Novels Now

You are browsing the archives of 2009 April.

Jackina Stark
304 pages
Audrey Eaton is a widow. She kisses her husband Tom goodnight and later awakens to find he has not come to bed. She gets up and finds that he has passed away quite unexpectedly in the middle of the night. Overcome by grief at the loss of her husband, Audrey shuts down. She [...]

Hand of Isis by Jo Graham
Pages: 508
First Published: Mar. 23, 2009
Genre: historical fantasy
Rating: 2.5/5
First sentence:
In twilight I approached the doors, and in twilight they stood open for me.
Comments: This is the story of Cleopatra told through the eyes of her sisterly handmaiden. Born just months apart, it is the story of three sisters, all [...]

She entrusted me with her version of this story late in her life. In fact, it’s a long story when all the pieces are added together, and it begins many years before my father jumped from the pedestrian bridge, when my grandmother was young and set out to follow the Tuskee River north. She [...]

Colleen Gleason
353 pages
The Bleeding Dusk is the third book in The Gardella Vampire Chronicles. I have enjoyed this series so much that I have actually delayed reading them. I am so not ready for this series to end but I just bought the last book in the series, As Shadows Fade, this past weekend. Now [...]

There was no other word for it. Moth knew constellations were pictures, but these seemed alive to him, moving together, tumbling, running. And not just one big mess of stars, either. They were separate from each other, moving in their own particular dance. [pg 65]

Starfinder: A Skylords Novel by John Marco
DAW, May [...]

I am not a cat. Beyond the obvious - no fur, no whiskers - I’m not and have never been as fastidious as your average feline, and I’m certainly not the clean freak that my own Musetta is. [from the prologue]
Probable Claws by Clea Simon
Poisoned Pen Press, 2009 (ARC)
Crime Fiction (MYS); 255 pgs
My favorite [...]

Near mid-century when Edward was born, the full moon was years from being the brightest. That would happen - in terms of luminosity and size - in the last month of the century. [Opening of The Brightest Moon of the Century]

The Brightest Moon of the Century by Christopher Meeks
White Whiskers Books, 2009 (ARC)
Fiction; 312 [...]

Life Sentences by Laura Lippman
Pages: 344
First Published: Mar. 10, 2009
Genre: fiction
Rating: 4/5
First sentence:
“Well,” the bookstore manager said, “it is Valentine’s Day.”
Comments: Cassandra Fallows, author of two memoirs and one novel, travels back to her Baltimore neighbourhood to research her new book. Her first memoir centred around the lives of her middle class white family and [...]

Poe: A Life Cut Short by Peter Ackroyd
Brief Lives series
Pages: 160
First Published: Jan, 2009 (UK, 2008/Can, Mar.2009)
Genre: biography, non-fiction
Rating: 3.5/5
First sentence:

On the evening of 26 September 1849, Edgar Allan Poe stopped in the office of a physician in Richmond, Virginia — John Carter — and obtained a palliative for the fever that had beset him.

Comments: [...]

The more she cooked, the more she began to view spices as carriers of the emotions and memories of the places they were originally from and all those they had traveled through over the years. She discovered that people seemed to react to spices much as they did to other people, relaxing instinctively into some, [...]

One More Year: Stories
By Sana Krasikov
Completed April 17, 2009
One More Year was a collection of short stories by new writer, Sana Krasikov. In this book, Krasikov introduced us to memorable characters through eight stories – each focused on Russians and their experiences in America and their homeland.
Each short story dropped the reader in the middle [...]

The Glister by John Burnside
Pages: 228
First Published: March 10, 2009
Genre: horror, thriller
Rating: 3/5
First sentence:
In the beginning, John Morrison is working in his garden.
Comments: Innertown, located somewhere on the coast of Britain, has been more like a ghost town since the chemical plant closed down years ago. Since them most people who worked there have [...]

Alligator Bayou by Donna Jo Napoli
Pages: 280
First Published: Mar. 10, 2009
Genre: YA, historical fiction
Rating: 4/5
First sentence:
The night is so dark, I can barely see my hands.
Comments: This is a coming of age story of one Italian immigrant boy, Calogero, of uncertain age until the end of the book where we can figure he is about [...]

Here’s what I need to confess about Peter and me: We were not exactly in love anymore. After fifteen years and three children together, we were often other places besides in it. We were under it, sometimes. Or above it. Or against it. Or in arms’ reach of it. Or in shouting distance of it. [...]

The Blue Notebook
By James A. Levine
Completed April 11, 2009
The Blue Notebook was one of the most eloquent but haunting books I have read in a long time. It’s the story of Batuk, a 15-year-old prostitute, whose father sold her into sexual slavery when she was nine. Living in a brothel in India, Batuk took up [...]

The Redeemer by Jo Nesbo
Harry Hole, Book 6
Translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett
Pages: 457
First Published: 2005 (Norway), Mar, 10 2009 UK/Can
Genre: crime fiction, mystery
Rating: 4.5/5
First sentence:

She was fourteen years old and sure that if she shut her eyes tight and concentrated she could see the stars through the roof.

Comments: One evening during Christmas a [...]

Hillary Jordan
336 pages
It’s hard to say that I loved a book that deals with such tough subject matter as prejudice, hatred, and violence but when the author is so skilled in evoking emotion, you gotta love it.
When Laura McAllen’s husband Henry drops the bombshell on her that they are leaving her city home and all [...]

Lisa McMann
248 pages
Janie Hannagan is back in Lisa McMann’s sequel to Wake which I reviewed last month. There is reportedly a sexual predator at Fieldridge High and Janie and Cabe are assigned to figure out who it is. Janie is also given some more information about her role as a dream catcher and what the [...]

Carefully, delicately, she caught the end of the paper with her thumbnail and withdrew it slowly from the shaft. It looked like a miniature parchment, tightly rolled into a tub. She laid the key in her lap and held the parchment up to the lamp, unrolling the crisp, brittle slip one millimeter at a time. [...]

To Tricia and her coworkers, my mother is not entirely human - not a daughter, not a mother, not a wife. Her past wiped out, she is just another sack of flesh, dehumanized. She has become a freak. Staff members put food in Ellen’s mouth, strip clothes off her body, dress her and lay her [...]