 1. Publishing Soon Each month BookBrowse previews 80+ notable books. Here is a particularly interesting title from these upcoming books.  Island of a Thousand Mirrors by Nayomi MunaweeraPublisher: Thomas Dunne Books
Publication Date: Sep 2, 2014
Novels, 224 pages
Critic's Opinion: 5/5
A stunning literary debut about two young women on opposing sides of the devastating Sri Lankan Civil War - winner of the Commonwealth Book Prize for Asia, longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize
Before violence tore apart the tapestry of Sri Lanka and turned its pristine beaches red, there were two families. Yasodhara tells the story of her own Sinhala family, rich in love, with everything ... continued
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 2. First Impressions: Free Books for Members First Impressions gives BookBrowse members the opportunity to read and review or discuss books. Members who choose to take part receive about 3-4 books a year entirely free of charge. Books are assigned primarily on when somebody last received one, so new members are assured of receiving a copy as people requesting for the first time have priority. Offer closes Sunday August 24.
More about membership | Members - click to request
Because of copyright and logistics the publishers who provide these books can only mail to US residents.
 Some Luck: A Novel by Jane Smiley
Knopf, publishes 10/07/2014.
From the winner of the Pulitzer Prize: a powerful, engrossing new novel - the life and times of a remarkable family over three transformative decades in America.
Members: request this book to read & discuss.
Discussion opens Oct 14
 Finding the Dragon Lady: The Mystery of Vietnam's Madame Nhu by Monique Brinson Demery
Public Affairs, publishes 10/07/2014.
A truly monumental achievement. Demery has vividly captured the life and times of one of Vietnam's most intriguing figures. Beautifully told, and exhaustively researched... Demery's book is now the standard for understanding the cultural politics of South Vietnam's first family.
Members: request this to read and discuss.
Discussion opens Oct 28
 Ruth's Journey: The Authorized Novel of Mammy from Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind by Donald McCaig Atria/Emily Bestler Books, publishes 10/14/2014. Before Tara, before Scarlett and Rhett, before the war that would divide a nation… there was Ruth. Discover her story in the first prequel to Gone with the Wind authorized by the Margaret Mitchell Estate. Members: request this book to read and review  The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah St. Martin's Press, publishes 02/03/2015. From the #1 New York Times bestselling author comes an epic novel of love and war, spanning from the 1940s to the present day, and the secret lives of those who live in a small French town. Members: request this book to read and review
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 3. Editor's Choice 
We Are Not Ourselves by Matthew Thomas
Hardcover (August 19, 2014), 640 pages. Publisher: Simon & Schuster. BookBrowse Rating: 5/5, Critics' Consensus: 4.8/5 Buy at Amazon | B&N | Indie We Are Not Ourselves is the perfect distillation of the American dream as played out in the twentieth century. At the center of this brilliant debut is Eileen Tumulty Leary, a daughter, wife, and mother, whose fortunes improve with the rising tide of middle-class mobility, but who then finds herself corseted by the very men who are closest to her. Growing up under the shadow of a strict Irish father and a depressed mother in 1940s Woodside, Queens, Eileen is wise enough to know that her only ticket to escape is to irrevocably bind her fortunes to those of an ambitious, upwardly mobile young... continued Read the review | More Editor's Choices | More reviews by Poornima Apte Full access to our reviews & beyond the book articles are for members only. But there are always four free Editor's Choice reviews and beyond the book articles on our homepage.
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 4. Generational & Family Sagas Whatever your interests you can find the books that are just right for you by browsing and cross-referencing our recommended reading lists by genre, time period, setting and wide variety of themes - including Generational & Family Sagas...
 Land of Love and Drowning by Tiphanie Yanique
Hardcover: Jul 2014
A major debut from an award-winning writer - an epic family saga set against the magic and the rhythms of the Virgin Islands. |
 The Hundred-Year House by Rebecca Makkai
Hardcover: Jul 2014
The acclaimed author of The Borrower returns with a dazzlingly original, mordantly witty novel about the secrets of an old-money family and their turn-of-the-century estate, Laurelfield. |
 Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
Hardcover: Jun 2014
A profoundly moving story of family, history, and the meaning of home, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait. |
 The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
Hardcover: Sep 2013, Paperback Jun 2014
Epic in its canvas and intimate in its portrayal of lives undone and forged anew, The Lowland is a deeply felt novel of family ties that entangle and fray in ways unforeseen and unrevealed, of ties that ineluctably define who we are. |
 Children of the Jacaranda Tree by Sahar Delijani
Hardcover: Jun 2013, Paperback Jun 2014
A stunning debut novel set in post-Revolutionary Iran that gives voice to the men, women, and children who won a war only to find their lives - and those of their descendants - imperiled by its aftermath |
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 5. Beyond the Book
Baltimore's Literary History
 Every time we review a book we also explore a related topic. Here is a recent "beyond the book" article for...
Your Face in Mine by Jess Row When one thinks of literature and American cities, Baltimore may not immediately come to mind. While "Charm City" might not have the apparent prestige of San Francisco or New York, Baltimore's literary history is a long and rich one. H. L. Mencken, Ogden Nash, Emily Post, Dashiell Hammett, Adrienne Rich, James M. Cain, Upton Sinclair, and Gertrude Stein (among many others) all lived and wrote for a time in Baltimore. The city played a major role in the lives of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, perhaps the Jazz Age's most famous couple, with F. Scott penning Tender Is The Night, there. Russell Baker won the Pulitzer Prize for Growing Up, his memoir of a Baltimore childhood. And Francis Scott Key, imprisoned at Fort McHenry during the War of 1812, wrote "The Star-Spangled Banner" in Baltimore ... continued Read in full | More about this book
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6. Beyond the Book
The Two North Poles
 Every time we review a book we also explore a related topic. Here is a recent "beyond the book" article for...
