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Cold Sassy tree
Olive Ann Burns.
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391 p. ; 24 cm.
Modern times come to a conservative Southern town in 1906 when the proprietor of the general store elopes with a woman half his age, and worse yet, a Yankee. The one thing you can depend on in Cold Sassy, Georgia, is that word gets around - fast.
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The color of water : a Black man's tribute to his white mother
James McBride.
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xvii, 314 p. : ill. ; 19 cm.
Who is Ruth McBride Jordan? A self-declared "light-skinned" woman evasive about her ethnicity, yet steadfast in her love for her twelve black children. James McBride, journalist, musician and son, explores his mother's past, as well as his own upbringing and heritage, in a poignant and powerful debut, The Color Of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother. The son of a black minister and a woman who would not admit she was white, James McBride grew up in "orchestrated chaos" with his eleven siblings in the poor, all-black projects of Red Hook, Brooklyn. "Mommy," a fiercely protective woman with "dark eyes full of pep and fire," herded her brood to Manhattan's free cultural events, sent them off on buses to the best (and mainly Jewish) schools, demanded good grades and commanded respect. As a young man, McBride saw his mother as a source of embarrassment, worry, and confusion-and reached thirty before he began to discover the truth about her early life and long-buried pain. In The Color of Water, McBride retraces his mother's footsteps and, through her searing and spirited voice, recreates her remarkable story. The daughter of a failed itinerant Orthodox rabbi, she was born Rachel Shilsky (actually Ruchel Dwara Zylska) in Poland on April 1, 1921. Fleeing pogroms, her family emigrated to America and ultimately settled in Suffolk, Virginia, a small town where anti-Semitism and racial tensions ran high. With candor and immediacy, Ruth describes her parents' loveless marriage; her fragile, handicapped mother; her cruel, sexually-abusive father; and the rest of the family and life she abandoned. At seventeen, after fleeing Virginia and settling in New York City, Ruth married a black minister and founded the all-black New Brown Memorial Baptist Church in her Red Hook living room. "God is the color of water," Ruth McBride taught her children, firmly convinced that life's blessings and life's values transcend race. Twice widowed, and continually confronting overwhelming adversity and racism, Ruth's determination, drive and discipline saw her dozen children through college-and most through graduate school. At age 65, she herself received a degree in social work from Temple University. Interspersed throughout his mother's compelling narrative, McBride shares candid recollections of his own experiences as a mixed-race child of poverty, his flirtations with drugs and violence, and his eventual self-realization and professional success. The Color of Water touches readers of all colors as a vivid portrait of growing up, a haunting meditation on race and identity, and a lyrical valentine to a mother from her son. Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award
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The colors of poverty : why racial and ethnic disparities persist
Ann Chih Lin and David R. Harris, editors.
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331 p. : ill., maps ; 25 cm.
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A confederacy of dunces
John Kennedy Toole ; foreword by Walker Percy.
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394 p. ; 21 cm.
Ignatius J. Reilly of New Orleans, --selfish, domineering, deluded, tragic and larger than life-- is a noble crusader against a world of dunces. He is a modern-day Quixote beset by giants of the modern age. In magnificent revolt against the twentieth century, Ignatius propels his monstrous bulk among the flesh posts of the fallen city, documenting life on his Big Chief tablets as he goes, until his maroon-haired mother decrees that Ignatius must work.
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The conscience of a liberal
Paul Krugman.
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viii, 296 p. ; 25 cm.
The renowned and often controversial columnist for the New York Times talks about how he became the last liberal standing in the mainstream capitalist media, and how he goes about his work. Newspaper columns generally require him to look at issues and trends through the lens of a particular recent event, but here he offers broader perspectives, particularly on equality and the lack of it in various aspects of US society. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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Consider the lobster, and other essays
David Foster Wallace.
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343 p. ; 25 cm.
Do lobsters feel pain? Did Franz Kafka have a funny bone? What is John Updike's deal, anyway? And what happens when adult-video starlets meet their fans in person? David Foster Wallace answers these questions and more in essays that are enthralling narrative adventures. Whether covering the three-ring circus of a vicious presidential race, plunging into the wars between dictionary writers, or confronting the World's Largest Lobster Cooker, Wallace projects a quality of thought that is uniquely his and a voice as powerful and distinct as any in American letters.
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A conspiracy of paper : a novel
David Liss.
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442, [13] p. ; 21 cm.
