Wellington City Libraries' Fiction Web Page - Previous new fiction books

PREVIOUS FICTION PICKS APRIL/MAY 2011 \| FEBRUARY 2011 \| DECEMBER 2010 \| OCTOBER - NOVEMBER 2010 \| JUNE - JULY 2010 \| APRIL-MAY 2010 \| MARCH 2010 \| DECEMBER 2009 \| SEPTEMBER-NOVEMBER 2009 \| JULY 2009 \| MAY 2009 \| MARCH 2009 \| JANUARY 2009 \| NOVEMBER 2008 \| AUGUST 2008 \| JUN/JULY 2008 \| APRIL 2008 \| FEBRUARY 2008 \| NOVEMBER 2007 \| SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2007 \| JULY/AUGUST 2007 \| MAY/JUNE 2007 \| MARCH/APRIL 2007 \| FEBRUARY 2007 \| DECEMBER 2006 \| OCTOBER 2006 \| AUGUST 2006 \| JULY 2006 \| MAY 2006 \| APRIL 2006 \| FEBRUARY 2006 \| The Da Vinci Code \| PREVIOUS FICTION PICKS
April/May 2011 This month has seen the announcement of the short lists and finalist for four major literary awards. The most prestigious being the fourth Man Booker International Prize. This award recognises one writer for his or her achievement in fiction, and is awarded every two years. The winner, chosen from the 12 finalists, will be announced at the Sydney Writers' Festival in May. The list of finalists can be found at the Man Booker Prize website. The 2011 Commonwealth Writers' Prize winner will also be announced at the Sydney Writers' Festival. After selecting Best Book and Best First Book from the four major Commonwealth regions, the judges will decide on the overall winner. The complete list of titles and authors in contention can be found at Commonwealth Writers' Prize website The I.M.P.A.C. Dublin Award judges have also announced their selected short listed titles and authors, with the winner being announced in June. All the nominations in the 162 long list were made by libraries around the world and this award has become one of the most richest and prestigious for the winning writer. All details of the long and short listed titles and author information can be found at the I.M.P.A.C. Dublin Award website. The Orange Prize for Fiction, celebrating fiction written by a woman, has also released the short list of competing titles and authors. These can be found at Orangeprize.co.uk The overall winner will be announced in June. The following are three novels selected from the short list for the I.M.P.A.C Dublin Literary Award. Of the ten novels that were chosen for this short list, three were by Australian writers. This for a global award is quite exceptional and shows how Australian literature has developed and become highly acclaimed.
	Jasper Jones : a novel is the third publication by Craig Silvey. Set in 1965 it tells the story of Charlie Bucktin, a bookish thirteen year old, who is visited one summer night by Jasper Jones, an outcast in their small mining town. He has come to ask for Charlie's help, and takes him to a secret glade, where Charlie witnesses Jasper's horrible discovery. With his secret Charlie is pushed and pulled by a town closing in on itself in fear and suspicion. During that summer he struggles with family and society, and learns some very hard lessons about truth, himself and other people. This novel was winner of the 2009 Indie Book of the year and shortlisted the following year for two major Australian prizes. Craig Silvey was born in 1982 in Western Australia and is now based in Freemantle. He is a musician, singer and songwriter for an Indie band. His first adult novel Rhubarb was published in 2004 and in 2007 he published a children's book.
	Ransom by David Malouf is the retelling of the last part of Homer's Iliad, set in the final days of the Trojan War. After Achilles withdraws his forces from combat, a move that cripples the Greek army, his best friend, Patroclus, persuades Achilles to let him take the Myrmidons back into combat and to wear Achilles' armour. AfterTrojan king Priam's beloved son, Hector, kills Patroclus, guilt, rage and grief drives Achilles on a frenzied quest for revenge that sees him slay Hector and then tie Hector's corpse to his chariot and drag it around the besieged city. Priam, desperate to stop this desecration decides to visit the enemy camp and offer money in exchange for Hector's body. David Malouf was born in 1934 in Brisbane. He won the 1996 I.M.P.A.C, Dublin Literary Award for his novel Remembering Babylon. He has also been selected as a finalist for the fourth Man Booker International Award for achievement in fiction. Johnno was his first novel published in 1975 and since then has published seven other much acclaimed and awarded novels, five short story collections, eight poetry collections, several works of non-fiction, a play and three libretti.
	After the fire, a still small voice is the debut novel of Evie Wyld. She was born in New South Wales, but has lived most of her adult life in London. She received a BA in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University and then an MA at Goldsmiths University, London. A collection of short stories was published in 2007. After the fire, a still small voice is the story of two Australian men and the shards of trauma that have made up both lives. Frank and Leon live parallel lives: the narratives begin with young Leon's father heading to the Korean War and returning badly damaged, having been in a prison camp. He soon runs away, with Leon's mother giving chase. Later Leon is drafted and faces in Vietnam horrors similar to those that traumatized his father. 40 years later, an adult Frank is living in a decrepit beachfront shack, starting his life over after his girlfriend leaves him. As these two narratives weave around each other, we learn what binds Frank and Leon together, and what may end up keeping them apart.
The following three novels have been selected for the short list of the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction:
	The memory of love is the second published novel by Aminatta Forna and has also be selected as the best book in the African region of the 2011 Commonwealth Writer's Prize. It is set in Sierra Leone at the turn of the twenty-first century. British psychiatrist Adrian Lockheart has fled his failing marriage in England and embarks on a temporary post at a Sierra Leone hospital intending to modernize treatment of the long-neglected schizophrenics, transients, and scarred victims of civil war who walk the hospital grounds. He soon meets his match in the elderly ex-professor Elias Cole, who speaks eloquently of his country's turbulent history, and also of his passion for the wife of a more radically minded colleague whose eventual disappearance Cole may be implicated in. Fate and tragedy intertwine in this stunning and powerful portrait of a country in the aftermath of a decade of civil war. Aminatta Forna was born in 1964 and is of Sierra Leonean and Scottish heritage. She studied Law at University College London and was a Harkness Fellow at the University of California, Berkley. Her first published work in 2003 was a memoir about her childhood in Sierra Leone and her investigation into the conspiracy surrounding her father's death. She has worked for the BBC and is well known for her three African Documentaries. Her first novel Ancestor stones was published in 2006.
	Room : a novel by Emma Donoghue has also been selected as the Best Book for the Caribbean and Canada region of the 2011 Commonwealth Writer's Prize. In 2010 it also won the Rogers Writer's Trust Fiction Prize and the Irish Book Award. Five-year-old Jack and his Ma live, eat, play and sleep in one room, an 11x11 foot space that is their prison. They are captives of the terrifying man Jack calls Old Nick. But as Jack grows older and more curious, it becomes clear that the room will not be able to hold him and Ma forever. When their insular world suddenly expands beyond the confines of their four walls, the consequences are piercing and extraordinary. Emma Donoghue was born in 1969 in Dublin. After receiving her BA at University College Dublin she completed her PhD at the University of Cambridge. She has written four plays, the first published in 1993, short stories, radio dramas, screenplays, literary histories and six other novels, the first Stir-fry was published in 1994.In 1998 she moved to Canada, becoming a Canadian citizen in 2004, and she lives in London, Ontario.
February/March 2011 The beginning of each New Year brings much anticipation and yearning for the coming regular annual literary events, but it will be several months before the first of the 'big prize' awards will announce their judging panels, and weeks later before the announcement of the selected long lists. But one annual literature award has already announced their long list. This is the Best Translated Book Awards, run by The University of Rochester in New York. Their selected long list is available on their on line Newsletter, Three Percent The long list features authors from 19 countries writing in 12 languages. The short list will be announced in March, and the winners in April. Both the wining author and translator receive US $5,000. The United Kingdom, version of this award is the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. This award began in 1990 and ran for five years. In 2001 it was restarted with support from the Arts Council England and in 2011 administration of the prize will now be run by Booktrust. Both the winning author and translator each receive £5,000.The long list for this prize will be announced in March, but previous year's nominations, selection and winners can be found on the Booktrust website. This month we will highlight recently received new translated fiction. All these authors have had previous work published in translation, and some are extremely popular writers. The titles selected here will not only provide enjoyable reading, but will give the reader a new perspective on life, how it was in the past and how it is now, in different arts of the world.
	Operation Napoleon by Arnaldur Indridason is translated from the Icelandic. Best know for his award winning crime novels featuring Detective Erlendur, this novel is his first novel of a different genre to be translated into English, although it was originally published in 1999. Arnaldur Indridason was born in Iceland in 1961, and has worked as a journalist and film critic. His first novel was published in 1997, and although there have been eleven novels in his popular award winning Reykjavik murder mystery series only eight have so far been translated into English. Operation Napoleon is a suspense thriller, moving from modern Iceland to America and Nazi Germany at the end of World War II. In 1999 as the US Army is secretively trying to remove an aeroplane from the Vatnajökull glacier, two young Icelanders become involved, but before they are captured, one of the two contacts his sister, Kristin. She will not rest until she discovers the truth of her brother's fate. Her pursuit puts her in great danger, leading her on a long and hazardous journey in search of the truth about Operation Napoleon.
	Three sisters by Bi Feiyu is translated from the Chinese. Born in 1964 and resident in Nanjing, his first novel The Moon Opera, published in English in 2007 was long listed for the 2008 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Three sisters was selected for the 2010 long list for the Man Asian literary prize. In China, Bi Feiyu has twice won the Lu Xun Literary Prize for his work. Three sisters, at times a humorous novel tells the story of three sisters in the Wang family living in the Wang Family village in rural China. The novel begins in 1971, so they grow up in a post-Cultural Revolution era. The novel is divided into three parts, each part following the development of each sister as they strive to change their lives from what was previously expected of young rural women. One sister uses her dignity, another seductive powers and the third her ruthless ambition for success, all wanting a better future.
	The road : short fiction and articles by the late Vasily Grossman is translated from the Russian. Vasily Grossman was born in 1905 in Russian and died in Moscow in 1964. He was a writer and journalist best known for his novel Life and Fate published in English 1980 after being smuggled out of Russia. He became better known after a A writer at war : Vasily Grossman with the Red Army 1941-1945, edited by Antony Beevor, was published in 2006. This was the secret notebooks that detailed his four years with the Red Army, which include devastating accounts of the siege of Stalingrad and his arrival with the army at Treblinka. The collection of work in The Road shows why Vasily Grossman in considered one of the outstanding literary figures of the 20th Century. The eleven stories range from satire, tragedy and comedy to pure narrative; all reflect the author's constant concern of how to improve the human condition. Also included in this collection are two letters Vasily Grossman wrote to his mother after her death and three newspaper articles of historical and literary importance.
	The accident : a novel by Ismail Kadare is translated from the Albanian. Born in Albania in 1936 Ismail Kadare now divides his time between Albania and France. He is an internationally know author, with prolific publications of fiction and poetry in over forty countries, translations into over thirty languages. He has been considered for the Nobel Prize for Literature several times and won the Man Booker International Award in 2005. The Accident is set against the tumultuous backdrop of war and its aftermath in the Balkans, and it intimately documents an affair between two people caught in each other's webs. The investigation into their deaths uncovers a mutually destructive obsession that mirrors the conflicts of the region, a destabilising mixture of vivid hallucination and cold reality.
	Comedy in a minor key by Hans Keilson is translated from the German. Hans Kelison was born in 1909 in Germany. He is a novelist, poet, psychoanalyst and child psychologist. During World Ward II he was an active member of the Dutch resistance. His first novel was published in 1934. It wasn't until 1961 when his novel Death of the adversary was translated and published in English, that he became known to and acclaimed by English readers. His main field of interest through his life has been working with children traumatized by war. He received acknowledgement as one of the world's greatest writers at the age of 100. Comedy in a minor key is set during the German occupation of Holland in the 2nd World War. It traces the struggles an ordinary Dutch couple, have when they hid a Jewish man, for many months, without raising any suspicion. But when he becomes ill and dies, they must find a way to dispose of the corpse.
	The Gordian knot by Bernhard Schlink is translated from the German. Bernhard Schlink was born in 1944 in Germany and became a lawyer and Judge. He was also a professor of public law and the philosophy of law at Humboldt University in Berlin. He has since retired and is a full time writer, best know for his novel The Reader, published in 1997, adapted to film in 2008. The Gordian knot was originally published in 1988, and has only been translated and published in English in 2010. A cold war spy story set in France and America. When a young lawyer Georg Polger gives up a comfortable existence in Germany to work as a freelance translator in the South of France he finds it a struggle to make ends meet. He is approached by a certain Mr Bulnakov, who wants Georg to take over a local translation agency. He takes on a lucrative project left unfinished by his predecessor, translating plans for military helicopters. But suddenly everything changes and Georg quickly realises that he is stuck between the CIA and the KGB, and further out of his depth than he can begin to comprehend.
December 2010 Once again another very busy year has drawn to a close. As with most previous years the collection has again increased by well over 2, 500 new titles and judging by the Readers' Choice reviews, most new books have found appreciative readerships. As we mentioned this time last year, this is a time to look back over all we have read over the past year and remember the novels we enjoyed the most. Many newspapers and magazines that review fiction ask selected guests to list their favourite books of the year. Some lists of favourite novels can be found on the following web sites. An impressive list of well known authors has nominated the best books of the year for The Guardian. All the contributing writers to The New Statesman have nominated best book for 2010 The Publisher's Weekly has selected 100 best titles of the year from all genres, beginning with the top ten. This site also includes a link to the best Children's books of the year. The Times Literary Supplement contributors have also chosen their best reads of 2010. We have asked members of the Wellington City Libraries staff to name their favourite novel of the year also. Many had trouble this year recalling their favourites, which proves the best way to remember what you have read, is to keep a small journal, listing title and authors, with relevant comments. In years to come it can be a marvellous resource, to check new material by those authors listed, or even to find a similar theme or genre that you enjoyed. It can also remind you of the situations in which you read a particular title, and memories of that time. Our staff chose very different types of fiction, but they were all totally enthusiastic about the books they selected. We hope that you will find something new to read in their selections and that you enjoy them as much as we have.
	Started early, took my dog / Kate Atkinson. Once again featuring ex-detective Jackson Brodie, this story is perhaps bleaker than the past Brodie novels. A long-buried crime from the 1970's: a murdered prostitute, a missing child and a police cover up. (Julie)
	Room : a novel / Emma Donoghue. Captivating characters, writing, and story, amazing. (Pauline)
	A film by Spencer Ludwig / David Flusfeder. A brilliant novel, based on a road trip the author made with his elderly father. At times very funny and moving, a great read. (Linda)
	Wildflower Hill / Kimberley Freeman. This was a great read. An excellent family saga (Sylvia)
	Zero history / William Gibson. With 'Zero History' Gibson wraps up a loose trilogy that began with 'Pattern Recognition' in 2003, followed by 'Spook Country' in 2007. Hollis Henry from 'Spook Country' once again finds herself in the employ of the mysterious marketing guru Bigend, in the search for an elusive 'brand' of clothing, linked to Military Contracting. Of course, with Gibson, the plot is secondary to his observations on contemporary culture & the speculative use of new technologies, and while various plotlines converge into a somewhat implausible ending, it's always fun & there is never a shortage of interesting ideas & characters. (Mark)
	The memoirs of a master forger / by William Heaney. I really enjoyed this novel. Darkly entertaining and offbeat. (Rebecca)
	The small hand : a ghost story / Susan Hill. Spooky, good story build up and only 167 pages and 19cms - great for the bus. (Liz)
	The girl who kicked the hornets' nest / Stieg Larsson ; translated from the Swedish by Reg Keeland. The Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson builds the character of Lisbeth Salander: a mixture of Bond, Bourne and computer hacker as a uniquely brittle but brutal character. (Martin)
	Ransom / David Malouf. Skilfully imagined, beautifully written novel about grief and revenge. (Linda)
	Kraken / by China Mieville. Set in an alternate London of magic, religion and strange otherworldliness. China Mielvelle bends language in a manner worthy of Shakespeare. (Debbie)
	The help / Kathryn Stockett. This story tells of the plight of black maids in Mississippi in the 1960's and how a white woman finds their stories so amazing she risks all to write them down in a book. (Raewyn)
	As the earth turns silver : a novel / Alison Wong. Beautifully written but tragic story set in Wellington's recent past. ( Debbie)
October/November 2010 This year has seen a rapid increase in the number of publications and a rise in popularity of Vampire novels. The first novel titled, The Vampyre by John William Polidori, Lord Byron's physician, was published in 1819 and was probably based on earlier European literature. It wasn't until Bram Stoker's very popular Dracula was published in 1897, that the Vampire character began to appear regularly in fiction. Vampire stories have moved from the original gothic/horror fiction genre into other genres, such as murder mysteries, science fiction, fantasy, humour, romance and chic lit. Anne Rice began her popular series, The Vampire Chronicles in 1976 with the novel, Interview with the Vampire and ended with the tenth novel, Blood Canticle in 2003. This last decade has seen the development of vampire fiction series from many authors, the most popular being MaryJanice Davidson (Undead series), Laurell K. Hamilton (Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series), Charlaine Harris (Southern Vampire series), Sherrilyn Kenyon (Dark-Hunter series) Jim Butcher (The Dresden Files series) and Charlie Huston (Joe Pitt case files series). This month we are highlighting six novels recently received that use vampires as characters in many diverse forms and genre, from black humour to science fiction, murder mystery to suspense thrillers. Apart from being great reads, they are all great examples of how vampire fiction has developed since Bram Stoker's Dracula.
	Night of the living Trekkies by Kevin David Anderson and Sam Stall is a black comedy. Jim Pike was a Star Trek fan until his faith in humanity was destroyed after two tours of duty in Afghanistan. He is an assistant manager of a small hotel in Houston. It is not until hundreds of Trekkies with homemade uniforms, glued-on prosthetics, and plastic phasers arrive for their annual Star Trek convention, that Jim is suddenly jolted back into life. When aliens release a zombie plague upon the Earth, the Trekkies find themselves trapped in the Botany Bay Hotel and desperate to escape, hoping their Starfleet training will be enough protection. Some will be assimilated. Others will summon the courage of their favourite characters and perform brave feats of heroism. Will Jim discover his inner Trekkie, and rise up, to take command of the crew? Kevin David Anderson was born in Indiana and now lives in Southern California. He has a B.A in Mass Communication and has worked as a marketing professional. He writes speculative fiction which has appeared in many horror and science fiction publications. Sam Stall became a freelance journalist in 2000. He has co-written over 20 books, including 2 novels and 2 novellas. He lives in Indianapolis
	The Passage by Justin Cronin is a thrilling science fiction novel and is the first volume of a planned trilogy, with the film rights having already been sold. A security breach at a secret U.S. government facility unleashes the monstrous product of a chilling military experiment. One night of chaos and carnage leaves a world forever altered. All that remains for the stunned survivors is the long fight ahead and a future ruled by fear of darkness, of death, and of a fate far worse. As civilization swiftly crumbles into a primal landscape of predators and prey, two people flee in search of sanctuary, FBI agent Brad Wolgast and six-year-old orphan Amy Harper Bellafonte who is a refugee from the doomed scientific project that has triggered apocalypse. Wolgast is determined to protect her. But for Amy, escaping the bloody fallout is only the beginning of a much longer odyssey that will span many miles and decades. Not until she has reached the time and place where she must finish what should never have begun. Justin Cronin is an American author who has published three other award winning novels. He is currently lives in Houston Texas where he is Professor of English at Rice University.
	The Leaping by Tom Fletcher is an exciting suspense thriller. Jack and Francis work in a call-centre in Manchester, where they are endlessly tormented by irate customers and a sinister boss, who seems quite bestial. Jack's girlfriend Jennifer buys Fell House, a mysterious ruin out in the remote Cumbrian Mountains, a move to the country seems like the answer to all their problems. Little do they know that an ancient evil is waiting in the valleys and as their house warming party spins out of control on a seemingly never ending night, they must face up to the terrifying possibility that not all their guests may be human and some of them want to feed. Tom Fletcher lives in Manchester and has published many spine tingling short stories, this is his first novel.
	Jane bites back: a novel by Michael Thomas Ford is another black comedy. Two hundred years after her death, Jane Austen is still surrounded by the literature she loves, but now it's because she's the owner of Flyleaf Books in a sleepy college town in Upstate New York. Every day she watches her novels fly off the shelves, along with dozens of unauthorized sequels, spin-offs, and adaptations. Jane may be undead, but her books have taken on a life of their own. To make matters worse, the manuscript she finished just before being turned into a vampire has been rejected by publishers 116 times. Jane longs to let the world know who she is, but when a sudden twist of fate thrusts her back into the spotlight; she must hide her real identity and fend off a dark man from her past while juggling two modern suitors. Michael Thomas Ford is an American author of nine other novels, many best sellers, and numerous works of non-fiction, for young adults and adults, all mostly gay themed. Jane bites back is the first of three novels based on Jane Austin due to be published next year. He lives in San Francisco.
