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Inconceivable!

posted by: November 3, 2014 - 6:00am

Cover of As You Wish by Cary ElwesIf you know the name Inigo Montoya, the secret to a nice MLT and never to go against a Sicilian when death is on the line, this book is for you. Cary Elwes takes readers behind the scenes of the cult classic movie The Princess Bride in As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of the Princess Bride. Elwes, who played the film’s hero Westley, was a fan of William Goldman’s novel long before he auditioned for the film. When he was approached about the role, he was thrilled. After meeting with Goldman and director Rob Reiner, Elwes was offered the part, and he became part of the 1987 movie which also featured Robin Wright, Mandy Patinkin, Peter Falk, Billy Crystal, Fred Savage, Wallace Shawn and Andre the Giant.

 

Moderately successful in theaters, The Princess Bride wasn’t the blockbuster that the studio hoped it would be. However, when the movie was released on video it truly found its audience. As home video collections became popular, VHS copies of The Princess Bride started selling better than anyone could have expected, and the movie’s popularity took on a life of its own.

 

In As You Wish, Elwes brings fans behind-the-scenes photos and stories told by the film’s cast. Elwes depicts the joy of making this film that has endured and captured the imagination of so many fans. Elwes recently called the book “the quintessential making-of memoir.” As You Wish is a must-read for fans of The Princess Bride, and it will definitely lead to re-watching this beloved movie.


 
 

Bad Dreams

posted by: November 3, 2014 - 6:00am

Cover of Broken Monsters by Lauren BeukesThe Detroit art scene goes horribly awry in Lauren Beukes’ new novel Broken Monsters. When the top half of a boy is found fused to the bottom half of a deer, Detective Gabriella Versado knows that more trouble will be on its way. Versado is a single parent of a teenage daughter named Layla who spends her free time catfishing online predators in hopes of serving them vigilante justice. Added to the mix is the charismatic Jonno, destined to become a YouTube sensation, willing to do almost anything to film a good story. Versado understands that the disturbing tableau created by this killer is only the beginning, and that she is dealing with a madman destined to strike again. What she doesn’t know is that the killer is haunted by dreams that are quickly spinning toward a grim reality.

 

South African author Beukes sets this story around the burgeoning Detroit art scene, where abandoned buildings are reclaimed and rebuilt into underground galleries. She is good at creating memorable characters, like the scavenger TK who knows the streets of Detroit well and can often sense when danger is lurking nearby. The story involves several main characters whose lives eventually intertwine and race toward an unforgettable ending. She builds suspense slowly, throwing in creepy details that blossom into all-out horror. Her previous novel, The Shining Girls, also features a killer with a paranormal bent, and readers who enjoy this one will want to read her first. Readers who enjoy this novel may want to try novels by Chelsea Cain or Gillian Flynn.


 
 

Three Powerful Sisters

posted by: October 31, 2014 - 7:00am

Cover of Sisters' Fate by Jessica SpotswoodThe third book in Jessica Spotswood’s The Cahill Witch Chronicles, Sisters’ Fate, wraps up the Cahill sisters’ story. Cate, Maura and Tess are three very powerful witches living in an alternate America in which anyone suspected of being a witch is locked away in an asylum, or worse, sentenced to death. The Brotherhood who control the country has continued life in the Puritan tradition, oppressing women and blaming witches for the country’s problems.

 

In Born Wicked and Star Cursed, Cate tried to protect her sisters from the Brotherhood and other witches who are jealous of their powers, but now because of the betrayal of one sister and the burgeoning power of another, Cate is conflicted about how to proceed. Cate eventually begins to work with a group of people resisting the Brotherhood, attending secret meetings and planning ways to change life in the country. When a fever begins to ravage New London and the witches are blamed, change becomes essential to preventing the deaths of witches and humans alike, bringing Cate and the other witches to make extreme choices.

 

At turns a nail-biting, action-packed story and family story about sisters who just happen to be witches, Sisters’ Fate is a satisfying conclusion to Spotswood’s series. Spotswood does a wonderful job creating flawed, interesting characters who fight for what they know is right until the very end.


 
 

Ignite an Adventure

posted by: October 30, 2014 - 7:00am

Cover of Firebug by Lish McBrideLish McBride, author of the teen series Necromancer, has come out with a new young adult novel titled Firebug. This preternatural pleasure is equal parts Twilight by Stephenie Meyer and Firestarter by Stephen King. Start with a young girl who has the ability to create fire with her mind, and mix in a love triangle and a sinister paranormal mob. The result is a fast-paced romp that’s hard to put down.