Benjamin Weaver, a Jew and an ex-boxer, is an outsider in eighteenth-century London, tracking down debtors and felons for aristocratic clients. The son of a wealthy stock trader, he lives estranged from his family--until he is asked to investigate his father's sudden death. Thus Weaver descends into the deceptive world of the English stock jobbers, gliding between coffee houses and gaming houses, drawing rooms and bordellos. The more Weaver uncovers, the darker the truth becomes, until he realizes that he is following too closely in his father's footsteps--and they just might lead him to his own grave. An enthralling historical thriller, A Conspiracy of Paper will leave readers wondering just how much has changed in the stock market in the last three hundred years. . . .
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The cookbook collector : a novel
Allegra Goodman.
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394 p. ; 25 cm.
"...a novel about getting and spending, and about the substitutions we make when we can't find what we're looking for..." --inside cover.
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Cooking with Fernet Branca
James Hamilton-Paterson.
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281 p. ; 21 cm.
"A playful book, full of fun and games. There is so much pleasure to be had from Hamilton-Paterson's delight in language and wicked way with unreliable narrators. . . . The book's effect is achieved almost entirely through the comic magnetism of a single character."-"The Times Literary Supplement" "A skillful, highly original writer. . . . The elegant language, witty asides and vivid observations are memorable."-"The Literary Review" "I'm bowled over by the sheer imaginative brilliance of the man."-Barry Humphries "I love his elegant and intensely evocative style: strangeness lifts off his pages like a rare perfume."-J.G. Ballard "A work of comic genius."-"The Independent" "A wonderfully rich alloy of sub-Wildean witticisms and nonsense, "Cooking with Fernet Branca" had me laughing out loud and uproariously."-Ian Thomson, "Sunday Telegraph" Gerald Samper, an effete English snob, has his own private hilltop in Tuscany, where he wiles away his time working as a ghostwriter for celebrities and inventing wholly original culinary concoctions-including ice cream made with garlic and the bitter, herb-based liqueur of the book's title. Gerald's idyll is shattered by the arrival of Marta, on the run from a crime-riddled former soviet republic. A series of hilarious misunderstandings brings this odd couple into ever closer and more disastrous proximity. James Hamilton-Paterson's first novel, "Gerontius", won the Whitbread Award. He is anacclaimed author of nonfiction books, including "Seven-Tenths", "Three Miles Down", and "Playing with Water". He currently lives in Italy.
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The Cornish trilogy
Robertson Davies.
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1136 p. ; 20 cm.
Woven around the pursuits of the energetic spirits and erudite scholars of the University of St. John and the Holy Ghost, this dazzling trilogy of novels lures the reader into a world of mysticism, historical allusion, and gothic fantasy that could only be the invention of Canada's grand man of letters.
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El coronel no tiene quien le escriba
Gabriel García Marquez.
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98 p. ; 21 cm.
"Un viejo coronel retirado espera que la patria le compense por los servicios prestados. Pero la patria permanece muda ..."--P. [4] of cover.
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Cost
Roxana Robinson.
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420 p. ; 24 cm.
THE LUMINOUS AND GRIPPING NEW NOVEL FROM "ONE OF OUR BEST WRITERS" (JONATHAN YARDLEY,THE WASHINGTON POST)When Julia Lambert, an art professor, settles into her idyllic Maine house for the summer, she plans to spend the time tending her fragile relationships with her father, a repressive neurosurgeon, and her gentle mother, who is descending into Alzheimer's. But a shattering revelation intrudes: Julia's son Jack has spiraled into heroin addiction.In an attempt to save him, Julia marshals help from her looseknit clan: elderly parents; remarried ex-husband; removed sister; and combative eldest son. Ultimately, heroin courses through the characters' lives with an impersonal and devastating energy, sweeping the family into a world in which deceit, crime, and fear are part of daily life.Roxana Robinson is the author ofSweetwater, whichBooklistcalled a "hold-your-breath novel of loss and love." Billy Collins praised Robinson as "a master at moving from the art of description to the work of excavating the truths about ourselves."InCost, Robinson tackles addiction and explores its effects on the bonds of family, dazzling us with her hallmark subtlety and precision in evoking the emotional interiors of her characters. The result is a work in which the reader's sense of discovery and compassion for every character remains unflagging to the end, even as the reader, like the characters, is caught up inCost's breathtaking pace.
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