	Bloodborn by Nathan Long is vampire fiction that falls into the science fiction and fantasy genre. Part of the Warhammer Novels, Boodborn is the first in a new series and tells of Ulrika, a love interest of Felix Jaeger in the previous Gotrek and Felix novels. Ulrika has become a vampire and is learning to cope with her new form, its wants and needs. When a fellow vampire is killed in Nuln, Ulrika and her mentor, Gabriella, are sent to investigate. Soon they find themselves facing danger from all sides as they attempt to solve a mystery that threatens the very existence of the Lahmian bloodline. How can they hope to destroy something with the power to kill a vampire? Nathan Long is an American author and screenwriter. He has published eleven other science fiction and fantasy novels. He lives in Los Angeles.
	Kiss of death by P. D. Martin is a vampire murder mystery. This is the fifth book featuring Australian FBI profiler Sophie Anderson. When a young woman's body is found with puncture marks on her neck, soon the delicious word is on everyone's lips. All of FBI profiler Sophie Anderson's skills, psychic and psychological, will be needed for her to determine whether this was a thrill kill or something even more sinister. Exploring the blood bars and Goth clubs of Los Angeles, Sophie immerses herself in the seductive culture of self-styled vampires. Posing as the alluring Lady Veronica and infiltrating a notorious clan, Sophie will learn just how deep the fantasy goes for some believers. When life requires death, nothing is sacred. P. D. Martin lives in Melbourne and began writing when very young. She has also worked as a corporate writer and along with five published novels has published work of non-fiction.
June - July 2010 It has been quite some time since we highlighted the short story genre on this web page, and with the recent arrival of many new collections, we thought now would be a good time to bring again reader's attention this specialised, skilful genre. Unlike novels, the short story has to grip the reader's interest in the first paragraph, character and plot development have to occur with an economy of words and most importantly the story has to end with the reader wanting more. Although at times this can be frustrating, usually the story is long remembered because of this. Many New Zealand novelists have developed their writing careers, honing their skills with the short story genre. National short story competitions offer the opportunity for budding writers to perfect their skills. Two such competitions are presently open for entries. The BNZ Literary Awards, previously known as the BNZ Katherine Mansfield Awards, are calling for entries in their Short Story Competition. It is the 51st year of this award, and many now well known New Zealand writers, were past winners. The entries close on 23rd July 2010, and more information can be found on BNZ's website The Sunday Star Times Short Story Award is open for entries from 1st July to the 31st August 2010. Details can be found at www.shortstory.co.nz The following selection of new short story titles highlights the many differences in theme and style. All will provide great satisfaction and entertainment.
	Never breathe a word showcases Caroline Blackwood's intelligence, skill and wit. The stories are fictional and autobiographical, dark and frank with the female characters so much larger than life in all aspects, leaving the male characters usually at a loss. This collection includes three previously unpublished stories.
	Wild Child by Wild Child confirms T. C. Boyle as a master of the short story genre with the reader's curiosity and interest captured in the first few sentences of each story. Even the titles of his stories intrigue, such a Sin dolor, Bulletproof, Thirteen hundred rats, and Three quarters of the way to hell, all, included in this collection. With a wild imagination covering the many facets of humanity Boyle explores the tragic, improbable and strangeness of human behaviour.
	Thomas Lynch is his first collection of fiction. He is best known as a poet and essayist, with four collections of poetry, two collections of essays and one work of non-fiction published. Thomas Lynch contributes regularly to many American magazines. He was born in Michigan, after graduating he became an undertaker taking over his father's funeral business in 1974. He now spends half of each year in West Clare, Ireland, where his ancestors once lived. Each of the five stories in this collection is linked by the gone but not forgotten, former partners, lost children and dead parents. Set in many different places from woods to casinos, all these stories prove Thomas Lynch's ability to understands and write about human nature and life, with humour, sympathy and most of the time celebration.
	Justin Taylor. This is his debut collection with half the stories previously published in Internet Literary magazines. The fifteen stories in this collection showcase the writer's ironic sense of humour, his fascination for the weird and dark side of life and his sense of the bizarre. He captures the suffocating boredom of small town life and perfectly portrays relationships and family life, making it achingly sad but ultimately true. Justine Taylor is 26; he lives in Brooklyn, New York and is working on his first novel.
	Sam Shepard, actor author and Pulitzer Prize winning playwright. This is his third collection of short stories and although titled 'stories' this is a collection not only of stories but also poetry, narratives of dialogue and short observations. No matter how brief the pieces are they are all connected by place, being the small western towns of America and the long lonely stretches of highway that runs between each town. The stories all show a wry sense of humour and tension that can at times be bleak. Sam Shepard has written forty five plays and directed most of them and has appeared in thirty films. With his vivid imagination these stories captivate short moments of life with a cinematic eye that opens new, different and thought provoking worlds to the reader.
	In-flight entertainment by Helen Simpson is a collection of sharp, humorous and poignant stories. This is her fifth collection of stories, the first, Four bare legs in a bed, was published in 1990. In 1991 she was named the Sunday Times Young Writer of the year and also won the Somerset Maugham Award. In 1993 she was also named as one of Granta's twenty Best Young British Novelists. Her fiction has never failed to please and delight. The stories in this collection range from the domestic to the fantastical, from comedy to tragedy, all written with a deft light touch that seems effortless. All prove her to be a champion of the short story genre.
April - May 2010 This seems to be the month of short list announcements, the first being the short list for the 2010 Orange Award for New Writers. This award covers debut works of fiction, including short stories and novellas written in English, but has to be by a woman of any nationality and published in the United Kingdom. The winner receives a £10, 000 bursary funded by the Arts Council England, which would be an amazing start to a writing career. The winner will be announced at the awards ceremony on 9th June 2010, along with the winner of the major Orange Prize for Fiction. More information on the writers, the long and short lists for all Orange prizes and novel synopsis can be found at www.orangeprize.co.uk The largest book prize, the international IMPAC Dublin Award, has recently announced the selected short list from a massive long list compiled by Librarians world wide. Because of the long lead in time from each year's prize to the next, all works nominated were published two years before the year of each award. This of course makes nearly all the titles readily available to readers. The winner will be announced on 17th June 2010. More information, including the long list, author biographies, novel synopsis and the nominating libraries can be found at www.impacdublinaward.ie This month we are highlighting the three novels on the shortlist for the Orange New Writers Award and we have selected three from the IMPAC Dublin Award. These novels demonstrate the diversity, writing skill and entertaining readability of award winning fiction.
	Jane Borodale's debut novel and is set in England in 1752. It tells the story of seventeen-year-old Agnes Trussel, brought up in rural Sussex, and pregnant with an unwanted child. When an elderly neighbour dies, Agnes sees her chance, steals woman's savings and runs away to London. On the way she meets the intriguing Lettice Talbot who promises that she will help Agnes upon their arrival, but Agnes soon becomes lost in the dark, labyrinthine city. She ends up at the household of John Blacklock, laconic firework-maker, and becomes his first female assistant. As the months pass and it becomes increasingly difficult for Agnes to conceal her secret. She meets Cornelius Soul, seller of gunpowder, and hatches a plan which could save her from ruin. But John Blacklock dislikes and disapproves of Mr Soul, and Agnes feels he is keeping something from her. Agnes also wonders if the housekeeper, Mrs Blight, with her thirst for accounts of hangings, suspects her crime or condition. It seems that she is caught between her crime and her condition, and that ruin is inevitable. Jane Borodale has an MA in site-specific sculpture from Wimbledon School of Art and has written and exhibited at a variety of sites including the Foundling Museum in London.
	Irene Sabatini. Beginning in Zimbabwe at the end of British colonial rule, a young Lindiwe Bishop encounters violence at close hand when her white neighbour is murdered, a domestic crime, apparently committed by the woman's stepson, Ian, although he is released from prison surprisingly quickly. Intrigued, Lindiwe strikes up a secret friendship with the mysterious boy next door, until he abruptly departs for South Africa. Years later, Ian returns to find Lindiwe has been hiding her own secret. It is to bring them closer together, but also test a relationship already contending with racial prejudice and the hostility of Lindiwe's mother. As their country slides towards chaos, the couple's grip on happiness becomes ever more precarious. This is an unpredictable story of love and hope. Irene Sabatini was born in Zimbabwe. She studies psychology at the University of Zimbabwe and then did a Masters at the Institute of Education in London. She currently lives in Geneva.
	Evie Wylde. Set in eastern Australia this is novel about fathers and sons, their wars and the things they will never know about each other. After the breakdown of a turbulent relationship, Frank moves from Canberra to a shack on the east coast once owned by his grandparents. He wants to put his violent past and bad memories of his father behind him. In this small coastal community, he tries to reinvent himself as someone capable of regular conversation and cordial relations. He even starts to make friends, but it is not easy for him to let go of the past, something is always watching from the cold shade of the teeming bush. Being the child of European immigrants to Australia, living in Sydney, he grows up in the 50s and 60s, and watches as his parents' lives are broken after his father volunteers to fight in the Korean War. Leon himself eventually finds himself killing young men as a conscripted machine-gunner in Vietnam. This is an intense, haunting novel, about the lessons men learn or don't learn from their fathers. Although Elvie Wylde was born in Australia she currently lives in London. She received a BA in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University and an MA in Creative Writing from Goldsmiths University London, where she concentrated mainly on short stories. She spent three years writing this, her first novel.
	Gerbrand Bakker is one of the novels short listed for the IMPAC Dublin Award and has also been short listed for the Best Translated Book Award. Set in the Dutch countryside it tells the story of Helmer, who, after his twin brother is killed in a car accident is forced to return to the family farm to assist his father. He resigns himself to taking over his brother's role and spending the rest of his days 'with his head under a cow'. The re-appearance of his twin brother's fiancé, Riet causes Helmer much unwanted disruption. She asks if her son could live with him on the farm for a while and this will the catalyst that changes everything. This novel is about loneliness and the possibility or impossibility of taking life into one's own hands. Gerbrand Bakker worked as a subtitle writer for nature films before becoming a gardener. This is his debut novel.
	Robert Edric's 19th novel. It is set in the City of London Mental Hospital, Dartford in 1922. It is a time when the aftershocks of the First World War are still present. An ex-soldier, poet and composer Ivor Gurney, suffering from increasingly frequent and deepening bouts of paranoid schizophrenia, is transferred to the Hospital. Neglected by the military and by his own family, and abandoned by all but a notable handful of his friends, Gurney begins a descent into the madness and oblivion which he believes has long been waiting to claim him. Yet following his arrival at Dartford, there are still those who continue to believe in Gurney's capabilities, and for a brief period, it seems that he might find some calm and ease in his life, and thus achieve the status so many consider him capable of. This is a remarkable, heart wrenching novel based on the actual life of Ivor Gurney. Robert Edric is the pseudonym of Gary Edric Armitage and was born in 1956. He lives in Sheffield, England.
	Ross Raisin's debut novel and has also been short listed for the IMPAC Dublin Award. This is the story of solitary young farmer, Sam Marsdyke, and his extraordinary battle with the world. When he is expelled from school, he stays at home to work on his parent farm which is isolated from the town. Sam is mistrusted by his parents and avoided by city incomers, he is a loner. When he meets rebellious new teenage neighbour Josephine, a friendship is formed and with it, thoughts to escape across the moors. This eventual escape turns into something much, much darker. This is an engrossing, powerful novel, at times sinister and comic. Ross Raisin was born in Yorkshire. He studied at King's College London and did a postgraduate degree in creative writing at Goldsmith's College. In April 2009 Ross Raisin won the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award for this novel.
March 2010 What better way to start the New Year than with the anticipation of the New Zealand International Arts Festival, to be held between 26th February and 21st March 2010. The most exciting part of the festival for readers is the New Zealand Post Writers and Readers week from March 9th to the 14th. Once again the programme includes much acclaimed fiction writers, non-fiction writers and poets, both international and national. Writers and Readers Week is a wonderful opportunity to hear so many interesting and diverse writers talk about there work, and in many cases to hear our own writers in discussion. The New Zealand writers include Bill Manhire, Neil Cross and Emily Perkins. More information on this great literature event can be found on the Writers and Readers Festival website. This month we have decided to highlight the latest works by some of the international writers who will be guests of the festival. They represent vastly different genres, styles and diversity of theme, but all provide wonderful reading experiences.
	Jeff in Venice, death in Varanasi is the most recent work of fiction by The Colour of Memory was published in 1989. His writing includes work of historical non-fiction, photography, biography and short stories. He regularly contributors articles and reviews to a variety of periodicals, from the Guardian to the New York Times.
	British writer American Gods that was published the previous year. His most recent work of fiction, Fragile things: short fictions and wonders was published in 2006. The stories in this collection show Neil Gaiman's storytelling brilliance as well as his terrifyingly entertaining dark sense of humour. From the story about a mysterious circus that terrifies an audience for one extraordinary performance before disappearing into the night, taking one of the spectators along with it to another about two teenage boys who crash a party and meet the girls of their dreams and nightmares, all are guaranteed to enchant and chill.
	Me and Kaminski is the most recent novel by Measuring the World and became the biggest selling novel in the German language since 1985. Daniel Kehlmann was born in Munich in 1975, but moved to his father's home, Vienna when he was six. At university he read philosophy and literature. Although author of five novels the first published when he was 22, only two have been translated into English.
	American writer In the cut, published in 1995 was adapted into film by Jane Campion and stared Meg Ryan. She has also written a memoir, I myself have seen it: the Myth of Hawaii. She has published five novels all are intense and include disturbing themes; The Big Girls is the most recent. Set in a women's prison on the Hudson River, this novel chronicles the aftermath of a highly publicized murder and its impact on four intertwined lives. The story is told in the alternating voices of Helen, who has long suffered terrifying schizophrenic hallucinations and is serving a life sentence for killing her two small children; Helen's psychiatrist, a single mother who came to work at the prison out of guilt over a patient's suicide; a corrections officer who becomes involved with the psychiatrist; and an ambitious Hollywood star whom Helen believes to be her sister. This is a chilling, tense, suspenseful novel.
	Burnt shadows, the fifth and most recent novel published by the author In the city by the sea was published in 1998 and received the Prime Minister's Award for Literature in Pakistan in 1999. Her novels have been translated into many languages. She and also works as a reviewer and columnist, mainly for the Guardian newspaper and lives in London.
	Tipping the Velvet published in 1998 after finishing her thesis, using much of her research material for the novel. For this novel she was awarded the 1999 Betty Trask Award and it was later dramatised for television by the BBC. Four other novels have followed, all historical fiction. Affinity published in 1999 won the Stonewall Book award and the Somerset Maugham Award. It was adapted to film and premiered in 2008. Fingersmith published in 2002 won the Crime Writers' Association Ellis Peters Historical Dagger award and was also adapted for television by the BBC. The Night Watch published in 2006 won the Lambada Literary Award 2007. Her most recent novel The Little Stranger was short listed for the Mann Booker Prize for Fiction, 2009 and is a spine tingling thriller set during a dusty post-war summer in rural Warwickshire. A local doctor is called to a patient at lonely Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for over two centuries, the Georgian house, once grand and handsome, is now in decline, its masonry crumbling, its gardens choked with weeds, its owners(or are they) a mother, son and daughter, are struggling to keep pace. But this family is haunted by something more sinister than a dying way of life. Little does Dr Faraday know how closely, and how terrifyingly, their story is about to become entwined with his.
December 2009 Once again another very busy year has drawn to a close. As with most previous years the collection has again increased by well over 2, 500 new titles and judging by the Readers' Choice reviews, most new books have found appreciative readerships. As we mentioned this time last year, this is a time to look back over all we have read over the past year and remember the novels we enjoyed the most. Many newspapers and magazines that review fiction ask selected guests to list their favourite books of the year. Some lists of favourite novels can be found on the following web sites: The Guardian: Books of the year: what kept you turning the pages? The Publishers weekly: Best books 2009 The Times Literary Supplement: Books of the year 2009 For a different perspective The Good Reads web site list their top 100 books, all voted for by readers, with the number of votes each title received. We have asked members of the Wellington City Libraries staff to name their favourite novel of the year also. Our staff chose very different types of fiction, but they were all totally enthusiastic about the books they selected. We hope that you will find something new to read in their selections and that you enjoy them as much as we have.
	The anthologist / Nicholson Baker. (2009) To get the utmost out of this novel (Mr Baker's best to date) you probably need to be reclining in bed with the duvet covered in books of American poetry, which you can pick up and peruse as the story unfolds. Even so, for a novel that is so wise, funny and telling about poetry, it is also thoroughly enjoyable just for its clever and witty prose, the wacky daily activities of the main character and (for book cover junkies) the sheer pleasure in reading such a well-designed hardback. (Pauline)
	All in the mind / Alastair Campbell. (2008) An amazing novel about mental illness, that is enlightening, compelling and at times very funny. (Linda)
	Blood's a rover : a novel / James Ellroy. (2009) Blood's a rover' is James Ellroy's final novel in his 'Underworld U.S.A' trilogy, following 'American Tabloid' (1995) and 'The Cold Six Thousand' (2001)]. The dense stylism of 'The Cold Six Thousand' almost sunk it under its own pretensions, the prose becoming so dense and terse it almost consumed itself. The final novel would seemingly never materialise, but finally eight years later it arrived and Ellroy is definitely back on form. It's labyrinthine plot takes up where the previous novel ends (1968) and continues on until 1972, a crazy epic reinvention of the confluence of American domestic & foreign policy and underworld crime, filtered through the politics, private obsessions & inner demons of the 3 main characters; an FBI 'enforcer', an ex-cop Mob consort, and a young Private Eye/Wheelman. While a somewhat easier read than the previous volumes, at 500+ pages it still requires an investment in time & patience - but one that's rewarded with a brilliantly controlled narrative that never loses it's power. (Mark)
	The left hand of darkness / Ursula Leguin. (1992) I do not normally read science fiction it's not my scene however I was watching "The Jane Austen Book club" DVD in it the guy asks the girl to read a science fiction book "Left Hand of Darkness" as she hates science fiction. He recommends this book coz he has given Jane Austen a go. I thought why not give it a try and you know what? I really enjoyed it. It had me thinking about life, the universe and everything. A really good read that challenges ones perception of the world as we know it and opens eyes to other possibilities - so this weekend I am going to try another one of Ursula's. (May make a science fiction fan of me yet) (Maxine)
	Kill your friends / John Niven. (2008) Darkly - and - disturbingly hilarious travelogue through the coke-addled mind of a ruthlessly ambitious Brit-Pop era A&R man. Written by an ex-industry insider, one can only hope biography plays a small part. Not for the faint-hearted and definitely not a Xmas present for Nana. (Jason)
	Wolf Hall / Hilary Mantel.(2009) Of novels read this year Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel made the biggest impact, partly because it took so long to read as I kept getting side tracked in the history of the period but also because it was a well researched fascinating historical novel. It follows the life of Thomas Cromwell, King Henry VIII's lawyer although mainly focusing on the period of Katherine of Aragon's decline and Anne Boleyn's rise to Queen. Of the novels I have read from the Tudor period Wolf Hall is certainly the most memorable. (Julie)
	Netherland / Joseph O'Neill. (2008) 'Netherland' builds slowly but accumulates real force and intensity as cricket loving transplanted Dutchman Hans picks his awkward, stumbling way through a murder, the vagaries of male friendship, modern fatherhood, a crumbling relationship, post 9/11 New York - life in the 21st century. I really enjoyed the writing and some passages were extremely lovely, if, a little incongruous, in that they came from the mind of an emotionally stunted, uncommunicative Dutchman. (Monty)
	Serena : a novel / Ron Rash.(2009) Serena is a right ripping yarn - a literary & historical thriller which you won't be able to put down but at the same time won't want to finish either. Good and evil, love and hate, history, unforgettable characters, beautiful prose - it's all here in truckloads - the author is not well known but he should be! (Pauline)
	The slap / Christos Tsiolkas. (2008) I enjoyed this because the topic is current and it gives us a look at Australian life. The fact that the same incident is recounted in different characters' voices also adds another dimension to it and shows how many people can be affected in different ways and be connected (or alienated) from each other because of one moment in time. (Sandra)
	The leisure seeker / Michael Zadoorian. (2009) A couple who are probably near their used-by-date, decide to defy their doctors and family concerns and take their trust old campervan on one last road trip down the infamous Route 66. This was a very funny, life confirming novel. (Linda)
	The book thief / by Markus Zusak. (2006) It's the one I shall be giving as Christmas presents this year. (Beth)
September-November 2009 Within the last month Wellington City Libraries has received 70 new fiction titles on Compact disc and MP3 disc format. These have been added to the Talking Books collection which holds over 2, 300 titles. We thought this would be an opportunity to highlight some of the recent additions to this collection. The Talking Book collection is located in front of the Fiction desk in Central, not in the A/V secure area. It is a popular collection that includes non-fiction, biography and all audio compact discs from mediation to poetry, plays to historical documentary. The new MP3 disc format part of the collection is constantly expanding also. Listening to a book is a great way for busy people to enjoy the written word while engaged in other tasks. It is a popular form of entertainment when travelling whether just commuting, or on longer holiday trips. The new titles of all talking books can be found on the Library's web site on the New Fiction on Cassette and CD page. Another way of listening to a book is by downloading a title from Overdrive Audio Books through the Library's web site on our Downloads Page. This database holds more than 1,000 titles of fiction and non-fiction books. The choice is almost limitless, with titles in business and management to foreign language study, self improvement to religion, classical fiction to science fiction and fantasy, horror to humour. The database also includes children and young adult fiction. Almost all titles are now available as MP3 downloads. There is no rental charge for this service. The following are recently received compact discs from our Talking Book collection. Some are must read classics and others new fiction, but all will give hours of listening pleasure.
