THE PRINCESS OF LAS VEGAS by Chris Bohjalian

We'd never been the sort of sisters who spoke or texted all he time, and now the less contact we had, the better. It would have been a failed charade if we had tried to feign closeness.

Chapter One, p. 27

ELEVEN PERCENT by Maren Uthaug

 "Unhappy people mostly think about themselves,"

p.66

RABBIT MOON by Jennifer Haigh

In her view, the Disney franchise is yet another toxic American export, like carbon emissions or troop deployments or fast food or nuclear waste. . . . .  Claire found the cartoons insipid and weirdly moralistic. . . . .  She drew the line, however, at theme parks.  Each time they visited [[her husband's]] mother in Florida, [[their daughter]] clamored to go to Disney World.  Claire's answer, always, was a resounding "No."

p. 43

DIFFICULT MEN by Brett Martin

Under George W. Bush, matters of politics had a way of becoming referenda on the nation's masculinity: were we a nation of men (decisive, single-minded, unafraid to use force and to dominate) or girls (deliberative, empathetic, given to compromise)?

PROLOGUE, p. 13

Above all, no genre suited the baby boomers' dueling impulses of attractions and guilt toward American capitalism as well as the Mob drama. The notion that the American dream might at its core be a criminal enterprise lay at the center of the era's signature works. . . .

FIVE, "Difficult Men", p. 84

MY FATHER THE PORNOGRAPHER by Chris Offutt

The majority of Americans grow up in cities and suburbs and are afraid of the woods. Horror movies exploit this fear: the person alone in the forest, the sounds of unknown nocturnal animals, the sheer panic of being lost at night.

Chapter Fourteen, p. 99

STALIN: TRIUMPH & TRAGEDY by Dmitri Volkogonov

in the modern world, conflict is almost bound to end in stalemate. This shown in Korea, in Vietnam and in Afghanistan.

"Icy Winds", p. 541

A Short Walk Through a Wide World by Douglas Westerbeke

I got a lot of books on reserve at the library, so I put this book on my B&N wishlist.

https://ivereadthis.com/2024/07/09/book-review-a-short-walk-through-a-wide-world-by-douglas-westerbeke/

C.J. Tudor's THE GATHERING

It was no surprise that drug addicts and alcoholics found God during their recovery. They had to replace one addiction with another.

p. 262, chapter 48

BLUE LARD by Vladimir Sorokin

Looks like it's on order at library. I'll reserve later, since I currently have 10 reserves. Thanks, Publishers Weekly!

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/25/books/review/vladimir-sorokin-blue-lard.html

King Nyx by Kirsten Bakis

I put Lives of the Monster Dogs on my B&N wishlist after reading a review of her latest novel, King Nyx.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/27/books/review/king-nyx-kirsten-bakis.html

THE ANTIQUE HUNTER'S GUIDE TO MURDER by C.L. Miller

https://ivereadthis.com/2024/02/20/book-review-the-antique-hunters-guide-to-murder-by-c-l-miller/

CLOISTERED: MY YEARS AS A NUN by Catherine Coldstream

 

★ Cloistered: My Years as a Nun

Catherine Coldstream. St. Martin’s, $30 (352p) ISBN 978-1-250-32351-4

In this penetrating debut memoir, former nun Coldstream describes her 12 years in an English priory and the circumstances that led to her eventual departure. Raised in an emotionally chilly family, Coldstream became bereft at age 24 when her elderly father died. After involving herself with various religious groups in an effort to aid her "long passage… across [the] unfamiliar landscape" of grief, Coldstream found comfort in silent prayer at northern England’s Akenside Priory. Inspired by the discipline and ritual she encountered there, Coldstream joined the mostly silent nuns’ ranks. As time wore on, however, her "hospital for wounded souls" turned icy and toxic, with infighting, big egos, and power struggles troubling the waters in which Coldstream initially found solace. After her conflicts with her fellow nuns reached a fever pitch over the course of a decade, the author fled the cloister in the middle of the night. In lyrical, evocative prose ("Time passes in the monastery like ghosts that move through walls; it seeps through cell doors and stony archways, through bone and marrow, imprinting patience and endurance at every touch"), Coldstream opens a window into a reclusive culture, resolutely exposing its problems without losing sight of its virtues. The results will fascinate believers and non-believers alike. Agent: Patrick Walsh, PEW Literary. (Mar.)

GOODBYE GLOBALIZATION by Elisabeth Braw

Saw this in today's New York Times Book Review in the Newly Published section on page four, which isn't online: "A senior fellow at the Atlantic Council interviews policymakers and business leaders to maintain that globalization's decline will dramatically reshape our world."

