Contemporary Fiction Recent Picks

May 2009

The underlined titles will take you directly to our catalogue.
Some featured items are linked via a book cover to enable you to read more reviews.

Security, Stephen Amidon. c(2009)
"There isn't much crime in Stoneleigh, Massachusetts, it is a college town, a mountain getaway for the quietly rich, where the average burglar alarm is set off by foraging wildlife. So when Edward Inman, owner of Stoneleigh Sentinel security, is alerted by a late-night alarm from the home of Doyle Cutler, one of his wealthiest clients, Edward thinks nothing of it, until a local student, Mary Steckl, claims that she was sexually assaulted at Cutler's house that same night. Edward soon finds himself drawn to Mary's story, and discovers the town he thought he knew is one filled with secret lives, suspicion and sexual hysteria." (Amazon)

The winner stands alone, by Paulo Coelho. (2009)
"This novel about shallowness, greed and celebrity worship is set during the Cannes International Film Festival and the entire action plays out over 24 hours. Igor is a wealthy Russian businessman. His wife Ewa left him two years ago and Igor has never really come to terms with their break up, especially as Ewa is now remarried to a famous fashion designer, Hamid Hussein. Igor is insanely jealous and when Ewa left him he told her that he would destroy 'whole worlds' in order to get her back, and he intends to keep his promise. Igor has followed Ewa and her new husband to Cannes and his plans to cause as much violence and destruction as possible until Ewa realises how much he loves her and comes back to him." (Amazon)

The believers, by Zoe Heller. (2008)
"When Audrey makes a devastating discovery about her husband, New York radical lawyer Joel Litvinoff, she is forced to re-examine everything she thought she knew about their forty-year marriage. Joel's children will soon have to come to terms with this unsettling secret themselves but, for the meantime, they are trying to cope with their own dilemmas. Rosa, a disillusioned revolutionary, is grappling with a newfound attachment to Orthodox Judaism. Karla, an unhappily married social worker, is falling in love with an unlikely suitor at the hospital where she works. Adopted brother Lenny is back on drugs again. In the course of battling their own demons and each other, every member of the family is called upon to decide what, if anything, they still believe in." (Book cover)

An equal stillness, by Francesca Kay. (2009)
"Jennet Mallow was born in Yorkshire in the 1920s, as she becomes a young woman she finds her interest in art and creativity alienates her from her family. She moves to London in search of a more exciting life and finds it in her new environment and in the handsome and enigmatic figure of the painter David Heaton. When Jennet falls pregnant, her parents more or less force the two to marry. In the post-war austerity of the 1940s, the young couple struggles to make ends meet and Jennet finds that her home life is gradually eroding everything she has fought to achieve. Aware that David is becoming increasingly reliant on drink and tired of the dank and drab bedsit in which they live, Jennet suggests they move to Spain. There, the bright blue skies, warm air and sunlit beaches give the couple and their children a new lease of life. Jennet begins to paint again and an agent takes an interest in her work. But as Jennet's own career begins to take off, her relationship with David sours and the two enter a destructive spiral with tragic consequences." (Amazon)

The vagrants, Yiyun Li. (2009)
"One day in the spring of 1979, Gu Shan is executed for her loss of faith in Communism. She is twenty-eight years old, and has already spent ten years in prison. Her father, an intellectual, is unable to accept what his rebellious daughter has become; her mother is devastated by the loss of her only child. The citizens of her town, including seven-year-old Tong, crippled Nini, the idler Bashi, and beautiful Kai, stage a protest after her death. Over the following six weeks, they go through uncertainty, hope and fear, until eventually the rebellion is brutally suppressed." (Book cover)

Dog on it : a Chet and Bernie mystery, Spencer Quinn. (2009).
"Chet the Jet is a dog who Police Training School, but now he is a dedicated PI and works with Bernie, owner of the Little Detective Agency. The story is told entirely from Chet's point of view, as Chet and Bernie investigate the disappearance of a teenage girl. A well-behaved, gifted student, she didn't arrive home after school and her divorced mother is frantic. Bernie is quick to take the case and he's relieved, if vaguely suspicious, when Madison turns up unharmed with a story that doesn't add up. But when she disappears for a second time in a week, Bernie and Chet aren't taking any chances; they launch a full-blown investigation. Without a ransom demand, they're not convinced it's a kidnapping." (Amazon)

Burnt shadows, Kamila Shamsie. (2009)
"Hiroko Tanaka is twenty-one and in love with the man she is to marry, Konrad Weiss. As she steps onto her veranda, wrapped in a kimono with three black cranes swooping across the back, her world is suddenly and irrevocably altered. In the numbing aftermath of the atomic bomb that obliterates everything she has known, all that remains are the bird-shaped burns on her back, an indelible reminder of the world she has lost. In search of new beginnings, two years later, Hiroko travels to Delhi. It is there that her life will become intertwined with that of Konrad's half sister, Elizabeth, her husband, James Burton, and their employee Sajjad Ashraf, from whom she starts to learn Urdu. With the partition of India, and the creation of Pakistan, Hiroko will find herself displaced once again, in a world where old wars are replaced by new conflicts. But the shadows of history, personal and political, are cast over the interrelated worlds of the Burtons, the Ashrafs, and the Tanakas." (Amazon)

The disappearance, by Efrem Sigel. (2009)
"Fourteen year old Daniel Sandler is adored by his parents, Joshua and Nathalie, an upper middle-class couple who summer in a small rural Massachusetts community. One day, the Sandlers return to their summer home from a mundane errand to find Daniel gone. As the hours pass with no clues to Daniel's whereabouts, their despair and anxiety escalate geometrically, and hopes that their child will return unscathed evaporate. Despite the dogged efforts of local law enforcement, weeks and then months pass without progress in the investigation. The uncertainty takes its toll on Joshua and Nathalie, both as individuals and as a couple and on the community around them." (Amazon)

The reunion, Simone van der Vlugt ; translated by Michele Hutchison. (2009)
"Sabine is twenty-four years old and has just returned to work following a nervous breakdown. Unsurprisingly, life in the office has changed since she left, and Sabine is now the brunt of her colleagues' cruel jokes, as well as the main topic of office gossip. It soon becomes clear, however, that Sabine's problems are far deeper than those she faces daily, at work. Unable to forget her friend Isabel, who went missing when the pair were at school, an approaching class reunion forces Sabine to think about what really happened all those years ago, and why. The terrifying flashbacks that she begins to experience make her all the more determined to solve the mystery of her friend's fate." (Amazon)

A mad desire to dance : a novel, by Elie Wiesel ; translated from the French by Catherine Temerson. (2009)
"Sixty year-old Doriel Waldman, a Polish Jew born in 1936, is on the verge of insanity until Dr. Thérèse Goldschmidt draws him out with his story of surviving the Holocaust in hiding with his father while his mother made a reputation for herself in the Polish resistance, only to die in an accident shortly after the war." (Book cover)

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