Book Blurb: Lethal Legacy

This book was just delivered to me at my Mom's house today and will be the next novel I pick up after I finish Harriette Simpson Arnow's The Weedkiller's Daughter.

Read the rest of the story of the book's adventures on its way to me below.

And be sure to watch the video of Linda Fairstein touring the rooms of the New York Public Library--the setting of this novel. Awesome.

Lethal Legacy (Alexandra Cooper Novel)
by Linda Fairstein
(c) 2009
Pub. Doubleday
384p

genre: suspense/thriller; mystery; detective

In Linda Fairstein’s outstanding new novel, the New York Public Library houses dazzling treasures—and deadly secrets.

When Assistant District Attorney Alex Cooper is summoned to Tina Barr’s apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, she finds a neighbor convinced that the young woman was assaulted. But the terrified victim, a conservator of rare books and maps, refuses to cooperate with investigators. Then another woman is found murdered in that same apartment with an extremely valuable book, believed to have been stolen. As Alex pursues the murderer, she is drawn into the strange and privileged world of the Hunt family, major benefactors of the New York Public Library and passionate rare book collectors.

Eventually Alex connects their internal family rivalries to a priceless edition of Alice in Wonderland, which also contains the world’s oldest map. Would one of the well-bred Hunts be willing to kill for the treasures? The search for the answer takes Alex and her team on a breathtaking chase from Manhattan’s grandest apartments to the secret tunnels and chambers of the New York Public Library, and finally to a nineteenth-century underground vault. There, in the pitch-black darkness, Alex comes face-to-face with the killer who values money more than life.

Featuring a cast of elite, erudite, and downright eccentric characters, and a complex trail of clues that will have you guessing until the final pages, Lethal Legacy is Linda Fairstein’s most beguiling thriller yet.

Reader's Guide

Read an Excerpt

In this video, Linda Fairstein takes us on a tour of the New York Public Library, focusing on the rooms where major scenes in her novel are set. Included are glimpses of the rooms where the conservators work on repairing and preserving old books and manuscripts with closeups of the instruments they use daily that stimulated the imagination of this murder mystery writer.



Oh, I am so drooling right now. I want to climb inside the screen and walk those marble floors. The New York Public Library is one of the places on my short list of places to see while I can still see.

www.lindafairstein.com


>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Even if I wasn't eager to read this story I would need to pick it up next in spite of all the novels I brought with me to my Mom's and the novels and NF I checked out on my sister's library card just in order to justify having put my husband through the hassle of shipping it to me after he had to use his contacts inside UPS (he works on the shipping dock of a major Southern Oregon corporation) to have the package delivered to him at his folk's house. A package addressed to me with my pen name and to his folk's PO Box, which UPS and informed his folks they were holding at their Medford hub for me to pick up in person with three pieces of ID.

Which would have been hard to do even if I had been in town as I don't have any official picture ID (being legally blind I don't drive and nor am I highly motivated to wait in line at the DMZ for six hours to voluntarily say cheese for a camera. bleh.) and the only other remotely IDish things I have are my library card and my voter's registration card. And none of them use my pen name except in the sense that my pen name is my first and middle name--Joy Renee.

This totally embarrassing situation came about because I won this 'review' copy on Goodreads in late January after entering the drawing for it weeks before that along with about twenty others. I always use my pen name and PO Box online unless I have a very good reason to use my full name and physical address. I don't remember seeing anything on the Goodreads site at the time I entered all those drawings specifying that my physical address was required. I think, if I thought about it at all, that I figured that in the case of a win someone would contact me via email requesting the necessary info.

Antoher thing I was assuming when I entered all those drawings was that I would be safely back at home in Phoenix by the time the contests closed. Ha. I'm still here in Longview, Washington helping out in the care of my Mom as she recoveres from the broken hip and the minor stroke brought on by the hip surgery she incurred in late November. And it looks like I'll be here through March. I'm nurturing some hope that I can be home for Easter though I haven't even checked to see which week that falls on this year.

