Time Is a River/Mary Alice Monroe

Publishers Weekly

Monroe delivers another novel of strong Southern women, and though this one has its share of weak moments, the author's love for her characters is palpable throughout. Mia Landan, a cancer survivor, returns to Charleston after a fly-fishing retreat and finds her husband in bed with another woman. Shocked, Mia rushes back to the mountains where she'd been fishing and seeks the help of fly fisherman Belle Carson, who offers her the use of a ramshackle cabin for the summer. Upon Mia's first trip into town, she learns why the cabin looks like it hasn't been opened in years-it's where Kate Watkins, Belle's grandmother, allegedly murdered her lover. But after Mia conveniently finds Kate's diary tucked away in the cabin, she becomes determined to get to the bottom of things, despite Belle's warnings not to stir up the mud. Through a series of occasionally contrived diary entries, flashbacks and folksy recollections from locals, the narrative juxtaposes Kate's story with Mia's self-discovery, and while the predictable ending results from implausibly convenient plot twists, Monroe's fans will still enjoy the author's spin on love, mystery and the power of self-determination. (July 2008)

Also by this author:

The Book Club

Publishers Weekly

Monroe's new novel opens as five friends, all members of a monthly book club, face turning points in their lives. Eve's husband dies suddenly, shattering her comfortable lifestyle, while Midge's mother makes an unannounced and unwelcomed reappearance. Annie finally feels ready to have a child, only to find her health and her marriage in jeopardy. Gabriella strains to make ends meet after her husband is laid off; Doris slides into depression as she tries to deny signs of her husband's infidelity. Sometimes close to and sometimes at odds with each other, the friends struggle to face harsh realities and, in the process, gain new independence. The actual book club of the title plays an oddly small role in this celebration of friendship and growth--the books the club reads are mentioned only briefly and often seem irrelevant to the women's struggles. Still, Monroe offers up believable characters in a well-crafted story.

Songs Without Words/Ann Packer

From www.bn.com:

Synopsis

Liz and Sarabeth were girlhood neighbors in the suburbs of Northern California, brought as close as sisters by the suicide of Sarabeth's mother. In the decades that followed, their relationship remained a source of continuity and strength. But when Liz's adolescent daughter enters dangerous waters, the women's friendship takes a devastating turn, forcing Liz and Sarabeth to question their most deeply held beliefs about their connection. From the bestselling author of The Dive from Clausen's Pier, Songs Without Words is the gripping story of a lifelong friendship pushed to the breaking point.

Almost Moon/Alice Sebold

From www.bn.com:

Synopsis

"When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily."

So begins The Almost Moon, Alice Sebold's astonishing, brilliant, and daring new novel. A woman steps over the line into the unthinkable in this unforgettable work by the author of The Lovely Bones and Lucky.

For years Helen Knightly has given her life to others: to her haunted mother, to her enigmatic father, to her husband and now grown children. When she finally crosses a terrible boundary, her life comes rushing in at her in a way she never could have imagined.

Unfolding over the next twenty-four hours, this searing, fast-paced novel explores the complex ties between mothers and daughters, wives and lovers; the meaning of devotion; and the line between love and hate. It is a challenging, moving, gripping story, written with the fluidity and strength of voice that only Alice Sebold can bring to the page.

About the Author
Alice Sebold is the bestselling author of The Lovely Bones and Lucky: A Memoir. She lives in California with her husband, the novelist Glen David Gold.

The Quilter's Apprentice/Jennifer Chiaverini

Predictable. Amateurish. Spawned about twenty sequels and companion books that include volumes with recipes and quilt patterns. This story center's around a quilting group that gathers weekly to share tales of life, love etc. Yada, yada, yada. Similar in format to The Friday Night Knitting Club and The Knitting Circle. The story was good but it was sparsely written. Publisher's Weekly says of Chiaverini "her prose is merely serviceable and the dialogue is stilted." Skip it unless there's nothing else available.

Frog Prince/Jane Porter

Lighter than air. A girl from Fresno gets divorced, moves to San Fransisco and gets a job in event planning.

The Last Summer of You and Me/Ann Brashares

The definition of summer reading. And it takes place on New York's Fire Island.

