Ireland and so will gain a new audience.

Reading: Harvard Views of Readers, Readership, and Reading History is an online exploration of the intellectual, cultural, and political history of reading as reflected in the historical holdings of the Harvard Libraries. For Internet users worldwide, Reading provides unparalleled digital access to a significant selection of unique source materials:

• personally annotated books owned by John Keats, Herman Melville, Hester Lynch Piozzi, and others
• William Wordsworth’s private library catalog
• commonplace books used by Joseph Conrad, Washington Irving, Victor Hugo, and more
• records of the Harvard College Library that reveal the reading activities of Emerson, Longfellow, and Thoreau
• historical textbooks that document the principles, and some of the biases, in reading instruction from the 18th to the early 20th centuries
• more than 250,000 pages from 1,200 individual items from the Harvard collections, including 800 books and 400 manuscript selections

For researchers, teachers, and students who may not have ready access to extensive historical collections, Reading provides an inspired opportunity to participate more fully in this rapidly expanding research area.

A recent study by researchers at the University of Nevada and UCLA, et.al., entitled: Family scholarly culture and educational success: Books and schooling in 27 nations, concludes  that having a ‘library’ of 500 books at home gives children an educational advantage over those who don’t. “Home library size has a very substantial effect on educational attainment, even adjusting for parents’ education, father’s occupational status and other family background characteristics,” reports the study, recently published in the journal Research in Social Stratification and Mobility. “Growing up in a home with 500 books would propel a child 3.2 years further in education, on average, than would growing up in a similar home with few or no books.” The study abstract states, “Children growing up in homes with many books get 3 years more schooling than children from bookless homes, independent of their parents’ education, occupation, and class. This is as great an advantage as having university educated rather than unschooled parents, and twice the advantage of having a professional rather than an unskilled father. It holds equally in rich nations and in poor; in the past and in the present; under Communism, capitalism, and Apartheid; and most strongly in China. Data are from representative national samples in 27 nations, with over 70,000 cases, analyzed using multi-level linear and probit models with multiple imputation of missing data.”

The researchers contend, “the number of books at home is an excellent reflection of a family’s “scholarly culture,” which they describe as a “way of life in homes where books are numerous, esteemed, read and enjoyed.” An early immersion in such a culture “provides skills and competencies that are useful in school,” and/or engenders “a preference for and enjoyment of books and reading that makes schooling congenial, or enjoyable,” they conclude.

We have no quarrel with all that. If you have a large collection of books at home and already encourage a ‘scholarly culture’ as described above, that’s great! But if you don’t have the room or the funds to create your own home library, we have a solution. Use your local public library. Rare is the home that can house or provide the thousands of books and materials available through your library. We believe, that with the same reverence and encouragement, reading library books can be an immeasurable boon to your child’s education, happiness and success in life. Celebrate National Library Week, April 11-17th, with the Essex Library. Come in and enjoy the materials, programs and services the Library has to offer all year long.

We can now say, with authority, that the Irish author of Brooklyn, Colm Tóibín, pronounces his name COL-um  toe-BEEN. Did you know that?

If you’re intrigued about what Dave Egger’s and his cohorts at McSweeney’s had in mind with Issue #33, read the New York Times’ Paper Cuts blog post here. They have something to say about what book reviews of the future may look like.

A Season on the Brink: a year with Bobby Knight and the Indiana Hoosiers by John Feinstein
Feinstein, a sportswriter, follows the 1985-86 season of coach Bobby Knight and his Indiana Hoosiers. Knight granted Feinstein an unprecedented inside look at college basketball-with complete access to every moment of the season. Feinstein saw and heard it all-practices, team meetings, strategy sessions, and midgame huddles-during Knight’s struggle to avoid a losing season. It’s been called the best book ever written about basketball.

The Book Of Basketball: the NBA according to the sports guy by Bill Simmons
Simmons, known to millions as ESPN.com’s Sports Guy, may be the only writer on the planet who possesses enough basketball knowledge and passion to write the definitive book on the NBA. Nowhere in the roundball universe will you find another single volume that covers as much in such depth as this wildly opinionated and thoroughly entertaining look at the past, present, and future of pro basketball. This book offers every hardwood fan a courtside seat beside the game’s finest, funniest, and fiercest chronicler.

Glory Road by Don Haskins
In the 1966 NCAA championship game, Don Haskins, coach of what was then the Texas Western College team, changed the face of college basketball by starting five black players – and defeating the powerful University of Kentucky team. The game was broadcast on national television, and viewers watched in amazement as Haskins openly defied the existing rules of race and sports, and set in motion the desegregation of all college teams in the South.