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Book Blurb: Globality

Globality: Competing with Everyone from Everywhere for Everything By Hal Sirkin, Jim Hemerling, Arindam Bhattacharya
(c) 2008
Business Pluss
304p

Globalization is about Americans outsourcing product development and services to other countries. Globality is the next step, where rapidly developing economies from around the world are now competing with us head to head. The authors present a strong case that the economic climate in which we have lived is going to change in unprecedented ways.

I've been interested in the global aspects of the economy ever since my husband got hired by a Silicon Valley start up whose home office was in India and most of whose top management positions were filled by men and women from India. While we lived there I was fascinated to see all the many nations represented by those living in our neighborhood, riding the bus, walking the street, eating with their families at the next table and so forth.

I identified by accent, language, dress or conversation people from Japan, Korea, several Latin American countries, Canada, Australia, China, several Middle East and several African countries. I knew I was witnessing some kind of phenomena and started noticing titles at the library about globalization that seemed to be relevant so I began reading about that in a casual way. But my casual interest was soon to become highly focused.

We were living in the Silicon Valley when the tech bubble burst and that company had to close all its U. S. branches putting Ed out of a job. There is nothing like loosing the only paycheck in the family to focus your attention. So when we got settled again here in Oregon, I began to study economics in a systematic way at the University of the Public Library. This book will go into the mix and, I believe, its subject could not be more relevant to the recent headlines

Read an excerpt.

As announced in this post, this is the twelfth and last of twelve Book Blurbs I plan to do for the review copies I received from Hachette books in August. There will also be more substantial book reviews for each of them as either Ed or I read them.

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Book Blurb: rush home road

rush home road
A novel
By Lori Lansens

When 5-year old Sharla Cody is dumped on the doorstep of Addy Shadd, a 70-year old woman living in a trailer park, Addy does not know how completely her life is about to change. She's hardly used to company and the troubled Sharla is not the sweet, beautiful angel she had envisioned. Over time, Addy and Sharla form a bond that neither of them expected-and Sharla begins to undergo a transformation under Addy's patient and loving care. But much to Addy's surprise and dismay, Sharla's presence brings back memories of her own tumultuous childhood. As she reminisces about her days growing up in Rusholme, a town settled by fugitive slaves in the mid 1800s, she remembers her family and her first love and confronts the painful experience that drove her away from home, never to return.
Brilliantly structured and achingly lyrical, this beautiful first novel by the award-winning author of The Girls tells the story of two unlikely people thrown together who transform each other's lives forever.

I got lost for two hours while previewing this book for this post. Lost in the story, dipping in here and there and finally succumbing to reading the the entire first chapter and then the author interview and discussion questions in the reader's guide in the back of the book. The reader's guide is also available at the Hachette site. And I also read the brief excerpt of Lansens' second novel, The Girls, tucked into the very back of the book and based on that headed straight to our library's online catalog to see if we have it. Not only do we have it, but we have it also in large print which was the deciding factor for ordering it immediately even though I've already got more than enough books checked out with nearly as many ordered. Finding a large print copy of something I'm eager to read right now is a huge bonus because I've been having significant eye-strain issues for the past week or two.

I'm so tempted to set everything else aside and devote the next several days to this story. I could even consider it prep work for the NaNo novel project I described in yesterday's post since this story is set in a trailer park in a rural community--though in Ontario, Canada it seems little different in atmosphere from the one I live in here in Oregon, USA.

As announced in this post, this is the eleventh of twelve Book Blurbs I plan to do for the review copies I received from Hachette books in August. There will also be more substantial book reviews for each of them as either Ed or I read them.

