Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #81
by muffy
If you don’t read another mystery this summer, you must read The Tenderness of Wolves* by Stef Penney
The winner of the 2006 Costa Book of the Year (formerly known as the Whitbread Awards), this debut novel by a former filmmaker is set in Dove River, an isolated settlement in the Canadian tundra of 1876. Mrs. Ross, our primary narrator, stumbled onto the brutal murder of her neighbor Laurent Jammett, a reclusive fur trapper, the same night her teenaged son Francis, went missing, along with a mysterious ancient bone tablet of great value.
Penney seamlessly weaves multiple plotlines, (including the disappearance of two young girls 17 years ago) as the search parties trek northward on the trail of the killer, bracing brutal elements and the threat of predatory wolves, towards an explosive conclusion.
Tenderness is much more than a mystery - it is a psychological thriller, an adventure tale, a well-research period piece that captures the cultural and social history of the Canadian north, and most of all, a probing exploration of the unfathomable topography of the human heart.
* = Starred Reviews
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #80
by muffy
Well, I wasn’t going to read it. Another Chicklit. I thought, and a bit too cute, judging from the cover. But I was stuck in an airport and it was there. Soon I was turning pages, surprised to be hooked by this engaging debut about a wounded healer and her African elephants.
In Still Life with Elephant by Judy Reene Singer, horse-trainer Neelie Sterling is not a good listener. She knows that and she tries hard. But when her cheating husband, veterinarian Matt tells her his partner is having his baby, Neelie can’t deny that she is dense and blind as well.
As a last-ditch effort to save her marriage, she volunteers to join Matt's rescue mission to save injured elephants in Zimbabwe. The trip is dangerous, exhilarating and the nursing of the elephants back home is grueling and frustrating. However, Neelie soon learns that healing could be mutual and there is “still” life (pretty marvelous at that) worth living, especially when the charming millionaire who sponsored the rescue comes knocking.
Nicely paced and sparkled with humor, a debut novel to wrap up the summer. The elephants will steal your heart and the romantic in you will cheer. For fans of Jennifer Weiner and Jenny Colgan.
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #79
by muffy
Consumption* by first time novelist Kevin Patterson, after his well-received The Water in Between: A Journey at Sea (2000), his travel memoir which critics raved as “A high-seas adventure story that combines the wry wit and deep reflection of A Walk in the Woods with the action and suspense of A Perfect Storm”, is a must-read for fans of psychological mystery.
Consumption recounts beautiful Victoria's reentry into Rankin Inlet after spending her teenage years in a TB sanitarium in Manitoba. In the intervening years this Canadian Inuit hamlet has seen great social and economic changes with the influx of southerners, bringing with them diseases, greed and psychic alienation. Victoria’s adjustment is made more difficult when she marries the ambitious diamond mine supervisor and becomes involved with a Yankee doctor.
Patterson (himself a physician) “seamlessly works murder, sex and intrigue into the mix and offers a terrific cast that makes arctic life, and the ties of kin, palpable, …and delivers a searingly visceral message about love, loss and dislocation”. For fans of Arnaldur Indriðason, Hakan Nesser, and Asa Larsson, and those who want their mystery served decidedly chilled.
*= Starred Reviews
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #78
by muffy
Looking for a fast-paced, adrenalin-fueled mystery/thriller? I recommend Lee Vance’s debut Restitution.
A graduate of the Harvard Business School and a retired partner of Goldman Sachs, Lee is no stranger to the rarified world of Wall Street’s rich and powerful, where we meet up with our protagonist Peter Tyler.
A high-power career, a beautiful wife and a dream home would not stop Peter from engaging in a one-night stand with a mystery colleague, and lands him squarely as the prime suspect in his wife’s murder. A cross between Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent and The Fugitive, this compelling read with a twisty plot pits Peter against an embittered ex-cop, the Russian mob, nasties in unexpected corners as he races across the globe to find his wife’s killer and to clear his name. A hell-of-a-ride. Nicely done.
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #77
by muffy
I can't wait to read this mystery by French crime writer Pierre Magnan's Death in the Truffle Wood*, first published in 1978.
It all started with a pig.
Provence. November. Truffle time. Runaway truffle sow Roseline is attacked in the woods by an unknown assailant. When Superintendent Laviolette of the Marseille Police arrives to investigate 5 missing youths, her owner Alyre Morelon demands some assistance in identifying Roseline’s attacker.
Village politics, a dead body in a freezer and other grisly incidents are compensated by the generally humorous tone, sly wit and marvelous characterization. Beautifully translated (by Patricia Clancy), it brings to life the quirky French peasant culture so seldom depicted in the genre.
* = Starred Reviews
Blog Post
Fabulous(?) Fiction Firsts #76
by muffy
If you need a quick dose of breezy chicklit. for the dog days of summer, give Katherine Center's debut novel The Bright Side of Disaster a try. I have it on good authority that it is quite engaging.