	London Fields by Time's Arrow, published in 1991, drew much acclaim and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, an other novel such as Yellow Dog published in 2003 was much disliked by critics.
	Natural History by Burial published in 2008. He now spends much of his time in Wellington and is employed as a scriptwriter for the Television series Spooks.
	Philip Hensher is the 6th novel by Philip Hensher and was short listed for the 2008 Man Booker Prize. It is an epic chronicle of twenty years of life in Britain, beginning in 1974 and ending with the fading of Thatcher's government in 1996. Set in Sheffield, it charts the relationship between two families: Malcolm and Katherine Glover and their three children; and their neighbours, the Sellers family, newly arrived from London so that Bernie can pursue his job with the Electricity Board. The day the Sellers move in there is a crisis across the road: Malcolm Glover has left home, convinced his wife is having an affair. The consequences of this rupture will spread throughout the lives of both couples and their children. England is changing: from a manufacturing- and industrial-based economy into a new world of shops, restaurants and service industries, a shift particularly marked in the North with the miners' strike of 1984, which has a dramatic impact on both families. This is an engaging wonderful novel. Philip Hensher was born in 1965 in South London. He is a much respected critic and journalist and has also published a collection of short stories and edited numerous new editions of classical works of English literature.
	Boris Pasternak is a great Russian classic. Published in Italian in1957 after being smuggled out of Russian where it was banned, it went on to be translated into English and republished spending 26 weeks at the top of the New York Times bestseller list in 1958. David Lean produced the 1965 film adaptation, but another 2006 version for Russian Television directed by Alexander Proshkin is said to be more faithful to the book. Set during the Russian revolution it tells of Yuri Zhivago, physician and poet, who wrestles with the new order and confronts the changes cruel experience has made in him and the anguish of being torn between the two women he loves. For this semi autobiographical novel, Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958, which after much political pressure he refused to accept. The award was still made, without the ceremony. The medal was finally awarded to his son in 1989. Boris Pasternak was born in 1890 and was best know in Russia as a poet, although a considerable amount of his work was originally banned. He died in Peredelkino, out of Moscow in 1960, and his funeral was attended by thousands.
	A Confederacy of dunces by The Neon Bible. Both were unpublished in his lifetime. After the rejection of The confederacy of dunces, he committed suicide in 1969. In 1980 this novel was finally published and he was posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Price for Fiction in 1981.
	Brother of the more famous Jack by Frankie & Stankie, a semi autobiographical novel which deals with growing up under apartheid, was long listed for the Man Booker Prize. This novel is also available on compact disc.
JULY 2009 Now that mid winter is upon us, the best way to pass the short wet days and long cold nights, is with a good gripping read. This month we will highlight some brilliant murder mysteries that will not only provide hours of exciting reading, but guarantee an escape from the winter blues. The authors we have chosen are from the Scandinavian countries and Iceland; all have new translations, recently received by Wellington City Libraries. Crime fiction from this part of the world has become very popular, with work from old and new writers being translated for a wider western audience. Nearly all have received national awards for their crime novels, with several being nominated and one winning the Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger award. Information about our highlighted crime novelists, other Scandinavian crime writers, interviews and reviews on new publications can be found at the Scandanavian Crime Fiction Blog. All of the six new crime novels we have chosen, show exceptional talent and craftsmanship and will provide hours of suspenseful, very satisfying reading. Unfortunately all are set in the harsh northern arctic winter, but this should only make us glad we are in the southern hemisphere where are our winters are relatively mild in comparison.
	Arctic Chill by Icelandic writer Silence of the Grave and his novel Jar City published in 2004, was recently adapted to film, showing at the 2008 Wellington Film Festival. His first novel was published in 1997and he lives in Reykjavik were most his novels are set. Police detective Erlendur, at times a brooding, complex but likeable character features in all his novels. In Arctic Chill, when a young dark-skinned boy, is found frozen to the ground in a pool of his own blood, with a fatal stab wound in his stomach, Erlendur and his team embark on their investigation with little to go on but the news that the boy's Thai half-brother is missing. The investigation soon unearths tensions simmering beneath the surface of Iceland's outwardly liberal, multicultural society. Erlendur is also forced to confront the tragedy in his own past.
	Anne Holt is set in Oslo, again in winter and features husband and wife police detectives, Adam Stubo and Johanne Vik. They are reluctantly called in to investigate as several celebrities have been found dead in the most macabre, horrific positions. Although Adam leads the investigation, it's Johanne who remembers a haunting pattern from her FBI days, a time she has tried to forget. As she attempts to discover whether the Norwegian police are facing an avenging angel or a simple copycat, time is running out, and suddenly Johanne realizes that she and Adam may be next on the killer's list. Anne Holt was born in 1958 in Larvik, Norway. After graduating with a law degree in 1986 she worked for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation and then for the Oslo Police Department, for two years giving her the right to practise as a lawyer. She started her own law practice in 1994. Her first novel was published in 1993 and has published ten others since, in 25 other countries. She is one of the most successful crime novelists in Norway.
	To Steal Her Love by Finnish writer The Priest of Evil. Both feature the Detective Sergeant Timo Harjunpaa, who is a credible, pleasant, humane family man. To steal her love is set in Helsinki and tells of a strange nocturnal visitor called Tweety, a skilful picker of locks who tiptoes through apartments in Helsinki. Nothing is stolen, nothing is destroyed. Numerous women wake to an unknown presence in their bedroom, but in the light of morning, it all seems a dream. At first the police take little notice, and the women themselves begin to doubt their own sanity. But evidence accumulates, and as the net closes, Tweety, falls in love with one of his night-time women. He shadows her, daring to approach her secretly only at night. As Detective Sergeant Timo Harjunpaa, investigates, this and other crimes, he is forced in his private life to reassess his values, the significance of those dearest to him, and the nature of love and guilt. Matti Joensuu was born in 1948 and works as an Inspector in the Helsinki Police Department.
	The Black Path by Sun Storm being published in 2006. This novel was awarded the Swedish Crime Writer's Association Prize for best debut novel. The sequel The Blood Spilt was chosen as the Best Swedish Crime Novel of 2004. All her novels feature heroine Rebecka Martinsson, a tax lawyer. In The Black Path, a woman is found on a frozen lake, her body showing evidence of extreme torture. As Inspector Anna-Maria Mella investigates she realises she will need help as the dead woman was a key figure in a mining company, who has interests around the world. So it isn't long until Attorney Rebecka Martinsson is prying into the company's business affairs. A tangled drama of secrets, perversion and criminality are soon discovered.
	The Redeemer by Norwegian Redbreast and Nemesis. The Redeemer is set in Oslo in mid winter. On a street, a man in uniform falls to the ground, after being shot at point blank range in the head. Harry Hole and his team have little to work with: no immediate suspect, no weapon and no motive. But when the assassin discovers he has shot the wrong man, Harry Hole's troubles have only just begun, and after some exceptionally shrewd detective work, the team begins to close in on a suspected hit man, who becomes more and more desperate to eliminate the right target.
	My Soul to Take by Icelandic writer My Soul to Take, a horrific murder is committed at a health resort situated in a recently renovated farmhouse, which turns out to be notorious for being haunted. Thora is asked by the owner of the resort, the prime suspect, to represent him. Her investigations uncover some very disturbing occurrences at the farm decades earlier, things that have never before seen the light of day.
MAY 2009 Recently the short lists for two major book prizes were announced. The International IMPAC prize, the world's largest literary prize, selected 8 novels from 146 that were nominated by 157 public libraries around the world. The winner, who will receive £100,000, will be announced on 11th June. A Full list of all submitted novels with synopsis of each, the shortlist and links to the nominating libraries can be found at the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award website. The second short list, recently announced was for the Orange Prize for Fiction. This prize of £30,000 is awarded annually for the best original full-length novel by a female writer, of any nationality written in English and published in the United Kingdom the preceding year. The purpose of the award was to move away from the more literary awards and therefore encourage readers with an enjoyable, satisfying reading experience. The first award was made in 1996 amid controversial claims of sexism, but it has now become one of the United Kingdom's most prestigious awards. In 2005 a new award was added, the Orange Award for New Writers, again for works of fiction, but including short story collections and novellas. The winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction will be announced 3rd June 2009. The long list, short list, author's profiles, previous winners and book cub information can be found at the Orange Prize for Fiction 2009 website. This month we will highlight the novels short listed for the Orange Prize. Several of theses novels we have recently received. The following six novels promise great reading with themes, style and structure as diverse as the nationalities of their authors.
	Ellen Feldman and is a gripping fictional account of one of America's historical miscarriage of justice. Set in Alabama in1931, nine black youths are arrested, originally for fighting with white youths, but two young girls accuse them of rape. One girl eventually drops the rape allegations, but the other continues to say she is telling the truth. The story is told from the perspective of a young journalist, who battles to save the youths from the electric chair and make the girl repent her lie. This case of injustice, that involves racism, sexism and anti-Semitism shocked America at the time and was reported around the world. Ellen Feldman, is a 2009 Guggenheim fellow, a highly regarded lecturer and much sought-after speaker. She was raised in New Jersey and has a B.A and an M.A in modern history. She did further graduate studies in History at Columbia University. She writes both fiction and social history and lives in New York City.
	The Wilderness by Samantha Harvey is her first novel. It tells the story of Jake Jameson an architect who in his early 60s. Unfortunately he is not the man he used to be. He has lost his wife, his son is in prison, and he is about to lose his past. Jake has the beginnings of Alzheimer's. As the disease takes hold of him, Jake struggles to hold on to his personal story, to his memories and identity, but they become increasingly elusive and unreliable. As Jake, assisted by 'poor Eleanor', a childhood friend with whom for some unfathomable reason he seems to be sleeping, the key events of his life keep changing as he tries to grasp them, and what until recently seemed solid fact is melting into surreal dreams or nightmarish imaginings. Eventually we realise that even Jake's clearest memories may not be true. Samantha Harvey was born in Kent, England in 1975. She has an M.A. in philosophy and a M.A. in Creative Writing. She has travelled extensively and has taught in Japan. She currently lives in Bath, England.
	Samantha Hunt is set in New York in 1943 and tells the story of a young chambermaid, Louisa who works at the Hotel New Yorker. From the moment Louisa first catches sight of the strange man who occupies a forbidden room on the thirty-third floor, she is determined to befriend him. Unbeknownst to Louisa, he is Nikola Tesla, inventor of AC electricity and wireless communication, and he is living out his last days at the Hotel New Yorker. Winning his attention through a shared love of pigeons, she eventually uncovers the story of Tesla's life as a Serbian immigrant and a visionary genius, a man who, though esteemed by many, forbade himself human connection. Before the week is out, Louisa must come to terms with her own understanding of love, death, and the power of invention. Samantha Hunt lives in New York City and this is her second novel. The first, The Seas won the 2006 National Book Foundation award for writers under thirty-five. Her fiction has been published in The New Yorker and McSweeney's.
	Deirdre Madden is set in during the midsummer in Dublin and is told over the course of one day. While away in New York, the celebrated actor Molly Fox has loaned her house to a playwright friend who is struggling to write a new work. The playwright reflects upon her own life, Molly's, and that of their mutual friend Andrew, who she has known since university. She wonders why Molly never celebrates her own birthday, which falls upon this day? How do relationships evolve over the course of many years? Exploring family, friendship and love, this is a novel about identity. Querying the ideas that we hold about who we are, and showing how the past informs the present in ways we might never have imagined. Deirdre Madden was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1960. She received her B.A .at Dublin University and her M.A. at the University of East Anglia in 1985. She is the author of five previously published novels and winner of several literary prizes, including the Somerset Maugham award in 1989.
	Home by Gilead, and is a variation on the parable of the prodigal son's return. The son is Jack Boughton, one of the eight children of Robert Boughton, the former Gilead, Iowa, pastor, who now, in 1957, is a widowed and dying man. Jack returns home shortly after his sister, 38-year-old Glory, moves in to nurse their father, and it is through Glory's eyes that we see Jack's drama unfold. When Glory last saw Jack, she was 16, and he was leaving Gilead with a reputation as a thief and a scoundrel, having just gotten an underage girl pregnant. By his account, he'd since lived as a vagrant, drunk and jailbird until he fell in with a woman named Della in St. Louis. By degrees, Jack and Glory bond while taking care of their father, but when Jack's letters to Della are returned unopened, Glory has to deal with Jack's relapse into bad habits and the effect it has on their father. Marilynne Robinson was born in Idaho, America and after receiving her B.A. at Pembroke College she went on to study at the University of Washington, where in 1977 she received here PhD. in English. She has been writer-in-residence or visiting professor at numerous universities in America. She teaches at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and lives in Iowa City.
	Burnt shadows, the fifth novel published by the author In the city by the sea was published in 1998 and received the Prime Minister's Award for Literature in Pakistan in 1999. Her novels have been translated into many languages. She and also works as a reviewer and columnist, mainly for the Guardian newspaper and lives in London.
MARCH 2009 We are now well into the New Year, a year that may prove to be a challenge to much of the world. It seems doom and gloom is predicted daily, but an easy method of escape is to be immersed into another world, with some exciting new fiction. Already this year, Wellington City Libraries has received a large amount of new fiction and here we will highlight some of the best that may provide a much needed distraction to daily life. More inspiration can be found on Wellington City Libraries My Library pages at www.wcl.govt.nz/mylibrary/index.html. Another great source for finding great reading material is the long list for the IMPAC Dublin Award 2009 that has just been released. This is one of the largest international awards for fiction. This year having 146 novels nominated from 117 countries, the long list includes synopses and brief author information; there is something for every one. The shortlist will be announced on 2nd April followed by the winner on 11th June. We hope that each of these resources will provide many hours of enjoyable reading.
	Ian Buruma. This is a novel about one woman's struggle to survive in the face of war and occupation during the Second World War. Much to his delight Sidney Vanoven is sent to Japan, in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, to take the post of film censor. He works in the censor's office watching Japanese films by day and at night he immerses himself in Tokyo's sensual pleasures. His job leads him into the circle of a beautiful film star Shirley Yamaguchi, a passionate and indomitable woman, whose wartime secrets hint at deception and betrayal. As her story unfolds, it seems to point at the dark heart of Japan itself. This is a captivating novel, populated with extraordinary characters, a saga of war, politics, art and erotic fantasy. Ian Buruma was born in 1951 in Holland. He studied Chinese literature and than Japanese film in Tokyo. He began his career as a journalist in the 1980's and his work since, has been much acclaimed and awarded. He has helded many prestigious positions which include Cultural Editor for The Far Eastern Economic Review and Foreign Editor of the Spectator. He was voted one of the Top 100 Intellectuals by the Foreign Policy/Prospect magazines in 2008
	Alastair Campbell is another debut novel. Alistair Campbell is the award winner author of the The Blair Years published in 2007 about his time as press secretary, then official spokesman and director of communications and strategy for Tony Blair and the British Labour Party. Born in 1957 he graduated from Cambridge University where he studied modern languages, then began a career in journalism. In 1986, through alcoholism he suffered a breakdown and after extensive treatment his health was restored. This experience of mental health issues enabled his to write this his first novel. All in the mind is set over a life changing weekend. It tells the story of Martin Sturrock a psychiatrist who is in need of help himself, but is dedicated to his patients. These include Emily is a traumatised burns victim, Arta a Kosovan refugee recovering from a rape, David Temple is a longterm depressive, and while the Rt Hon Ralph Hall MP who lives in terror of his drink problem being exposed. None of these patients realise the Martin Sturrock has hidden demons of his own, and that his life is rapidly falling apart. This is a brilliantly compelling, yet compassionate and at times funny novel
	Nicolas Dickner. This multi award winning novel begins in 1989, three young people, born thousands of miles apart, each cut themselves adrift from their birthplaces and set out to discover what , or who, might anchor them in their lives. They each leave almost everything behind, apart from the accumulated memories of their own lives and family histories, and eventually settle in Montreal. Over the course of the next ten years, their paths will sometimes cross and sometimes they narrowly miss each other, as they all pass through the neighbourhoods of Montreal. Their stories weave in and out of other wondrous tales, stories about such things as fearsome female pirates, urban archaeologists, unexpected floods, fish of all kinds, a mysterious book without a cover and a dysfunctional compass whose needle obstinately points to the remote Aleutian village of Nikolski. It is in the accumulation of those details around the edges of their lives that we begin to know these individuals as part of a greater whole. This is a fascinating novel, well crafted and a pleasure to read. Nicolas Dickner was born in 1972 in Quebec. He studied visual arts and literature at university and after travelled extensively. He has published a children's book and two collections of short stories.
	Once on a moonless night is the most recent novel by Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. When Pu Yi, the last emperor, was exiled to Manchuria in the early 1930s, it is said that he carried an ancient silk scroll inscribed with a lost Buddhist sutra. Eventually, the scroll would be sold illicitly to an eccentric French linguist named Paul d'Ampere, a transaction that would land him in prison, where he would devote his life to studying the ineffably beautiful ancient language of the scroll. The narrator of this novel is an unnamed French woman studying in China in the 1970s, and she hears this story from the greengrocer Tumchooq, who has recently returned from three years of re-education. She visits Tumchooq's stall near the gates of the Forbidden City, many times as she is drawn to the young man and his stories of an estranged father. But when d'Ampere is killed in prison, Tumchooq disappears, abandoning the narrator, now pregnant with his child. As she goes in search of her lost love, she will at last find the missing scroll and discover the truth of the Buddha's lesson that begins "Once on a moonless night". This is a novel full of tales within tales and worlds within worlds, ranging from ancient Chinese empires through communist China to modern Beijing. Dai Sijie was born in China in 1954, now lives in Paris, leaving China in 1984 for France on a scholarship. He eventually became a film director, making three critically acclaimed films before turning to writing.
	Sam Taylor. He was born in Britain and studied at Hull University, then North Carolina University where he read American Studies. He became a journalist for The Observer for eight years, and then in 1921 he moved with his family to rural France and became a full time writer. The island at the end of the world tells the story from eight year old Finn's perspective. He lives with his father, sisters Alice and Daisy on the wreck of an ark on a remote and isolated island. The last remaining survivors of the flood, they rely on this tight-knit family unit for emotional and practical support. For Finn, the island and his relationship with his father encompass his entire world. But Alice, a teenager growing increasingly frustrated and suspicious of the stories their father tells of their past, begins despairingly to seek contact with the outside world. When a boy, a stranger, is washed up on the shore, it appears they may not be alone after all. This is a compelling book, part disturbing thriller, part dark family drama, a riveting read.
	Barry Unsworth. Set in 1914 in Mesopotamia, later to become Iraq, this historical novel is a brilliant commentary on imperial ambition in the Middle East. Sommerville a British archaeologist is excavating a long-buried Assyrian palace. The site lies directly in the path of a new railroad to Baghdad, and he watches nervously as the construction progresses, threatening to destroy his discovery. The expedition party includes Somerville's beautiful, bored wife, Edith; Patricia, a smart young graduate student; and Jehar, an Arab man-of-all-duties whose subservient manner belies his intelligence and ambitions. Posing as an archaeologist, an American geologist from an oil company arrives one day and insinuates himself into the group. But he's not the only one working undercover to stake a claim on the country's rich oil fields. Barry Unsworth was born in 1930 in Durham and now lives in Italy. His first novel The Partnership was published in 1966. His novels have received many awards, the most well know, the Sacred Hunger which was joint winner of the 1992 Booker Prize.
JANUARY 2009 Once again another very busy year has drawn to a close. As with most previous years the collection has again increased by well over 2, 500 new titles and judging by the Readers' Choice reviews, most new books have found appreciative readerships. As we mentioned this time last year, this is a time to look back over all we have read over the past year and remember the novels we enjoyed the most. Many newspapers and magazines that review fiction ask selected guests to list their favourite books of the year. Some can be found at The New York Times best 10 books of 2008, Contemporary Literature Best of 2008 and also at Goodreads' Best Books of 2008. We have asked members of the Wellington City Libraries staff to name their favourite novel of the year also. Many had trouble this year recalling their favourites, which proves the best way to remember what you have read throughout the year is to keep a small journal, listing title and authors, with relevant comments. In years to come it can be a marvellous resource, to check new material by those authors listed, or even to find a similar theme or genre that you enjoyed. It can also remind you of the situations in which you read a particular title, and memories of that time. Our staff chose very different types of fiction, but they were all totally enthusiastic about the books they selected. We hope that you will find something new to read in their selections and that you enjoy them as much as we have.
