Archive for the ‘NE & New York’ Category

THE ACCIDENT by Linwood Barclay

The Accident, the latest thriller from Linwood Barclay, is an exciting, quick and enjoyable read. The book is told primarily in the first person of Glen Garber, the owner of Garber Contracting, a small home construction company struggling in the current economy in Milford, Connecticut. Glen cannot believe or accept it when the police tell him his wife Sheila caused the death of herself and others while she was parked drunk the wrong way on an off ramp. Although everyone tells him he must accept his wife had a drinking problem, he just refuses to believe she did or would have driven while drunk. Things get only worse, when the other people killed in the accident file suit against him for failure to identify and act on his wife’s drinking problem that led to the accident.

October 15, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , ,  Â· Posted in: NE & New York, Thriller/Spy/Caper

THE NIGHT STRANGERS by Chris Bohjalian

In Chris Bohjalian’s THE NIGHT STRANGERS, Chip Linton is a forty-year-old commercial airline pilot who is traumatized when, through no fault of his own, one of his regional planes goes down in Lake Champlain. In the aftermath of the accident, Chip, Emily, and their ten-year-old twin daughters, Hallie and Garnet, move from Pennsylvania to an isolated three-story Victorian near Bethel, New Hampshire, in the scenic White Mountains. Emily resumes her career as a lawyer, the kids enroll in the local school, and Chip becomes a do-it-yourselfer, replacing wallpaper, painting, and doing carpentry around the rickety old house.

October 8, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , ,  Â· Posted in: Horror, NE & New York, Psychological Suspense, Speculative (Beyond Reality)

WE THE ANIMALS by Justin Torres

WE THE ANIMALS in this wonderful debut novel refers to three brothers, close in age, growing up in upstate New York. They are the Three Musketeers bound strongly together not just because of geographical isolation but because of cultural separateness too. The brothers are born to a white mother and a Puerto Rican father—they are half-breeds confused about their identity and constrained by desperate and mind-numbing poverty.

September 22, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , , , ,  Â· Posted in: Class - Race - Gender, Coming-of-Age, Contemporary, Family Matters, Latin American/Caribbean, NE & New York

INCOGNITO by Gregory Murphy

Thirty-one year old William Dysart should be on top of the world. He is a successful attorney, lives in a beautiful home, and is married to Arabella, a stunner who turns heads wherever she goes. Gregory Murphy looks beneath the veneer of the Dysarts’ seemingly enviable life in Incognito. William is growing tired of doing the bidding of Phil Havering, the managing partner at his law firm. In addition, he has become disenchanted with his wife who, in spite of her great beauty, is insecure and demanding. After six years of marriage, the couple is childless, and it is becoming increasingly apparent that Arabella is a social-climbing, vain, and shallow individual who is more interested in material possessions and status than she is in her relationship with William. “It was rare now that their conversations did not end in a quarrel.”

September 17, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , ,  Â· Posted in: Debut Novel, Facing History, Mystery/Suspense, NE & New York, New York City, Reading Guide

THIS BEAUTIFUL LIFE by Helen Schulman

Somewhere on the journey from the comfortable upstate college town of Ithaca to the glistening moneyed world of downtown Manhattan, the Burgamots have lost their way.

August 2, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , ,  Â· Posted in: Contemporary, Family Matters, NE & New York, New York City, Reading Guide

RAGTIME by E. L. Doctorow

E.L. Doctorow’s 1974 masterpiece, Ragtime, takes its name from the a style of music, the melodious offspring of blackface cakewalks and patriotic marches, that perfectly captures the optimism and energy of the America in the early 1900s. It’s aptly titled too, for Doctorow manages to capture the energy of the era, a time of hitherto unheard of growth and prosperity, a time when coal miners took on the capitalists for safer work conditions and fair pay, and won; a time when a single, socially- minded photographer, documenting immigrant ghettos, took pictures powerful enough to move a president and serve as evidence of the necessity of improved housing conditions for the poor; a time when American entrepreneurs amassed more wealth than some European monarchy, through little more than hard work and talent. However, it was also the era of Jim Crow legislation and the venomous prejudice that made it impossible for a black man to materially enjoy his success, say, by driving a shiny new Model T Ford – but more on that later.

July 30, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , ,  Â· Posted in: Class - Race - Gender, Classic, Facing History, National Book Critic Circle (NBCC), NE & New York, New York City, y Award Winning Author