The new year is upon us and with it come many wonderful new books to discover. Here are a dozen books that are publishing in the first three months of 2015. We like them so much we are showcasing each - as a professionally reviewed book, a First Impressions review book, a focus for discussion or a giveaway - and we think you will like them too!
Vanessa and Her Sister by Priya Parmar
December 30, 2014. 368 pages. Published by Ballantine Books
For fans of The Paris Wife and Loving Frank comes a captivating novel that offers an intimate glimpse into the lives of Vanessa Bell, her sister Virginia Woolf, and the controversial and popular circle of intellectuals known as the Bloomsbury Group.
BookBrowse members are reviewing Vanessa and Her Sister for First Impressions. Read the reviews
Descent by Tim Johnston
January 6, 2015. 384 pages. Published by Algonquin Books
Descent, the story of a family undone by the disappearance of a daughter who went out for a morning run and didn't come back, is stunning in its emotional impact - a compulsively readable page-turner with a strong literary sensibility.
BookBrowse members are reviewing Descent for First Impressions.
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Sweetland by Michael Crummey
January 19, 2015. 336 pages. Published by Liveright/WW Norton
The scarcely populated town of Sweetland rests on the shore of a remote Canadian island. Its slow decline finally reaches a head when the mainland government offers each islander a generous resettlement package, the sole stipulation being that everyone must leave. Fierce and enigmatic Moses Sweetland, whose ancestors founded the village, is the only one to refuse. As he watches his neighbors abandon the island, he recalls the town's rugged history and its eccentric cast of characters.
BookBrowse's Norah Piehl will be reviewing Sweetland. More about this book
Mr. Mac and Me by Esther Freud
January 27, 2015. 304 pages. Published by Bloomsbury USA
1914. Thomas Maggs is thirteen and lives with his parents and sister at the Blue Anchor pub, in the village of Dunwich on the Suffolk coast...one day a mysterious Scotsman and his red-haired wife arrive in the village. The man's name is Charles Rennie Mackintosh, but the locals are soon calling him Mac. Mac and his wife are both artists, regarded as eccentrics in town, but a source of wonder and fascination for Thomas.
Mr. Mac and Me is the story of an unlikely friendship, and a vivid portrait of one of the most brilliant and misunderstood artists of his generation.
BookBrowse's Rebecca Foster will be reviewing Mr. Mac and Me. More about this book
The Same Sky by Amanda Eyre Ward
January 27, 2015. 288 pages. Published by Ballantine Books
From the acclaimed author of How to Be Lost and Close Your Eyes comes a beautiful and heartrending novel about motherhood, resilience, and faith - a ripped-from-the-headlines story of two families on both sides of the American border. Alice and her husband, Jake, own a barbecue restaurant in Austin, Texas...Carla is a strong-willed young girl who's had to grow up fast, acting as caretaker to her six-year-old brother Junior. Years ago, her mother left the family behind in Honduras to make the arduous, illegal journey to Texas.
BookBrowse members are reviewing The Same Sky for First Impressions. Read the reviews
The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
February 3, 2015. 448 pages. Published by St. Martin's Press
Viann and Isabelle have always been close despite their differences. Younger, bolder sister Isabelle lives in Paris while Viann lives a quiet and content life in the French countryside with her husband Antoine and their daughter. When World War II strikes and Antoine is sent off to fight, Viann and Isabelle's father sends Isabelle to help her older sister cope. As the war progresses, it's not only the sisters' relationship that is tested, but also their strength and their individual senses of right and wrong. With life as they know it changing in unbelievably horrific ways, Viann and Isabelle will find themselves facing frightening situations and responding in ways they never thought possible as bravery and resistance take different forms in each of their actions.
BookBrowse members are reviewing The Nightingale for First Impressions. Read the reviews
A Kim Jong-Il Production: The Extraordinary True Story of a Kidnapped Filmmaker, His Star Actress, and a Young Dictator's Rise to Power by Paul Fischer
3 Feb 2015. 368 Pages. Published by Flatiron Book.
Before becoming the world's most notorious dictator, Kim Jong-Il ran North Korea's Ministry for Propaganda and its film studios. Conceiving every movie made, he acted as producer and screenwriter. Despite this control, he was underwhelmed by the available talent and took drastic steps, ordering the kidnapping of Choi Eun-Hee (Madam Choi)--South Korea's most famous actress--and her ex-husband Shin Sang-Ok, the country's most famous filmmaker.