	The household guide to dying / Debra Adelaide (2008) This was a very enjoyable, satisfying read. (Joy)
	Swan Peak / James Lee Burke (2008) Perfectly delineated characters all cross paths as this novel moves towards a violent confrontation that ties the myriad of plot lines together, as Burke serves up another concoction of vivid, lyrical prose, street wise criminals and woozy existentialism. (Mark)
	A partisan's daughter / Louis de Bernières (2008) This is a novel that unfolds slowly and subtly, and although the reader knows that the relationship is doomed, the characters and stories build in rich layers towards an inevitable conclusion. (Neil)
	Born yesterday : the news as a novel / Gordon Burn (2008) The British news, over a year is transformed into a novel and it is amazingly crafted by a skilled writer. This is a truly gripping novel full of coincidences, quirky detail and intelligent perception. (Linda)
	Falling man : a novel / Don DeLillo (2007) This is a clever, subtle, deep very thoughtful and rewarding read. (Bridget)
	The brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao / Junot Díaz (2008) This is a chronicle of the "cursed" lives of super nerd Oscar, his sister and mother in the Dominican Republic and America. Packed with ill-intended foot notes, this is a free-wheeling, surprising, and multilayered joy to read. (Carmel and Monty)
	Runt / Niall Griffiths (2008) Niall Griffiths produces another powerful and disturbing novel, with its own language and rhythms, and the inevitable violent culmination. (Neil)
	The gone-away world / Nick Harkaway (2008) This is a dazzlingly brilliant debut novel. It's hilarious, gloomy, utterly perplexing and completely mesmerizing. (Craig)
	Tethered : a novel / Amy MacKinnon (2008) A rather different style of writing and theme, I thought it was great. A funny little play on botanical names throughout and a wee bit of a strange denouement, but I really enjoyed it. (Ann)
	Lost paradise / Cees Nooteboom ; translated from the Dutch by Susan Massotty (2008) This was a delightful, charming novel. (Linda)
	Death at intervals / José Saramago; translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa. (2008) Death at Intervals is a brilliantly witty novel from a great writer who never disappoints. (Linda)
	The almost moon / Alice Sebold (2007) I loved this novel the first time I read it, but was surprised at how much more it moved me on the second. (June)
	Without a backward glance / Kate Veitch (2008) This is an Australian story about the adult lives of four siblings who were deserted by their mother when they were children. The characters are understandable and plausible and the plot works too. (Sheila)
	The road home / Rose Tremain (2007) A well written, moving novel, that shows the extreme difficulties new immigrants face with language and cultural differences. (Julie)
November 2008 The popular author Kate Atkinson recently visited Wellington and the evening event with her was well supported by avid fans of her many books. This author tour of course was to promote her latest work, which is the final part of what is described as a trilogy, but is really the just the continuing development of some of her original characters. These three novels are classified as murder mysteries, they all fill the criteria for this genre, which is, there is a central mystery not necessary a murder, a group of suspects, a detective, either professional or amateur intent on solving the crime, and a final solution that the reader could arrive at by the logical deduction of clues. Murder Mysteries are the most popular genre in our fiction collection and over the years this genre has become as diverse in theme, character and style as the novels in the general fiction section. This diversity includes themed crime mysteries from chocolate making to scrap booking, embroidery to gardening. There are many historical mysteries, translated mysteries, historical and modern, environmental, Gay and Lesbian, cosy and hardboiled. The location settings are as varied as the themes and many of course follow the lives and careers of one main character who solves the crime. All these types of murder mystery can be found on our Fiction subject help page, where you can search for Murder Mystery books by sub genre. This is month we are highlighting recent novels by six popular crime writers. All are great examples of the diversity of the murder mystery genre and provide excellent entertainment that could easily become addictive.
	When Will There Be Good News by Kate Atkinson, follows on from, Case Histories (2004) and One Good Turn (2006), although is easily read separately. Each novel in this series starts with a horrendous crime, and in the latest a six-year-old Joanna witnesses the brutal killing of her mother and siblings by a knife-wielding madman in the British countryside. We then move to thirty years later and Joanna is now a Doctor and mother living in Edinburgh. Sixteen-year-old Reggie, wise beyond her years, works as her nanny When Dr. Joanna Hunter goes missing, Reggie seems to be the only person who is worried. On the other side of the city, Detective Chief Inspector Louise Monroe, who has appeared in the previous novel, is also looking for a missing person, unaware that hurtling towards her is an old friend, Jackson Brodie, himself on a journey that is about to be fatally interrupted. This is a gripping, fast paced and at times witty novel. The character of Jackson Brodie has appeared in all three novels, and easily endears himself to readers, with his good fortune and evitable bad. Kate Atkinson lives in Edinburgh, but was born in York. She earned her Master Degree in English Literature from the University of Dundee in 1975. Her first novel Behind the Scenes at the Museum won the 1995 Whitbread Book of the Year. She has six published novels, a play and a collection of short stories.
	Alys Clare is the twelfth book in this historical mystery series set in Medieval England. Alys Clare is the pseudonym for Elizabeth Harris, who was born in 1944. She studied archaeology at the University of Kent. The Hawkenlye series of murder mystery are all set in and around the Abbey of Hawkenlye in the twelfth century. It is on the main road form London to the coast. Abbess Helewise is one of the central characters in each novel, along with the Knight Josse D'Acquin. Together they form a strange but successful detective partnership. This latest novel is set in May 1199 and begins as a party of five from Hawkenlye Abbey who have journeyed hundreds of miles for more than three weeks, reach their destination at the Ile d'Oleron. Queen Eleanor has summoned Abbess Helewise and her party to discuss the building of a chapel at the abbey, dedicated to the well-being of the soul of her dear son King Richard. Meanwhile Sir Josse d'Acquin receives secret orders of a very different kind that sets him on the trail of a group of mysterious knights rumoured to be devil worshippers. As with all Alys Clare's novels, the characters are brilliantly drawn, the historical detail is fascinating and the plots believable and exciting.
	P. D. James is her twentieth published novel. These include a series of books featuring the Scotland Yard policeman Commander Adam Dalgliesh. In this latest novel he is called in to investigate a murder at Mr Chandler-Powell's private clinic in Dorset. A notorious investigative journalist Rhoda Gradwyn, was to have a disfiguring and long-standing facial scar removed. She was planning on the success of this to be the beginning of a new life. Unfortunately she was murdered and not long after Dalgliesh begins his investigation, there is another murder. P.D. James is one of the most successful English detective novelists. Born in 1920, she began work as a full time writer in 1979. Since then she has published twenty novels, and received thirteen crime genre awards. Her work has been published in many countries and translated into fourteen languages. She was awarded an OBE in 1983 and created a Life Peer (Baroness James of Holland Park) in 1991.She has received seven honorary degrees from university in the United Kingdom and was made an Honorary Fellow of Downing College in Cambridge in 1986. Three other Honorary Fellowship follow form other distinguished universities. P.D. James is acknowledged for giving a literary dignity to the murder mystery genre, but all her novels explore the darker and disturbing workings of the human mind.
	The Laughter of Dead Kings by Tomb of the Golden Bird (2006). As Barbara Michaels she has written 20 novels mainly gothic and supernatural thrillers.
	Ian Rankin is his first stand alone thriller in nearly ten years. Last year saw the end of his famous detective Inspector Rebus of the Edinburgh Police, although in this novel there are a few slight references to him. Doors open was originally published in serial form in The New York Times in 2007 and is the reverse of the Inspector Rebus series, as the perspective in this novel is from the criminal side and the dark underworld of Edinburgh. Mike Mackenzie is a self-made who is looking for something to liven up the days. A chance encounter at an art auction offers him the opportunity to do just that as he settles on a plot to commit a 'perfect crime'. He intends to rip-off one of the most high-profile targets in the capital, the National Gallery of Scotland. So, together with two close friends from the art world, he devises a plan to a lift some of the most valuable artwork around while persuading the world no crime was ever committed. This is a fast paced, action packed novel. It is well plotted and witty with the brilliant dialogue. Ian Rankin was born in 1960, after graduating from Edinburgh University he moved to London for four years, then to France where he started his writing career. He is most famous for the seventeen crime novels that feature the character Inspector Rebus, a great favourite with readers. Another series featuring the character Jack Harvey were also successful. Ian Rankin now lives in Edinburgh. He has received four Honorary Doctorates and in 2002 he received an OBE for services to literature.
	Kathy Reichs is her eleventh novel featuring the forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan. In this novel she is called in when a careless plumber accidentally knocks through a wall, and finds a secret chamber that holds the remains of a ritualistic display, slain chickens, a goat and a human skull with part of the jaw missing. The forehead is darkened by an irregular stain the exact red-brown of dried blood, and lined with remnants of desiccated tissue. Age, race and sex indicators confirm the skull as that of a young, black female. Just as Temperance is working to determine the post-mortem interval, another body is uncovered. This time the corpse is headless, and the torso is carved with Satanic symbols. Kathy Reichs is one of only seventy-seven certified forensic anthropologist in the United States. She was born in Chicago and received her Ph.D in physical anthropology from Northwestern University in 1975. She is Professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina. Her first novel, Deja Dead won the 1997 Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel.
August 2008 Interestingly four of the authors long-listed for the www.themanbookerprize.com (ultimately won by Aravind Adiga) were recently chosen as part of the Hay 21 list of authors to watch. This list was to celebrate 21 years of the Guardian Hay Literary Festival, held in Hay-on-Wye in Wales. Originally the Festival started with 50 speakers and 2,400 members of the audience, this has grown to this year having 768 speakers/performers and an audience of 140,000. Many famous writers have actually begun their careers at the Festival, and for the young writers listed on the Hay 21 which includes Emily Perkins from New Zealand this is quite an achievement. The complete list with author profiles and some book extracts can be found @ www.ahyfestival.com/wales/hay21.aspx This month we will highlight six of these young writers, showing not only the diversity of their nationalities as the differences in their writing styles and genre.
	The Calligrapher was published with much acclaim in 2003. His second novel, Self Help was published in 2007; this was long-listed for the Man Booker prize that year and won the 2007 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize for a novel. But with his highly praise third novel, Pravda, published this year he has proved his consistency and ability, therefore has been included in the Hay 21 list. Inspired by the author's own family history, this is a novel of suspicion and loss, love and loyalty and the destructive legacy of deceit. When Gabriel Glover arrives in St. Petersburg to find his mother dead in her apartment, still reeling from grief, Gabriel and his twin sister, Isabella, arrange the funeral without contacting their father, Nicholas, a brilliant and manipulative libertine. Unknown to the twins, their mother had long ago abandoned a son, Arkady, a pitiless Russian predator now determined to claim his birthright. Aided by an ex-seminarian whose heroin addiction is destroying him, Arkady sets out to find the siblings and uncover the dark secret hidden from them their entire lives. Edward Docx is able to capture the feel of St. Petersburg, London, New York and Paris which adds depth to this portrait of a family in turmoil. As the mystery of their mother's life and death is revealed, this haunting story rushes toward a startling conclusion.
	Hanif Mohammed is his debut novel. He has been included in the Hay 21 list and his novel has been long-listed for the 2008 Man Booker Prize. Mohammed Hanif was born in Pakistan in 1965; he graduated from the Pakistan Air Force Academy as Pilot Officer, but left to pursue a career in journalism. He has written plays for stage and BBC radio where he is currently head of the BBC's Urdu Service. He lives in London. A case of exploding mangoes is a clever, provocative and funny novel that re-imagines the conspiracies and coincidences that lead to the mysterious 1988 plane crash that killed Pakistan's dictator General Zia ul-Haq. At the centre of this novel is the narrator Ali Shigri, a Pakistan Air Force pilot. His father, one of Zia's colonels, committed suicide under suspicious circumstances. Ali is determined to understand what or who pushed him to such desperation and to avenge his death. What he quickly discovers is a tangle of events: Americans in Pakistan, Soviets in Afghanistan and dollars in every hand. He mounts his elaborate plot for revenge with an ever changing band of accomplices that include a hashish smoking American lieutenant, the chief of Pakistan's secret police, the Air Force squadron's laundryman and a mango besotted crow. This is a darkly comic book about love, betrayal, tyranny and family.
	Another debut novel, God's own country by Ross Raisin, has ensured the author has been included in the Hay 21 list of authors to watch. In this novel the fine line between sanity and insanity are explored which is chilling but entirely convincing. Sam Marsdyke is an awkward late teenager who was thrown out of school after being accused of attempting to rape a schoolmate. Sam now works his family's farm along with his father, and there he notices Josephine Reeves, a 15-year-old whose family has moved from London to the Yorkshire village where Sam resides. From that moment on, Sam's carefully constructed protections begin to crumble and what starts off as a harmless friendship between an isolated loner and a defiant teenage girl takes a most disturbing turn as Sam's tenuous grip on reality slips away. The novel uses much Yorkshire dialect and a stream-of-consciousness narration, which adds to the authenticity of the story. Ross Raisin was born in 1980 and holds an MFA from Goldsmiths College in London, where he resides.
	Child 44 by Gorky Park. Set in the Soviet Union in 1953, war hero Leo Stepanovich Demidov, a rising star in the MGB, the State Security force, is assigned to look into the death of a child. Leo is annoyed, first because this takes him away from a more important case, but, more importantly, because the parents insist the child was murdered. In Stalinist Russia, there's no such thing as murder; the only criminals are those who are enemies of the state. After attempting to curb the violent excesses of his second-in-command, Leo is forced to investigate his own wife, the beautiful Raisa, who's suspected of being an Anglo-American sympathizer. Demoted and exiled from Moscow, Leo stumbles onto more evidence of the child killer. This is a suspenseful, surprising unexpected novel of love and family, of hope and resilience.
	How the soldier repairs the gramophone was short-listed for The German Book Award, as well as winning several other major prizes. The author is the recipient of the Graz and Iowa writing fellowships and has been included in the Hay 21 list. How the soldier repairs the gramophone is a moving, powerful story of a young Bosnian refugee named Aleksandar Krsmanovic. Aleksandar is the apple of his family's eye, but his sheltered childhood ends when ethnic wars brewing in the surrounding republics make their way to his hometown in the spring of 1992. As Serbian troops storm the village, Aleksandar's family hides, but nowhere is safe. The violence forces the family to Germany, where they struggle to adjust to their new lives as refugees. Although this novel captures the catastrophe of war through a child's eyes it contains much natural, witty humour. The semi-autobiographical the hero, Aleksandar, is talkative, precocious and determinedly optimistic in the face of heartbreaking losses, forever making startling little observations on life that somehow get it all wrong and yet sort of right.
	Lastly another Man Booker Prize long-listed title and Hay 21 author to watch is Australian A fraction of the whole. Steve Toltz was born in Sydney and has lived in Montreal, Vancouver, New York, Barcelona, and Paris working in a variety of jobs, including English teacher and screenwriter. Most of his life, Jasper Dean couldn't decide whether to pity, hate, love, or murder his certifiably paranoid father, Martin, a man who overanalyzed anything and everything and imparted his self-garnered wisdom to his only son. But now that Martin is dead, Jasper can fully reflect on the crackpot who raised him in intellectual captivity, and what he realizes is that, for all its lunacy, theirs was a grand adventure. As he recollects the events that led to his father's demise, Jasper recounts a boyhood of outrageous schemes and shocking discoveries, about his infamous outlaw uncle Terry, his mysteriously absent European mother, and Martin's constant losing battle to make a lasting mark on the world he so disdains. It's a story that takes them from the Australian bush to the cafes of bohemian Paris, from the Thai jungle to strip clubs, asylums, labyrinths, and criminal lairs. This is an amazing, satirical novel that is funny and very entertaining.
Jun/July 2008 Recently the winner of the ninth Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction was announced at the annual Guardian Hay Festival held in Hay-on-Wye, Wales. This award has become a highlight of the festival with the winner being presented with a case of Bollinger Champagne, 52 volumes of the Everyman Wodehouse edition and a live Gloucestershire Old Spot pig. This year's winner, from a short list of six novels was The Butt. The other eight previous year's winners have included A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian. Although this event occurs at the beginning of summer for the northern hemisphere, we thought we could highlight the winner's novel, along with new humorous fiction we have recently received, to warm and cheer our cold dark days of winter reading.
	A short Gentleman is the second comic novel by Seeds of Greatness was published in 2006. Canter was born and brought up in the Jewish community of Golders Green, north London. He studied law at the University of Cambridge, and after a short time in advertising copywriting he became a freelance scriptwriter. He became the principal writer for comedian Lenny Henry and also writing for Dawn French, Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones. The short gentleman in this novel is Robert Purcell, whose life for a long time, went according to plan. He got a first in Law and then enjoyed a distinguished career as a barrister and a judge. But his life fell apart when he committed a crime. He went to prison. Now he's out, his wife suggested he write an account of who he is and what drove him to his crime. Confession is not an easy task for an English gentleman, but this is what this novel is. Robert has to struggle to come to terms with the forces that brought him down: Elizabeth, the wife who wanted him to change, Judy Page, the ex-girlfriend who came back to haunt him, Pilkington, the childhood bully who grew into an adult bully, Mike Bell, the old friend Robert was always happy to patronise. Finally, there's his father, who proved, at the end of his life, not to be the man Robert thought he was. This is a series of funny, sometimes hilarious, incidents elegantly written with a wickedly dry wit.
	Wit's End is her sixth novel. She received her masters in Political Science from the University of California at Davis. She started writing science fiction stories, with her first collection titled Artificial Things being published in 1986. This was followed by several more collections of stories, anthologies edited by her and five novels that include the best known, The Jane Austen Book Club, published in 2004 and recently made into a movie. Wit's End is set in contemporary Santa Cruz. The novel centres on Rima Lanisell, a young woman at loose ends, having just lost her father to cancer. She travels to coastal California at the request of her godmother, Addison Early, who once knew Rima's father well, perhaps too well. Rima is on a mission to discover just what that relationship was really about. But her godmother, a bestselling mystery writer, is secretive and feisty. Over the years, she has tried to protect her work and her privacy as her passionate fans have become ever more intrusive In this age of the Internet, with its blogs, chat rooms, websites, its Wikipedia, false personas, and hidden identities, those fans have begun to take over the plot lines and the life of her famous fictional detective. For many, he is more real than Addison herself. This is a highly inventive take on the way dedicated readers appropriate their favourite books, perhaps the one act of theft applauded the world over, except by authors. This novel is quietly witty and highly inventive with characters that are both oddball and endearing.
	Garrison Keillor was one of the six novels selected for the short list of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize. Garrison Keillior was born in Minnesota, United States in 1942 and began his broadcasting career, for which he has become so well known, while he was at high school. He graduated with a degree in English from the University Of Minnesota in 1966. Although he has written many novels and stories, based around the fictitious town of Lake Wobegon, he is also known as a columnist, writing for the New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly, musician, satirist, and most popularly as the host of the radio show A Prairie Home Companion, which began in 1974. He wrote the screen play for the movie version of this in 2006. Pontoon as the title says is set in Lake Wobegon and is filled with many wonderful wacky characters and situations. Evelyn Peterson, a sprightly 82-year-old whose secret life of romance and adventure is revealed after her death. Her daughter, Barbara, a please-everyone type with a fondness for chocolate liqueur, finds Evelyn dead in bed. Barbara plans to carry out her mother's strict instructions for a cremation ceremony involving a bowling ball filled with her ashes, and events escalate from there. This is an entertaining very funny novel, in true Keillor style.
	Another very funny novel we have recently received is David Lodge. In it we follow the life of Professor Desmond Bates, who took early retirement from the Department of Linguistics when the university merged it with the English department. He misses the purposeful routine of the academic year, and has lost his appetite for research. His wife Winifred's career is rapidly progressing and he has been reduced to an escort and househusband. The monotony of his days is relieved only by wearisome journeys to London to check on the welfare of his eighty-nine-year-old father, an ex-dance musician who stubbornly refuses to move from the house he is patently unable to live in with safety. But these discontents are nothing compared to the affliction of hearing loss, which is a constant source of domestic friction and social embarrassment. It is through his deafness that Desmond inadvertently gets involved with a young woman whose wayward and unpredictable behaviour threatens to destabilize his life completely. This is a wickedly comic but moving novel about one man's attempts to come to terms with deafness and death, ageing and mortality. David Lodge is an award winning author of fifteen novels and eleven non-fiction works of literary criticism and theory, mainly concerning American and English novels. He has also written adaptations of novels for television and two plays for theatre. He received his degree and masters at the University College London and his PhD at the University of Birmingham where still lives. He taught English until 1987 when he retired to become a full time writer. He retains the title of Honorary Professor of Modern English Literature at Birmingham University.
	The winning novel, Will Self is set in a rather distorted world, in a country that is part Australia, part Iraq, part Greenland, a modern day heart of darkness. Tom Brodzinski finally decides to give smoking; a moment's inattention to detail becomes his undoing. Flipping the butt of his final cigarette off the balcony of the holiday apartment he's renting with his family, Tom is appalled when it lands on the head of one his fellow countrymen, Reggie Lincoln. The elderly Lincoln is badly burnt, and since the cigarette butt passed through public space before hitting him, the local authorities are obliged to regard Tom's action as an assault, despite his benign intentions. Worse is to follow: Lincoln is married to a native from one of the rigorous, mystical tribes of the desert interior, and their customary law is incorporated into the civil statute. In order to make reparations to Mrs Lincoln's people, Tom will have to leave his family behind, and carry the appropriate goods and chattels deep into the arid heart of this strange, island continent. This is an imaginative allegorical novel, with a wonderful use of metaphor, typical of Will Self's writing. Since graduating from Oxford University he worked briefly as a cartoonist and began writing fiction. He now has over eighteen published works that include novels, short stories collections and non-fiction and two collections of journalism. He is a regular broadcaster on television and radio, contributor to many magazines and newspapers. He lives in London.