They Call Me Coach by John Wooden
The autobiography of John Wooden, UCLA basketball coach for 27 years, who  has sometimes been called America’s “winningest” coach. Still charming fans everywhere, college basketball legend John Wooden reflects on his record-breaking career, his inspired life behind the scenes, and how his top players went on to shape and change the NBA. Wooden offers a very personal history of an unforgettable time in college basketball.

When The Game Was Ours by Larry Bird and Earvin Magic Johnson Jr. with Jackie MacMullan
Larry Bird and Magic Johnson open up exclusively to veteran sports columnist Jackie MacMullan to provide the definitive, revelatory, and wholly entertaining account of their decades-long rivalry. From the moment these two legendary players took the court on opposing sides, they engaged in a fierce physical and psychological battle. Their uncommonly competitive relationship came to symbolize the most compelling rivalry in the NBA.

Last Dance: behind the scenes at the Final Four by John Feinstein
There is no event in sports quite like the Final Four. Feinstein explores what it means to a school, a coach, and a player to be in the Final Four or even at The Final. There are the moving stories of players and coaches who thought theyd never make it to college basketballs final weekend, the spectacular triumphs of the winning teams, and the heartbreaking defeats for those who missed the cut. Feinstein also brings us inspiring and dramatic stories from the people behind the scenes: from the officials and referees to the scouts and ticket-scalpers.

Loose Balls: the short, wild life of the American Basketball Association by Terry Pluto
The story of the ABA, which lasted from 1967 to 1976, spawned such stars as Julius Erving and Moses Malone, and originated the three-point shot as well as the annual slam-dunk contest. The definitive and most widely respected history of the ABA. It’s a wild ride through some of the wackiest, funniest, strangest times ever to hit pro sports — told entirely through the (often incredible) words of those who played, wrote and connived their way through the league’s nine seasons.

Can I Keep My Jersey?: 11 teams, 5 countries, and 4 years in my life as a basketball vagabond by Paul Shirley
One of the great locker-room chronicles of the modern age. With sharp elbows and an even sharper wit, Shirley–whose writings have been described as “wildly entertaining” by The Wall Street Journal–drops hilarious commentary, revealing which teams have the best cheerleaders (he’s spent many a time-out watching them ply their trade), why Christ is rapidly becoming every team’s “sixth man,” and even the best ways to get bloodstains out of your game uniform, using only an ordinary bar of soap and a hotel bathroom sink.

The Fall of Light by Niall Williams

Anybody Out There? by Marian Keyes

The Navigator by Eoin McNamee

The Guards by Ken Bruen

Charming Billy by Alice McDermott

Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle

Haunted Ground by Erin Hart

Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir by Frank McCourt

Pearl by Mary Gordon

The Return Journey by Maeve Binchy

The Death Of A Joyce Scholar: A Peter McGarr Mystery by Bartholomew Gill

The Mermaids Singing by Lisa Carey

The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry

The Case Of The Missing Books by Ian Sansom

In no specific order, below is a partial listing of new mystery arrivals. Click on the title to place a hold in the Library’s catalog.

The Bad Book Affair by Ian Sansom
Sansom is a regular contributor to The Guardian and author of three other Mobile Library Mysteries. Israel Armstrong—the hapless duffle coat wearing, navel-gazing librarian who solves crimes and domestic problems whilst driving a mobile library around the north coast of Ireland—finds himself on the brink of thirty. But any celebration, planned or otherwise, must be put on hold when a troubled teenager—the daughter of a local politician—mysteriously vanishes. Israel suspects the girl’s disappearance has something to do with his lending her American Pastoral from the library’s special “Unshelved” category. Now he has to find the lost teen before he’s run out of town—while he attempts to recover from his recent breakup with his girlfriend, Gloria, and tries to figure out where in Tumdrum a Jewish vegetarian might celebrate his thirtieth birthday.

The Man From Beijing by Henning Mankell
Mankell is the acclaimed author of the Kurt Wallander mysteries. January 2006. In the Swedish hamlet of Hesjövallen, nineteen people have been massacred. The only clue is a red ribbon found at the scene. Judge Birgitta Roslin has particular reason to be shocked: Her grandparents, the Andréns, are among the victims, and Birgitta soon learns that an Andrén family in Nevada has also been murdered. She then discovers the nineteenth-century diary of an Andrén ancestor—a gang master on the American transcontinental railway—that describes brutal treatment of Chinese slave workers. The police insist that only a lunatic could have committed the Hesjövallen murders, but Birgitta is determined to uncover what she now suspects is a more complicated truth.