Jenny Harris never anticipated single motherhood but when her fiancé ran out for cigarette the night she went into labor and never returned, she has her hands full. Things are not all bad though, apart from sleep deprivation, baby worries and the raging hormones... She found new friends in a mommy group and a handsome neighbor with a particular talent with cranky babies. It's too bad that her fiancé has a change of heart.
wwjd?
Blog Post
Fantastic Fiction Firsts #75
by muffy
Alright, I haven't read it yet but the critics are heaping high praise on David Blixt's debut novel The Master of Verona.
This first-time novelist+actor of the Michigan Shakespeare Festival has deep roots in the Ann Arbor Community (see the A2News interview), and will be at Borders Downtown on Wednesday, July 25th at 7 p.m. for a reading and signing.
Set in the Italian Renaissance and populated with such luminaries as Dante (Inferno) and the reimagined Montagues and Capulets, this historical is narrated by Pietro Alighieri, the 17 year-old son of Dante. Amidst the excitement of war between Padua and Verona and the drama of the Paduan court, Pietro witnesses his two best friends, Mariotto and Antonio being pushed to the edge of rekindling an ancient blood feud by their joint love of the same woman.
"Intricate plotting, well-staged scenes and colorful descriptions enhance head-spinning but lively entertainment" ~Kirkus.
"The precipitous ending, marked with dizzying revelations by the protagonists, do nothing to mar a novel of intricate plot, taut narrative, sharp period detail and beautifully realized characters." ~Publishers Weekly
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #74 - Iranian Gems
by muffy
If you enjoyed Anita Amirrezvani’s dazzling debut novel The Blood of Flowers, don’t miss the much anticipated debut The Septembers of Shiraz* by Dalia Sofer, due out next month (holds are accepted now).
Anita Amirrezvani grew up in San Francisco with her mother while spending much time over the years with her father and his extended family in Tehran, including the summer of 1979, at the onset of the Iranian Revolution when she was about to turn 17. Blood of Flower, tells the story of a 17th century unnamed female narrator who, at 14 journeys to Isfahan to learn rug weaving, a trade dominated by men. As she blossoms into a brilliant designer, her prospect for personal happiness grows dim, in this “Dickensian tale of one woman’s struggle to live a life of her choosing”.
Dalia Sofer was born in Iran and fled with her family in 1982 at the age of 10. The Septembers of Shiraz recounts the struggles of the Amin family at the wake of the Iranian Revolution, when father Isaac, a Jewish rare-gem dealer is wrongly accused and imprisoned for being an Israeli spy. His wife Farnaz begins to question the loyalty of those around them. Young daughter Shirin takes immense risk to safeguard the rest of the family, while older son, alone in the United State deals with isolation and falls into the embrace of an unlikely family.
These two novels by first-time authors deal with the universal themes of identity, alienation and love while painting a vivid portrait of Iran, then and now. Great reads.
* = Starred Review
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #73
by muffy
Fans of novelist and memoirist Diana Abu-Jaber: The Language of Baklava (2005), Crescent (2003); and Arabian Jazz (1993), should not be surprised that critics are calling her first mystery The Origin* ...“poetic in tone and profound in its inquiry into the nature of memory and the self”, themes explored in her earlier works which centered mostly around the Arab-American communities close to her heart. (Author's website)
This time around, in The Origin, Lena Dawson, an emotional fragile fingerprint examiner for the Syracuse police is suffering from personal memory issues. Since her philandering husband’s departure, she lives for her work. When a rash of infant deaths afflict the area, she suspects that something (someone, more likely), other than crib death is at work. Added to the palpitating tension is her budding romance with a wounded detective, the nagging mystery of her own childhood, and a stalker dogging her every step.
A gripping contemporary thriller with a “flawed but appealing protagonist”. “Haunted, moving,” and highly recommended.
* = Starred Reviews
Blog Post
Fabulous Fiction Firsts #72
by muffy
I am sure if you are a reader of mysteries, you would have come across some very famous feline detectives. Occasionally, a dog or two have tried to get in on the act. Clever, I am sure, but they have always relied on their two-legged sidekicks.
Now Leonie Swann, in her debut mystery (translated from German) Three Bags Full* introduces fleecy ones who work alone!
In the bucolic Irish village of Glennkill, a flock of sheep has just come across the murdered body of its beloved shepherd George Glenn. Led by the very smart Miss Marple, they are determined to bring the killer to justice, not withstanding all the obstacles in their way (they can’t talk, their chief suspects is the BUTCHER!).
Already a bestseller in Europe, U.S critics are calling Three Bags Full a “quirky philosophical mystery”, “refreshingly original” and “magical”. Swann also “peppers the text with literary allusion that add humor and lighten the existential gloom of both people and sheep”.
* = Starred Review