	The autobiography of the Queen : a novel by Adele : Jane Eyre's Hidden Story published in 2002, biography and travel.
APRIL 2008 The shortlist of titles for one of the world's largest literary prize, the International IMPAC Dublin prize has been announced. Much to our disappointment Wellington writer Lloyd Jones did not reach the short list for his novel Mister Pip. The eight novels chosen from 137 novels submitted, give a truly international flavour to this award. All were nominated from a total of 161 libraries in 121 cities. The winner, who will receive €100,000, will be announced on 12 June. Full details of all submitted novels, the shortlist and links to nominating libraries can be found at www.impacdublinaward.ie. Recently we have received several new titles from past winners of the Nobel Prize for literature. It is very exciting to think that writers of such acclaim are still producing work that will inspire, enlighten and entertain old and new readers alike. The Nobel Prize began in 1901 is and awarded each year to an author whose body of work meets "the most outstanding work of idealistic tendency" as stated in the will of Alfred Nobel. The full list of past winners, biographies and details of the prize can be found on the Nobel Prize website. The following new material from past recipients of this major award showcases the diversity, skill, and craftsmanship each have developed in their writing and the pleasure they continue to give readers.
	J.M. (John Maxwell) Coetzee was born in South Africa 1940 where he was educated, and graduated from the University of Cape Town with honours degrees in Mathematics and English. In 1968 he received his PhD in English, Linguistics and Germanic Languages from the University of Texas at Austin. He remained in the United States, where he held many teaching positions. His first novel was published in 1969, and since then has been a prolific author of fiction, essays and autobiography, winning the Booker Prize twice. In 2002 he emigrated to Australia, where he holds an honorary position at the University of Adelaide. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003. Diary of a bad year is his most recent work, and is about friendship, loneliness and the possibility of love. An aging writer asked to contribute to a collection of political essays, keeps a diary of his opinions, which are very strong and topical. After meeting a young unemployed woman, he engages her as his typist. She begins to challenge all his beliefs and opinions. The job and the writer's not unwelcome attraction to her is a much needed distraction, but unfortunately her smart money-making boyfriend has other plans. This novel is written using the three voices in separate sections throughout, but is very thought-provoking, funny and quite moving.
	Beethoven was one-sixteenth black : and other stories, is the title of her latest collection. The thirteen stories in this collection offer demonstration of how people's origins, inheritances and histories, and the loss of them, are inescapable. The title story centres on the white, twice-divorced academic descendant of a London diamond prospector who visits his forebear's mine in Kimberly, South Africa, and wonders who in the township, black and white, he may be related to. The narrator of "Dreaming of the Dead" is haunted by famous former companions. The daughter of "A Beneficiary", meanwhile, finds an unsettling letter among the effects of her late mother, an actress. Cultural inheritance shadows the marriage of a Hungarian couple that emigrates to South Africa in "Alternate Endings". Always the author puts big, sweeping disasters (the Holocaust, apartheid) in the pasts of flawed, ill-equipped characters and shows how their choices have been little more than wing beats against history. The results are terrifying, sometimes acidly funny and often beautiful.
	Detective story is the latest novel form 2002 Nobel Prize winner for Literature, Fateless, published in 1992 and then again as Fatelessness in 2004 was made into a film, of the same title and was released in 2005. Detective story is a political allegory that takes a subtle look at the price of the war on terror. The story is told by Antonio Martens, a policeman in an unnamed Latin American country, who is awaiting trial for multiple counts of murder after the regime that employed him, was toppled. Martens tells how he was transferred from the criminal investigative branch of the police to the Corps, a security unit, where, free by any meaningful restraints, he pursued the case of Federigo and Enrique Salinas, a father and son who operated the country's leading department store chain and were suspected of plotting treason. Any means were justified to reach the regime's chosen end, the destruction of an entire liberal class. Inside Marten's mind, we inhabit the rationalizing world of evil and see firsthand the inherent danger of inertia during times of crisis.
	The Cleft, is a strange, at times disturbing but fascinating novel. An old Roman senator, contemplative at his late stage of life, embarks on what will likely be his last endeavour: the retelling of the story of human creation. He recounts the history of the Clefts, an ancient community of women living in an Edenic, coastal wilderness. A society free from sexual intrigue, free from jealousy, free from petty rivalries: a society free from men. The Clefts have no need nor knowledge of men, childbirth is controlled, like the tides that lap around their bodies, through the cycles of the moon, and their children are always female. But with the unheralded birth of a strange, new child, a boy, the harmony of their community is suddenly thrown into jeopardy.
	Death at Intervals is the most recently published novel by Baltasar and Blimunda. Nine other novels have been translated and published internationally, but his work in Portuguese includes poetry and essays. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998. Death at intervals is a witty, original satire. It begins on the first day of the New Year, when no one dies. This understandably causes great consternation amongst religious leaders, if there's no death, there can be no resurrection and therefore no reason for religion and what will be the effect on pensions, the social services, hospitals, Funeral directors? Life insurance policies become meaningless. Amid the general public, on the other hand, there is initially celebration as they have achieved the great goal of humanity, eternal life. But will death's disappearance benefit the human race, or will this sudden abeyance backfire? This is Jose Saramago at his magical best.
FEBRUARY 2008 With the best summer weather still to come and more outdoor activities being possible, leaving less time for long and involved reading, we have decided to highlight a selection of new Short Stories collections by some old and some new exciting writers. Short stories are a popular genre with many readers, as they can be de a show case for the skills of the writer. The plot and character development has to quick and precise using an economy of words. A good short story will always leave the reader wanting more and some can be remembered for years. We have slipped in a graphic novel of stories, for those readers who have yet to experience this genre. It gives a different aspect to the short story form, although sparing in text, the old adage "every picture tells a story" really applies. This type of genre can be as complex and thought provoking as the usual short story. So for an entertaining, satisfying read that will take only a brief amount of time, try something from our selection, hopefully you will be pleasantly surprised.
	Etgar Keret. He was born in Tel Aviv in 1967 and since starting writing in 1992 has become a well known and much admired, award winning writer in Israeli literature and cinema. Along with short stories, which have been translated into 22 different languages, he has written plays, children's books and graphic novels. He lectures at the Tel Aviv University's School of Film. Missing Kissinger is a collection of 46 stories, that are fierce, funny, full of energy and insight, and also sometimes dark, tragic and often very poignant. Many of the characters in these stories are waiting for something to change their lives, many of them can't quite reach ultimate happiness, some of them are sick, and some are abandoned, most have trouble communicating. The unexpected can, and usually does happen. These stories are very short with every word being the right one, but all will leave the reader wanting more.
	Me and You and Everyone We Know, in which she acted, directed and wrote the screenplay. The stories in here collection have all been previously published in a variety of magazines, including Harper's Magazine and the New Yorker. They are at times funny, dark and very whimsical, with a diverse range of situations and characters.
	Vincent Lam. Born in Ontario in 1974 he did his medical training at the University of Toronto and works as an emergency physician and also does air evacuation work and expedition medicine on Artic and Antarctic ships. His first novel is soon to be published. This debut collection of stories won Canada's most prestigious literary award, the Scotiabank Giller Prize for 2006. The twelve interlinked stories introduce us to a group of medical students over ten years, as they make the transition from medical school to hospital life. The stories span the unique challenges faced by young, inexperienced doctors, having to decide during a first human dissection whether it is more important to follow the anatomy textbook or keep a tattoo intact. They also delve into their private lives, their relationships and family histories, their fears and motivations. Told with black humour, the stories investigation both common and extraordinary moral dilemmas, and a give a sometimes shockingly realistic portrait of today's medical profession. Bloodletting & Miraculous cures is a well written, riveting collection.
	Sadly the great American playwright Presence: Stories had been posthumously published. Of the twenty plays he wrote, the most famous were Death of a Salesman, and the Crucible, for which he wrote the screenplay. The misfits would be his most well known screen play, as it was the last movie made starring his former wife Marilyn Munroe. All six of the stories in this collection have previously appeared in magazines such as The New Yorker, Harper's, and Esquire, and all in different ways celebrate redemption through love. The stories have been arranged along the arc of a life, from the sexual awakening of a young Brooklyn teenager, through a middle-aged writer's creative and marital troubles, ending with an old man's beachside ruminations. This collection is a brief example of Arthur Miller's writing skill, a skill that will be remembered and celebrated for many years to come.
	Cheating at Canasta is his 9th collection, containing 12 short stories. Two of the stories have already won the O. Henry Award, though the volume contains seven unpublished stories as well, and as with all his writing shows a timeless quality. His writing is precise and gives unflinching insights into the hearts and lives of ordinary people. From a chance encounter between two childhood friends to the memories of a newly widowed man to a family grappling with the sale of their ancestral land, all are examined with grace and skill. These stories stay in the mind long after they're finished, because of the subtlety and power that shapes and directs them toward their solemn, sometimes harsh conclusions.
	Clare Wigfall. She was born in 1976 in London and graduated from Manchester University in 1998, after which she moved to Prague where she still lives. She teaches creative writing to children and adults, and runs a face painting and party clown company and a community figure-drawing workshop. The characters these nineteen stories are all searching for something missing, something absent. As they live their seemingly ordinary lives, the dark undercurrent of life, with all its complications and imperfections, is gradually revealed. One long hot summer, Evelyn drowns a wasps' nest, and while digging among the tiny corpses makes a sinister discovery. A university professor arrives unannounced at the door of an Arizona fortune-teller, little knowing how this woman will alter his life and over a Coca-Cola in a village bar in Andalusia a woman hears from a stranger the worst thing a mother can do. They are all extraordinarily compelling, and skilfully constructed miniature masterpieces.
	Megan Kelso, it is the first received by Wellington City Libraries. Megan Kelso was born in 1968 in Seattle, Washington and started writing in the 1990's with graphic novels. She has won many awards for her work, including in 2002 the Ignatz Award for Outstanding Artist. From April to September, 2007 she published a weekly comic strip for the New York Times. All the graphic short stories in this collection have been previously published in a wide range of magazines and anthologies. The subjects of these 15 stories can be divided into two types, the semi autobiographical and personal stories of her childhood and adolescence and stories about the idea of America and American history. In each story with just a few panels emotions and ideas are captured that expand well beyond the pages. The work is charming, witty, nuanced, slightly elusive, and sharply observed. Some stories are narrative, some just show the emotion of a single moment in time, but none truly end by the last page. This collection of stories is diverse, clever and a fun read.
NOVEMBER 2007 Once again another very busy year is drawing to a close. As with most previous years the collection has again increased by well over 2,500 new titles and judging by the Readers' Choice reviews, most new books have found appreciative readerships. It has been an exciting year for New Zealand Literature, with many new authors being published and Lloyd Jones' novel Mister Pip winning the Montana Medal for Fiction or Poetry, the Commonwealth Writer's Prize and being short listed for the Man Booker Prize. As we mentioned this time last year, this is a time to look back over all we have read over the past year and remember the novels we enjoyed the most. As newspapers and magazines that review fiction ask selected guests to list their favourite books of the year, we have done the same with members of the Wellington City Libraries staff. They were limited to a very brief reason why they enjoyed the books they chose. Although they chose very different types of fiction, they were all totally enthusiastic about the books they selected. We hope that you will find something new to read in their selections and that you enjoy them as much as we have.
	The Yacoubian building, Alaa Al Aswany ; translated by Humphrey Davies. (2007, c2002) Set in modern day Cairo at the start of the Iraq War, this novel gives a fascinating insight into the lives of the tenants in one of the city's apartment buildings. Through their interactions and relationships in the building and the influences from outside, a wonderful picture is drawn of modern Muslim Society. (Julie)
	One good turn : a jolly murder mystery, Kate Atkinson (2006) Should a murder mystery make you laugh? A wry, clever story and an interesting take on genre. (Bridget)
	Moral disorder, Margaret Atwood (2007). Dreadful cover aside, this was my absolute favourite read of 2007. I am convinced that it is autobiographical even though we were never told so. It is wonderfully written in form of eleven stories, most memorable for me being 'The White Horse' in which we meet Gladys. (Marilyn)
	The uncommon reader, Alan Bennett (2007) The Queen discovers reading in a big way and starts to neglect her official duties in this very funny short novel, which examines the monarchy, the class system, and the power of books to change people's lives (Neil).
	Jesus out to sea: short stories, James Lee Burke (2007) 'Jesus Out to Sea' collects 11 previously published short stories by James Lee Burke, that range from the haunting title story about hurricane Katrina to a trio of poignant coming-of-age stories on childhood friendship, each one infused with his rich and lyrical prose. (Mark)
	Extremely loud & incredibly close, Jonathan Safran Foer (2005). A highly recommended read. I really enjoyed the very different perspectives of all the characters, and nine-year-old Oskar was a totally believable narrator. (Paula)
	A spot of bother, Mark Haddon (2006). I admire a writer who can "be" a toddler and a 60 year-old (and every age in between) with such authenticity. (Shannon)
	The raw shark texts, Stephen Hall (2007). Very clever, fast paced. (Jason)
	The reluctant fundamentalist, Mohsin Hamid (2007). A taut, compelling monologue runs through this tense, though provoking novel, giving a terrific sense of unease and menace. (Fiona)
	Down river, John Hart (2007). Even better than his acclaimed debut 'The King of Lies', John Hart's 'Down River' tells the story of a wealthy young man who returns to his hometown 5 years after being acquitted of a crime he did not commit, but one which everyman believes he is guilty of. A richly layered, literate, and atmospheric 'southern gothic' about family ties and betrayals, the forces of economic change on small towns, and hard won redemption, 'Dark River' is everything that Donna Tartt's 'The Little Friend' wasn't. (Mark)
	The custodian of paradise, Wayne Johnston (2007). This big fat 2007 novel, a sequel to 'The Colony of Unrequited Dreams' (1999) has everything going for it - a wonderful, eccentric central character, a compelling and somewhat gothic setting (Newfoundland), beautiful, clever prose and at the heart of it all - a mystery - who is the man known as The Provider? And what are Sheilagh Fielding's secrets. (Pauline)
	Day, A.L. Kennedy (2007). The damage, both physical and mental caused by war and the struggle for normalization in peacetime, as revealed through Air force Gunner Day's story. A gripping 'boys own story', written by a great female author. (Linda)
	On Chesil Beach, Ian McEwan (2007). This is a brilliant novella telling the story of Edward and Florence, a young couple spending their honeymoon in a small hotel in Dorset, and the way in which their different backgrounds and expectations combine to disastrous effect. (Neil)
	In the dark, Deborah Moggach (2007). I love all Deborah Moggach's books and this one was an excellent read - it is set in a London boarding house in 1916 and involves the widow who runs it, her young son Ralph, the homely maid Winnie, a host of curious boarders and a dashing but shady butcher who becomes romantically involved with the widow. Warmly recommended, and not just by me - it has received excellent reviews in a host of British newspapers and magazines. (Sue)
	The life of hunger, Amélie Nothomb ; translated from the French by Shaun Whiteside (2006). The Life of Hunger was written in a clever fanciful style that was very engaging. (Carmel)
	Thistle and Twigg, Mary Saums (2007). I really enjoyed this book; it managed to surprise me at the end. I would recommend it. (Kylie)
	A bit of earth, Rebecca Smith (2006). This was an original, charming and very satisfying read. (Joy)
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2007 Recently the short listed contenders for the Man Booker Prize 2007 were announced and our congratulations go to Mr Pip which joined five other authors selected for this honour. This will be the first time since The Bone People that a New Zealand author has been so highly recognised. It is a very prestigious fiction prize, with 92 novels submitted of which 18 were selected for the long list. From the 6 novels chosen from this to make the shortlist, the winner will be announced on 16th October. More information on the Man Booker Prize, past winners, recent nominations and author biographies can be found at www.themanbookerprize.com Each short listed author and novel receives endless publicity, so we have decided to highlight the authors and novels that were selected for the long list, but failed to proceed further. Of these seven writers, four were debut novels, probably the highest number for many years and all show exciting new talent. All the long listed novels provide a great diverse reading experience.
	The Welsh Girl is his first novel. Born in 1966 to Welsh and Chinese parents he has degrees in physics and English and was awarded an MA in Creative Writing from Boston University. After working in Malaysia, Singapore and the United Kingdom, he has settled in the United States. He was named in 2003 by Granta magazine, one of twenty "Best of Young British Writers". His short stories have been published in many anthologies, and his two collections The Ugliest House in the World published in 1988 and Equal Love published 2000 both won several literary prizes. The Welsh Girl is a thought provoking novel set in Snowdonia in 1944. It tells the story of the young daughter of a fierce nationalist shepherd, who yearns to escape the confines of her rural life. A German Jewish refugee is sent to Wales to interview Rudolf Hess and in the nearby POW camp, a young German soldier faces the moral dilemma of his surrender and his loss of honour. All these lives intersect and as a perilous wartime romance begins, all three will question where they belong, and their duty to family, country and each other.
	Tan Twan Eng is also set during the Second World War, but in Malaya, and begins in Penang in 1939. Philip Hutton is 16 years old, his father is English and his mother Chinese, and he finds because of this he does not fit easily into society. He befriends a young Japanese diplomat Hayato Endo, and together they share and explore each others' cultures and beliefs. But when the Japanese invade Malay, Philip realises everything he holds dear is threatened with destruction. He also learns that his once trusted friend has been harbouring a devastating secret and to save all that he loves from being placed in mortal danger, he must risk everything. This is a haunting story of betrayal, barbaric cruelty, courage and love. Tan Twan Eng was born in Penang. He studied Law and worked as an advocate and solicitor in Kuala Lumpur. He currently lives in Cape Town.
	Gifted is her first novel and tells the story of Rumi Vasi, born with a talent for mathematics, who at the age of 8 on a trip to India acquires what seems like a supernatural power with numbers. On returning home to Cardiff her parents decide that the genius of their daughter will be strictly disciplined and that through her they will leave their mark on their adopted country. All goes according to plan, until as a young teenager Rumi starts to rebel and in doing so numbers start loosing their magic for her. As her longing for normality and her parents will to succeed deepen, so too does the gap between the generations widen. This is a dazzling, very funny novel about teenage dislocation, parental expectation and family love.
	The fourth debut novel long listed was Catherine O'Flynn. This novel was also long listed for the 2007 Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction. Beginning in the 1980's we are introduced to a young girl, Kate Meaney, who likes playing detective. With her friend Adrian, the Newsagent's son, they follow imaginary suspects through the newly opened Green Oaks Shopping Centre. When Kate suddenly disappears, Adrian is suspected and driven from his home by the news media. Then in 2004 we meet Lisa, Adrian's sister, who works at the Shopping Centre in a music store. Through boredom she forms an unlikely relationship with a security guard, Kurt and while watching his CCTV screens she becomes entranced by the images of a little girl who keeps reappearing throughout the centre. With Kurt she tries to discover if the sightings of the young girl are linked in any way to the strange history of the Green Oaks Shopping Centre. This clever novel is both funny and sad. It reflects on the ridiculous consumer society we now all belong to.
	Edward Docx is set in London and St Petersburg. It is the story of a family half-English and half-Russian. Gabriel Glover lives in London and struggles to hold together a self help magazine he despises. One night Gabriel receives a distressing phone call from his mother Masha who lives in St Petersburg. Bothered by the worrisome sound of her voice he races to Russia only to find her dead in her apartment. With his twin sister Isabella they must discover who their mother really was and more pressingly, who they are themselves. Amidst their quest, their despised philandering father Nicholas must admit some secrets which both he and Masha carefully withheld from their children. Masha's illegitimate son Arkady holds the key to breaking the silence between the father and his grieving children. In the last hundred pages of this absorbing gripping novel, the threads all come together to unearth some surprising revelations and a heart-breaking climax. Edward Docx was born in 1972 and was educated at St Bede's College, Manchester and Christ's College, Cambridge. He is a British newspaper columnist, broadcaster and writer. His first novel, The Calligrapher was published in 2003.
	Martin Sloane published in 2002 was awarded many literary prizes. His long listed novel is titled Consolation and is his second novel. Set in Toronto, it seamlessly weaves the past and future together. In 1856 a photographer named Hallam took many photographs of the city as it was developing and took these to exhibit in England. On his return, his ship sunk on Lake Ontario and the strongbox holding the photographs was lost. A century and a half later David Hollis is convinced with the changing shoreline to the harbour over the years, this important historic record of the city could be located and retrieved. This is a skilfully crafted novel, with humour, charm and emotion.
	Winnie and Wolf by The Victorians, After the Victorians and God's funeral : The decline of Faith in Western Civilization.