 

After Ava’s mother is killed by the Coterie, an organization that governs paranormal citizens, Ava is forcibly enlisted as a hitwoman by the same organization. Her talents and affiliations have limited her circle of friends to her guardian, Cade, and her two partners, Ezra and Lock. When the leader of the Coterie, a vampire named Venus, threatens her last remaining family, Ava balks and starts a fight that just may be too big to win.

 

Morris Award-nominated McBride created a page-turner in this first installment of her new series. The combination of action, drama and witty banter is sure to leave you wanting more.


 
 

You Have to Say Every Word – No Matter What

posted by: October 30, 2014 - 7:00am

Cover of The Book with No Pictures by B.J. Novak Sample pages from The Book With No Pictures by B.J. NovakA picture book with no pictures? Leave it to Emmy Award winning actor B.J. Novak to create just that with his innovative and interactive The Book with No Pictures. Sure to be a repeat story time request, this is one that parents won’t tire of either.

 

There is one rule when reading this gem that begs to be read aloud – everything written on the page has to be spoken out loud by the reader. The reader may be compelled to sing or even scream as the words could be a zany song about eating ants for breakfast or just a list of splendiferously ridiculous sounds like Fa-rumpa-jumpa and BA-DONGY FACE!!!!!!

 

A white background carries the varied font types, sizes and colors which are expertly employed to emphasize a change in tone and voice for the reader of this story. Novak also creatively breaks the fourth wall with direct address allowing for interaction as the reader beseeches the listener to let him stop throughout and  even at the end begs, "please please please please please choose a book with pictures." Novak, whose author picture is appropriately a verbal description, is a beloved and talented comedian who has achieved great success making grown-ups laugh and has now charmed a whole new audience who won’t  stop giggling. Find out for yourself by watching this YouTube clip of Novak’s delightful reading in front of a roomful of laughing children.


 
 

Past into Present

posted by: October 29, 2014 - 7:00am

Book cover of Fire Shut Up in My Bones by Charles M. BlowBook cover of the Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace by Jeff Hobbs.Two little boys growing up in America; one an urban Jersey boy, the other raised in the small towns of the deep South. Both are African-American, poor, with strong, determined mothers and absentee fathers, each a young witness to violence. Both are identified as highly intelligent and both went to college and graduated. One became a reporter and appears on network television news shows; the other is dead, murdered. Journalist Charles Blow tells his own story in Fire Shut Up in My Bones: A Memoir while Jeff Hobbs memorializes the life of his Yale roommate in the bestselling The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League.

 

Charles Blow looks to be sitting in the catbird seat. Op-ed columnist for The New York Times and a commentator on CNN, he is a man who projects confidence and success. His memoir, however, reveals a rural Louisiana childhood of poverty where he saw conflict settled with weapons and one of the greatest insults a boy could endure was to be a called a “punk,” meaning homosexual. Blow was twice the victim of sexual abuse by older male relatives, leaving him wondering what it was about himself that attracted predators. Fire Shut Up In My Bones is Blow’s sensitive and introspective reflection on how his past created his present.

 

Young Robert Peace idolized his father, a man who seemed to know everyone in Newark’s rough suburbs. Convicted of killing two women, Peace’s father was incarcerated when Peace was in first grade. Rob’s mother Jackie worked in institutional kitchens to afford a private education for her son, determined that Rob would escape the ghetto. Indeed he did, landing a fully funded spot at Yale thanks to his prodigious intellect, focused hard work and leadership qualities. The quick and sad version of Peace’s story is after college, he gradually drifted back to his old neighborhood and slid into the criminal activity leading to his murder. Hobbs chooses to honor his friend fairly by writing The Short and Tragic Life which presents Peace as a complex man who struggled under the weight of opposing expectations and experiences.


 
 

Ye Gods!

posted by: October 28, 2014 - 7:00am

Percy Jackson's Greek GodsSo you raced through the Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan, all the way from The Lightning Thief through The Last Olympian. Then you settled into the Heroes of Olympus series, flying through those tomes like Hermes fleeing Typhon. Now you’re just waiting around for your copy of The Blood of Olympus to hit the hold shelf and your journey through all things Greek and godly will be complete.

 

Probably think you’re an expert on Greek mythology by now, right?

 

Think again.

 

Sure, you know all about Zeus, Athena, Poseidon; all the poster children of Greek legend and lore. And by now you’ve gotten a handle on what it means to be a demigod. But how about Minthe or Metis? Thetis or Themis? Ring any bells? Face it, when it comes to real expertise, you’ve got a ways to go. Fortunately, Professor Percy Jackson has got your back.

 

Here to guide you through the chaotic origins of Greek mythology, including nymphs, lesser gods, heroes and upstart mortals of latter days, Percy Jackson’s Greek Gods covers it all.