In the Kingdom of Ice by Hampton Sides There are actually two North Poles - a geographic North Pole and a magnetic one. The geographic North Pole is recognized as the northernmost point on the earth's surface, and is the axis point around which the earth spins. It's 450 miles north of Greenland in the middle of the Arctic Ocean. The magnetic North Pole is approximately 100 miles south of the geographic pole and due north of Canada's Sverdrup Island. It is not fixed and moves on a daily basis ... continued Read in full | More about this book |
 7. Author Interview  Charlie Lovett discusses his debut novel, The Bookman's Tale, and its roots in Shakespeare and the sometimes exclusive world of antiquarian booksellers. Read the Interview | The Bookman's Tale
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 8. Readalikes for Louise Penny   Many would say that there is no one to compare to the inimitable Louise Penny, and with book 10, The Long Way Home, publishing on August 26, fans will have almost 400 more pages of Inspector Gamache to enjoy! But when that last page is turned, where to next? Here are a few suggestions that might fit the bill...
 Elizabeth George was born Susan Elizabeth George in Warren, Ohio. She is a graduate of University of California in Riverside. She also attended California State University at Fullerton, where she was awarded a master's degree in Counseling/Psychology and an honorary doctorate of humane letters.. (more)
Try: In Pursuit of The Proper Sinner
 P.D. James, Baroness James of Holland Park OBE, better known as P. D. James, was born on August 3 1920 in Oxford, the eldest daughter of an Inland Revenue Official. The family moved first to Wales and then, when she was 11, to Cambridge where she attended the Cambridge High School for Girls. Due to financial pressures at home she left school when she was 16...(more)
Try: A Certain Justice
 Donna Leon is the author of the international best-selling novels featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti, all of which have been critically acclaimed. The winner of the CWA Macallan Silver Dagger for Fiction, among other awards, Leon has lived in Venice for over twenty-five years... (more)
Try: Uniform Justice
Peter May won the Scottish Young Journalist of the Year Award at the age of 21, and had his first novel published at 26. He then left journalism and became one of Scotland's most successful and prolific television dramatists. By the age of 30 he had created two major TV series, The Standard and Squadron, for the British television network, the BBC... (more)Try : The Blackhouse
 Martin Walker is senior director of the Global Business Policy Council, a private think-tank based in Washington, DC. He is also editor emeritus of United Press International and was a journalist with The Guardian for 25 years, serving as bureau chief in Moscow and the United States...(more)
 Jacqueline Winspear was born and raised in the county of Kent, England. Following higher education at the University of London's Institute of Education, Jacqueline worked in both general and academic publishing, in higher education and in marketing communications in the UK. She emigrated to the USA ... (more)
Try: Pardonable Lies
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 9. Quote
"In youth we run into difficulties. In old age difficulties run into us." - Beverly Sills
Beverly Sills was one of the best-known American opera singers of the 1960s and 1970s.
She was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1929. At the age of three, she won a radio contest and soon began singing on the radio regularly as Bubbles Silverman. After studying opera with a voice coach as a child she made her operatic debut in at the age of 18 at the Philadelphia Civic Opera.
She first sang for the New York City Opera in 1955, after which she took a break returning to the New York City Opera in 1966. In 1975, she performed for the first time at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. After retiring from singing in 1980, she became the general manager of the New York City Opera. In 1994 she became Chairman of the Lincoln Center and in 2002, of the Metropolitan Opera, stepping down in 2005. She was also a chairman of the board of trustees of the March of Dimes.
She received many honors during her long career including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980. She died on July 2, 2007 from lung cancer at the age of 78.
More Quotes
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 10. Wordplay
This week's wordplay
Solve one of our fiendish wordplay puzzles, and be entered to win the book of your choice! Enter nowSolve this clue: "A Roads L T R"
Answer to the last wordplay E C H A Silver L: " Every Cloud Has A Silver Lining" Meaning: Even in the worst of situations there is hope of better. It would seem that we have the 17th century poet John Milton to thank for the first linking of clouds and silver linings: "Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud Turn forth her silver lining on the night? I did not err; there does a sable cloud Turn forth her silver lining on the night, And casts a gleam over this tufted grove." --- Comus: A Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle by John Milton, 1634 There are plentiful examples of clouds and silver linings in literature after this date, even to the point that some simply reference "Milton's clouds" on the assumption that readers will know they have silver linings. But it wasn't until the early Victorian era in 1840 where we start to get close to the expression as used today. A review of Marian; or a Young Maid's Fortunes by Mrs. S. C. Hall (Anna Maria Hall) in the first volume of Dublin Magazine comments that "there's a silver lining to every cloud that sails about the heavens if we could only see it."
The first known use of the expression in its modern form was in a 1949 copy of La Belle Assemblée which, rather ironically, intended to quote Mrs Hall (who in turn had quoted Milton) but instead mangled the reference and thus gave birth to the proverb as we know it today. More Wordplays
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