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Book Blurb: Right Livelihoods

Reminder: Enter the drawing for Josh Henkin's Matrimony on Monday's post. Read the rules for valid entries carefully. More than one has not given me contact info. Contest ends at NOON Pacific Coast Time Monday, September 29, 2008

Right Livelihoods: Three Novellas
by Rick Moody
(c) 2007
Hardback: Little Brown & Co
Trade Paperback: Back Bay Books (August 2008)
240p

At the center of The Omega Force, which opens RIGHT LIVELIHOODS, is a buffoonish former government official in rocky recovery. Dr. "Jamie" Van Deusen is determined to protect his habitat--its golf courses (and Bloody Marys), pizza places (and beers) from "dark complected" foreign nationals. His patriotism and wild imagination are mainly fueled by a fall off the wagon. The collection's second novella, K & K, concerns a lonely young office manager at an insurance agency, where the office suggestion box is yielding unpleasant messages that escalate to a scary pitch. Ellie Knight- Cameron's responses to these random diatribes illuminate the toll that a lack of self-awareness can take. The book ends with a cataclysmic vision of New York City, after the leveling of 50 square blocks of Manhattan. Four million have died. Albertine, the "street name for the buzz of a lifetime," is a mindaltering drug that sets The Albertine Notes in motion. Only Rick Moody could lead us to feel affection for the various misguided, earnestly striving characters in this alternately unsettling and warm trio of stories.

I like eccentric characters and there are plenty of those in these three stories, beginning with their rather unreliable POV protagonists but it is the questions in the Reading Group Guide that really draw me to these stories:

1. How do you think the Buddhist concept of “right livelihood” (making a living without harming others) plays out in these three novellas?....

2. In what ways are the three novellas linked by a post- 9/11 national psychology?...

3. Which did you respond to most: the realistic rendition of post- traumatic emotions in “K&K”? The seriocomic approach of “The Omega Force”? Or the futuristic elements of “The Albertine Notes”?

6. How is reading and misreading key to each story? Meaning and misunderstanding?

That last one intrigues me a lot because I like stories that make me think. I am also interested in the concepts themselves as I've stated here before: I like thinking about thinking.

Read an excerpt.

As announced in this post, this is the tenth of twelve Book Blurbs I plan to do for the review copies I received from Hachette books last month. There will also be more substantial book reviews for each of them as either Ed or I read them.

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Book Blurb: Barefoot

Barefoot: A Novel
by Elin Hilderbrand
(c) 2007 (Trade Paberback release June 2008)
Little, Brown & Co. --Hardback
Back Bay Books --Trade
403p

Three women arrive at the local airport, observed by Josh, a Nantucket native home from college for the summer. Burdened with small children, unwieldy straw hats, and some obvious emotional issues, the women-- two sisters and one friend--make their way to the sisters' tiny cottage, inherited from an aunt. They're all trying to escape from something: Melanie, after seven failed in-vitro attempts, learned her husband was having an affair, and then discovered she's pregnant; Brenda embarked on a passionate affair with an older student that got her fired from her prestigious job as a professor in New York; and her sister Vicki, mother to two small boys, has been diagnosed with lung cancer. Soon Josh is part of the chaotic household, acting as babysitter, confidant, and, eventually, lover.

Let me count the known elements of this story that are hooks for me: beaches, babies, sisters, friendship, romance, marriage, motherhood, infidelity, infertility, girl talk, secrets...all seasoned with shakers of sun, sand and sea.

As announced in this post, this is the ninth of twelve Book Blurbs I plan to do for the review copies I received from Hachette books last month. There will also be more substantial book reviews for each of them as either Ed or I read them.

Don't forget to check back next week for the giveaway contest for Josh Henkin's Matrimony.

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Book Blurb: The Wheel of Darkness

The Wheel of Darkness
By Douglas Preston, & Lincoln Child
(c) 2007; Mass Paperback released July 2008
Vision
492p

FBI Special Agent Pendergast is taking a break from work to take Constance on a whirlwind Grand Tour, hoping to give her closure and a sense of the world that she's missed. They head to Tibet, where Pendergast intensively trained in martial arts and spiritual studies. At a remote monastery, they learn that a rare and dangerous artifact the monks have been guarding for generations has been mysteriously stolen. As a favor, Pendergast agrees to track and recover the relic. A twisting trail of bloodshed leads Pendergast and Constance to the maiden voyage of the Britannia, the world's largest and most luxurious ocean liner---and to an Atlantic crossing fraught with terror.