Garden Spells/Sarah Addison Allen

Publishers Weekly

Two gifted sisters draw on their talents to belatedly forge a bond and find their ways in life in Allen's easygoing debut novel. Thirty-four-year-old Claire Waverley manifests her talent in cooking; using edible flowers, Claire creates dishes that "affect the eater in curious ways." But not all Waverley women embrace their gifts; some, including Claire's mother, escape the family's eccentric reputation by running away. She abandoned Claire and her sister when they were young. Consequently, Claire has remained close to home, unwilling to open up to new people or experiences. Claire's younger sister, Sydney, however, followed in their mother's footsteps 10 years ago and left for New York, and after a string of abusive, roustabout boyfriends, returns to Bascom, N.C., with her five-year-old daughter, Bay. As Sydney reacquaints herself with old friends and rivals, she discovers her own Waverley magic. Claire, in turn, begins to open up to her sister and in the process learns how to welcome other possibilities. Though Allen's prose can lean toward the pedestrian and the romance subplots feel perfunctory, the blending of horticultural folklore, the supernatural and a big dollop of Southern flavor should find favor with a wide swath of readers.

The Birth House/Ami McKay

Publishers Weekly

Canadian radiojournalist McKay was unable to ferret out the life story of late midwife Rebecca Steele, who operated a Nova Scotia birthing center out of McKay's Bay of Fundy house in the early 20th century; the result of her unsatisfied curiousity is this debut novel. McKay writes in the voice of shipbuilder's daughter, Dora Rare, "the only daughter in five generations of Rares," who as a girl befriends the elderly and estranged Marie Babineau, long the local midwife (or traiteur), who claims to have marked Dora out from birth as her successor.

After initial reluctance and increasingly intensive training, 17-year-old Dora moves in with Marie; on the eve of Dora's marriage to Archer Bigelow, Marie disappears, leaving Dora her practice. A difficult marriage, many difficult births, a patient's baby thrust on her to raise without warning and other crises (including WWI and the introduction of "clinical" birthing methods) ensue.

Period advertisments, journal entries and letters to and from various characters give Dora's voice context. The book is more about the texture of Dora's life than plot, and McKay handles the proceedings with winning, unsentimental care. (Sept.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Peony in Love/Lisa See

Publishers Weekly

Set in 17th-century China, See's fifth novel is a coming-of-age story, a ghost story, a family saga and a work of musical and social history. As Peony, the 15-year-old daughter of the wealthy Chen family, approaches an arranged marriage, she commits an unthinkable breach of etiquette when she accidentally comes upon a man who has entered the family garden. Unusually for a girl of her time, Peony has been educated and revels in studying The Peony Pavilion, a real opera published in 1598, as the repercussions of the meeting unfold. The novel's plot mirrors that of the opera, and eternal themes abound: an intelligent girl chafing against the restrictions of expected behavior; fiction's educative powers; the rocky path of love between lovers and in families. It figures into the plot that generations of young Chinese women, known as the lovesick maidens, became obsessed with The Peony Pavilion, and, in a Werther-like passion, many starved themselves to death. See (Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, etc.) offers meticulous depiction of women's roles in Qing and Ming dynasty China (including horrifying foot-binding scenes) and vivid descriptions of daily Qing life, festivals and rituals. Peony's vibrant voice, perfectly pitched between the novel's historical and passionate depths, carries her story beautifully-in life and afterlife. (July)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Although it took me a few days to get into the story once I was hooked I found myself racing to the end. I loved this book.

Empress Orchid/Anchee Min

Empress Orchid sweeps readers into the heart of ancient China's Forbidden City to tell the fascinating story of a young concubine who becomes the nation's last empress. Min introduces the beautiful Tzu Hsi, known as Orchid, and weaves an epic of a country girl who seized power through seduction, murder, and endless intrigue. When China is threatened by enemies, she alone seems capable of holding the country together.

Much like Lisa See's Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, I devoured this in three days. 'Nuf said?

The Ghost at the Table/Suzanne Berne

Sisters, living and dead, loom large in Berne's tale of family secrets unraveled. Cynthia Fiske writes a series of historical fiction for girls, depicting the lives of remarkable women through the eyes of their slightly less-remarkable sisters. An invitation to her own sister's house for Thanksgiving in New England coincides with her need to visit Mark Twain's home in Hartford to research a new novel on the writer's daughters, whose story of a charismatic father and three troubled siblings parallels the Fiskes' history. Complicating the usual holiday tensions is the presence of their elderly father, once brash and manipulative, now disabled and facing a divorce from his much-younger wife. As the family struggles with generations of dysfunction and unspoken secrets, including the mysterious death of their mother decades earlier, Cynthia rebels by sharing the most sordid details of the long-gone Clemens family. Although she is nearing middle age, her feelings of isolation and rejection that began in childhood have left her a perpetual adolescent in relation to her family.

