Jan 9, 2014
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Here's the latest issue of our twice-monthly BookBrowse Highlights newsletter to keep you up to date with some of the new books and authors featured at BookBrowse.
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Readers Recommend
 House of Bathory
by Linda Lafferty
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing Publication Date: 01/07/2014 Historical Fiction, 486 pages Number of reader reviews: 13 Readers' consensus:  BookBrowse Members Say "When I came across House of Bathory I was intrigued. I learned from Wikipedia that the Countess of Bathory was infamous - "...the most prolific female serial killer in history" - but I had never heard of her. After reading about who she was, and when and where she lived, I had to read this book. I was not disappointed. Two stories are told: the fascinating historical story in Cachtice Castle in 1610 leading up to the Countess's arrest; and the second story, just as fascinating, that begins in 2010 Colorado. Together, these two stories are expertly told, and becomes quite an exciting, 'unputdownable' reading experience." - Alice R. (Alexandria, VA. "I was totally engrossed in this book. The author's construct of moving the story line back and forth from the past to the present was well done and only built up this reader's interest in what was going to happen next. The plot was well thought out and the characters were fascinating - everything from a Goth to a historian to an evil countess - and it worked! Learning about Jungian psychology was an added plus. If you need a page-turner to take you away, this is the book for you." - Mary S. (Bow, NH) "This was a fascinating book. I was hesitant to read it when I realized the background of the Countess Bathory. However there were many other interesting persons brought into the book. It turned out to be suspenseful and hard to put down. I found myself reading late into the night to find out what would happen next, even though I had looked ahead and knew what happened to the countess." - Doris K. (Angora, MN) Read all the Reviews Buy at Amazon
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Readers Recommend
 Soy Sauce for Beginners by Kirstin Chen
Publisher: New Harvest Publication Date: 01/01/2014 Novels, 256 pages Number of reader reviews: 18 Readers' consensus: BookBrowse Members Say "There are some writers who catch you with their first sentence. You may not have a particular interest in the topic, you may not have anything in common with the character, but their way with words feels like listening to a symphony or watching a sunrise. While Kirsten Chen achieves this, she achieves so much more in tackling the challenges of life we all face in a very interesting (and informative) context. I look forward to more from this author." - Sarah H. (Arvada, CO) "I love books about food, and the title Soy Sauce For Beginners, intrigued me...I wasn't disappointed. Gretchen Lin, a graduate student in San Francisco, is in the midst of an unraveling marriage and decides to return to her home in Singapore where her family owns an artisanal soy sauce company. On her return, she is drawn into a power struggle between her father, her Uncle Robert, and his son... Added to great story telling, I learned all sorts of things about soy sauce that will make me more judicious in selecting the proper sauce for my next recipe. Who knew?" - Linda J. (Manchester, MO) "The title of the book in no way reflects the complexity of the issues covered by the author. From personal issues and choices of the main character, to family crisis situations, and cultural differences , the story line moves slowly on the beginning of the book, but picks up speed as you are drawn into the characters, and the complex issues presented. How we handle relationships, family , friends and co-workers, and define ourselves by the passion for work are all good discussion points." - Janice S. (Scotts Hill, TN). Read all the Reviews Buy at Amazon
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Featured Review
Below is part of BookBrowse's review of The Invention of Wings.
The Invention of Wings
by Sue Monk Kidd
Hardcover (Jan 2014), 384 pages.
Publisher: Viking
ISBN 9780670024780
BookBrowse Rating:  Critics' Consensus:
Review
Sue Monk Kidd's debut, published in 2002, revolved around a series of pivotal relationships in a woman's life: mother-daughter, sister-sister, friend-friend, all set against the backdrop of the struggle for civil rights in the 1960s South. That novel, The Secret Life of Bees, became a mega bestseller and a very successful motion picture. Since then Kidd has generated an impressive body of work.
Her newest novel revisits the same themes and utilizes a similar backdrop as Bees (albeit a century and a half removed). Encompassing the years 1803-1838, The Invention of Wings is a historical novel recounting the relationship between Sarah Grimke, real-life daughter of a Charleston, SC slave-owning family and Hetty, usually called "Handful." Although a creation of Monk Kidd's imagination, Handful's character is based upon an actual slave given to Sarah as a birthday present when they were just eleven and ten years, old respectively.
As these two remarkable women forge their somewhat uneasy friendship through the years, both yearn for greater things than fate has handed them: Handful is a piece of property and Sarah is imprisoned by the limitations her society places on women.