Blacklands by Belinda Bauer
Eighteen years ago, Billy Peters disappeared. Everyone in town believes Billy was murdered—after all, serial killer Arnold Avery later admitted killing six other children and burying them on the same desolate moor that surrounds their small English village. Only Billy’s mother is convinced he is alive. Her twelve-year-old grandson Steven desperately wants to bring his family closure, and if that means personally finding his uncle’s corpse, he’ll do it. Spending his spare time digging holes all over the moor in the hope of turning up a body is a long shot, but at least it gives his life purpose. Careful to hide his identity, he secretly pens a letter to Avery in jail asking for help in finding the body of “W.P.”—William “Billy” Peters. So begins a dangerous cat-and-mouse game.

Caught by Harlan Coben
17-year-old Haley McWaid is a good girl, the pride of her suburban New Jersey family, captain of the lacrosse team, headed off to college next year with all the hopes and dreams her doting parents can pin on her. Which is why, when her mother wakes one morning to find that Haley never came home the night before, and three months quickly pass without word from the girl, the community assumes the worst. Wendy Tynes is a reporter on a mission, to identify and bring down sexual predators via elaborate—and nationally televised—sting operations. Working with local police on her news program Caught in the Act, Wendy and her team have publicly shamed dozens of men by the time she encounters her latest target. Dan Mercer is a social worker known as a friend to troubled teens, but his story soon becomes more complicated than Wendy could have imagined.

False Convictions by Tim Green
Casey is counting on an open-and-shut case, a sure success for her first effort with the Freedom Project, the renowned charity group dedicated to helping exonerate wrongfully convicted prisoners. Not only is the Freedom Project giving Casey the chance to help innocent people, but its founder, Robert Graham, is offering Casey a one-million-dollar annual pledge to her legal clinic for taking on just two jobs a year. Her first assignment is to revive the case of Dwayne Hubbard, an indigent black man serving a life sentence for the rape and murder of a college student seventeen years ago. Using DNA evidence, Casey expects to easily prove Hubbard’s innocence. Yet when she arrives in rural Auburn, New York, she meets immediate and aggressive resistance.

False Mermaid by Erin Hart
American pathologist Nora Gavin fled to Ireland three years ago, hoping that distance from home would bring her peace. Though she threw herself into the study of bog bodies and the mysteries of their circumstances, she was ultimately led back to the one mystery she was unable to solve: the murder of her sister, Tríona. Nora can’t move forward until she goes back—back to her home, to the scene of the crime, to the source of her nightmares and her deepest regrets. Determined to put her sister’s case to rest and anxious about her eleven-year-old niece, Elizabeth, Nora returns to Saint Paul, Minnesota, to find that her brother-in-law, Peter Hallett, is about to remarry and has plans to leave the country with his new bride. Nora has long suspected Hallett in Tríona’s murder, though there has never been any proof of his involvement, and now she believes that his new wife and Elizabeth may both be in danger. Time is short, and as Nora begins reinvestigating her sister’s death, missed clues and ever-more disturbing details come to light.

Murder In The Palais Royal by Cara Black
Her partner, René, has been shot, and eyewitnesses have identified Aimée as the culprit. A mysterious deposit has been made to their firm’s bank account, interesting the taxman in their affairs. Someone seems to be impersonating Aimée; someone wants revenge. Two murders ensue. How do they relate to the youth whom Aimée’s testimony sent to jail in the very first Aimée Leduc investigation, Murder in the Marais?

Still Midnight by Denise Mina
Alex Morrow is not new to the police force-or to crime-but there is nothing familiar about the call she has just received. On a still night in a quiet suburb of Glasgow, Scotland, three armed men have slipped from a van into a house, demanding a man who is not, and has never been, inside the front door. In the confusion that ensues, one family member is shot and another kidnapped, the assailants demanding an impossible ransom. Is this the amateur crime gone horribly wrong that it seems, or something much more unexpected?

The Weed That Strings The Hangman’s Bag by Alan Bradley
Flavia de Luce, a dangerously brilliant eleven-year-old with a passion for chemistry and a genius for solving murders. Flavia finds herself untangling two deaths—separated by time but linked by the unlikeliest of threads. Flavia thinks that her days of crime-solving in the bucolic English hamlet of Bishop’s Lacy are over—and then Rupert Porson has an unfortunate rendezvous with electricity. The beloved puppeteer has had his own strings sizzled, but who’d do such a thing and why? For Flavia, the questions are intriguing enough to make her put aside her chemistry experiments and schemes of vengeance against her insufferable big sisters. Astride Gladys, her trusty bicycle, Flavia sets out from the de Luces’ crumbling family mansion in search of Bishop’s Lacey’s deadliest secrets.