I read Relic, the very first of the Preston/Child collaborations, a few years back and remember being disappointed that there weren't anymore yet. I don't know why I let ten new titles by this amazing duo go past me over the years. Maybe it has something to do with how rarely I browse library shelves lately, having taken to ordering my selections via the online catalog and picking them up in hurried stops at the small nearby branch of our fifteen branch library system. Whatever the reason, I was pleased to find this among the selection Hachette offered me for review. I read the excerpt offered at Hachette and was drawn right in by all the elements I love in this genre. Or is it a genre blend? It has all the elements of mysteries, thrillers, suspence, horror, paranormal. Their stories, at least the two I've been exposed to now, are woven into a fabric containing threads of ancient myth, ancient mysteries, ancient artifacts unearthed and ancient evils released.

Now I need to decide if I am going to read this one before going back to catch up with the previous ones--at least the ones featuring Agent Pendergass, of which there have been six since Relic. In an afterward Preston and Child say that The Wheel of Darkness is a stand alone tale so I do have a choice and this one is right here.

As announced in this post, this is the eighth of twelve Book Blurbs I plan to do for the review copies I received from Hachette books last month. There will also be more substantial book reviews for each of them as either Ed or I read them.

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Book Blurb: North River

North River: A Novel
By Pete Hamill
(c) 2007; 2008 Trade paperback release
Back Bay an imprint of Little, Brown and Co.
341p

One snowy New Year's Day, in the midst of the Great Depression, Dr. James Delaney--haunted by the slaughters of the Great War, and abandoned by his wife and daughter--returns home to find his three-year-old grandson on his doorstep, left by his mother in Delaney's care. Coping with this unexpected arrival, Delaney hires Rose, a tough, decent Sicilian woman with a secret in her past. Slowly, as Rose and the boy begin to care for the good doctor, the numbness in Delaney begins to melt. Recreating 1930s New York with the vibrancy and rich detail that are his trademarks, Pete Hamill weaves a story of honor, family, and one man's simple courage that no reader will soon forget.

This was another of the Hachette books with an excerpt available which I read before the review copy was sent to me and now I can't wait to get back to it. I found the scene between grandfather and grandson so touching. They were strangers to each other and did not even speak the same language. I fell in love with both of them through that scene. The tenderness of the grandfather in spite of the stress he was under on so many fronts and the courage and curiosity of the toddler who, waking in the care of a strange man was yet trusting enough to accept his new circumstance with enough serenity that he was able to learn to communicate both his sorrow about his missing Mama and his wonder at his first sight of snow.

This was all done with a straightforward prose with the POV solidly in the grandfather, Dr. James Delaney's mind. Where I believe it stays throughout the novel except for the cases of some letters. The prose is stripped of all sentimentallity and yet elicits strong emotion with every scene. Well, you can see for yourself:

As announced in this post, this is the seventh of twelve Book Blurbs I plan to do for the review copies I received from Hachette books last month. There will also be more substantial book reviews for each of them as either Ed or I read them.

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Book Blurb: Hooked

Hooked: A Thriller About Love and Other Addictions
by Matt Richtel
(c) 2007
Twelve an Imprint of Hachette Book Group USA
289p (Trade Paperback)

Nat Idle, a San Francisco writer with a medical degree, narrowly survives an explosion in an Internet café after a stranger hands him a note warning him to exit immediately. The handwriting on the note belongs to his deceased girlfriend, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist whom he has obsessively been mourning.
So begins HOOKED, a pop thriller for the Digital Age, written with the force and the pace of an intimate email dispatch you can't stop reading. Each chapter of this novel will keep readers hooked as Nat Idle searches for the love of his life in the midst of manipulation and conspiracy.
Just as previous generations were influenced by movies, today we are becoming hooked on Internet technology, which is changing the way we read, think, and dream. HOOKED vividly illustrates how technology is turning us into a national of addicts. It will make you rethink your relationship with your computer and your mobile phone.

Read an excerpt here.