Warily learning to trust each other, they deal with pain, loss, frustration and tragedy, eventually arriving at a crossroads from which both know there is no turning back. For Sarah this pivotal point is the realization that she can no longer be part of a system that treats people as commodities, and if she is to be true to her convictions she must leave home, family and everything she has ever known of her comfortable life. For Handful, it is the inescapable truth that she would rather be dead than endure one more moment of servitude. "I want freedom more than the next breath," she finally tells her half sister Sky. "We'll leave ridin' on our coffins if we have to...We're leavin; or die tryin."
The novel embraces a cast of memorable characters including Handful's mother, Charlotte, the slave seamstress. Charlotte refuses to let her indomitable spirit be cowed and encourages her daughter, even from beyond the grave, to always reach higher. "Mauma always used to say-You got to figure out which end of the needle you goin' to be-the one that's fastened to the thread or the end that pierces the cloth," Handful remembers, as she finally comes to understand exactly what her mother meant... continued
Reviewed by Judi Sauerbrey
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Beyond The Book
 At BookBrowse we don't just review books, we go beyond the book to explore topics behind and related to each book we review. Here is our beyond the book feature for
Ten Classic Children's Novels for Winter
The Twistrose Key is full of frozen landscapes inspired by Norwegian winters - sleighs, ice caves, and sled runs, plus a good place to take the chill off with a mug of hot mulled cider. Here is a list of ten other novels for children that will give readers a good dose of frost and snow, either as inspiration for getting through the long winter, or for filling in what Mother Nature lacks in warmer climes.
- Ethel Cook Eliot, The House Above the Trees (1921)
An orphaned girl finds a world of magic in the woods, including Wind Creatures who can fly and the ultimate nature spirit, Tree Mother. Many satisfying scenes involve sledding and playing in winter woods, where true children of the forest never get cold.
- Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Big Woods (1932)
Or, for a more grueling read, The Long Winter (1940).
Nothing is so sensual as the food stored away for winter in Laura and Mary's house in the Wisconsin woods - pumpkins and squash, dried corn, smoked meats. When the snows come, there is plenty of fiddle music by the fire and at winter's end, a huge maple sugaring party and dance with the cousins.
- Elizabeth Coatsworth, Away Goes Sally (1934)
Like an early American Girl book, this adventure set in the early nineteenth century follows a young girl as her family moves house in an innovative way. Sally sets off into the icy wilds of Maine with the house, which her stubborn Aunt Nannie vows she will never leave, pulled on sled runners.
- Elizabeth Enright, The Four-Story Mistake (1942)
Delicious family scenes abound in this World War II-era story about a city family, the Melendys, settling into a huge ramshackle house in Upstate New York. The Melendy Christmas is a memorable occasion complete with a homegrown variety show, and the children find they can ice-skate right out their back door into a beautiful rural world.
- C.S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe (1950)
One of the most chilling winter landscapes in fiction are the snowy woods Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy find on the other side of the eponymous wardrobe. Enjoy sledge riding with the Queen, but stay away from the Turkish Delight.
- L.M. Boston, The Children of Green Knowe (1955)
In this magical tale of another child sent to live in the country, the figures moving in the old pictures on the wall are friendly. When the snow comes, it falls gloriously on an intricate garden full of topiaries, and the boy Toseland finds it is house policy to leave the windows open for the birds to come in and warm themselves.
- Susan Cooper, The Dark is Rising (1973)
Midwinter's Eve takes on great significance in an ongoing battle between the Dark and the Light when a boy named Will turns eleven and discovers he is the last of the Old Ones. Against the backdrop of a traditional English Christmas, Will learns about his place in the age-old struggle. When the forces of the Dark send a monumental snowstorm to cripple the country, the Light must work furiously to protect the world from the biting cold.
- Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass (1995)
What more profound and richly imagined polar landscape is there in literature than Philip Pullman's Arctic? There is something metaphysical going on with the Aurora Borealis, and sinister science experiments are underway in a lab somewhere out on the tundra. Ride across the snowy wastes with Lyra Belacqua and her companion, the fearsome armored polar bear Iorek Byrnison.
- Cressida Cowell, How to Train Your Dragon Book 4: How to Cheat a Dragon's Curse (2006)
Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III sets off across the ice in search of a very unlikely Macguffin - the frozen potato. (It's the only thing that will break a certain curse, and the terrifying Hysterical Tribe is rumored to have one). The feats that Vikings can pull off on skis and makeshift sleds boggle the mind, and the balance between death-defying feats and robust belly laughs in this book (as in the entire Cressida Cowell series) are sure to keep you warm. The books are the basis for the popular movie series.