Worst Case by James Patterson
The son of one of New York’s wealthiest families is snatched off the street and held hostage. His parents can’t save him, because this kidnapper isn’t demanding money. Instead, he quizzes his prisoner on the price others pay for his life of luxury. In this exam, wrong answers are fatal.

Deception by Jonathan Kellerman
Her name is Elise Freeman, and her chilling cry for help—to whoever may be listening—comes too late to save her. On a DVD found near her lifeless body, the emotionally and physically battered woman chronicles a year-and-a-half-long ordeal of monstrous abuse at the hands of three sadistic tormentors. But even more shocking than the lurid details is the revelation that the offenders, like their victim, are teachers at one of L.A.’s most prestigious prep schools. With Elise now dead by uncertain means, homicide detective Milo Sturgis is assigned to probe the hallowed halls of Windsor Prep Academy. And if ever he could use Dr. Alex Delaware’s psychological prowess, it’s now.

If The Dead Rise Not by Philip Kerr
Berlin, 1934: The Nazis have secured the 1936 Olympiad for the city but are facing foreign resistance. Hitler and Avery Brundage, the head of the U.S. Olympic Committee, have connived to soft-pedal Nazi anti- Semitism and convince America to participate. Bernie Gunther, now the house detective at an upscale Berlin hotel, is swept into this world of international corruption and dangerous double-dealing, caught between the warring factions of the Nazi apparatus.
Havana, 1954: Batista, aided by the CIA, has just seized power; Castro is in prison; and the American Mafia is quickly gaining a stranglehold on the city’s exploding gaming and prostitution industries. Bernie, who has been unceremoniously kicked out of Buenos Aires, has resurfaced in Cuba with a new life, seemingly one of routine and relative peace. But Bernie discovers that he truly cannot outrun the burden of his past: He soon collides with a vicious killer from his Berlin days, who is mysteriously murdered not long afterward-and an old lover, who may be the murderer.

The Mapping of Love And Death by Jacqueline Winspear
Maisie Dobbs must unravel a case of wartime love and death—an investigation that leads her to a long-hidden affair between a young cartographer and a mysterious nurse. August 1914. Michael Clifton is mapping the land he has just purchased in California’s beautiful Santa Ynez Valley, certain that oil lies beneath its surface. But as the young cartographer prepares to return home to Boston, war is declared in Europe. Michael—the youngest son of an expatriate Englishman—puts duty first and sails for his father’s native country to serve in the British army. Three years later, he is listed among those missing in action. April 1932. London psychologist and investigator Maisie Dobbs is retained by Michael’s parents, who have recently learned that their son’s remains have been unearthed in France. They want Maisie to find the unnamed nurse whose love letters were among Michael’s belongings—a quest that takes Maisie back to her own bittersweet wartime love. Her inquiries, and the stunning discovery that Michael Clifton was murdered in his trench, unleash a web of intrigue and violence that threatens to engulf the soldier’s family and even Maisie herself. Over the course of her investigation, Maisie must cope with the approaching loss of her mentor, Maurice Blanche, and her growing awareness that she is once again falling in love.

Heresy by S. J. Parris
Giordano Bruno was a monk, poet, scientist, and magician on the run from the Roman Inquisition on charges of heresy for his belief that the Earth orbits the sun and that the universe is infinite. This alone could have got him burned at the stake, but he was also a student of occult philosophies and magic.  Bruno’s pursuit of this rare knowledge brings him to London, where he is unexpectedly recruited by Queen Elizabeth I and is sent undercover to Oxford University on the pretext of a royal visitation. Officially Bruno is to take part in a debate on the Copernican theory of the universe; unofficially, he is to find out whatever he can about a Catholic plot to overthrow the queen.  His mission is dramatically thrown off course by a series of grisly murders and a spirited and beautiful young woman. As Bruno begins to discover a pattern in these killings, he realizes that no one at Oxford is who he seems to be. Bruno must attempt to outwit a killer who appears obsessed with the boundary between truth and heresy.

The Ask by Sam Lipsyte
Milo Burke, a development officer at a third-tier university, has “not been developing”: after a run-in with a well-connected undergrad, he finds himself among the burgeoning class of the newly unemployed. Grasping after odd jobs to support his wife and child, Milo is offered one last chance by his former employer: he must reel in a potential donor—a major “ask”—who, mysteriously, has requested Milo’s involvement. But it turns out that the ask is Milo’s sinister college classmate Purdy Stuart. And the “give” won’t come cheap.