 

Not in some boring lecture-style either. Nah, Percy wouldn’t have the attention span for it, and you don’t have TIME for that right now anyway! You’re about to embark on the very last book in the Heroes of Olympus series for Pan’s sake! Percy knows that and doesn’t want to shake your focus.

 

But seriously, at a time like this, do you REALLY want to face Gaea without a complete working knowledge of the whole Greek godly shebang? When you’re in the thick of battle, you don’t want any multi-headed, poison-dripping surprises. So while you’re waiting for The Blood of Olympus, do yourself a favor and brush up on your myth know-how. You’ll be glad you did.


 
 

Between the Covers with Gary Krist

posted by: October 28, 2014 - 7:00am

Empire of SinThis fall, Maryland author Gary Krist will take readers into a little-known chapter of New Orleans history with his new book Empire of Sin: A Story of Sex, Jazz, Murder, and the Battle for Modern New Orleans. Krist brings to light the social and political struggles that New Orleans faced at the turn of the 20th century. Focusing on events from 1890 through 1920, Krist tells a tale of vice, politics, economic development, crime, jazz, racism and murder. The most shocking thing about this story is that it’s all true! This engrossing book is a must-read for anyone who enjoyed Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair that Changed America.

 

Krist recently answered some questions about Empire of Sin for Between the Covers. Read on to learn more about the city’s politics, its remarkable residents and the Axman, a serial murderer who terrorized New Orleans for 18 months.

 

Between the Covers: Why New Orleans? Was it the story or the city that first captured your interest?

Gary Krist: It’s hard to separate story from city, but I’d say it was a desire to write about New Orleans that first attracted me. For an urban historian, New Orleans is a particularly attractive subject, primarily because of its unique history. As a place with French and Catholic roots, it has a culture very different from that of other American cities. (My favorite observation about New Orleans is that it was the first major American metropolis to build an opera house but the last to install a sewer system.) So it was fascinating for me to see how this unique place weathered the great transition to modernity in this era.

 

BTC: I suspect that many of our readers don’t know a lot about this chapter in New Orleans history. Will you describe the social and political climate of the city at the turn of the 20th century?

GK: The last decades of the 19th century were difficult for New Orleans. The city’s prosperous antebellum days were long past; years of civil war and reconstruction had been hard on the local economy, and the city had become hopelessly backward in terms of urban development (hence that much-delayed sewer system). Northern capital investment was desperately needed to modernize the city’s infrastructure, but Northern capitalists were reluctant to invest in a place with such a bad reputation for vice and crime. So the city’s “better half” decided that it was time to clean up New Orleans, which meant doing battle with the city’s long-entrenched underworlds of vice and crime. Basically, they wanted to make New Orleans “respectable”—and that was going to be quite a job.

 

BTC: During this time, a red-light district called Storyville was created in New Orleans. Tell us a little bit about its development.

GK: Interestingly, Storyville began as part of this clean-up campaign. Reformers knew that abolishing prostitution entirely would not be feasible in a city like New Orleans, so they tried instead to isolate and regulate the trade. An alderman named Sidney Story identified a particular 18-block neighborhood and wrote an ordinance making prostitution illegal everywhere EXCEPT in this one, out-of-the-way area. Reformers figured that this would be a good way of lowering the profile of vice in the city. But the plan backfired, and Storyville (as the district came to be called, much to Alderman Story’s annoyance) soon was making New Orleans world-famous as a virtual supermarket of sin. And when reformers decided that they needed to close the district after all, it turned out that Storyville was a lot harder to kill than it had been to create.

 

BTC: Another notable thread of the story is the Axman murders, a series of grisly murders that took place from 1918-1919 and remain unsolved. What impact did these events have on the city?

GK: The Axman appeared at a critical time, just when the champions of respectability thought they had won their battle for New Orleans. Storyville had finally been closed in 1917, and the city’s crime problem seemed to be under control at last. But then an anonymous murderer dramatically upended this sense of victory with a series of bloody nighttime ax attacks that terrorized the city for 18 months. With each succeeding murder, panicked New Orleanians became increasingly paranoid and irrational. Then an open letter—purportedly from the Axman himself—appeared in The Times-Picayune, claiming that the murderer was a devil from hell with a liking for the new jazz music. He threatened to kill again on St. Joseph’s Night, promising only to spare any household in which jazz was being played. And, well, I don’t want to reveal too much, but you can just imagine what a night of music and dancing took place in New Orleans that night.

 

BTC: Empire of Sin is filled with unbelievable characters, and the most amazing thing is that they were all real people. Do you have a favorite? Which person in this book will stick with the reader the longest?