CASCADE FAILURE by L.M. Sagas

Not at library (yet), so I put on my B&N wishlist. May not get the novel because it's part of the series, with the second entry dropping later this year.

Cascade Failure

L.M. Sagas. Tor, $17.99 trade paper (416p) ISBN 978-1-250-87125-1

Sagas debuts with a fun romp through a faraway galaxy where three political powers’ jittery coexistence is threatened when a mysterious disaster strikes a terraformed planet. Trust wields corporate power, Union controls the labor necessary to exploit new worlds, and the paramilitary Guild tries to keep both factions honest. Former Guild ranger Jal Red, suspected of desertion, is lured aboard the old spacer Ambit, joining three other entertaining misfits: philosophical AI Captain Eoan; Nash, an augmented doctor-engineer who knits; and Saint, Ambit’s XO and Jal’s grumpy former battle buddy, who has plenty of unresolved issues with Jal. Answering an SOS from a planet stricken by a mysterious weapon, the crew brings aboard Anke, the lone survivor and a whiz-kid programmer who wants to stop what he calls the “Deadworld Code,” a high-tech, planet-destroying weapon developed by forces preferring profit to people. Rapid-fire adventures spiked with army jargon and balanced with touching resolutions of personal conflicts keep the pages turning. Add in a charming found family—and even a space-faring cat—and this spirited space opera is a resounding success. (Mar.)

LOST MAN'S LANE by Scott Carson

B&N reserve, for now.

★ Lost Man’s Lane

Scott Carson. Atria/Bestler, $28.99 (448p) ISBN 978-1-9821-9145-0

Carson (Where They Wait) evokes the best of Stephen King in this exceptional coming-of-age tale about a young man confronting the supernatural menace that’s taken root in his hometown. In 1999 Bloomington, Ind., 16-year-old Marshall Miller gets pulled over by a cop on the same day he gets his driver’s license. While he’s waiting for a ticket, he notices a frightened teenage girl in the backseat of the officer’s car. Weeks later, Marshall spots the girl’s face on a missing person poster: her name is Meredith Sullivan, and she disappeared on the same day that Marshall was pulled over. He reports his encounter to law enforcement and discovers that the man who ticketed him was only impersonating a police officer. Determined to help find her, Marshall seeks out Noah Storm, the PI attached to Meredith’s case, who’s so impressed with the boy’s attention to detail that he offers Marshall an informal internship as his assistant. During their search, Marshall experiences strange recurring dreams, frequent snake sightings, and other seemingly unexplainable phenomena. The episodes gradually lead him to believe something ghostly has come to Bloomington, and it may be his job to stop it. Carson masterfully weaves threads about Marshall’s home and school life into the tantalizing central mystery, and populates the narrative’s margins with fully realized characters who help bring the setting to vivid life. This unique and intelligent crowd-pleaser is not to be missed. Agent: Richard Pine, InkWell Management. (Mar.)

THE STARS TURNED INSIDE OUT by Nova Jacobs

B&N reserve until library gets it in.

The Stars Turned Inside Out

Nova Jacobs. Atria, $27.99 (320p) ISBN 978-1-6680-1854-5

Jacobs (The Last Equation of Isaac Severy) follows up her acclaimed debut with an engrossing whodunit revolving around Geneva’s Large Hadron Collider. After arriving for work one morning, CERN engineer Claude Touschard discovers the dead body of precocious young physicist Howard Anderby in one of the LHC’s tunnels. While it appears Anderby has been killed by radiation exposure, there’s no evidence the collider was turned on the night before, nor that anybody was in it. To keep the death from becoming public, CERN hires well-respected PI Sabine Leroux to investigate. As she speaks with Anderby’s colleagues, Sabine turns up copious evidence of professional rivalries and resentments, as well as Anderby’s potential involvement in a "geeky arms race" with the Chinese that may have put a target on his back. Meanwhile, researcher Eve Marsh, who harbored a crush on Anderby, frets about her recently published anonymous article considering whether particle physics can combat catastrophic climate change, which was based on her unauthorized use of the lab’s resources. Jacobs bestows even minor characters with such convincing motives that the plot’s momentum never slows, no matter how complex things get. Golden age mystery fans will love this. Agent: Lisa Bankoff, Bankoff Collaborative. (Mar.)