The Hole We’re In by Gabrielle Zevin
Meet the Pomeroys: a church-going family living in a too-red house in a Texas college town. Roger, the patriarch, has impulsively gone back to school, only to find his future ambitions at odds with the temptations of the present. His wife, Georgia, tries to keep things in order at home, but she’s been feeding the bill drawer with unopened envelopes for months and can never find the right moment to confront its swelling con tents. In an attempt to climb out of the holes they’ve dug, Roger and Georgia make a series of choices that have catastrophic consequences for their three children—especially for Patsy, the youngest, who will spend most of her life fighting to overcome them.

The Privileges by Jonathan Dee
Smart, socially gifted, and chronically impatient, Adam and Cynthia Morey are so perfect for each other that united they become a kind of fortress against the world. In their hurry to start a new life, they marry young and have two children before Cynthia reaches the age of twenty-five. Adam is a rising star in the world of private equity and becomes his boss’s protégé. With a beautiful home in the upper-class precincts of Manhattan, gorgeous children, and plenty of money, they are, by any reasonable standard, successful. The future in which they have always believed for themselves and their children—a life of almost boundless privilege, in which any desire can be acted upon and any ambition made real—is still out there, but it is not arriving fast enough to suit them. But the Moreys’ standards are not the same as other people’s.  As Cynthia, at home with the kids day after identical day, begins to drift, Adam is confronted with a choice that will test how much he is willing to risk to ensure his family’s happiness and to recapture the sense that the only acceptable life is one of infinite possibility

Union Atlantic by Adam Haslett
At the heart of Union Atlantic lies a test of wills between a young banker, Doug Fanning, and a retired schoolteacher, Charlotte Graves, whose two dogs have begun to speak to her. When Doug builds an ostentatious mansion on land that Charlotte’s grandfather donated to the town of Finden, Massachusetts, she determines to oust him in court. As a senior manager of Union Atlantic bank, a major financial conglomerate, Doug is embroiled in the company’s struggle to remain afloat. It is Charlotte’s brother, Henry Graves, the president of the New York Federal Reserve, who must keep a watchful eye on Union Atlantic and the entire financial system. Drawn into Doug and Charlotte’s intensifying conflict is Nate Fuller, a troubled high-school senior who unwittingly stirs powerful emotions in each of them.

On the Brink by Henry Paulson
From the man who was in the very middle of this perfect economic storm, ON THE BRINK is Paulson’s fast-paced retelling of the key decisions that had to be made with lightning speed. Paulson puts the reader in the room for all the intense moments as he addressed urgent market conditions, weighed critical decisions, and debated policy and economic considerations with of all the notable players-including the CEOs of top WallStreet firms as well as Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner, Sheila Bair, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain, and then-President George W. Bush. More than an account about numbers and credit risks gone bad, ON THE BRINK is an extraordinary story about people and politics-all brought together during the world’s impending financial Armageddon.

Freefall by Joseph Stiglitz
Stiglitz traces the origins of the Great Recession, eschewing easy answers and demolishing the contention that America needs more billion-dollar bailouts and free passes to those “too big to fail,” while also outlining the alternatives and revealing that even now there are choices ahead that can make a difference. The system is broken, and we can only fix it by examining the underlying theories that have led us into this new “bubble capitalism.”

Broker, Trader, Lawyer, Spy by Eamon Javers
Today’s global economy has a dark underbelly: the world of corporate espionage. Using cutting-edge technology, age-old techniques of deceit and manipulation, and sheer talent, spies act as the hidden puppeteers of globalized businesses. They control markets, determine prices, influence corporate decisions, and manage the flow of data and information of some of the world’s biggest corporations. In his gripping and alarming book, Eamon Javers takes the reader inside this hidden global industry. Readers meet the spies who conduct surveillance operations, satellite analysts who peer down on corporate targets from the skies, veteran CIA officers who work for hedge funds, and even a Soviet military intelligence officer who now sells his services to American companies.

The Quants by Scott Patterson
Peter Muller, an eccentric, whip-smart whiz kid who’d studied theoretical mathematics at Princeton and now managed a fabulously successful hedge fund called PDT…when he wasn’t playing his keyboard for morning commuters on the New York subway.  Ken Griffin, who as an undergraduate trading convertible bonds out of his Harvard dorm room had outsmarted the Wall Street pros and made money in one of the worst bear markets of all time.  Now he was the tough-as-nails head of Citadel Investment Group, one of the most powerful money machines on earth.  Cliff Asness, the sharp-tongued, mercurial founder of the hedge fund AQR, a man as famous for his computer-smashing rages as for his brilliance, and Boaz Weinstein, chess life-master and king of the credit default swap, who while juggling $30 billion worth of positions for Deutsche Bank found time for frequent visits to Las Vegas with the famed MIT card-counting team.  In 2006, these four men and their cohorts were the new kings of Wall Street.  Muller, Griffin, Asness, and Weinstein were among the best and brightest of a  new breed, the quants.  Over the prior twenty years, this species of math whiz –technocrats who make billions not with gut calls or fundamental analysis but with formulas and high-speed computers– had usurped the testosterone-fueled, kill-or-be-killed risk-takers who’d long been the alpha males the world’s largest casino.  The quants believed that a dizzying, indecipherable-to-mere-mortals cocktail of differential calculus, quantum physics, and advanced geometry held the key to reaping riches from the financial markets.  And they helped create a digitized money-trading machine that could shift billions around the globe with the click of a mouse.

