Joan's Recs

Joan


$26.00
ISBN-13: 9781400069569
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Random House, 4/2012
A year's sabbatical in Paris! That's just what Eloisa James, a romance writer who's really Mary Bly, a Shakespearean professor at Fordham University did after her recovery from cancer and ready for a change. She and her husband, who's also an academic and their two young children sold their house and car and spent a year just lazying around in Paris. What an entertaining book to read what with living like Parisians, learning the language-sort of, sampling really good food and discovering why French women don't get fat! I'm going to read this one again. What fun!
-  Joan

$25.99
ISBN-13: 9781401340919
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Hyperion Books, 4/2012
A timely book -100 years later- the sinking of the Titanic. It's 1915 and a wealthy young Bostonian, Sybil Allston, has lost her mother and sister in the tragedy. She's left to cope with her ne'er-do-well brother and a father who seems neither here nor there. In desperation Sybil turns to spiritualism in an attempt to contact her mother and sister.  A plot rich with opium dens in Boston's Chinatown, a flashback to her father's earlier life as a deckhand in colonial Shanghai and scenes of Sybil's mother and sister's final lavish evening on the Titanic. Engrossing historical fiction and a second novel by the author of The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane.
- Joan

$25.95
ISBN-13: 9781594203336
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Penguin Press HC, The, 2/2012
Americans do seem to go through a lot of trials and tribulation with raising their young ones. The art of a baby sleeping through the night, learning to like grown-up food and behaving in public seems to have been mastered by French parents. No Tiger Mother here but a common sense book well worth reading by parents-to-be and grandparents.
- Joan

The Lifeboat (Hardcover)

$24.99
ISBN-13: 9780316185905
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Reagan Arthur Books, 4/2012
Just suppose there's been a shipwreck at sea and you were one of the hapless passengers who's now adrift in a lifeboat with forty-one other passengers. You know that lifeboat is way overloaded and as time passes with no sign of rescue, all forty-one passengers are not going to survive. Who is going to sacrifice themselves so that others might live? The oldest men? A loud and domineering woman whom everyone dislikes? Surely not the young mother clutching her little son! You feel helpless and try not to be swayed by the raucous clamor to "do something" even if it's wrong. A moral dilemma and psychological thriller set in 1914 just two years after the Titanic sank, The Lifeboat is Charlotte Rogan’s first novel. I hope to see more stories by this author.
- Joan

$24.95
ISBN-13: 9781565129238
Availability: Coming Soon - Available for Pre-Order Now
Published: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 6/2012

AVAILABLE JUNE 2012

As suspenseful and erotic as his first novel, A Reliable Wife, this one is set in 1945 in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley - in a small village where the inhabitants are good religious folk but whose actions are governed by the Baptist and Methodist preachers in town. Hellfire and damnation await those who sin or consort with sinners. Heading Out to Wonderful is a story of a love affair gone terribly wrong and the repercussions that are felt for years to come. I've been anticipating Robert Goolrick's second novel and I'm not disappointed. It's beautiful writing and a haunting story that stays with you.

- Joan


Restoration (Paperback)

$14.99
ISBN-13: 9780062065650
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Ecco Press, 2/2012
Once upon a time there was a crumbling villa outside a little town in Italy. Two people who loved each other dearly, lived there and they had a little son. It was all the best of intentions but the wife became bored with the remoteness and the worry of it all. It was World War II. She fled to Rome, had an affair, and in her absence, her son dies of meningitis. Racked with guilt, she returns home to find that her husband has left her and the villa is now occupied with Allied soldiers, partisans and displaced civilians. She stands to lose everything that she holds dear. Makes one wonder if it is possible to restore what once was or does life just go on? Written by the Icelandic writer Olaf Olafsson, Restoration is set in the gorgeous landscape of Tuscany.
-  Joan

$30.00
ISBN-13: 9781400067893
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Random House, 1/2012
Queen Elizabeth has been on the throne of England for 60 years! That's a remarkable passage of time especially so, since I remember her coronation day all those many years ago. Elizabeth was a beautiful young princess and over the years we have all watched her grow old and gracefully so.  She does admit she wasn't a very good mother; her priorities were England and the Commonwealth. She takes her job very seriously. A book rich in details, personal and political. How did all those years pass so quickly? A thoroughly enjoyable read.
- Joan

The Forgotten Waltz (Hardcover)