The Friday Night Knitting Club/Kate Jacobs

Between running her Manhattan yarn shop, Walker & Daughter, and raising her 12-year-old biracial daughter, Dakota, Georgia Walker has plenty on her plate in Jacobs's debut novel. But when Dakota's father reappears and a former friend contacts Georgia, Georgia's orderly existence begins to unravel. Her support system is her staff and the knitting club that meets at her store every Friday night, though each person has dramas of her own brewing.

I have to admit that I was drawn to this title mostly because of having read Ann Hood's The Knitting Circle. I found Hood's book the better of the two as The Friday Night Knitting Club had more of a soap opera feel to it and ended rather abruptly I thought.

Astrid and Veronika/Linda Olsson

This debut novel recounts the unusual and unexpected friendship that develops between two women. Veronika, a young writer from New Zealand, rents a house in a small Swedish village as she tries to come to terms with a recent tragedy while also finishing a novel. Her arrival is silently observed by Astrid, an older, reclusive neighbor who slowly becomes a presence in Veronika's life, offering comfort in the form of companionship and lovingly prepared home-cooked meals. Set against a haunting Swedish landscape, Astrid & Veronika is a lyrical and meditative novel of love and loss.

Ordinary Life:Stories/Elizabeth Berg

Berg is one of my favorite authors and this compilation of short stories doesn't disappoint. I particularly enjoyed Martin's Letter to Nan and the title story, Orinary Life: A Love Story. The first is the result of readers' queries to the author about characters from an earlier novel, Pull of the Moon one I really enjoyed. The latter is funny and touching at the same time.

Diagnosis Love/Maggie Leffler

From the Publisher

Dr. Holly Campbell is trying to outrun the symptoms of her life: her grief over her mother’s recent death, her chronic missteps at love, and, most of all, the doubts she’s had about her career since she started resenting her patients for being sick. So answering an ad for a residency program in rural England seems like the perfect escape.

By leaving home, Holly is following in her mother’s footsteps. But while her mother fled to medical school on Grenada, Holly has come to an odd little English hospital–where fate intervenes. For Holly no sooner learns that practicing medicine in England is like driving on the wrong side of the road than her twin brother’s runaway fiancée shows up on her doorstep, her grade-school crush turns up in her dormitory, and her mother’s old lover appears at lunch. How can Holly cure their ailments if she can’t even diagnose her own? Filled with the heartbreaking and healing powers of love, The Diagnosis of Love is the witty, warm, perceptive tale of a young doctor colliding with the past–and choosing her own future.

After purchasing a couple of books that haven't hooked me yet, I turned to the library catalog new purchase list for incentive. The title intrigued me and so far it is interesting enough to wile away these dog days of summer.

Abide In Me/Elizabeth Strout

From the Publisher
In the late 1950s, in the small town of West Annett, Maine, a minister struggles to regain his calling, his family, and his happiness in the wake of profound loss. At the same time, the community he has served so charismatically must come to terms with its own strengths and failings-faith and hypocrisy, loyalty and abandonment-when a dark secret is revealed.
Tyler Caskey has come to love West Annett, "just up the road" from where he was born. The short, brilliant summers and the sharp, piercing winters fill him with awe-as does his congregation, full of good people who seek his guidance and listen earnestly as he preaches. But after suffering a terrible loss, Tyler finds it hard to return to himself as he once was. He hasn't had The Feeling-that God is all around him, in the beauty of the world-for quite some time. He struggles to find the right words in his sermons and in his conversations with those facing crises of their own, and to bring his five-year-old daughter, Katherine, out of the silence she has observed in the wake of the family's tragedy.
A congregation that had once been patient and kind during Tyler's grief now questions his leadership and propriety. In the kitchens, classrooms, offices, and stores of the village, anger and gossip have started to swirl. And in Tyler's darkest hour, a startling discovery will test his congregation's humanity-and his own will to endure the kinds of trials that sooner or later test us all.

This one is slow going. Started a few weeks ago, I have found the characters difficult to get close to.

The Knitting Circle/Ann Hood

From the Publisher

After the sudden loss of her only child, Stella, Mary Baxter joins a knitting circle in Providence, Rhode Island, as a way to fill the empty hours and lonely days, not knowing that it will change her life. Alice, Scarlet, Lulu, Beth, Harriet, and Ellen welcome Mary into their circle despite her reluctance to open her heart to them. Each woman teaches Mary a new knitting technique, and, as they do, they reveal to her their own personal stories of loss, love, and hope. Eventually, through the hours they spend knitting and talking together, Mary is finally able to tell her own story of grief, and in so doing reclaims her love for her husband, faces the hard truths about her relationship with her mother, and finds the spark of life again.

