Archive for the ‘California’ Category

CASEBOOK by Mona Simpson

Miles Adler-Rich is a precocious teen-ager, very much upset by the changes in his family. His parents have recently divorced and his mother has taken up with a new boyfriend named Eli Lee. Eli says he works for the National Science Foundation and professes to love Miles’s mother, Irene, very much. However, there is something about Eli that seems off to Miles.

April 15, 2014 · Judi Clark · Comments Closed
Tags:  Â· Posted in: California, Coming-of-Age, Contemporary

THE ACCIDENT by Chris Pavone

Isabel Reed, a literary agent for ATM, spends all night reading, “The Accident” by Anonymous, the new manuscript from her assistant Alexis who was very enthusiastic about it. The book has startling information about Charlie Wolfe, a major media figure with major political connections that is hoping to run for office himself. The information in the manuscript, if true, would certainly end Wolfe’s career as it describes a crime he apparently covered up while a student at Cornell University.

April 6, 2014 · Judi Clark · Comments Closed
Tags: ,  Â· Posted in: California, Denmark, Edgar Award, New York City, Switzerland, Thriller/Spy/Caper, y Award Winning Author

KINDER THAN SOLITUDE by Yiyun Li

“Perhaps there is a line in everyone’s life that, once crossed, imparts a certain truth that one has not been able to see before, transforming solitude from a choice into the only possible line of existence.” For four friends, that line was crossed during their late teenage years, when one of them was poisoned, perhaps deliberately, perhaps accidentally, lingering in a physical limbo state until she finally dies years later. The young man, Boyang, remains in China; the two young women, Ruyu and Moran, move to the United States. Each ends up living in what the author describes as a “life-long quarantine against love and life.â€

March 21, 2014 · Judi Clark · Comments Closed
Tags: , , , , ,  Â· Posted in: California, Character Driven, China, Contemporary, Literary, US Midwest, World Lit

THE DROP by Michael Connelly

Harry Bosch is the real deal. Michael Connelly’s THE DROP is another superb entry in this outstanding series about an L. A. cop who is cynical and battle-weary, yet still committed to doing his job.

December 17, 2011 · Judi Clark · Comments Closed
Tags: ,  Â· Posted in: 2011 Favorites, California, Sleuths Series, y Award Winning Author

QUEEN OF AMERICA by Luis Alberto Urrea

Like its predecessor, THE HUMMINGBIRD’S DAUGHTER, Urrea’s sequel, QUEEN OF AMERICA is a panoramic, picaresque, sprawling, sweeping novel that dazzles us with epic destiny, perilous twists, and high romance, set primarily in Industrial era America (and six years in the author’s undertaking). Based on Urrea’s real ancestry, this historical fiction combines family folklore with magical realism and Western adventure at the turn of the twentieth century.

November 30, 2011 · Judi Clark · Comments Closed
Tags: , , , ,  Â· Posted in: California, Facing History, italy, Latin American/Caribbean, Mexico, NE & New York, New Orleans, New York City, Texas, United Kingdom, US Southwest, Washington, D.C., Wild West

THE BARBARIAN NURSERIES by Hector Tobar

From the looks of it you could never tell that the beautiful Torres-Thompson home in fancy Laguna Rancho Estates, is on the cusp of unraveling. But look closely and you can see the edges of the tropical garden coming undone, the lawn not done just right; and these are merely the symptoms of greater troubles. For the couple Scott Torres and Maureen Thompson the country’s financial crisis has come knocking, even in their ritzy Los Angeles neighborhood.

October 17, 2011 · Judi Clark · Comments Closed
Tags: ,  Â· Posted in: California, Class - Race - Gender, Contemporary, Latin American/Caribbean, y Award Winning Author