As someone who sleeps beside her laptop which is connected via WIFI to the net and whose first act upon awaking is to lift the lid to see if there is anything new in her inbox and who feels bereft at those times it isn't there because her husband has borrowed it, I would have an obvious interest in a story whose theme posits that we are all becoming addicts of our electronic gizmos. Which is why I eagerly read the excerpt--the first chapter--available on the Hachette site before my review copy was sent to me and was hooked. Now I'm itching to pick up the book to finish the story but have a few pre-existing commitments to tend to first. And, yeah, the laptop and/or internet are involved in nearly all of them.

As announced in this post, this is the sixth of twelve Book Blurbs I plan to do for the review copies I received from Hachette books this month. There will also be more substantial book reviews for each of them as either Ed or I read them.

My husband, Ed, whose special interests are in programing, data base and website development, is currently reading Hooked and is going to provide a guest post review on Joystory soon.

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Book Blurb: by george

by George: A Novel
by Wesley Stace
(c) 2007
Back Bay Books
400p (trade paperback)

Two years ago, singer-songwriter Wesley Stace blew onto the literary scene with his bold and free-wheeling Dickensian comedy Misfortune. Now, he is back with another wonderfully entertaining and inventive novel. By George is the twisting story of four generations of the curious Fisher family, as told by two boys named George Fisher: one, a schoolboy in the 1970s; the other, a ventriloquist's dummy in the second World War. It's a story of love, loss and family ties, and of two boys separated by years but driven by the same desires: to find a voice, and to be loved.

Read an excerpt

I am especially excited about this book. I had never heard of Wesley Statce before encountering this title on the list that Hachette offered me for review. Once I learned that he was compared to Charles Dickens I was eager to get my hands on either by George or his previous, Misfortune. I was intrigued enough that I went looking for more info. And then I discovered that by George, besides being a well-woven story, was an exploration of the acquisition of voice--both personal and artistic.

Now anyone whose read my blog for long will know that is one of my core issues. Not only does my discipline as a writer give me a natural interest in the artistic voice but I've been in a dedicated search for a sense of empowerment for my personal voice because the fundamenatlist sect I wss raised in not only dictated what was and wasn't correct to think about it essentially shamed me into silience on the grounds of my femaleness being intrinsically untrustworthy. So I am quite interested in how Stace develops this particular theme.

As announced in this post, this is the fifth of twelve Book Blurbs I plan to do for the review copies I received from Hachette books this month. There will also be more substantial book reviews for each of them as either Ed or I read them.

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Book Blurb: The Choice

The Choice
by Nicholas Sparks
(c) 2007 (trade release 2008)
Grand Central Publishing
272p

#1 New York Times bestseller Nicholas Sparks turns his unrivaled talents to a new tale about love found and lost, and the choices we hope we'll never have to make.


Travis Parker has everything a man could want: a good job, loyal friends, even a waterfront home in small-town North Carolina. In full pursuit of the good life - boating, swimming , and regular barbecues with his good-natured buddies -- he holds the vague conviction that a serious relationship with a woman would only cramp his style. That is, until Gabby Holland moves in next door. Spanning the eventful years of young love, marriage and family, THE CHOICE ultimately confronts us with the most heartwrenching question of all: how far would you go to keep the hope of love alive?

My interest in this Sparks story is the same as for his Dear John, the subject of the last blurb I put up. I just love the feeling tone of Sparks' stories. They are usually emotional wringers but don't leave you feeling manipulated like some hanky-honkers. They are emotional because the characters are pitted against challenges that test the mettle of their souls and force them to see what the most important things really are and how trivial what they once deemed important is. And the most important things are always about relationships and the love given and received within them; the sanctuary from life's chaos they provide.

As announced in this post, this is the fourth of twelve Book Blurbs I plan to do for the review copies I received from Hachette books this month. There will also be more substantial book reviews for each of them as either Ed or I read them.

Read more...

Book Blurb: Dear John

Dear John
by Nicholas Sparks
(c) 2006 (paperback release 2008)
Grand Central Publishing
335p (paperback)

An angry rebel, John dropped out of school and enlisted in the Army, not knowing what else to do with his life--until he meets the girl of his dreams, Savannah. Their mutual attraction quickly grows into the kind of love that leaves Savannah waiting for John to finish his tour of duty, and John wanting to settle down with the woman who has captured his heart. But 9/11 changes everything. John feels it is his duty to re-enlist. And sadly, the long separation finds Savannah falling in love with someone else. "Dear John," the letter read...and with those two words, a heart was broken and two lives were changed forever. Returning home, John must come to grips with the fact that Savannah, now married, is still his true love—and face the hardest decision of his life.

