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BookBrowse Highlights
| March 19, 2015
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Hello
We have a generous assortment of highlights from BookBrowse just in time for your spring reading.
Take a look at what our members have to say about The Last Flight Of Poxl West, a book many discovered through our popular First Impressions program.
You can read our review for Rose Tremain's The American Lover, which we featured in the latest edition of The BookBrowse Review and gather informative insights about the myth of the American cowboy in the Beyond the Book segment.
Our reviewer Sarah Tomp recently celebrated the launch of her debut young-adult novel, My Best Everything, and we toast her impressive achievement by featuring a selection of reviews.
Davina
BookBrowse Editor |
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1. First Impressions: Members Recommend
Each month we give away books to U.S. resident members to read and review (or discuss). Members who choose to participate receive a free book about every three months. Here are their opinions on one recently published novel:
 The Last Flight of Poxl West by Daniel Torday Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Publication Date: Mar 2015
Novel, 304 pages
Number of reader reviews: 23
Readers' consensus: 4.2/5.0
Members Say
"A luminous book, well worth reading! Poxl West is a complex, conflicted, troubled man, yet is a fascinating character. His interactions with his 'nephew' are charming and lend a note of lightness to an otherwise serious story. The book deals with love and loss, truth and fabrication, bravery and fear, and the onerous burden of guilt. I keep thinking about this book long after I have finished reading it." - Florence K. (Northridge, CA)
"The Last Flight of Poxl West should probably be read twice, once to learn the story of a young man learning about the past while being taught life lessons and again for the truisms, fortunate and un, that are part of all of our histories. Recommended for those who understand that fiction isn't necessarily untrue." - Patricia L. (Seward, AK)
"It is much more than a war narrative and a bildungsroman. In the end, you will lean back and think what it means to not only live your life but what it means to understand how to live it." - Sandra H. (St. Cloud, MN)
More about this book | Read all the reviews
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 2. One of Our Own 
My Best Everything by Sarah Tomp
Published Mar 2015. 400 Pages. Published by Little, Brown Books
When we heard that long-time BookBrowse reviewer Sarah Tomp was publishing her first book we were, to say the least, excited. But we were also in a quandary - eager to tell you about her debut, which has received great reviews - but struggling to write an unbiased review. So, we have decided to leave it to others to speak for My Best Everything:
In Brief
It's summer in Appalacia and Lulu Mendez is finished with high school and ready to leave for pastures new; but her father has lost her college tuition money and she needs a new ticket out of town. Could moonshine be the answer?
Reviews
"This is such a cleverly written book. It's different. It's a slow burn romance between two completely different people. I fell in love with the characters." - Lori Clark, Goodreads
"A wholly original and most satisfying debut." - School Library Journal
"I don't know how to explain this, but this is one of those stories that will catch you off guard and worm its way into your heart." - Jaime, Goodreads
"Tomp's descriptions of small-town Virginia life are forceful." - Publishers Weekly
"When I think about the fact that I almost missed this book, my stomach does an unhappy flip... if you love beautifully written, sincere contemporary YA fiction, My Best Everything is for you." - Sara, Goodreads
More about this book
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 3. Editor's Choice 
The American Lover by Rose Tremain
Hardcover (February 01, 2015), 240 pages. Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company. BookBrowse Rating: 5/5, Critics' Consensus: 4.6/5 Buy at Amazon | B&N | IndieRose Tremain's The American Lover is an exquisite and rewarding jewel box collection of thirteen compelling stories, focused on vastly different but richly imagined lives from different countries, different settings and time periods. The characters hail from England in the 1970s to Russia at the turn of the 20th century to Canada and America in contemporary time, and are all complex and unique but familiar - being well drawn and deeply human in their hopes and fears, their longings, weaknesses, regrets. It is often said that writers are at their best when they write what they know... continued 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. Beyond the Book: The American Cowboy  Every time we review a book we also explore a related topic. Here is a recent "beyond the book" article for Epitaph by Mary Doria Russell
 In a chapter toward the middle of her novel, Epitaph, Mary Doria Russell includes an excerpt of a letter penned by Oscar Wilde, in England, to Harry Wood, editor of one of Tombstone's newspapers, The Nugget. In it, he inquires whether the editor could "obtain for me a good specimen of the genus Homo known as the cow-boy." The note lends humor to a tense moment in the book, right after the ... continued Read in full |
 5. Recommended for Book Clubs  In Tuesday's Book Club newsletter, we ran a feature about books set during World War I. In case you missed it (or aren't subscribed to the book club newsletter) we posted it to our blog as well.