JULY/AUGUST 2007 The winners of the Montana Book Awards were announced on Monday 27th July 2007. Lloyd Jones won the Montana Medal for Fiction or Poetry for his novel Mr Pip. This was also voted winner of the reader's Choice award. The full list of awards and winners can be found at www.booksellers.co.nz The long list has been announced for the 2007 Man Asian Literary Prize. This is a new major literary prize, intended to give recognition to Asian literature. The long list was drawn from 240 nominations, with the inaugural winner being announced in November. Further information, with the selected long list of titles and authors can be found at www.manasianliteraryprize.org
	The 2007 Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction went to Nigerian writer Half of a Yellow Sun, and for this she has received much praise, fame and acclaim. But we are looking at the lesser well known prizes for 2007, and the 2007 Orange Broadband Award for New Writers was given to Karen Connelly for her novel The Lizard Cage. This award was made for the first time in 2005 to coincide with the 10th anniversary of The Orange Prize for Fiction. The winner receives £10,000 to provide greater freedom to continue writing. Karen Connelly is the author of many volumes of poetry and non-fiction, including an award winning travel book titled 'Touch the Dragon: a Thai Journal'. She spends her time living between Toronto and Greece. 'The lizard cage' tells the story of Teza who once electrified the people of Burma with his protest songs against the dictatorship. Arrested by the Burmese secret police in the days of mass protest, he is seven years into a twenty-year sentence in solitary confinement, cut off from his family and contact with other prisoners. Enduring the harsh conditions with resourcefulness, Buddhist patience and humour, he searches for news and human connection in every being and object that is grudgingly allowed into his cell. Despite his isolation, Teza has a profound influence on the world of the cage and he knows he has the power to transfigure one small life, and send a message of hope and resistance out of the cage. Karen Connelly has visited Burma many times and had lived for two years on the Thai-Burma border. This is a beautiful, very human novel which she says is her contribution to the largely unwritten history of kindness. For more information on the Orange Broadband Prize winners, past and present go to www.orangeprize.co.uk.
	Every year the Edgar Allan Poe Awards are announced by the Mystery Writers of America at The Janissary Tree. Jason Goodwin was born in 1964 and lives in Sussex with his wife and four children. He speaks French and German. He studied Byzantine history at Cambridge University and has written several previous works of non-fiction, including the much acclaimed Lords of the Horizon: A History of the Ottoman Empire. The Janissary Tree is set in 19th Century Istanbul and is the first of a promised series featuring Yashim, a Eunuch and Ottoman detective. As the Sultan plans radical reforms for his Empire a concubine is strangled in the palace harem and a young Janissary cadet is found butchered in the street. Yashim discovers some people will go to any lengths to keep the traditions of the old Ottoman Empire. This is a thrilling, richly detailed historical mystery, with an amazing array of characters, from mystics, archivists, to soup-makers and seductive women. But the darkest of all is the mysterious person who controls the Sultan's harem.
	Nova Swing by Light, it easily stands alone.
	Iris and Ruby by Sunrise. Iris and Ruby is set around Cairo and tells of a family relationship spanning three generations; it moves from 1942 to the present day. Iris is eighty-two, frail and forgetful and lives a quiet claustrophobic live in Cairo, under the care of her manservant, Mamdooh. Her life is suddenly disrupted by the unexpected arrival of her troubled and wilful granddaughter, Ruby, who has run away from England to seek solace with the grandmother she hasn't seen for many years. An unlikely bond arises as the two women open themselves up to one another and Ruby helps Iris document her deteriorating memories of the vibrant life she enjoyed in Cairo during World War Two, a time when she lost her heart to her one true love, Captain Xan Molyneux and then lost him to the ravages of the war. This leads Iris to a disastrous marriage and the birth of Ruby's mother, an event which has shaped all their lives. This is deeply atmospheric novel with a skilfully intertwined narrative.
	Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction 2007. This award is made each year for comic writing and is named in honour of P.G. Wodehouse. The winner receives no money, but a case of vintage Bollinger champagne and the honour of having a pig named after him, all befitting of the late P. G. Wodehouse. Previous winners can be found at www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/awards/wodehouse.htm. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen tells the story of Dr Alfred Jones, a fisheries scientist, who leads a very predictable uneventful life until he finds himself reluctantly involved in a project to bring salmon fishing to the highlands of the Yemen. Not only will this project change his life, but it will also change the course of British political history for ever. With characters such as a visionary Sheik, a toady spin doctor, bumbling bureaucrats and thousands of salmon spawn, this is a wonderfully entertaining satire about dreams and belief. Paul Today was born in 1946 and read English literature at Oxford; he lives in Northumberland and is a keen salmon fisherman. He only started writing a few years ago, and his second novel is due for publication in 2008.
MAY/JUNE 2007 In 1983 Granta magazine announced twenty "Best of Young British Novelists" and devoted an entire issue of the magazine to their fiction. The writers had to be less than 40 years of age, British citizens and were chosen from a list of nominees, by a panel of judges. This was a great innovation, giving the writers necessary publicity by bringing them and their work to the attention of the reading public. It also meant that readers became aware this new and exciting fiction and could watch their future progress and development. Some of these young writers could go on to write future classics. The first list of the then young writers included Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie and Ian McEwan. This was the beginning a much anticipated literary event that would occur every decade. In 1993, Louis de Bernieres, Alan Hollinghurst and Iain Banks were some of the writers named and in 2003 they included Monica Ali, Andrew O'Hagan and Zadie Smith. In 1996 Granta magazine announced the Best Young American Novelists, twenty were chosen from many nominated and these included Sherman Alexie, Jeffrey Eugenides, Jonathan Franzen, and Lorrie Moore. This too has become a much acclaimed, discussed and observed event for the American public, all fiction readers and writers. Recently the second American list was announced, nearly ten years since the first. We have decided to highlight six of the writers listed, as their fiction has recently been received and we are sure you will find it as exciting and innovative work, well worth reading. The full list of Best young American Novelists can be found here.
	War by Candlelight was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award in 2006. Lost City Radio is his first novel. It is a powerful and intense look at war's damaging effect on society and the individual. Set in South America, it tells the story of Norma who has not seen her husband since the beginning of the civil war, ten years ago. She presumes he is dead. She starts a radio show where each week she reads out the names of the missing, those who vanished in the clamour and brutality of the drawn-out conflict, with the hope of reuniting the few survivors with their families. Successes are few; her true gift is the offer of hope. Although her face is unknown to her listeners, she becomes a celebrity. Her life is suddenly changed when a young boy from a jungle village enters her radio studio and provides a connection to the husband she thought lost. This is a very moving novel which shows the wide reaching effects war has on a society and the emotional impact on the individual.
	Extremely loud and Incredibly Close is the second novel by the much celebrated Everything is Illuminated, published in 2002, which won the Guardian First Book Award and the National Jewish Book Award. In 2005 it was adapted to film. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was published in 2005 and uses the events of September 11th attacks on the World Trade Centre as a backdrop for the story of nine-year-old Oskar Schell. Oscar is child genius, an inventor, amateur entomologist, Francophile, letter writer, pacifist, natural historian, percussionist, romantic, Great Explorer, jeweller, detective, vegan, and collector of butterflies. When his father is killed in the Twin Towers attack, he sets out to solve the mystery of a key he discovers in his father's closet. It is a search which leads him into the lives of strangers, through the five boroughs of New York, into history, to the bombings of Dresden and Hiroshima, and on an inward journey which brings him ever closer to some kind of peace. This is an enchanting, deeply sensitive novel.
	Lucky Girls, published 2005 draws on the cultural differences between Americans abroad and their Asian hosts, something which the writer herself experienced. This collection was awarded several prizes including the Pen/Malamud Award for excellence in short fiction and the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction in 2004. Her first novel is titled Dissident and again draws on cultural differences, and is set in Los Angeles and Beijing. A famous Chinese performance artist and political activist takes up an artist's residency in Los Angeles, where he is to stay with a wealthy Beverly Hills family. From the moment he arrives, however, it becomes clear that all is not what it seems, on either side. The dissident seems strangely reluctant to talk about his past, and is happier teaching than working on his own projects; his hosts appear, on the surface at least to be a happy, nuclear family, yet their relationships are, in fact, fraught with rivalries and tensions. What happens when these two very different cultures, one Chinese man living many falsehoods and the other, an American family about to break apart finally collide makes this a great read. The Dissident is written with amazing skill and talent.
	The Dream Life of Sukhanov was published in 2006. It tells of fifty-six year-old Anatoly Sukhanov who has everything a man could want: a glittering career, a beautiful wife and two children, and a grand apartment in the smartest part of Moscow. He thinks he has achieved his dream to make his own small secure world, and therefore has achieved true happiness. Then Perestroika dawns and the rigid structures of the world in which Sukhanov has thrived begin to crumble and he is beset by heartbreaking visions from his past, when he was a struggling young artist. He wonders if he had ever made the right choices in his life. This is a deeply moving tale of hope and fear, youth and old age, written with great style by a new young talent.
	A Family Daughter is the debut novel of Liars and Saints was published in 2003. A Family Daughter is set in Argentina in 1979, and is a wonderful tale of the close-knit Santerres family. The novel begins with the youngest member of the family, seven-year-old Gabby, who is forced to stay indoors, during a heat wave as she has chickenpox. What she hears through the open windows and the events that are set in motion that summer will span decades and continents, change the Santerres forever, and surprise and amaze everyone. This is a rich, full novel about passion and desire, fear and betrayal. It illustrates both the joys and complications of contemporary life, and the relationship between truth and fiction.
	The Russian Debutante's Handbook, published in 2003, won the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction and the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction. His short fiction and essays have appeared in many magazines including the New Yorker and Esquire. Absurdistan is his second novel and was published in 2006 It is a satire about the new Russian oligarchy, the American lifestyle and the two countries' shared megalomania, consumerism and appetite for exploiting small countries. The narrator, son of the 1,238th-richest man in Russia, is Misha Vainberg, an obese 30-year-old with an unrestrained appetite for whiskey, women and sturgeon. He was sent to the United States, to study and become a normal prosperous American. But during a trip back to Russia, his Mafioso father is charged with having murdered an Oklahoma businessman and then assassinated himself. Under those circumstances, Misha can not obtain a visa to return to his beloved USA, or his Brooklyn girlfriend. In desperation, he buys Belgian citizenship and a passport in Absurdistan, a new country being forged out of a staged war between the Sevo and Svani peoples in a small territory between Iran and Russia. The founding fathers of Absurdistan are gangsters working with a large American corporation; here Misha must fend for his life as a civil war erupts in the tiny country, to the concern of almost no one else in the world. This novel is very funny and the author manages to include most aspects of 21st Century life in both Central Asia and America through the main characters sharp insights and observations.
MARCH/APRIL 2007 This month the regional winners of the 21st Commonwealth Foundation's Writers' Book Prize have been announced. As a New Zealand author has won the South East Asian and South Pacific region prize for Best Book, we thought we would highlight the other winners of each region and some of the winners of the Best First Book prizes. The Commonwealth Foundation Writers' Prize was established in 1987 to encourage and reward new fiction writing in the Commonwealth. This also enables the winning fiction to reach a worldwide audience. There are four regions Africa, Canada and the Caribbean, Europe and South Asia, South East Asia and South Pacific, short lists are decided from nominations for Best Book and Best First Book. The two winners of each region receive £1,000 and go through to the final selection by an international panel for the Overall Best Book award of £10,000 and the Overall Best First Book award £5000. This year the overall winners will be announced in May, and the awards present in Jamaica. For more information on the Commonwealth Foundation and the lists of the nominated titles on each region's short list can be viewed on the Commonwealth Foundation's website.
	Wellington's Lloyd Jones has been awarded the South East Asian and South Pacific Region Best Book prize for his novel Mister Pip. Born in 1955, Lloyd Jones has written nine novels, numerous shorts stories, edited many collections and was series editor for Four Winds Press essay publications. His novel, Book of Fame won the 2001 Montana Book Award and has been adapted for theatre. He has also been awarded the Katherine Mansfield Fellowship and recently Creative New Zealand's Berlin Writers' Residency. Mister Pip is set in on the island of Bougainville in 1991 and the story is told through 13 year old Matilda. The coastal village she lives in with her mother is relatively tranquil although war is a short distance away on the other side of the island. When a reclusive New Zealander Mr Watts decides to open the abandoned school, Matilda's world is gradually changed. Mr Watts introduces the children to Great Expectations by Charles Dickens and his characters, especially Mr Pip become as real to Matilda as any living person. But on an island at war, the power of fiction has dangerous consequences that will lead to an unforeseen and shocking climax. This is a powerful novel of survival and the search for understanding that remains in the mind long after the last page is read.
	The winner of the Best First Book for the South East Asian and South Pacific Region is by Australian author Andrew O'Connor and is titled Tuvalu. Set in Tokyo is tells the story of Noah Tuttle who is aimlessly living a half kind of life in a cheap rundown hostel in the seamier margins of the city. He teaches mediocre English to disinterested students, sleeps with his girlfriend, Tilly, when she's around, drinks beer when he can afford it, and generally avoids other people and their expectations. Nothing much happens to him, until, that is, he meets the wealthy, captivating and completely self-absorbed Mami Kaketa, a supremely selfish creature who leaves people like so much litter in her wake. This is a dark, funny, inconclusive and strange story of ennui, escape, exile and dreams. It follows the emotional complexities of a young Australian caught between two very different cultures. Andrew O'Connor was born in Victoria, Australia in 1978. After studying Arts at Melbourne University he worked and travelled in central and northern Australia and then Japan.
	Friends of Meager Fortune by David Adams won the prize for Best Book of the Canada and Caribbean region. David Adams is a multi-award winning author, born in 1950 in New Brunswick, Canada. Not only has he written many novels, but also several screen plays, award winning non-fiction and poetry. He has been writer-in- residence at numerous American Universities. The Friends of Meager Fortunes is an engrossing story of fate and the drama of small town life, a transfixing love story and a devastating portrait of a society. It is the story of the lumberjacks who felled the trees by hand and dragged them down mountainsides with horses. Owen Jameson and his men will become part of New Brunswick history, setting up camp on the notoriously dangerous Good Friday Mountain. The teamsters spend months in pitiless ice and snow, daily pitting themselves against nature and risking their lives for scant reward, in the last moments before the coming of mechanization that will make them obsolete. This heroic, brutal life is all Meager Fortune, the camp keeper, knows. This is a book about true greatness and true weakness; about the relentlessness of fate and the evil that men and women do.
	The winner of Best Book for Europe and South Asia is The Perfect Man by Nerrm Murr. In this his third novel he tells story of Rajiv Travers, the child of an Indian mother and English father, is abandoned first to relatives in London and later to the care of his uncle's mistress, Ruth Winters, who lives in a small American town. Ruth is a remote figure who writes romance novels filled with beautiful women who find perfect men. The town, in the backwoods of 1950s Missouri turns out to be as exotic and strange to Rajiv as he is to its inhabitants. But Rajiv, though always an outsider, finds acceptance when he is befriended by four of the town's children. As the children grow older, their friendship becomes increasingly intense, and is complicated not only by desire and shifting loyalties, but also by the personal failings and secrets of the adults around them. One secret in particular is masked by silence and when the silence finally breaks, the violence, anger, and madness that erupts costs one of Rajiv's friends the chance for any real future and draws this novel to a harrowing conclusion. This is a powerful haunting novel. Naeem Murr was born and raised in London, but has lived in the United States of America since 1987. The recipient of numerous awards and scholarships for his writing, he has published a number of prize-winning short stories, novellas and non-fiction pieces in literary journal. His first novel, The Boy published in 1988 was translated into six languages.
	The winner of the Best First Book for the Europe and South Asia region is Hisham Matar, for his novel titled, In the Country of Men. Hisham Matar was born in New York in 1970 and spent his childhood in Cairo. He has lived in London since 1986. This is a breathtakingly emotional novel that becomes utterly gripping, told from the perspective of nine-year old Suleiman, living in Libya in the 1970s under the brutal Qaddafi regime. His world becomes terrifying and bewildering when his best friend's father disappears and is next seen on state television at a public execution; when a mysterious man sits outside the house all day and asks strange questions; when his mother and uncle burn all his father's books when they know what an avid reader he is; and when it seems his father has finally disappeared for good. Soon, the whispers and fears, secrets and lies will become so intense that Suleiman can bear them no longer and in his terrified effort to save his family may end up betraying his friends, his parents and ultimately himself.
	The winner of the Best Book award for the region of Africa was The Native Commissioner by Shaun Johnson. This is a compelling fictional account of the colonial era and the birth of apartheid. Shaun Johnson, who lives in Cape Town, is one of Nelson Mandela's closest associates and one of South Africa's leading political journalist. He worked for many years as a journalist before launching South Africa's Sunday Independent and becoming Managing Director of Independent Newspapers. He then became Chief Executive for the Mandela Rhodes Foundation. The Native Commissioner is based on his Father's papers and tells of George Jameson, who through the 1940s to 1960s was responsible for the natives in his appointed region. He could speak several tribal languages and had a reputation for kindness, fairness and trustworthiness. Then after the 1948 elections he finds that he his moved from one post to another, further and further out into the back areas of South Africa. The laws of apartheid and regulations horrify him, but he continues to do his best as humanely as he can, but gradually it is all too much for him and he sinks into a depression and an early grave at his own hand. This is a fascinating, complex novel about a decent kind man trying to fight the black depression that takes hold of him while trying also to make sense of a world that has turned completely upside down.
FEBRUARY 2007 The first major prize long list to be announced this year is for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. This was inaugurated by the British newspaper, The Independent in 1990 to honour fiction translated and published in Britain. It ran for five years and was revived in 2001 with the support of the Arts Council of England. The prize of £10,000 (divided equally between the author and the translator) is awarded to a novel or short story collection that was published in the United Kingdom the year preceding the award. The other stipulation is that the author must be alive at the time the translation is published. This is a unique award as both the writer and the translator are judged equally. From the 86 titles submitted, the judges chose a long list of 20, with a truly international mix, from countries such as Cuba, Norway, Italy, Afghanistan, Albania, and Angola. The short list from this will be decided in March, with the winner being announced a few months later. The 2007 long list, previous year's winners and finalists can be found @ Wikipedia. This month, we have decided to highlight several long listed titles. These books all give great examples of exemplary writing and translation skills and cover a broad range of topics. We guarantee there will be at least one title that you won't be able to put down.
	The book about Blanche and Marie by Per Olov Enquist is a fascinating, extraordinary biographical fiction. It tells the story of Blanche Wittman, who having been diagnosed with hysteria in 1878 was committed to Salpetriere Hospital for sixteen years. She was placed under the care of the famous M. Charcot. Over time the nature her relationship with M. Charcot developed and changed until eventually she graduated from patient to assistant. On leaving the hospital she was hired by Marie Curie to work in her Paris laboratory, where, on 17 February 1898, after successful experiments conducted with the mineral pitchblende, radium was discovered. So enchanted was Marie by its soft blue glow that she took to keeping a glass vial of radium salts at her bedside. For Blanche, the effects were more brutal; exposure to radiation necessitated the amputation of all her limbs, save one. Marie did not escape tragedy altogether; her husband and collaborator Pierre was weakened by illness and subsequently killed having wandered in front of an oncoming horse and cart. Following Pierre's death Marie embarked on an ill-fated love affair which, in 1911, almost cost her a second Nobel Prize. With the use of fact and fiction, the story of Blanche and Marie tells of the relationship of two extraordinary women at a time of tremendous scientific and social change. Per Olov Enquist was born in Sweden in 1930 and is one of Sweden's best known authors internationally. He has worked as a journalist, playwright and novelist. In the nineties he gained international recognition for his novel The Visit of the Royal Physician.
	Atiq Rahimi is an Afghan writer and film-maker who has lived in France since 1985. His second novel The thousand a Rooms of Dream and Fear explores the fractured mind and emotions of a country caught between religion and the political machinations of the world's super powers. Set in 1979 in the early stages of the pro-Soviet coup, it tells the story of Farhad, a typical student with a hedonistic attitude to life who ignores the religious conservatism of his grandfather. One night when out drinking with a friend about to leave for Pakistan, he is beaten and knocked unconscious. He awakens in a strange house and begins to remember what happened. As the outlines of reality start to harden, he realises that if he is to escape the soldiers who wish to finish the job they started, he too must leave everything he loves behind him and find a way to get to Pakistan. Atiq Rahimi's first novella, Earth and Ashes has been made into a feature film.
The Successor won the Booker International Prize in 2005. The Successor is a historical, psychological thriller, based on actual events, set in Albania at an unnamed time. It tells of the repercussions of the death of the regime leader's designated successor; did he kill himself, or was he murdered? When doubt is raised, rumours begin to gather and confusion and tension build. The story is narrated through different voices: the architect of the Successor's home, the minister of the interior and the Successor's bereaved daughter, all influenced by the outwardly benevolent but increasingly sinister Guide, the country's leader. The novel asks questions of the human character's resolve when faced with the iniquities of tyranny. Ismail Kadare was born in 1938 and is a world-renowned Albanian writer. In 1990 immediately before the fall of Communism in Albania he sought asylum in France. He now divides his time between France and Albania. His work has been published in over forty countries and he has been a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Vienna is Eva Menasse's first novel. She was born in 1970 in Vienna and had a successful career as a journalist with a Frankfurt newspaper, becoming their correspondent from Prague and Berlin. She now lives in Berlin and works as a freelance author. Vienna shows the disintegration of history and identity in the twentieth century through the adventures of one family. The half-Jewish Viennese family are split apart by the Nazi invasion and the novel follows the family members for three generations into all parts of the world, from Vienna to the Isle of Man, Burma, Canada and back to England. Vienna is a character-led rather than plot-driven novel that gives a panoramic and sparkling view of family life in Austria and England. There are delightful vignettes of Vienna with its coffee-houses, bridge parties and tennis clubs; and vivid descriptions of wartime and post-war England. It is funny, tragic and compelling.