I am eager to read this as I've read several of Sparks' novels and loved them all. There is something numinous about his stories. They leave a glow behind in your memory of them. A glow suffused with the hope and love which the characters have opted for in the face of personal heartbreaks that challenge their very souls.

As announced in this post last week, this is the third of twelve Book Blurbs I plan to do for the review copies I received from Hachette books this month. There will also be more substantial book reviews for each of them as either Ed or I read them.

Read more...

Book Blurb: Shoot the Moon

Shoot the Moon
by Billie Letts
(c) 2004
Grand Central Publishing
368p

From one of America's best-loved storytellers - the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller WHERE THE HEART IS - comes her latest national bestseller, a tale of a small Oklahoma town and the mystery that has haunted its residents for years.

In 1972, windswept DeClare, Oklahoma, was consumed by the murder of a young mother, Gaylene Harjo, and the disappearance of her baby, Nicky Jack. When the child's pajama bottoms were discovered on the banks of Willow Creek, everyone feared that he, too, had been killed, although his body was never found.

Nearly thirty years later, Nicky Jack mysteriously returns to DeClare, shocking the town and stirring up long-buried memories. But what he discovers about the night he vanished is more astonishing than he or anyone could have imagine. Piece by piece, what emerges is a story of dashed hopes, desperate love, and a secret that still cries out for justice...and redemption.

I am excited about this one because I absolutely loved Where the Heart Is. That novel had all my favorite elements in a story: quirky or eccentric characters; surprise twists in the story always generated out of the character of the characters: the whole gamut of emotions from laughter to tears to outrage; characters who are irresistible, for whom my heart goes out to as completely as to one of my own family members; and communities with their own eccentricities and struggles against their darker instincts which are transcended by an enlarging of the heart. All of this I have high hopes of encountering in Shoot the Moon.

In an interview about the writing of Shoot the Moon, Letts said, "My greatest hope is that my stories might lead readers to greater acceptance, tolerance, and compassion for one another." This is one of my own hopes for my own stories so it is no wonder that I am drawn to Letts' stories.

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Book Blurb: Trespassers Will Be Baptized

Trespassers Will Be Baptized: The Unordained Memoir of a Preacher's Daughter
By Elizabeth Emerson Hancock
(c) 2008
Center Street
288p

Growing up Southern and Baptist in Eastern Kentucky, Elizabeth Hancock's world revolved around Sunday School, foreign missions projects, revival meetings and of course, the Kentucky Wildcats, who "glorified God through their goal-shattering, soul-shattering play." Hancock chronicles her childhood misadventures with sardonic wit, detailing her and her sister Meg's mischievous - if harmless - abuses of power (stealing Guess jeans from the Africa donation box, or hawking backyard swimming pool baptisms during her neighborhood's annual yard sale) and lovingly recalling the wisdom imparted by her long-suffering parents as they ministered to their unruly flock. TRESPASSERS WILL BE BAPTIZED marks the arrival of a talented new voice in a coming of age story that is by turns comical and affecting.

The explanation for my interest in this book is in my profile and masthead blurb. I am eager to compare Hancock's experience of growing up as a Southern Baptist preacher's daughter with my own experience of growing up in an equally restrictive sect and sub-culture in which daily schedules, every activity and nearly every thought is conceived and constrained in the church's womb.

Just by previewing the book and the promo materials at Hachette Book Group and Hancock's own website, especially her blog, I can tell that she moved from this milieu into the wider world--Harvard and Georgetown studies, Miss Massachusetts 1998--with a great deal more grace than I did. I hope to discover how she survived that culture-shock without losing her sense of self. Of all the ten Hachette Books I will be reading and reviewing in the coming weeks, this one has the most personal meaning to me.

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