$25.95
ISBN-13: 9780393072556
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: W. W. Norton & Company, 10/2011
A story of an adulterous affair that takes place during Ireland's economic boom years in the 1990s and fizzles out about the same time as the Celtic Tiger. Gina Moynihan, a young married woman-about-town has a lust-filled  affair with the married Sean Vallely. It's an obsession with passion for her and she's sure that in time he'll leave his wife. Unfortunately for Gina,  Sean is comfortable with both situations and has a daughter who seems to be somewhat mentally unbalanced. The years pass and Gina is left with something she didn't quite anticipate. You think "how can this woman be so dumb?"  The collapse of the Irish economy and an affair, too. Beautifully written!
-- Joan

$26.95
ISBN-13: 9780670023004
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Viking Adult, 9/2011
Have you ever felt you are the latest in a long line of mediocre cooks and the easiest thing to do in the grocery store is to head for the ultraprocessed foods? Products with too much sodium, sugar and just plain weird sounding chemical ingredients. Well, read on. This is one of the best cookbooks around. The author, a Cordon Bleu grad gathered nine volunteer women who considered themselves "not very good cooks." In a series of classes she taught them basic culinary skills and the self confidence to try  "cooking from scratch." The book is chock full of great tips and yes: recipes, too.  I was inspired to try her recipe for Artisan bread which I had never made. It worked!
-- Joan

Portrait of a Spy (Hardcover)

$26.99
ISBN-13: 9780062072184
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Harper, 7/2011
When it comes to international spy thrillers the Gabriel Allon series is among the very best. He's an art restorer, an assassin and is a member of an elite Israeli intelligence unit. Global terrorism, suicide bombers, skullduggery in the art world: the locales move from New York art galleries to the Saudi desert and disparate locations between. If you haven't read any of the Gabriel Allon books this is a great one to start on.  He's a twenty first century James Bond- only better!
-- Joan

$27.99
ISBN-13: 9781610390446
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: PublicAffairs, 9/2011
You'd think there would be a big difference between an autocracy and a democracy. Probably not that much.  The authors say governments do not differ in kind but only in the number of essential supporters or "backs that need scratching". The size of this hopefully small group determines almost everything about politics: what leaders can get away with and the quality of life under them be that for good or evil. This book held my attention even for bedtime reading. Our conception of politics in the U.S. or abroad may never be the same.
-- Joan

$30.00
ISBN-13: 9781590205655
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Overlook Press, 6/2011
It was WWII and Churchill was Prime Minister of Great Britain. Nazis were overrunning Europe, France had just fallen and England was next on Hitler's agenda. There wasn't much hope for England at that point, but Churchill, a man who loved military history, rose to the occasion. Espionage, code breaking, radar, bouncing bombs, the quirkier they seemed the more Churchill was adamant "Let's try it!"  Under his leadership, new technologies were born which led to the Allied victory. Churchill had detractors but he could inspire others and was the right man for England at that time.
-  Joan

$26.00
ISBN-13: 9780307408846
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Crown, 5/2011
William E. Dodd, a college professor was appointed ambassador to  Berlin by FDR in 1933. No one else wanted the job. Hitler had just been appointed chancellor of Germany. Dodd, taking his family along would soon find out he was ill-equipped for the task. The mood in America was isolationist. Politicians seemed more interested in Germany's paying reparations from WW1  than Germany's treatment of its Jewish population. By 1938 the disillusioned Dodd returned to the U.S. Life had become untenable for him and other Americans in Berlin. Dodd's daughter, Martha didn't make it any easier as she was keeping company with all sorts of unsavory characters, including the chief of the Gestapo, a famous German flying ace and a handsome Soviet spy. A fascinating and revealing story of American politics leading up to WWII.
-  Joan

Once Upon a River (Hardcover)

$25.95
ISBN-13: 9780393079890
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: W. W. Norton & Company, 7/2011
Once upon a time there was a young woman named Margo who loved a river almost more than she loved life itself. She was a teenager, a sharp shooter and a loner and was at home in the outdoors. Her father had been murdered, her mama was missing and so Margo took to the Stark River in her boat to find her vanished mother. She found peace and solace on the river. . . up to a point. A story about survival, self preservation and optimism in horrific circumstances. You find yourself hoping "this girl wll be OK".'
-  Joan

$25.95
ISBN-13: 9780307595867
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Knopf, 5/2011

There must be something about the long Nordic winters that inspires authors to come up with some stupendously good crime fiction. My attention never wandered from The Snowman and I finished this 400-page book in two days. A serial killer is murdering women in Norway, always at the first snow of the year and leaving a snowman at the murder scene. Harry Hole, an Oslo police investigator who has problems of his own, is on the case. The book, like Stieg Larsson's trilogy probably isn't for the faint-hearted but this is a very talented author and I recommend it highly.