In no particular order:

The Privileges by Jonathan Dee ~~ Smart, socially gifted, and chronically impatient, Adam and Cynthia Morey are so perfect for each other that united they become a kind of fortress against the world. In their hurry to start a new life, they marry young and have two children before Cynthia reaches the age of twenty-five. Adam is a rising star in the world of private equity and becomes his boss’s protégé. With a beautiful home in the upper-class precincts of Manhattan, gorgeous children, and plenty of money, they are, by any reasonable standard, successful. But the Moreys’ standards are not the same as other people’s. The future in which they have always believed for themselves and their children—a life of almost boundless privilege, in which any desire can be acted upon and any ambition made real—is still out there, but it is not arriving fast enough to suit them. As Cynthia, at home with the kids day after identical day, begins to drift, Adam is confronted with a choice that will test how much he is willing to risk to ensure his family’s happiness and to recapture the sense that the only acceptable life is one of infinite possibility.

Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez ~~ Tawawa House in many respects is like any other American resort before the Civil War. Situated in Ohio, this idyllic retreat is particularly nice in the summer when the Southern humidity is too much to bear. The main building, with its luxurious finishes, is loftier than the white cottages that flank it, but then again, the smaller structures are better positioned to catch any breeze that may come off the pond. And they provide more privacy, which best suits the needs of the Southern white men who vacation there every summer with their black, enslaved mistresses. It’s their open secret. Lizzie, Reenie, and Sweet are regulars at Tawawa House. They have become friends over the years as they reunite and share developments in their own lives and on their respective plantations. They don’t bother too much with questions of freedom, though the resort is situated in free territory–but when truth-telling Mawu comes to the resort and starts talking of running away, things change.

Eight White Nights by Andre Aciman ~~ A man in his late twenties goes to a large Christmas party in Manhattan where a woman introduces herself with three words: “I am Clara.” Over the following seven days, they meet every evening at the same cinema. Overwhelmed yet cautious, he treads softly and won’t hazard a move. The tension between them builds gradually, marked by ambivalence, hope, and distrust. As André Aciman explores their emotions with uncompromising accuracy and sensuous prose, they move both closer together and farther apart, culminating on New Year’s Eve in a final scene charged with magic and the promise of renewal.

Union Atlantic by Adam Haslett ~~ At the heart of Union Atlantic lies a test of wills between a young banker, Doug Fanning, and a retired schoolteacher, Charlotte Graves, whose two dogs have begun to speak to her. When Doug builds an ostentatious mansion on land that Charlotte’s grandfather donated to the town of Finden, Massachusetts, she determines to oust him in court. As a senior manager of Union Atlantic bank, a major financial conglomerate, Doug is embroiled in the company’s struggle to remain afloat. It is Charlotte’s brother, Henry Graves, the president of the New York Federal Reserve, who must keep a watchful eye on Union Atlantic and the entire financial system. Drawn into Doug and Charlotte’s intensifying conflict is Nate Fuller, a troubled high-school senior who unwittingly stirs powerful emotions in each of them.

Ransom by David Malouf ~~ In his first novel in more than a decade, David Malouf—arguably Australia’s greatest living writer—gives us a stirring reimagination of one of the most famous passages in all of literature: Achilles’ rageful slaughter and desecration of Hector, and Priam’s attempt to ransom his son’s body in Homer’s The Iliad.

The Postmistress by Sarah Blake ~~ It is 1940. France has fallen. American radio gal Frankie Bard, the first woman to report from the Blitz in London, wants nothing more than to bring the war home. Meanwhile, in a small town on Cape Cod, Iris James is in charge of the town’s mail. Iris believes that her job is to deliver and keep people’s secrets, passing along the news that letters carry. And one secret she keeps are her feelings for Harry Vale, the town mechanic, who inspects the ocean daily, searching in vain for German U-boats he is certain will come. Two single people in midlife, Iris and Harry long ago gave up hope of ever being in love, yet they find themselves unexpectedly drawn toward each other. Listening to Frankie as well are Will and Emma Fitch, the town’s doctor and his new wife, both trying to escape a fragile childhood and forge a brighter future. When Will follow’s Frankie’s siren call into the war, Emma’s worst fears are realized. Promising to return in six months, Will goes to London to offer his help, and the lives of the three women entwine.