Madam Choi vanished first. When Shin went to Hong Kong to investigate, he was attacked and woke up wrapped in plastic sheeting aboard a ship bound for North Korea.
An extremely timely nonfiction thriller packed with tension, passion, and politics, A Kim Jong-Il Production offers a rare glimpse into a secretive world, illuminating a fascinating chapter of North Korea's history that helps explain how it became the hermetically sealed, intensely stage-managed country it remains today.
BookBrowse members are reviewing A Kim-Jong-Il Production for First Impressions.
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The Wonders by Paddy O'Reilly
February 10, 2015. 288 pages. Published by Washington Square Press
With warmth, humor, and astonishing insight, Paddy O'Reilly has written a wonderful novel that will appeal to fans of Sara Gruen's Ape House, Karen Joy Fowler's We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, and Teddy Wayne's The Love Song of Jonny Valentine - or anyone who's ever questioned the nature of fame, our kinship with the animal kingdom, and the delicate balancing act of life and death.
BookBrowse will be hosting a discussion about The Wonders. More about this book
Lusitania: Triumph, Tragedy, and the End of the Edwardian Age by Greg King & Penny Wilson
February 24, 2015. 400 Pages. Published by St. Martin's Press
On the 100th anniversary of its sinking, King and Wilson tell the story of the Lusitania's glamorous passengers and the torpedo that ended an era and prompted the US entry into World War I.
She was a ship of dreams, carrying millionaires and aristocrats, actresses and impresarios, writers and suffragettes – a microcosm of the last years of the waning Edwardian Era and the coming influences of the Twentieth Century. When she left New York on her final voyage, she sailed from the New World to the Old; yet an encounter with the machinery of the New World, in the form of a primitive German U-Boat, sent her – and her gilded passengers – to their tragic deaths and opened up a new era of indiscriminate warfare.
BookBrowse members are reviewing Lusitania for First Impressions. Read the reviews
Mightier Than the Sword by Jeffrey Archer
February 24, 2015. 400 pages. Published by St. Martin's Press
Jeffrey Archer's compelling Clifton Chronicles continue in this, his most accomplished novel to date. With all the trademark twists and turns that have made him one of the world's most popular authors, the spellbinding story of the Clifton and the Barrington families continues.
BookBrowse will do a big giveway for Mightier Than the Sword.
More about this book
All the Old Knives by Olen Stein
March 10, 2015. 224 pages. Published by St. Martin's Minotaur
Nine years ago, terrorists hijacked a plane in Vienna. Somehow, a rescue attempt staged from the inside went terribly wrong and everyone on board was killed. Members of the CIA stationed in Vienna during that time were witness to this terrible tragedy...Two of those agents, Henry Pelham and Celia Harrison, were lovers at the time, and in fact that was the last night they spent together. Until now. That night Celia decided she'd had enough; she left the agency, married and had children, and is living an ordinary life in the suburbs. Henry is still an analyst, and has traveled to California to see her one more time, to relive the past, maybe, or to put it behind him once and for all. But neither of them can forget that long-ago question: Had their agent been compromised, and how? And each of them also wonders what role tonight's dinner companion might have played in the way things unfolded.
BookBrowse members are reviewing All the Old Knives for First Impressions. Read the reviews
The Last Flight of Poxl West by Daniel Torday
March 17, 2015. 304 pages. Published by St. Martin's Press
All his life, Elijah Goldstein has idolized his charismatic Uncle Poxl. Intensely magnetic, cultured and brilliant, Poxl takes Elijah under his wing, introducing him to opera and art and literature. But when Poxl publishes a memoir of how he was forced to leave his home north of Prague at the start of WWII and then avenged the deaths of his parents by flying RAF bombers over Germany during the war, killing thousands of German citizens, Elijah watches as the carefully constructed world his uncle has created begins to unravel. As Elijah discovers the darker truth of Poxl's past, he comes to understand that the fearless war hero he always revered is in fact a broken and devastated man who suffered unimaginable losses from which he has never recovered.
BookBrowse members are reviewing The Last Flight of Poxl West for First Impressions.
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