- Joan


$28.00
ISBN-13: 9781439163528
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Simon & Schuster, 4/2011

Years ago before Julia Child was a famous chef, she and her husband, Paul Child worked for the OSS- the Office of Strategic Services, which morphed into the CIA. A Covert Affair is a fascinating account of the World War II years, undercover assignments in the Far East and the McCarthy hearings in the 1950s which destroyed the careers of more than a few of their close friends in the OSS. Julia Child is better known for her cookbooks, but I liked  the OSS part better. 

-Joan


Red Wolf (Hardcover)

$25.99
ISBN-13: 9781451602067
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Atria Books, 2/2011

This is the fifth book in the Annika Bengtzon series by the author who is described as the "Scandanavian queen of crime writers." In the middle of a freezing winter, a journalist is murdered in a northern Swedish town. Bengtzon, a crime reporter, traces this killing back to a deadly act of sabotage on a military base in 1969. The killer then, is back in town and a series of shocking murders follow. Present-day politicians in Sweden who were young and idealistic in the 1960s become implicated. I liked this suspenseful tale and I liked Annika, doing her best to handle a career, a straying husband and a chaotic household.

- Joan


The Paris Wife (Hardcover)

$20.00
ISBN-13: 9780345521309
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Ballantine Books, 3/2011

Ernest Hemingway was a man of many facets and several wives. Hadley Richardson was the first of his four wives and seems to have been the great love of his life. They spent much of their married life as expatriates in 1920's Paris. It was a marvelous time with the likes of Gertrude Stein, the Fitzgerald's and Ezra Pound but too much was going on and there were other diversions for Hemingway. The marriage didn't last. Hadley Richardson went on to find happiness and lived to be very old. Hemingway didn't. The book is beautifully written and I loved it!

- Joan


$28.95
ISBN-13: 9780385532501
Availability: Special Order - Subject to Availability
Published: Nan A. Talese, 11/2010
In 1975 Antonia Fraser, the British historian and author left her husband and six children to live with Harold Pinter, the playwright who left his wife, actress Vivian Merchant. It was a real scandal, but for the two involved, it was a real love match The book is chock full of amusing anecdotes from the diary Antonia Fraser kept for the almost thirty-five years that she and Harold Pinter were together. London was a happening place back in those days. Pinter died in 2008 and his lady still misses him-hence the title Must You Go? I remember a lot of the personalities in this book. Being over sixty has its benefits!
- Joan

$24.00
ISBN-13: 9781439195024
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Touchstone, 3/2011
Barb is young, divorced and broke. She's renting a small house in upstate New York once lived in by Vladimir Nabokov and his wife and comes across a manuscript possibly written by Nabokov himself. The publisher hems and haws - is it genuine? In the meantime she needs cash and comes up with a marvelous way to raise some quickly and makes the women in Onkwedo very happy. A book to liven up a cold, dark, winter's day. It's very clever and the setting is oddly familiar. Could the author have been raised in Oswego? Oswego-Onkwedo?
- Joan

$26.95
ISBN-13: 9780525951810
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Dutton Adult, 9/2010
2050 seems like a long way into the future but forty years go fast. What do we have to look forward to? Demographic trends, natural resource demand, climate change and globalization all point to the fact that eight nations of the Arctic Rim (including the northern area of the U.S.) will become increasingly prosperous (chalk that up to global warming) while countries closer to the equator will face water shortages, aging populations and crowded megacities. A scientific forecast of our future on this planet and the thought that we in the far north may see a more prosperous future make this a great read.
- Joan

$25.95
ISBN-13: 9781594203336
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Penguin Press HC, The, 2/2012

Americans do seem to go through a lot of trials and tribulation with raising their young ones. The art of a baby sleeping through the night, learning to like grown-up food and behaving in public seems to have been mastered by French parents. No Tiger Mother here but a common sense book well worth reading by parents-to-be and grandparents.