Stick out Your Tongue is a collection of short stories by Ma Jian. The stories are all set in Tibet prior to the 1950 Chinese invasion, and the most remarked on feature of these stories is that traditional Tibetan culture is not idealised, but rather depicted as harsh and often inhuman. The stories were written shortly after the author visited Tibet, and are enchanting and horrifying, violent and beautiful, perverse and seductive. Ma Jian was born in China in 1953. He moved to Hong Kong in 1986 after some of his works were banned. In 1997 he moved to Germany and two years later to England, where he now lives. His works included one other novel, The Noodle Maker, and a prize-winning travel memoir, describing his travels in Tibet. This collection of stories was banned in China.
Grace, she tells the story of Johan, who has sometimes been fortunate but never particularly successful. He lost his job for a breach of professional integrity, and he and his son haven't spoken in eight years. His greatest happiness (his grace) is his competent, confident wife Mai, who loves him unreservedly. When he discovers he has only six months to live he is determined with the help of his beloved Mai that his passing will be controlled and dignified. But when the time comes everything is not as he imagined. This is a touching, complex, and intelligent novel that shows even the most ordinary lives can be unexpectedly touched by grace.
DECEMBER 2006 We have almost arrived at the end of another year and on reflection, a busy time in Fiction with over 2,400 new fiction titles having been added to the collection, giving Wellington City Libraries patrons a wonderful reading choice. This is also a time to look back over all that we have read during the past year and remember the books that we enjoyed the most. At the end of each year many newspapers and magazines that review fiction publish lists of books that selected guests have enjoyed throughout the year. So we asked staff members of Wellington City Libraries to nominate a book that stood out from all the others they had read this year. Most had trouble recalling one book they preferred above all others. Maybe it was just the nature of publishing this year, with the vast number of titles available the choices are almost limitless. Here is our selection, starting with a graphic novel; we hope you will enjoy them as much as we have.
Ministry of Space, writer, Warren Ellis; artist, Chris Weston. An alternative history with teeth, updated Dan Dare artwork. What price progress justifies the means? (Karl)
The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood. The myth of Penelope and Odysseus brought to life in great Atwood style, lyrical with a contemporary twist. (Cathy)
Brookland by Emily Barton. This was a brilliant novel written in a classic 19th Century style relating a completely convincing story through wonderful feminist characters. (Pauline)
Pegasus descending by James Lee Burke. Allegoric crime novel on the haunting nature of the past, set in the last days before Hurricane Katrina changed the face of New Orleans forever. (Mark)
Gunpowder plot: a Daisy Dalrymple mystery by Carola Dunn. A great series of murder mysteries set in the 1920's with fun characters, witty dialogue and suspense. (Kylie)
The secret river by Kate Grenville. This was a gripping historical masterpiece about one couple's attempts to make part of Australia their own, and the tragedies that this brought to the native Aborigine inhabitants. (Julie)
Magic for beginners by Kelly Link. Short stories that set you off balance, sometimes disturbing, sometimes delightfully fantastical. Convenience store clerks serve zombies, villagers hide in a handbag, rabbits and more rabbits arrive and watch, a cult television slips into the real world, marriage with a ghost is problematic. (Karen)
The Chinatown death cloud peril by Paul Malmont. If you liked the period setting of Michael Chabon's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Paul Malmont's first novel 'The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril' will hit the spot. With a cast consisting of William 'The Shadow' Gibson, Lester 'Doc Savage' Dent, H.P. 'Cthulhu' Lovecraft, L. Ron 'Scientology' Hubbard, Robert 'Starship Troopers' Heinlein, Louis 'Hopalong Cassidy' L'Amour, Chester 'Coffin Ed' Himes, and Orson 'Citizen Kane' Welles, there's enough action to satisfy the most jaded pulp fan. (Karl)
Explorers of the new century by Magnus Mills. Two teams of explorers race across a cold, deserted land heading for the Agreed Furthest Point - a poker-faced comic and surreal masterpiece. (Neil)
Black Swan Green by David Mitchell. I thought Mitchell was a clever-sod big-ideas and complex-structure type novelist, so this book was a surprise - a stammering boy's experiences of 1982 in a dull Worcestershire town. The episodic arrangement feels comfortable and casual, and the only wrong notes for me were his exotic poetry teacher and an excessive tidiness at the end. (Karen)
Rumpole and the reign of terror by John Mortimer. Rumpole novels are always entertaining, witty and pure escapist reading. (Sue)
Everyman by Philip Roth. This is a brilliantly written short compelling account of one mans life, that is at times amusing, dark and yet very moving. (Linda)
Glasshouse by Charles Stross. As usual Stross has too many ideas, and here a good SF novel competes with a fascinating bit of anthropology in this book about an experiment in which volunteers (including war criminals with erased memories) recreate Earth's 'dark ages' (ie the late 20th, early 21st centuries). Main character Robin becomes suspicious about the researchers, but life is dangerous enough with fellow participants lynching those who break social conventions and bring group points down. (Karen)
OCTOBER 2006 This selection of six novels from our recently received new fiction all give different aspects of living in large modern cities. In the modern world, each city's inhabitants are influenced not only by their immediate surroundings but are also instantly influenced by what is happening globally. The six authors of these novels, all of different nationalities, have all previously published. The background cities used in these selected novels range from Mumbai to New York, Copenhagen to Beijing, Boston to the outskirts of London. Each of these novels have a unique story to tell, from comedy and farce to suspense and horror. All will ensure a great many hours reading pleasure.
Kingdom Come. J. G. Ballard was born in 1930, in Shanghai, China and was interned with his family by the Japanese during the Second World War. They returned to Britain in 1946. After reading medicine at King's College, Cambridge he went on to study English at London University. His first short story was published in 1956 and since then has had 33 novels and short story collections published. He was short listed for the Booker Prize in 1984 for Empire of the Sun, which won the Guardian Fiction prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize the same year. His novel Super-Cannes won the 2000 Commonwealth Writer's Prize. Kingdom Come is set in the near future in Brooklands, a motorway town off the M25 from London. Unemployed advertising executive Richard Pearson has to clear his father's flat as a few weeks earlier he father was fatally wounded at the Metro-Centre, a vast shopping mall in the centre of this apparently peaceful town, when a deranged mental patient open fired on a crowd of shoppers. When the main suspect is released without charge due to the dubious testimony of self-styled pillars of the community, Richard suspects that there is more to his father's death than he realised. As he witnesses sinister, disturbing occurrences at the massive mall, Richard comes to the conclusion that the Metro-Centre, with its round-the-clock cable channel and sports clubs, lies at the very heart of his father's death. Consumerism rules the lives of everyone in the motorway towns and feeds the cravings of this bored community with its desperate need for something new, whatever the cost. This is a thrilling dystopian novel that has consumerism as the new apocalypse.
Red Earth and Pouring Rain won in 1995 the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book and the David Higham Prize for Fiction.
White Guys. Beginning in 1970 in a small town in Massachusetts and ending many years later in the city of Boston, it is a powerful portrayal of male friendship and loyalty. Billy was everything the boys could want in a friend, tough and true, but over time as they developed their lives and careers, Billy was left behind. He stayed in his home town to care for his mentally handicapped brother. Many years later a school reunion gives Billy a chance to develop his own path to success and wealth, and becomes the envy of all with his mall construction business. But the friendships are tested to the limit when horrific events tragically disrupt Billy's life and one friend is ensnared in a series of events that threatens to bring his life tumbling down around him. Anthony Giardina was born in 1960 in Massachusetts and now lives in Northampton. After graduating in 1973, he tried acting in New York and began writing plays, the first one being produced in 1977. His first novel Men with Debts was published in 1984. He has taught writing for many years and apart from his novels has written many plays, short stories and articles.
The Exception, a psychological thriller, has become a bestseller in Denmark. Four women who work for the Danish Centre for Genocide Studies start receiving death threats; they suspect they are being stalked by a Bosnian torturer and war criminal. As they come under more fearful pressure the women begin to manipulate and persecute each other, with terrifying consequences. Ironically these women are professionals who daily analyse cases of global cruelty, crimes against humanity. Yet they fail to see their behaviour paralleling the crimes they study. This novel is a powerful, yet disquieting study of the psychology of evil, an intelligent, thrilling page turner.
The Commissariat of Enlightenment was published in 2003. A Disorder Peculiar to the Country begins on 9/11, and finds Marshall and Joyce Harriman both luckily escaping death that morning, but finding perverse pleasure assuming the other has died in the terrorist attacks. In the midst of an ugly divorce with both of them refusing to move out of their New York apartment, finding that both have survived sends them to an all-out war to destroy each other. Their actions, tapping phone calls, fake anthrax attacks, and a possible suicide bombing mirror the activities outside in the country around them. Both are determined there will be no compromises or prisoners taken. This is a witty, clever insight on how the modern state of perpetual war can influence ordinary domestic live.
Banquet Bug is her first novel to be written in English and is set in Beijing. Journalists who attend banquets to promote a cause or a product are also given "a little something for their trouble." Dan Dong, an unemployed factory worker, is one of these journalists, but he has no credentials: he is a banquet bug. Through this new career he meets a variety of people, several of whom are impressed by his prevaricating. They beg him to listen to their tales of woe and to write about them, in hopes of addressing the wrongs done to them or to their families. Dan becomes deeply concerned for them and when his reportage leads him into a dangerous, far-reaching scandal and he is arrested during a crackdown on 'banquet bugs'. A witty fable depicting a high level of corruption and totalitarianism in the China the author once knew.
AUGUST 2006 Debut or first novels are often avoided by many readers unless they have been acclaimed and praised publicly. To take a first novel from the shelf requires a certain amount of courage and faith. The author is unknown, nothing is known of the writer's prose style or the novel structure. It is a leap in the dark, but one that can be well rewarded. Novels are more often than not a natural progression from the writers' other published work. This can range from journalism to memoirs, short stories to poetry. Many first novels have received instant success and become classics. To name a few, Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen, The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass, Catch 22 by Joseph Heller, and Lord of the Flies by William Golding. Some have won prizes, like Booker winners The Bone People by Keri Hulme, The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, and Vernon God Little by D.B C. Pierre. So taking a chance on a debut novel can be a rewarding reading experience. The following selection of novels recently received by Wellington city Libraries are all debut novels. All the writers, except one, have had other work published being non-fiction, drama and short stories and all provide a diverse and enjoyable reading experience. Maybe one or two could even become future classics.
Cellophane, her first novel, she draws from the experiences of her dual upbringing, setting the story in Peruvian jungle and depicts a family and a country caught between the old ways and the new, between feudalism and revolution. At the height of the Great Depression, paper engineer Don Victor Sobrevilla moves his small empire where the trees are, in the heart of the rain forest, constructing a highly successful paper factory and a vast hacienda, Floralinda. It is far from the political centres of Trujillo and Lima, linked only to the outside world by the dangerous and unpredictable Amazon. When, in 1952, Don Victor discovers the formula for cellophane, his household is afflicted with a "plague of truth," a compulsion to confess their most shameful histories and most hidden yearnings, to make their stories as transparent as the paper itself. When desires are laid bare, so are the conflicts that the family has kept hidden for so long, resulting in interlocking quests for power. This is a bawdy, comic, enchanting novel.
Winkie by Clifford Chase is a dark satirical novel. Set in present day America, with terrorist paranoia ever present, the main character is Winkie, a discarded teddy bear who miraculously discovers the power of movement and runs away to the forest to begin a new life. Unfortunately, this particular forest has been pigeonholed as the hideout for a notorious terrorist, and militant FBI agents quickly surround Winkie with drawn weapons and whirling helicopters. Unsure quite what to make of the samll quadruped, the authorities nevertheless trot out their standard interrogation techniques while charging the little bear with unparalleled barbarism. In the surrealistic courtroom circus that follows, Winkie faces a gauntlet of bizarre witnesses from the trials of Socrates, Galileo, and Oscar Wilde, an ordeal he endures by retreating into memories of the early years that nurtured his awakening. This original allegory exposes the absurdities of our age and explores what it means to be human in an increasingly barbaric world. Clifford Chase is the editor of Queer 13: Lesbian and Gay writers recall Seventh Grade and author of a memoir of his brother's death. The character Winkie was inspired by his own childhood toy bear.
Cottagers is an eerie suspense thriller. Cyrus Coddington, age nineteen, suspects that he may be a genius without a calling. He is a year-round resident of East Sooke, Vancouver Island, and has a natural resentment for the summer cottagers (holidaymakers) who descend on its rocky beaches. When two vacationing American couples arrive, old friends with a complicated history, they become his obsession. Greg and Nicholas are engaged in an academic collaboration that looks more like competition; Samina and Laurel are old friends who have grown apart and developed a strange jealousy. Cyrus spies on the cottagers through their windows, then begins to insinuate himself into their lives. When one of the cottagers goes missing, no one will look at any of the others the same way again.
Remainder is the first novel from British born writer Tom McCarthy and has been long-listed for the 2006 Man Booker prize. A parable for our time, the hero survives an accident that leaves him traumatized, but eight and a half million pounds richer from the compensation. He is hopelessly estranged from the world around him and spends his time and money obsessively reconstructing and re-enacting vaguely remembered scenes and situation from the past. But when this fails to quench his thirst for authenticity, he starts re-enacting more and more violent events, as his repetition addiction spirals out of control. This is a darkly comic novel about obsession, memory and identity. Tom McCarthy has published a non-fiction book, titled Tintin and the Secret Literature and is General Secretary of the International Necronautical Society, a semi-fictitious avant-garde network.
In the Country of Men. Hisham Matar was born in New York in 1970 and spent his childhood in Cairo. He has lived in London since 1986. This is a breathtakingly emotional novel that becomes utterly gripping. Told from the perspective of nine-year old Suleiman living in Libya in the 1970s under the brutal Qaddafi regime. His world becomes terrifying and bewildering when his best friend's father disappears and is next seen on state television at a public execution; when a mysterious man sits outside the house all day and asks strange questions; when his mother and uncle burn all his father's books though they know what an avid reader he is; and when it seems his father has finally disappeared for good. Soon, the whispers and fears, secrets and lies will become so intense that Suleiman can bear them no longer and in his terrified effort to save his family may end up betraying his friends, his parents and ultimately himself.
The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo. He was the 2002-2003 winner of the Rome in Literature from American Academy of Arts and Letters and winner of the Samuel Goldberg Prize for Jewish Fiction. He lives in San Francisco and teaches at San Francisco State University. His novel is a set in Namibia just after independence in the early 1990s, at an all-boys Catholic primary school at Goas set deep in the veld. Though physically isolated in semi-desert beneath a relentless sun, the people of Goas create an alternate, more fertile universe through the stories they tell each other. The books central character is Mavala Shikongo, a combat veteran who fought in Namibia's long war for independence against South Africa. She has recently returned to the school with a child, but no husband. Mavala is modern, restless, and driven, in sharp contrast to conservative Goas. All the male teachers, including Larry Kaplanski a young volunteer from Cincinnati, try not to fall in love with her. They all fail immediately and miserably. This extraordinary first novel explores the history of a place through the stories of its people. It is charmingly witty and quite unforgettable.
JULY 2006 Now that we are into the middle months of the year, with the short days and very cold winter weather, we thought highlighting some great page turning murder mysteries would guarantee hours of entertainment, while storms rage outside. All the murder mystery novels selected here are translated from German, French, Italian, and Spanish. They are all rather exotic in their way, and give some fascinating glimpses of other cultures and countries. The common link between all these novels is their genre, the murder mysteries they describe and the detective procedure involved in catching the perpetrators, which appears to be similar throughout the world. We hope that these choices will help you escape the cold winter blues for short while and perhaps provide new choices for your reading pleasure.
Black Ice by Hans Werner Kettenbach is a well translated psychological thriller with several very neat twists in the plot, set in a European world of small-town hypocrisy. Erika, an attractive local heiress, is married to Wallmann, a man with expensive tastes. When she falls to her death near their lakeside villa, the police conclude it was a tragic accident. Scholten, a long time married employee of Erika's, knows a thing or two about the true state of her marriage. He suspects an almost perfect crime, but in proving his theories his life will change forever. This novel was made into a film in 1998. The author, Hans Werner Kettenbach is 75 and still writing; he published his first novel at 50 after a career in journalism, including foreign correspondent in New York and Newspaper Editor. He has published 12 novels, five of which have been made into films. "Black Ice" is the first to be translated into English and hopefully there will be more.
The Oxford Murders he uses his experiences of living in Oxford, gained while working in a postdoctoral position at the Mathematics Institute, with his love of mathematics to result in an intriguing thiller. On a balmy summer's day in Oxford an old lady who once helped decipher the Enigma Code is killed. After receiving a cryptic anonymous note containing only the address and the symbol of a circle, Arthur Seldom, a leading mathematician, arrives to find the body. Then follow more murders seemingly unconnected except for notes appearing in the maths department, for the attention of Seldom. It is left to Seldom and a postgraduate mathematics student to work out the key to the series of symbols before the killer strikes again. This is a clever and satisfying thriller that not only keeps the suspense going to the end, but also ensures the reader learns some interesting facts along the way.
Havana Black is the latest novel of Leonardo Padura's to be translated from the Spanish, is set in Havana, Cuba where the author was born in 1955 and where he still lives. A brutally mutilated body is discovered washed up in the bay of Havana. It is the body of Miguel Forcade, once an official in the Cuban government responsible for the confiscation of the belongings of the bourgeoisie fleeing the revolution, exiled in Miami. Had he really returned to Havana just to visit his ailing father? Inspector Mario Conde immerses himself in the dark history of expropriations of works of art, paintings that have vanished without trace, corrupt civil servants and old families that lost much, but not everything. The author evokes the disillusionment of a generation, many of them veterans of the war in Angola, dealing with the catastrophe that followed the collapse of Russian aide in the 1990's and now discovering the corruption of those that preceded them. This is a truly atmospheric novel, set in a turbulent decaying city that is not only an exciting murder mystery, but also gives literary glimpses into Cuban society, sex, religion and even food.
Night Bus, by Giampiero Rigosi, is his first novel to be translated from the Italian, and hopefully there will be more, as it is mystery that moves at breakneck speed, with a new complication or twist at every turn showing the true skill of this writer. Set in Bologna, Leila is young, beautiful and a hustler who robs hapless men picked up in the trendy nightclubs. Easy money, until she ends up with a document at the centre of a carefully crafted plot of political blackmail. In an atmosphere of intense underworld paranoia she is pursued simultaneously by two secret service operatives, a goon hired by the blackmailer and the police. They are after the document and a suitcase full of dollars meant to be the pay-off. Chased through the streets of Bologna she comes across Francesco, a bus driver and gambling addict who agrees to help her. Suitcases and blackmail notes change hands at a frenetic pace against a background of murder and other violence beyond the fringe. Giampiero Rigosi was born in 1962 and lives and works in Bologna. He is a much acclaimed literary critic, short story writer and producer of radio programmes on cinema noir and crime literature.
The Three Evangelists is the fourth novel in the Chief Inspector Adamsberg series by French writer Fred Vargas. Born in Paris in 1957, as well as being a best-selling author in France, she is a historian and archaeologist by training. Her novels are full of whimsical characters, plots that spring from the strangest starting points, dialogues that turn into verbal jousting contests, wry humour and historical and psychological details that enhance but do not intrude. Sophia Simeonidis, a Greek opera singer, wakes up one morning to discover that a tree has appeared overnight in the garden of her Paris house. Intrigued and unnerved, she turns to her neighbours: Vandoosler, an ex-cop fired from the police for having helped a murderer to escape, and three impecunious historians, Mathias, Marc and Lucien, the three evangelists. They agree, both because they need the money and out of sheer curiosity, to dig around the tree and see if something has been buried there. They find nothing but soil. A few weeks later, Sophia disappears and her body is found burned to ashes in a car. Vandoosler and the three evangelists set out to find out who killed her. An original murder mystery, that will ensure you will want to read all the others in this series.
Ice Moon by German writer Jan Costin Wagner. Set in Turku, Finland a young woman dies peacefully in her sleep; her husband sits distraught at her side. Returning to his job at the Finland CID he finds that a murder inquiry is just beginning. A woman has been smothered with her pillow while she slept and, as the case unfolds, others will be found having met death in the same eerily quiet and bloodless way. It is a very tranquil, peaceful sort of death, in which the victims appear to have experienced neither fear nor pain. The young policeman, stricken with his own feelings of grief and loneliness, starts to feel an affinity with this humane killer. Meanwhile the murderer's dysfunctional relationship with his own cracked personality spawns increasingly macabre behaviour. This is a murder mystery that is haunting and unsettling, a novel peopled with characters who share the anxiety of feeling deeply misunderstood. Jan Wagner was born in 1972 and is married to a native of Finland. They spend time both there and in Germany. This is Jan Wagner's third novel and the first to be translated into English. His first won the 2002 Marlowe Prize for Best Crime novel and hopefully will be his next novel to be translated.