BECOMING MADAM SECRETARY by Stephanie Dray

library reserve

Becoming Madam Secretary

Stephanie Dray. Berkley, $29 (528p) ISBN 978-0-593-43705-6

Dray (The Women of Chateau Lafayette) delivers an insightful fictional biography of Frances Perkins (1880–1965), the first woman to serve in the U.S. Cabinet. At the outset, Frances studies childhood malnutrition in 1909 New York City as part of her master’s thesis in economics and sociology. Determined to stop children from working in factories and to advocate for the rights of all workers, she takes a job as a lobbyist for the Consumers’ League of New York City. The next year, she meets attorney Franklin Delano Roosevelt at a tea dance, and the two clash over their differing views on social justice initiatives (he’s circumspect, she’s strident). Frances also meets Paul Wilson, an economist and heir to the Marshall Fields fortune, whom she goes on to marry. Dray pulls off an exhaustive and stirring chronicle of Frances’s professional achievements as she struggles to raise a family with Paul, who is diagnosed as manic-depressive. As secretary of labor in FDR’s cabinet, Frances toils to gain support from the president and the public for the Social Security Act, which finally passes in 1935, and she draws on the example of the strong-willed Eleanor Roosevelt to persevere while Paul is institutionalized for his mental illness. Women’s historical fiction fans won’t want to miss this. Agent: Kevan Lyon, Marsal Lyon Literary. (Mar.)

WHAT HAPPENED TO NINA? by Dervla McTiernan

Library reserve.

What Happened to Nina?

Dervla McTiernan. Morrow, $30 (336p) ISBN 978-0-06-304225-4

The gripping latest from Australian crime writer McTiernan (The Murder Rule) examines a murder, its aftermath, and the impact of social media on the families involved. Twenty-year-old Nina Fraser sets out to go rock climbing with her wealthy boyfriend, Simon Jordan, near their New England homes one morning. That night, Simon returns to his family, but Nina does not. Nina’s parents suspect Simon is involved in her disappearance, but he maintains his innocence, insisting that Nina was alive when he left her behind at his parents’ house after a heated argument. The police find his vague explanation of the events suspicious, and he becomes a person of interest in the case. The Jordans then hire a respected publicity firm, which sets about painting Simon and Nina’s romance as fairy tale perfect while planting spurious information about Nina’s family online. Soon, journalists and true crime obsessives delve into the case, obscuring the truth in favor of sensational conspiracy theories that nearly tear Nina’s family apart and eventually lead to more violence. McTiernan makes the details of Nina’s disappearance clear early on, shifting the focus from whodunit to what happens in the court of public opinion. What emerges is a smart and unpredictable portrait of how the boundaries between tragedy and entertainment get blurred. It’s a disturbing treat for thriller fans. Agent: Shane Salerno, Story Factory. (Mar.)

IT LASTS FOREVER AND THEN IT'S OVER by Anne de Marcken

B&N reserve, for now, until library gets it in.

It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over

Anne de Marcken. New Directions, $15.95 trade paper (128p) ISBN 978-0-8112-3821-2

De Marcken debuts with an unsettling narrative of grief and zombies. The undead narrator, who has forgotten her real name, sets out from the hotel where she has been sheltering with other zombies, who are united in their hunger and divided over new religions cropping up among them, and heads west—"West because west is the direction of leaving behind. West because west is the last resort. I go west because west is where I remember you"—in a quest to remember who she once was, and to capture a sense of the person who loved her and made her life worth living. Along the way she says goodbye to her zombie friends, loses limbs, and acquires a dead crow as a companion. De Marcken never loses sight of the grand themes of life, death, and decay, as the narrator riffs cleverly on the nature of her condition ("Zombies used to be drug addicts, television watchers, videogame players. Now zombies are zombies. Consumers are consumers"). It amounts to a keen and weighty depiction of what does and doesn’t make someone human. (Mar.)

HELP WANTED by Adelle Waldman (library reserve)

Help Wanted

Adelle Waldman. Norton, $28.99 (278p) ISBN 978-1-324-02044-8

Waldman’s perceptive sophomore novel (after The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.) centers on the employees of a big-box store in Upstate New York. Nine of them are a part of the Movement team, arriving at four a.m. to unload trucks, unpack boxes, and stock the shelves before the store opens. Team manager Meredith, who’s under pressure from corporate headquarters to maintain the department’s budget, alienates the others by refusing requests for additional work hours or raises, contributing to their struggles to make ends meet. When the store manager announces he’s transferring to another location, and that corporate will be coming to interview employees to decide which team manager will take his role, Movement member Val sees an opportunity to get rid of Meredith by pushing to promote her. Val and the other team members put the plan in action, and several of them begin fantasizing about a promotion. Though Waldman touches only briefly on the employees’ personal lives, making it difficult to keep all the characters straight, the narrative builds to a satisfying and surprising conclusion. It’s a bracing and worthwhile glimpse of the high stakes faced by low-wage workers. (Mar.)