This sci-fi novel is based on a video game of the same name. In fact, award-winning author, John Shirley, has written this book to be a prequel to the games. The city of Rapture is a post-WWII utopia gone awry.
Ultra Violet is an artist, but not the one who hung out with Warhol at the Factory. She is also the only library staff member who was a Shakespearean research scholar and a member of the Meat Cutters' Union in the same year.
Story-Wallah
09/06/11
In a time of cultural tension, it is more important than ever to read works by authors with varied experiences and backgrounds. Aside from containing some very good short stories that are enjoyable in their own right, this collection also contains a wealth of insight into a world quite different from our own.
The Ice Chorus
08/28/11
Liselle Dupre is a middle-aged Canadian documentary filmmaker who moves to an Irish coastal town to recover from a painful relationship. Making a documentary about the townspeople opens up Liselle to the truth about her own past.
Tags: film makers, Ireland, relationships
The Beautiful Miscellaneous
08/26/11
A brilliant physicist is disappointed in his profoundly average son. He tries everything to get the boy to show some mathematical or scientific promise, but to no avail. When Nathan is in a severe accident and comes out of a coma with a whole new way of thinking, his father sees an opportunity to turn him into a human guinea pig. An unusual coming of age story that is relatable for anyone who had parents with high expectations.
Tags: Fathers and sons, Savants, Scientist
The Vesuvius Club
08/22/11
Intensely silly and yet unabashedly erudite, The Vesuvius Club weaves together dark humor (with a British accent), saucy romantic encounters and action-packed fight scenes. Written by Mark Gatiss who is one of the contributing writers to the new Doctor Who series and who played Mycroft Holmes in the recent Sherlock series.
Tags: dark humor, Thriller, Victorian
Faith
08/17/11
Art Breen and his mother were abandoned by Art's father when he was just an infant. Mary Breen raised Art on her own until he was about 12 years old and she remarried to Ted McGann. Ted is a tough, manly drinker who is intimidating to delicate, young Art. Mary and Ted have two more children and lead a fairly happy life, even though Ted drinks heavily and is prone to violent outbursts. Art never quite fits in to the McGann family and is taken to a Seminary boarding school for high school. In the priesthood, Art comes into his own. He finds a way to relate to people that he never could access before. He still had a hard time dealing with men, but he found the women and children to be delightful and he delighted them. After a long, successful career at several different parishes, Art is in his fifties when he meets and befriends a young woman with a drug addiction. Kath Conlon has some serious problems and a neglected little boy. Art fears for the boys safety and for Kath's and offers free schooling for the child at the parish school. Kath is happy for the help, and Art arranges for a parishioner to get her a decent, cheap apartment. It comes as a great shock to Art and his family when Kath accuses him of molesting her son. As the story plays out, the accusation tests the faith of each member of Art's family, both in their religion, and each other.
Faith is written from multiple perspectives and spans several decades in the telling. Jennifer Haigh does an excellent job of capturing the feeling of the Irish Catholic experience in Boston. The honest analysis of the crisis of the pedophile priest controversy and how it has impacted the faith and futures of individuals and families is well-worth writing about. Definitely a thought-provoking story.
Tobacco-stained Mountain Goat
08/15/11
If you're a classic film buff who likes Douglas Adams and Dashiell Hammett, here's the book for you. Futuristic Melbourne is the setting for a noir-style mystery filled with movie references.
The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb
08/08/11
At her full adult height Lavinia Warren Bump was 2 feet, 8 inches tall, yet she was a proportional dwarf, meaning she was a "perfect woman in miniature". Melanie Benjamin was inspired by her appearance in the E. L. Doctorow masterwork, Ragtime, to write Lavinia's fictionalized autobiography.
The book traces her life from the Massachusetts farm where she lived a protected life with her family, to her achievement of becoming a school teacher, to her disheartening and sometimes shocking life on a Mississippi riverboat as a performer. Lavinia maintained her dignity and grace through it all. It was her most distinguishing characteristic. She returns home to find that she misses the lime-light, and approaches P. T. Barnum with a business offer. Barnum takes her into his troupe and Lavinia Warren becomes a household name. With a bit of manipulation from Barnum, Lavinia meets and marries the famous General Tom Thumb, who is only a few inches taller than her. The wedding of the tiny people was the event of the year. It even bumped the news of the Civil War off of the front page of the New York Times. They travelled the world together and amassed a fortune. Nonetheless, Lavinia had many hardships to endure.
Any reader interested in P. T. Barnum, or Gilded Age America will enjoy this historical treat. It is rich with detail about the period, including clothes, customs and lifestyles of the rich and famous, such as the Astors and Vanderbilts.
Tags: Dwarfism, Historical Fiction, Side Shows
Stone Upon Stone
08/08/11
Mysliwski is a highly regarded, prize-winning contemporary author of Poland, and this is his first novel to be translated into English. A gritty, realistic epic of one Polish man's journey through the changes that took place in this tumultuous region over the last century.
The Blackberry Bush
08/05/11
Crossing back and forth from Holland, Berlin, and Los Angeles, this book tells the parallel tales of a boy and a girl both born the day the Berlin Wall came down. Although this is tagged as Christian fiction, it is spiritual without knocking the reader over the head with an ideology. A sweet story of hope.