Worst Case by James Patterson ~~ The son of one of New York’s wealthiest families is snatched off the street and held hostage. His parents can’t save him, because this kidnapper isn’t demanding money. Instead, he quizzes his prisoner on the price others pay for his life of luxury. In this exam, wrong answers are fatal. Detective Michael Bennett leads the investigation. With ten kids of his own, he can’t begin to understand what could lead someone to target anyone’s children. As another student disappears, one powerful family after another uses their leverage and connections to turn the heat up on the mayor, the press–anyone who will listen–to stop this killer. Their reach extends all the way to the FBI, who send their top Abduction Specialist, Agent Emily Parker. Bennett’s life–and love life–suddenly get even more complicated.

The Wife‘s Tale by Lori Lansens ~~ On the eve of their Silver Anniversary, Mary Gooch is waiting for her husband Jimmy–still every inch the handsome star athlete he was in high school–to come home. As night turns to day, it becomes frighteningly clear to Mary that he is gone. Through the years, disappointment and worry have brought Mary’s life to a standstill, and she has let her universe shrink to the well-worn path from the bedroom to the refrigerator. But her husband’s disappearance startles her out of her inertia, and she begins a desperate search. For the first time in her life, she boards a plane and flies across the country to find her lost husband. So used to hiding from the world, Mary finds that in the bright sun and broad vistas of California, she is forced to look up from the pavement. And what she finds fills her with inner strength she’s never felt before. Through it all, Mary not only finds kindred spirits, but reunites with a more intimate stranger no longer sequestered by fear and habit: herself.

One Amazing Thing by Chitra Divakaruni ~~ Late afternoon sun sneaks through the windows of a passport and visa office in an unnamed American city. Most customers and even most office workers have come and gone, but nine people remain. When an earthquake rips through the afternoon lull, trapping these nine characters together, their focus first jolts to their collective struggle to survive. There’s little food. The office begins to flood. Then, at a moment when the psychological and emotional stress seems nearly too much for them to bear, the young graduate student suggests that each tell a personal tale, “one amazing thing” from their lives, which they have never told anyone before. And as their surprising stories of romance, marriage, family, political upheaval, and self-discovery unfold against the urgency of their life-or-death circumstances, the novel proves the transcendent power of stories and the meaningfulness of human expression itself.

“You Grow Girl was launched by Gayla Trail in February 2000 and has grown into a thriving online community that speaks to a new kind of gardener, seeking to redefine the modern world relationship to plants. This contemporary, laid-back approach to gardening places equal importance on environmentalism, style, affordability, art, and humour.”

We learned some new gardening tricks and tips from her blog and we have high expectations from her book. In the same vein, San Francisco gardening guru, Maria Finn also has a blog–CityDirt.net and a new book out. Her book,  A Little Piece of Earth: How to Grow Food in Small Places is perfect for the gardening novice or the old hand–and it looks great on a table top as well.

This year’s judges for the Fiction panel:

Stewart O’Nan–who was “discovered” by B&N for his debut novel, Snow Angels, published in 1994. He has since written 11 novels, including Last Night at the Lobster, The Good Wife, The Night Country, Wish You Were Here, A Prayer for the Dying, and his latest, Songs for the Missing, two works of nonfiction, and a screenplay on the life of Edgar Allan Poe.

Kathryn Harrison–who was “discovered” for her novel, Thicker Than Water, published in 1991. She has published five additional novels including Envy, The Seal Wife, and The Binding Chair, two memoirs, The Mother Knot and The Kiss, a travel memoir about the Camino de Santiago, a biography of Saint Therese of Lisieux, and a collection of personal essays, Seeking Rapture.

David Schickler–who was “discovered” for his work of debut fiction, Kissing in Manhattan, published in 2001. He published a second work of fiction in 2004, Sweet and Vicious. A graduate of the Columbia University MFA program, his work as appeared in The New Yorker, Tin House, Zoetrope: All-Story, and Travel & Leisure.

Judges for the Non-Fiction panel:

Rachel Simon–who was actually “discovered” by B&N twice — a rare mistake, and one that also occurred with Kim Edwards, author of The Memory Keeper’s Daughter. Simon’s 1994 debut novel, The Magic Touch caught B&N’s attention first, and again when she published her first memoir, Riding the Bus with My Sister, eight years later. Last year, she published a new memoir, Building A Home with My Husband.