More good summer reading. Interesting portrait of the trials and tribulations of a group of strong and colorful women.

Sleep Toward Heaven/Amanda Eyre Ward

From the Publisher

Amanda Eyre Ward's debut novel is an intimate portrait of three women whose lives collide during a brutal Texas summer.

In Gatestown, Texas, twenty-nine-year-old Karen Lowens awaits her execution with a host of convicted serial killers on death row. In Manhattan, Dr. Franny Wren, also twenty-nine, tends to a young cancer patient, and resists the urge to run from her fiancé and her carefully crafted life. In Austin, Texas, brassy Celia Mills, a once-vibrant librarian, mourns her murdered husband.

Over the course of the summer, fate pushes these eerily recognizable women together, culminating in a revelation of the possibility of faith, the responsibility of friendship, and the value of life. Sleep Toward Heaven is a luminous story of murder and desire, solitude and grace -- a rare literary page-turner where redemption seems perpetually within arm's reach.

I read this last summer I think. Good summer read that makes you think.

Happiness Sold Separately/Lolly Winston

This was a soap opera and not a very good one at that. I had trouble really sympathizing with the characters. Overall, they were melodramatic and the story was maudlin to begin with. There were times when Elinor seemed more interesting, like when she communed with the tree on her front lawn and spent time with her best friend and next-door neighbor. I'd categorize this as a light read for its writing style, but as I said, the subject matter was a downer.

From the Publisher:

Elinor Mackey has lived her life in perfect order: college, law school, marriage, successful corporate career. But suddenly her world is falling apart. In her late 30s, she's discovered that she and her podiatrist husband, Ted, can't have children. When Elinor withdraws from Ted into an interior world of heartbreak and anger, Ted begins an affair with Gina, the nutritionist at their gym--a young woman with an oddball son who adores Ted. Meanwhile, Elinor falls in love with the oak tree in her front yard, spreading out her sleeping bag to sleep under the stars. Gina's jealous ex-boyfriend--a charming alcoholic with a mean streak--becomes a dark presence as his passion turns to violence. Ted, who may be the only one who can help Gina and her son, suddenly finds himself in love with two women at the same time. In the tradition of Anne Tyler, John Cheever, and Tom Perotta, Winston's second novel looks beyond the manicured surface of suburbia to a world of loss, longing, lust, and betrayal.

Author Biography: LOLLY WINSTON lives in Los Gatos, California.

Skylight Confessions/Alice Hoffman

I've been a huge Alice Hoffman for years. Open this book and by the time you finish the first page you are transported. Hoffman's style is mesmerizing. This story kept me captivated though the ending was somewhat unsatisfying. Yet it is perhaps Hoffman's goal that we are left to speculate what ultimately happens to the story's final generation.

From the Publisher

A stunning new novel about three generations of a family haunted by love from the bestselling author of Practical Magic and Here on Earth.

Arlyn Singer believes in destiny and in love.

But fate seems to be playing a trick on the night when John Moody knocks on her door to ask for directions. Opposites who cannot understand each other, they are drawn to one another even when it's clear they're bound to bring each other grief. Their marriage is dangerous territory, tracing a map no one should follow. It leads them and their children to the Connecticut countryside, the avenues in Manhattan, the blue waters of the Long Island Sound, all in a search for family and identity.

There is Sam, the brilliant explosive artist who is drawn to self-destruction and dreams. Blanca, the beautiful loner who tries desperately to protect her brother from his destiny and lives her own life in a world of books. And Will, the grandson, who is left a legacy of broken pieces he needs to put together, an emotional and mysterious puzzle made up of people who don't know the first thing about love.

Here is a family so real, so tragic, so devoted it is as if they have written their own riveting history--a quest for love and truth. Glass breaks, love hurts, and families make their own rules. SKYLIGHT CONFESSIONS is a luminous and elegant work of true originality. No one who reads this novel will ever forget it or look at their own family in quite the same way.

About the Author: Alice Hoffman is the bestselling author of 18 acclaimed novels, including The Ice Queen, Practical Magic, Here on Earth, The River King, Blue Diary, Illumination Night, Turtle Moon, Seventh Heaven, and At Risk. She lives outside Boston.