GK: Oh, I could probably name a dozen—like Josie Arlington, the wealthy brothel madam who for decades kept her sinful life a secret from her beloved niece; or Buddy Bolden, the almost-legendary cornetist who is credited with being the inventor of jazz music; or Tom Anderson, the poor kid from the rough Irish Channel neighborhood who rose to become one of the most powerful (and strangely likeable) vice lords in the country. But my favorite character is probably Louis Armstrong, who grew up in the hardest and most degrading circumstances imaginable, but whose unfailing good-heartedness and matchless musical gift allowed him to rise above his harsh childhood to become one of the great artists of the century.

 

BTC: What is the most shocking thing that you learned in your research?

GK: Some of the beliefs of the so-called reformers shocked me. For instance, one of the leaders of the anti-Storyville campaign was a woman named Jean Gordon. She was firmly convinced that she was on the side of virtue, but as with many self-styled moral champions, her idea of “virtue” was often distorted by class and racial prejudice. So while she fought hard for female suffrage and child labor regulation, she also lent her support to the rise of Jim Crow discrimination and the disenfranchisement of African-Americans. Even worse, she held some astounding beliefs about eugenics, advocating for the forced sterilization of children who showed signs of a future in crime, prostitution or alcoholism. “Took Lucille Decoux to the Women’s Dispensary July 17 [for an appendectomy],” Jean once wrote in her diary. “This was an excellent opportunity to have her sterilized…and thus end any feeble-minded progeny coming from Lucille.”

 

BTC: What are you working on next?

GK: My fascination with cities in the early 20th century hasn’t gone away, so I’m working on a book about Los Angeles in roughly this same time period. The book will center on the Hollywood of the silent-film era and weave in a few other elements. But the idea is still taking shape in my mind, so it’s probably too early to talk about it.


 
 

Chock Full of Trouble

posted by: October 27, 2014 - 7:00am

Cover art for Skink No SurrenderRichard is going crazy. His 14-year-old cousin Malley doesn't want to go to boarding school. Now she has run off with some guy named Talbo Chock. Luckily for Richard, he crosses paths with Skink, the 72-year-old oddball protagonist in Carl Hiaasen's newest teen novel Skink: No Surrender. Skink has been around before. He is one of Hiaasen's most beloved characters first appearing in his adult novel Double Whammy over 25 years ago. Now he's back, just in time to dish out his own weed-whacking brand of integrity and justice.
 

Richard doesn't know what to make of Skink, the eccentric, one-eyed ex-governor of Florida. One minute Skink is burying himself in the sand waiting to catch Loggerhead turtle egg thieves, the next he's off to help Richard solve the mystery of Malley's disappearance. Richard and Skink’s swampy journey leads them into one white-knuckle situation after another, thankfully diluted with plenty of humor along the way. Road kill for dinner, anyone?
 

Hiaasen, a Florida native and columnist for the Miami Herald, has long been an advocate for the Everglades. This latest plot-driven adventure, told from Richard’s perspective, continues Hiaasen’s subtle brand of environmental awareness while skimming over the creepier aspect of the story: a teenage girl’s abduction by an older man. As with his previous books, nature — and man's disregard for it — pulse below the surface, as does the fact that imperfection is not, by itself, a bad thing. There's a place for even flawed superheroes, like Skink, when it comes to defending what's right. Marketed for teen readers, this latest effort, recently long-listed for the National Book Award, will appeal to the legion of Hiaasen fans who appreciate his popular brand of humor and zesty storytelling.


 
 

In the Middle of Nowhere

posted by: October 27, 2014 - 7:00am

Cover art for WildlifeWildlife is Australian author Fiona Wood’s first novel to be published in the United States.  It tells the story of two high school girls on their wilderness term at an Australian high school. Sibylla and Lou’s elite school makes students spend one term at their outdoor education campus, living in cabins, going on solo hikes and learning to fend for themselves. Sib and Lou are thrown together in a cabin with a few other girls, and each have to deal with their respective relationship and friendship issues.
 

Sib has always been outside of the popular group, but a once-in-a-lifetime modeling gig puts her in the spotlight. Her newfound popularity catches the attention of the most attractive guy in her class, Ben. When the two start dating, Sib begins to worry about her inexperience in relationships because of pressure from her best friend Holly. The peer pressure leads her to question her relationship with Ben and eventually her existing friendships.
 

Lou, on the other hand, is a transfer student looking to start over after her boyfriend died in a car accident the previous school year. She keeps her distance from her fellow classmates, including Sib, until the situation between Sib and her friends escalates, and the two form a new friendship.
 

Ultimately a story about friendship, romance and growing up, Wildlife is a well-written novel that readers looking for a high school story with a twist will enjoy. Wood’s characters are highly relatable and fully realized — Sib, Lou and their fellow students all seem real, their issues ones many teens face.


 
 

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