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 6. Publishing Soon
Each month BookBrowse previews 80-100 notable books. Here is a particularly interesting title from these upcoming books.  The Tightrope Walkers by David AlmondPublisher: Candlewick Press Publication Date: Mar 2015 Novels, 336 pages Critic's Opinion: 5/5 Buy at Amazon | B&N | Indie
A gentle visionary coming of age in the shadow of the shipyards of northern England, Dominic Hall is torn between extremes. On the one hand, he craves the freedom he feels when he steals away with the eccentric girl artist next door, Holly Stroud - his first and abiding love - to balance above the earth on a makeshift tightrope. With Holly, Dom dreams of a life different in every way from his ... continued
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 7. Author Interview  A Conversation With Bill Browder, author of Red Notice, a devastating exposé of corruption and cronyism in Putin's Russia. Read the Interview | Red Notice
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 8. News Mar 13 2015: U.S. investigators have closed an inquiry into whether Harper Lee was pressured into publishing a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird. Lee herself was "extremely hurt" by allegations she was manipulated, her lawyer Tonja Carter said. To Kill a Mockingbird was published in July 1960 ... (more) Mar 12 2015: Terry Pratchett, author of the Discworld series, has died aged 66, having had Alzheimer's disease for eight years. "The world has lost one of its brightest, sharpest minds," said Larry Finlay of his publishing company, Transworld. Pratchett, who wrote more than 70 books during his life ... (more)
Mar 09 2015: After giving away $1 million to independent bookstores last year, author James Patterson is giving $1.25 million to school libraries this year. Donations will range from $1,000 to $10,000 per school. Anyone can nominate a school library (more)
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 9. Wordplay Solve one of our fiendish wordplay puzzles, and be entered to win the book of your choice!
This week's wordplay: Solve this clue: "Like M, L D"
The answer to last Week's Wordplay: A T I A Teapot
"A tempest in a teapot"
Meaning: An over reaction that is out of all proportion to a minor event
Variations on this expression can be found in a great many languages and far back in time. The first known use is by Marcus Tullius Cicero around 52BC, who in De Legibus (The Laws) wrote excitabat enim fluctus in simpulo ut dicitur Gratidius (for Gratidius raised a tempest in a ladle, as the saying is).
The imagery of weather and a small container representing a minor event magnified out of all proportion appears in many languages. Some talk of storms in cups (including Arabic and Bengali), others refer to storms in glasses of water (including French and Dutch). Others reduce the size of the vessel even further, such as Yiddish where there are squalls in spoons of water, and Greek where one drowns in a spoon of water .... continued
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 10. Win This Book
 The Headmaster's Wife by
Thomas Christopher Greene
Published Feb 2015
288 pages
Enter the Giveaway
From the Jacket
Like his father before him, Arthur Winthrop is the headmaster of Vermont's elite Lancaster School. It is the place he feels has given him his life, but is also the site of his undoing as events spiral out of his control. Found wandering naked in Central Park, he begins to tell his story to the police, but his memories collide into one another, and the true nature of things, a narrative of love, of marriage, of family, and of a tragedy Arthur does not know how to address emerges.
Luminous and atmospheric, bringing to life the tight-knit enclave of a quintessential New England boarding school, the novel is part mystery, part love story, and an exploration of the ties of place and family. Beautifully written and compulsively readable, The Headmaster's Wife stands as a moving elegy to the power of love as an antidote to grief.
Paperback release Feb 2015. First published in hardcover Feb 2014.
Enter the giveaway
Past Winners
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