Lee Martin– who was “discovered” for the compelling memoir of his boyhood, From Our House, published in 2000. He has since penned another memoir, Turning the Bones, a short-story collection, The Least You Need to Know, and two novels, Quakertown, and The Bright Forever, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Martin directs the creative writing program at Ohio State University.

Danielle Trussoni–who was “discovered” for Falling Through the Earth, her acclaimed memoir about her childhood as the daughter of a Vietnam veteran, and which the New York Times named one of the best books of 2006. Trussoni is publishing her first novel, Angelology, in March.

The 2009 Fiction Finalists:

More of This World or Maybe Another by Barb Johnson
Mathilda Savitch by Victor Lodato
All the Living by C.E. Morgan

The 2009 Non-Fiction Finalists:

Columbine by Dave Cullen
The Fourth Part of the World: The Race to the Ends of the Earth, and the Epic Story of the Map that Gave America Its Name by Toby Lester
In the Sanctuary of Outcasts: A Memoir by Neil White

The winners in each category receive a $10,000 prize and a year of additional promotion in B&N stores. Second-place finalists receive $5,000, and third-place finalists take home $2,500. Winners will be announced March 3.

http://www.ctmirror.org/news

The E-Book service is as easy to use as Overdrive’s downloadable audiobooks. Just download the Adobe software to your chosen device–it took us less than 5 minutes to sign up for a free Adobe ID and then to download the software. Downloading the book to our computer took approximately 4 seconds. And there it was, at our fingertips. Features on the Adobe software include:  the ability to increase (or decrease) the font size on the page, bookmark multiple pages with notes and search for words or phrases throughout the text. How cool is that? Overdrive now allows for 7 titles in any combination of audio or e-book to be checked out at one time. The audiobooks check out for 10 days and the e-books for 2 weeks. The files expire automatically with no overdue fines to worry about. Even if you think you’d never enjoy an e-book, try one out…it’s free, and it might prove to be a way to increase your access to reading materials.

The Newbery Medal is awarded annually by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association, to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children.
This year’s Newbery Medal winner is When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead.
Newbery Honors went to:
Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose
The Evolution Of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly
The Mostly True Adventures Of Homer P. Figg by Rodman Philbrick
Where The Mountain Meets The Moon by Grace Lin

The Caldecott Medal was named in honor of nineteenth-century English illustrator Randolph Caldecott. It is awarded annually by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association, to the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children.
This year’s Caldecott Medal winner is The Lion & the Mouse illustrated and written by Jerry Pinkney.
Caldecott Honors went to:
All The World by Liz Garten Scanlon, illustrated by Marla Frazee
Red Sings From Treetops: A Year In Colors by Joyce Sidman, illustrated by Pamela Zagarenski

The Theodor Seuss Geisel Award, established in 2004, is given annually (beginning in 2006) to the author(s) and illustrator(s) of the most distinguished contribution to the body of American children’s literature known as beginning reader books published in the United States during the preceding year.
This year’s Theodor Seuss Geisel Award winner is Benny and Penny in the Big No-No! by Geoffrey Hayes.
Geisel Honors went to:
I Spy Fly Guy! by Tedd Arnold
Little Mouse Gets Ready by Jeff Smith
Mouse and Mole: Fine Feathered Friends by Wong Herbert Yee
Pearl and Wagner: One Funny Day by Kate McMullan, illustrated by R.W. Alley

The MWA award winners will be honored at the Edgar Awards banquet in New York City, Thursday, April 29, 2010.

“Cycling is exploding in a good way. Urbanites everywhere, from ironic hipsters to earth-conscious commuters, are taking to the bike like aquatic mammals to water. BikeSnobNYC cycling’s most prolific, well-known, hilarious, and anonymous blogger brings a fresh and humorous perspective to the most important vehicle to hit personal transportation since the horse. Bike Snob treats readers to a laugh-out-loud rant and rave about the world of bikes and their riders, and offers a unique look at the ins and outs of cycling, from its history and hallmarks to its wide range of bizarre practitioners. Throughout, the author lampoons the missteps, pretensions, and absurdities of bike culture while maintaining a contagious enthusiasm for cycling itself. Bike Snob is an essential volume for anyone who knows, is, or wants to become a cyclist.”

The winner of the Novel category is Brooklyn by Colm Toibin.
Other contenders in the Novel category were:
Family Album by Penelope Lively
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
The Elephant Keeper by Christopher Nicholson

The winners of each category are available here. The complete Costa Book Awards shortlist is available here. Most of the shortlisted books are not yet available in the U.S.–but watch for many of them to arrive in the coming months.