- Sarah Prineas, Winterling (2012)
Fer (short for Jennifer), a girl from our world, gets lured through a passage into a mysterious land still in the grip of winter when it's long past time for spring. The line between people and animals is blurring in the snowy land, and Fer must set things right.
by Jennifer G Wilder
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Books Into Movies Winter 2014
If you're wondering what films based on books will release between January and March 2014, BookBrowse has the answer! Check them out here in release date order (based on USA opening dates).
Go to blog
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Win
The World Without You
by Joshua Henkin
Published in paperback: Apr 2013
Enter the Giveaway
Discussion Guide
Interview
Excerpt
Buy at Amazon
From the Jacket
It's July 4, 2005, and the Frankel family is descending upon their beloved summer home in the Berkshires. But this is no ordinary holiday. The family has gathered to memorialize Leo, the youngest of the four siblings, an intrepid journalist and adventurer who was killed on that day in 2004, while on assignment in Iraq.
The parents, Marilyn and David, are adrift in grief. Their forty-year marriage is falling apart. Clarissa, the eldest sibling and a former cello prodigy, has settled into an ambivalent domesticity and is struggling at age thirty-nine to become pregnant. Lily, a fiery-tempered lawyer and the family contrarian, is angry at everyone. And Noelle, whose teenage years were shadowed by promiscuity and school expulsions, has moved to Jerusalem and become a born-again Orthodox Jew. The last person to see Leo alive, Noelle has flown back for the memorial with her husband and four children, but she feels entirely out of place. And Thisbe? - Leo's widow and mother of their three-year-old son - has come from California bearing her own secret.
Set against the backdrop of Independence Day and the Iraq War, The World Without You is a novel about sibling rivalries and marital feuds, about volatile women and silent men, and, ultimately, about the true meaning of family.
Entertainment Weekly
[I]t's damn difficult to make the basic unhappy-family novel distinctly one's own. Henkin does so with a one-two combination of strengths: psychological empathy for his realistic characters, and an expository modesty that draws attention away from the skilled writing itself.
The Huffington Post
Heart-searing, eye-tearing, and soul-touching
The Boston Globe
Blazingly alive. . . . [Henkin] grounds his novel in both time and place, creating a living, breathing world... Gorgeously written, and as beautifully detailed as a tapestry, Henkin delicately probes what these family members really mean to one another... [C]ompassionate, intelligent, and shining
The Denver Post
Henkin juggles [his] large cast of characters with ease, telling a poignant story while maintaining each unique identity. This is no small trick, as the characters are neither perfect nor perfectly unlikeable. They are, in the end, a family. They do what families do, which is a complex dance of happy and sad, of distance and intimacy.
5 people will each win a paperback copy of
The World Without You. This giveaway is open to residents of the USA only, unless you are a BookBrowse member, in which case you are eligible to win wherever you might live. Enter the giveaway here
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 In the spirit of her blockbuster #1 New York Times bestseller The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin embarks on a new project to make home a happier place. DiscussAbout This Book
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Discussing
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Featured Reading
Mid-Atlantic
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Wordplay
Solve this clue "It's N S O M N" and be entered to win the book of your choice Entry & Details |
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Answers to
The Big Holiday Wordplay
Answers here
The winners will be drawn shortly and will be contacted by email.
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News
Jan 07 2014:
Kate Atkinson, Lucy Hughes-Hallett, Michael Symmons Roberts, Chris Riddell and Nathan Filer have won prizes at this year's Costa awards.
...(more)
Jan 03 2014:
For much of a career spanning more than 60 years, the writer Elizabeth Jane Howard, who has died aged 90, suffered a certain condescension from literary editors as a writer of "women's novels". But it did not deter her. She herself described her readers as "women and educated men", and expressed...(more)
Jan 02 2014:
Research indicates that reading a gripping novel causes biological changes in the brain which last for days...
(more)
Jan 02 2014:
Shelf Awareness reports that booksellers they talked to since the holidays all had good news about the holiday season. At worst, sales were even with last year, but most stores reported healthy gains--in some cases, spectacular gains. Sales were particularly strong toward the end of this year's...(more)
Jan 02 2014:
Kate DiCamillo, the author of more than a dozen books including the Newbery Medal-winning The Tale of Despereaux, will be named the country's fourth national ambassador for young people's literature at a ceremony at the Library of Congress on January 10. DiCamillo follows Walter Dean Myers...(more)
Read these news stories, and many others, in full
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