MAY 2006 The recently received material this month features debut or first novels. There are over 10,000 fiction books published in America each year, one book published every hour or so. According to an article in the New York Times dated 3rd May, 2006 there is a constant increase annually of published material, fiction and non fiction books, even though the numbers of readers doesn't increase nor does the amount of time readers actually have to read more. This means also that there are even more new writers to choose from, this can be a daunting task for readers trying to select a book to read. We do endeavour to make this task a little easier on our WebPages, with links to book lists, reviews, prize winners, and best sellers along with the monthly My Library lists, which give a brief synopsis of newly received material; all this is to ease the selection process for readers and to help increase their time for reading. So we hope you will find an interesting and satisfying read from our list of debut novels selected from our recent material. The writers' nationalities are as varied as their subject matter, but all show future promise.
The Sand Cafe by Neil MacFarquhar begins in the Dhahran Palace Hotel, Saudi Arabia, in August 1991. The US forces are massing on the border with Iraq, preparing to throw Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. Sent to cover the story of a lifetime, wire service reporter Angus Dalziel finds himself with a view mainly of his hotel room. Harassed by Saudi officialdom, stifled and spoon-fed by U.S. Army press minders, Angus struggles to unearth real stories about military corruption, the repressive Saudi society America is defending and front-line reverses once the longed-for fighting begins. Watching his comrades veer between frenzy and torpor in their media bubble, Angus ponders the rot at the heart of journalism, specially the shallowness and vanity of television correspondents. A fierce and very funny debut novel of journalists at war, or waiting for one that never quite arrives. Neil MacFarquhar has based his first novel on his Gulf War experiences. He has worked as a correspondent in the Arab world for more than twelve years, including the last five as the Cairo bureau chief for the New York Times.
Nina : adolescence is a stunning intimate story of a family's unravelling. The eerily seductive narrative is told from the perspective of Nina Begley, who was with her younger brother when he drowned, the novel tracks the disintegration of the family. After the accident, Nina's father turns to drink and her artist mother, Marion, shutters herself in her room. To draw her mother out, Nina offers to pose for a painting and doesn't even balk when Marion asks her to pose nude. Hassinger perfectly captures the guilt and thirst for affection that compels Nina to pose nude and, eventually, to attend an art exhibit featuring her own adolescent body, an event that will be the catalyst that enables the family finally to surmount tragedy.
Broken Biscuits. It is a funny, grim yet ultimately uplifting dark saga of family history and secrets. It is a seaside love story of two misfits who find love in a hostile world. Agnes is senile; her granddaughter Jodie is an oddball and the plot cleverly moves between Jodie's life going forwards and Agnes' life going backwards. Agnes is so far gone that she's been carted off and institutionalised. As her memories play back marriages, wars, affairs and an Edinburgh childhood with seven brothers and sisters, there are plenty of things in her life that she really should say sorry for. Jodie's got her own problems she's eccentric, the sort of person that people cross the road to avoid. With advice from Dr Hassani and support worker June, she tries really hard to get care in the community to work and to make new friends. Trouble is she just doesn't fit in. And now she's decided to spring Agnes from the old people's home with the help of willing accomplice Owen, a moody yo-yo himself. Liz Kettles shows that life on the margins of society can eventually be happy and fulfilling.
The Killing Jar the first novel from Nicola Monahan was inspired by the lives she witnessed on the council estates where she grew up in York, England. She later graduated form York University and went on to become a teacher. A change of career in to Finance took her around the world, ending with her return in 2001 to pursue an MA in creative writing at Nottingham University. The Killing Jar is Kerrie-Ann's story. Kerrie-Ann doesn't know who her father is, and her mother is a junkie. By the age of 10, she's sent out to sell drugs in school playgrounds. By the age of 12, she's been beaten up by a customer, hidden stolen guns in the dump behind the estate, done time in a girl's home, and already has a taste for drugs. And then there's Mark her only true friend and the one person she can really trust. Their friendship turns into a powerful love and together they are invincible, riding the euphoric highs of the 80s rave scene. But in their world of dealing and violence, addictions become all-consuming and it's easy to lose control. In this truly outstanding first novel, Nicola Monaghan has created a scary, unforgettable and original voice in a character who tells her story straight, with courage and control and without self-pity and shows that love and hope can exist in the most poisoned places.
18 seconds is a murder mystery, although it is actually his second novel it is the first one to be published. He worked for twenty years for the Metropolitan Police Force in Washington, D.C., with a varied career, ranging from an undercover narcotics detective to Lieutenant commander in the Public Integrity Branch, Internal Affairs division. The main character in 18 seconds is Sherry Moore; she is beautiful, blind, and psychic. But she doesn't read minds; Sherry's gift, although some might say it's more of a curse is with touch. By touching a dead person, she can see the last 18 seconds of that person's life. Naturally, this skill makes her very handy to the police, and when Lieutenant Kelly O'Shaughnessy is having trouble finding out who killed a young girl, the two women plunge headlong into an old case involving a vicious serial killer. George Shuman’s experience gives this novel a realistic style and the authentic investigative detail ensures an absorbing, tension filled mystery.
Everyman's rules for scientific living the first novel by Carrie Tiffany, has been short listed for the Orange Prize for 2006. She was born in West Yorkshire and with her family migrated to Western Australia in the early 1970s. She spent her early years working as a park ranger and now lives in Melbourne. Everyman's rules for scientific living, is set in rural Australia and begins in 1934 on the government 'better farming train' travelling through the wheat fields and small towns of Australia. The train bringing city experts and advice to those already living on the land, to persuade the country that science holds the answers and that productivity is patriotic. Amongst the swaying cars full of cows, pigs and wheat, an unlikely seduction occurs between Robert Pettergree, a man with an unusual taste for soil, and Jean Finnegan, a talented young seamstress with a hunger for knowledge. In an atmosphere of heady scientific idealism they settle on an impoverished farm with the ambition of proving that science can transform the land. With failing crops and the threat of a new world war looming, Robert and Jean are forced to confront each other, the community they have destroyed, and the impact of progress on an ancient and fragile landscape. This is a novel about love, told with humour, and a quiet innocence. The Australian landscape with its stark beauty is vividly captured along with the hope and disappointment of an era.
APRIL 2006 This month's most recently received novels are selected from our Humour, Satire and Black Comedy category. This is only one of forty three subject headings Wellington City Libraries allocate to new fiction as it is received. Classifying fiction this way enables readers to search the catalogue for similar types of novels. The subject headings used for new novels are rather broad and sometimes barely represent work with multiple themes, especially now when very complex plots and character developments have become the norm. The six novels selected from the humour category represent the variation that occurs with in one subject heading. They range from first novels to veteran comic writers, from straight-forward humour to the obscure. They are all humorous, but in very different ways, including some unsuitable for the easily offended, but all endeavour to show just how absurd human beings can be, and how ridiculous our world has become. We are sure that they will provide an enjoyable and laugh-out-loud reading experience.
Doctors and Nurses by Lucy Ellman by, is an outrageously comic novel not recommended for the easily offended. This is her 5th novel, her first, Sweet Desserts being published in 1988, won the Guardian Fiction Prize. Her novels always include lists (in this case being illnesses that can afflict the body and capital letters used to excess), and in this novel also photographs. She is a definitely a very clever, witty writer who shows a great deal of human understanding. Lucy Ellman was born in the United States, educated in England and now lives in Scotland with her husband, writer Todd McEwen. Doctors and Nurses is a medical romance to end all. Into a rural back-water arrives massive nurse Jen, who has only one thing in her sights and that is the handsome Doctor Roger Lewis. All around her is thrown into wreck, ruin and death as she pursues the man of her dreams.
Rattled is her first novel. She is now editor-in-chief of Baristanet.com, a local community blog based in northern New Jersey that receives 4,000 hits a day. Rattler is a clever and diverting first novel, about the repercussions of a brazen misuse of precious land and greed. This ironic comedy of errors features the materially ambitious Heather Peters and her dream house in a new development in New Jersey ludicrously named Galapagos Estates. Heather is dismissive of her lawyer husband, a horrible mother to her anxious eleven-year old son, and insultingly rude to Harlan White. The last native landowner left, aside from eco-minded Agnes, Harlan is valiantly resisting the aggressive tactics of unscrupulous developer Jack Barstad. Heather thinks she has found paradise, but when a timber rattle snake, a deadly and endangered species, appears on her patio, she soon finds herself in hell. This is a is hilarious and venomous comedy about nature, nurture, and the ecology of greed.
How to kill your husband, subtitled 'and other handy household hints', and is her 11th novel. In 1989 after a diverse career that included work as a satirical reporter on Australian television to a columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald, she moved to London where she still lives with her husband and two children. Her first novel Puberty Blues was published when she was twenty and her latest novel shows how she has moved on as a writer, now finding the comic side of middle aged marriage. When Jazz Jardine is arrested for her husband's murder, her friends are deeply shocked as Jazz was a stay-at-home mum and domestic goddess. Her friends Hannah, childless career woman and Cassie, demented working mother of two are ordinary women who set out immediately to prove their best friend's innocence, uncovering betrayal, adultery, plot twists, thinner thighs and toy boys aplenty en route. This is a sexy, funny and wise novel giving a rather caustic view on what goes on in the kitchens and bedrooms of ordinary married couples.
Love and other near death experiences by Mil Millington is his third comic novel. He has written for various magazines, radio and the Guardian, and is co-founder and writer of the English magazine "The weekly." He was one of the five top debut novelists of 2002 and is currently working on the screen play for Things my Girlfriend and I Have Argued About, an adaptation of his second novel by the same title published in 2003. Mil Millington describes the darker, humorous side of modern relationships. This novel is about Rob Garland who is getting married in two months and has a big problem. More worrying than the seating arrangements, the choice of wedding stationery, more even that the savagely obscene expense of everything is the fact that Rob should be dead: and he knows it. Faced with an ultimatum from his girlfriend to either sort himself out, or call the wedding off, he sets about trying to come to terms with how it is that, somehow, he's still inexplicably breathing. After pouring his heart out to the listeners on his late-night radio jazz show, he soon finds himself teamed up with others who really ought not to be alive, but who for random, meaningless and, frankly, stupid reasons, unaccountably are. And that's when things become yet more worrying: because it turns out that their search to understand why they've each remained oddly alive might very well end up killing them all. This is a very witty novel, with sharp, if not sarcastic musings on love, religion and mortality.
Ludmila's broken English. D.B.C (Dirty but clean) Pierre is the pseudonym taken by South Australian born Peter Finlay winner of the 2003 Mann Booker Prize for Vernon God Little. A self-confessed drug user, embezzler and petty criminal Pierre promised reform and reparation to his victims on winning one of the world's top literary prizes, so his latest work has been much anticipated. In this novel he charts the unlikely meeting between East and West that follows Ludmila Derev's appearance on a Russian brides website. Determined to save her family from starvation in the face of marauding Gnez troops, Ludmila's journey into the world and womanhood is an odyssey of sour wit and even sourer vodka. Thousands of miles to the West, the Heath twins are separated after 33 years conjoined at the abdomen. Released for the first time from an institution they are suddenly plunged into a round-the-clock world churning with opportunity, rowdy with the chatter of freedom, democracy, self-empowerment and sex. This is an outrageously funny and clever book, filled with many memorable characters, and with D. B. C. Pierre showing off his best linguistic skills.
The mobile library: the case of the missing books is the fourth book by Ian Sansom. He lives in Northern Ireland and contributes to the Guardian, the London Review of Books and Poetry Review. The main character in this novel is Israel Armstrong, an intelligent, shy, passionate, and sensitive person. He is also Jewish, a vegetarian, a bit rotund and he has just arrived in Ireland to take up his first post as a librarian. Unfortunately the library has been shut down and all Israel is left with is the old mobile Library with 15,000 books missing. Who on earth steals that many books? How? When would they have time to read them all? So he begins his quest around the countryside of North Antrim in search of answers, a proper cappuccino and a decent newspaper. Ian Sansom has created a very funny inept sleuth, subject to many hilarious cultural misunderstandings. This is a satisfying and amusing read which promises to be the first of many novels to come featuring Israel Armstrong.
FEBRUARY 2006 This is a selection of the first new books received for 2006. There is no general theme linking these titles, apart from subject diversity. As with all good novels they reflect different aspects of society, nationality and culture, so they cover a very broad view of our world, from American politics to the English countryside living, albeit satirical, from a South African apartheid experience to the experience of a Lahore born Glaswegian DJ, trendy New York families in crisis to a fantastical literary illusion. Although they are all very different, each will prove to be a enjoyable reading experience.
Love and other impossible pursuits by Ayelet Waldman is set amongst the professional families on the Upper East side of New York and tells the story of Emilia Greenleaf's struggle to relate to her precocious five-year-old stepson William. She is married to Jack, a successful partner in a law firm and the proud father of William. Emilia is on a leave of absence from her own legal career after the sudden death of their two day old daughter. She tries valiantly to care for William after school, but fails although help does comes from the most unlikely of place. This is a sensitive, funny and moving contemporary story that explores the resentment and/or affection people feel towards immediate or extended members of their family. Aylete Waldman is a well know New York essayist, married to the author Michael Chabon, and mother of four children.
The Camel Club is the title of the latest book by David Baldacci. Again a masterly complex, character driven novel, such as readers of Baldacci have come to expect. The main character is called Oliver Stone; a man with no past who spends his days camped opposite the White House, permanently protesting and hoping to expose corruption wherever he may find it. When he and his friends, a group of conspiracy theorists known as the Camel Club, witness a murder of an intelligence analyst, they suddenly find themselves involved in a very dangerous plot that reaches to the highest levels of Washington society. In this his 12th novel David Baldacci goes beyond the traditional boundaries of fiction, painting a frighteningly vivid portrait of a world that could be our own very soon, and the few people who have a chance to stop the last war the world may ever fight.
In the fold has arrived. Although born in Canada, she finished her schooling in England, and read English at New College, Oxford. She was nominated by Granta magazine in 2002 as one of 20 Best Young British Novelists. She won the Whitbread First Novel award in 1993 for The big over easy. A master at literary allusion, wordplays and tightly scripted plots, it is impossible to fit any of his novels into any type of genre. The big over easy is the fifth novel from English born Jasper Fforde, and is actually a reworking of his first novel that failed to find a publisher. This novel is set in Reading at Easter and no one can remember the last sunny day. Humpty Dumpty, a large egg, ex-convict and millionaire philanthropist is found shattered beneath a wall in a shabby area of town. Detective Inspector Jack Spratt and his colleague Mary Mary are assigned to the case, and soon grappling with a sinister plot involving cross-border money laundering, the illegal Bearnaise sauce market, corporate politics and the cut and thrust world of international Chiropody. This is an outrageously entertaining fantasy novel.
Psychoraag by Suhayl Saadi is a critically acclaimed best seller that was also short-listed for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 2005. Born in Yorkshire to Pakistani parents, Shuayl Saadi trained as a doctor and manages to continue this work in Glasgow, along with his writing. He is also a dramatist, awarding short story writer and poet. The novel's main character Zaf is a community radio DJ who finds the ghosts of his and his family's past catching up with him during his last night on air. Spanning everything from his parents' turbulent past in Pakistan to the relative merits of the Asian Dub Foundation, this novel is about the experience of being a young Pakistani man growing up in urban Scotland. Although challenging, the prose in Psychoraag is blend of standard English with a distinctive urban Scots peppered with Urdu, it is never dull, but provides a rewarding reading experience. Also included is a discography of the music played during Zaf's last broadcast.
Gem Squash Tokoloshe. This novel was short-listed for the Whitbread First Novel Award 2005. She was educated in South Africa and after earning a Fine Arts degree, she worked as a freelance graphic designer. In 2001 with her husband, she moved to London, where she began her novel, set in her native South Africa. It tells the story of an isolated family on a drought stricken farm in the Northern Transvaal. The Father took to the road to become a travelling salesman, returning only in weekends, leaving his daughter Faith and wife Bella alone. Eventually he stops returning to the farm, and Bella's health begins to go into rapid decline. Fifteen years later after her mother's death in the Sterkfontein asylum for the criminally insane, Faith returns to the farm to claim her inheritance and to confront the dark, terrifying mysteries of the past. She also has to make sense of the complex world she lives in and come to terms with the beliefs that her society and upbringing have instilled in her. This is an intense, yet compelling novel.
The Da Vinci Code If you enjoyed The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, you may like to try...
The third secret : a novel / Steve Berry. (2005) Fatima, Portugal, 1917: The Virgin Mary appears to three peasant children, sharing with them three secrets, two of which are soon revealed to the world. The third secret is sealed away in the Vatican, read only by popes, and not disclosed until the year 2000. When revealed, its puzzling tone and anticlimactic nature enable a perilous set of events to unfold. The Papal secretary Father Colin Michener finds himself embroiled in murder, suspicion, suicide, deceit, and his forbidden passion for a beloved woman. In a desperate search for answers, he travels to a Bosnian holy site and then to Pope Clement's birthplace in Germany, where he learns that the third secret of Fatima may dictate the very fate of the Church, a fate Michener finds lying in his own hands.
The rule of four / Ian Caldwell & Dustin Thomason. (2004) Princeton students are fascinated by a mysterious, coded 15th Century manuscript. As they come closer to deciphering the puzzle, they realise that a recent murder is related and that their lives are in danger.
The last templar / Raymond Khoury. (2005) Four masked horsemen steal an ancient relic from the Vatican Treasures exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. As the bodies of the four horsemen start being discovered the importance of the stolen relic becomes apparent. The FBI Investigation team and a Vatican envoy are drawn into the dark, hidden history of the crusading Knights. They embark on a journey that will take them through the cemeteries and sewers of Manhattan, across continents to desolate Turkish mountains and remote Greek islands, through the Mediterranean, into the very heart of the Vatican.
The historian : a novel / Elizabeth Kostova. (2005) Finding and an ancient book and a cache of yellowing letters in her father's library a young woman is plunged into a labyrinth where the secrets of her father's past and her mother's mysterious fate connect to an evil hidden in the depths of history. Deciphering obscure signs and hidden texts, reading codes worked into the fabric of medieval monastic traditions leads to a hunt for the truth about Vlad the Impaler, the medieval ruler whose barbarous reign formed the basis of the Dracula myth.
The oracle / Valerio Massimo Manfredi ; translated from the Italian by Christine Feddersen-Manfredi. (2005) In 1973 an archaeologist discovers a gold Mycenaean vase embellished with images of the last voyage of Ulysses. But his mysterious death and the disappearance of the vase remain unexplained for ten years series until a series of violently gruesome deaths catalyse different characters into a relentless pursuit for the truth.
The Club Dumas : a novel / Arturo Perez-Reverte ; translated from the Spanish by Sonia Soto. (1998) A well-know bibliophile is found hanged days after selling a rare manuscript of Alexander Dumas's classic, The Three Musketeers. Across Madrid, Spain's wealthiest book dealer has finally laid his hands on a 17th-century manual for summoning the devil. Lucas Corso, solitary and obsessive, is the detective hired to authenticate both texts. But the further he follows the trail of devil worship, the more it leads him back to Dumas.
The sixth lamentation : a novel / by William Brodrick. (2003) A suspected Nazi war criminal seeks sanctuary in a French monastery. A woman who was a member of a secret group once engaged in smuggling Jewish children to safety is dying. How are these two people related, and why has the Vatican ordered Father Anselm to investigate?
Secret of the scroll / Chester D. Campbell. (2002) A Retired U.S. Air Force OSI agent brings a "souvenir" Dead Sea Scroll home from the Holy Land, and his life suddenly changes. A Palestinian terrorist group invades his home, taking his wife hostage. He finds himself with an ancient Hebrew scroll worth millions, wanted by both the Palestinians and a radical far-right Israeli organization. He discovers the scroll has a secret with calamitous possibilities in the wrong hands.
Codex / Lev Grossman. (2004) When a fast-track investment banker becomes involved in organising a rare books collection, he begins a search for a mysterious manuscript that strangely parallels an intricate computer game.
Ex-libris / Ross King. (2001) In 1660, London bookseller Iasaac Inchbold is hired to track down an ancient and cryptic manuscript; he is soon drawn into a dangerous labyrinth of clues and mysteries.
Labyrinth / Kate Mosse. (2005) Skeletons are discovered in an ancient tomb during an archaeological dig in southern France. Dr Alice Tanner is in danger as she discovers the story of her ancestor Alais, a young healer caught in the persecution of Cathars and charged with protecting grail secrets.
The Da Vinci legacy / Lewis Perdue. (2004) The disappearance of documents from a collection of Leonardo Da Vinci's work sends Curtis Davis in search of the missing pages and brings him face to face with a conspiracy from the dawn of Christianity and with a long-lost discovery that could change history.
The school of night / Alan Wall. (2001) Editor Sean Tallow steals two Elizabethan tomes from a university library. In the enciphered Hariot notebooks, as they are called, he hopes to find reference to the enigmatic School of Night, a group of Elizabethan intellectuals who clustered around Sir Walter Raleigh. He pursues the School of Night and its entanglement in the question of whether the man from Stratford-on-Avon could really have written the plays ascribed to William Shakespeare.
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