Archive for the ‘NE & New York’ Category

DAUGHTERS OF THE REVOLUTION by Carolyn Cooke

Carolyn Cooke is a master of the short story form—she won the O. Henry Award for her collection, THE BOSTONS. Cooke’s debut novel, Daughters of the Revolution, is also set in New England in the late 60’s, in a town called Cape Wilde.

The epicenter of much of the action, even if might not seem so at first, is the Goode School—a prep school for boys. Principal Goddard Byrd, known simply as “God,” is absolutely against allowing co-education in his school. “Over my dead body” is his constant refrain when asked about it.

June 27, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , ,  Â· Posted in: Class - Race - Gender, Contemporary, Debut Novel, Facing History, NE & New York, Reading Guide

DELIRIOUS by Daniel Palmer

Daniel Palmer’s DELIRIOUS is a nightmarish tale in which Charlie Giles, “an electronics superstar,” suddenly loses his job, his reputation, and quite possibly, his mind.

June 25, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , , ,  Â· Posted in: Debut Novel, Macavity Award, NE & New York, Psychological Suspense, Thriller/Spy/Caper

TEN THOUSAND SAINTS by Eleanor Henderson

It’s 1987 and New York’s lower east side and alphabet city are places for the homeless, vagrants, the impoverished, hippies, some immigrants who have held out through the next generation and some younger folks who call themselves “straight edge.” Straight edge refers to teenagers who like hard rock and punk but live a straight and clean lifestyle – no meat, no sex, no booze and no drugs. Many shave their heads and are into tattoos. That’s what TEN THOUSAND SAINTS by Eleanor Henderson is about – a group of straight ddge teens and their parents trying to understand themselves and one another as they venture through life, a lot of it in alphabet city in Manhattan.

June 8, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , ,  Â· Posted in: Coming-of-Age, Contemporary, Debut Novel, Family Matters, NE & New York, New York City

SPIRAL by Paul McEuen

Paul McEuen, a professor of physics at Cornell, makes good use of his scientific knowledge in Spiral, a provocative and frightening techno-thriller. The story opens in 1946, with biologist Liam Connor witnessing a horrifying scene of destruction from the deck of the USS North Dakota. Liam is a prodigy whose expertise includes “saprobic fungi, the feeders on the dead.” At twenty-two, he already has an impressive rĂ©sumĂ©, having spent four years at Porton Down, “the center of British chemical and germ weapons research.”

May 30, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , ,  Â· Posted in: Debut Novel, NE & New York, Speculative (Beyond Reality), Thriller/Spy/Caper

TINKERS by Paul Harding

I can honestly say that I have not read a book so evocative of place and time since reading anything by Faulkner.

May 27, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , , ,  Â· Posted in: 2010 Favorites, Contemporary, Debut Novel, End-of-Life, Literary, NE & New York, Pulitzer Prize, y Award Winning Author

FAITH by Jennifer Haigh

Jennifer Haigh exerts a sublime spin on the unreliable narrator in this probing, poignant saga of an Irish-American family hailing from Boston’s South End. Sheila McGann, the central narrator, left Boston and her Catholic faith years ago while her family stayed in “Southie.” The cardinal premise is the question of whether her half-brother, Art, a once esteemed and trusted but now disgraced and defrocked parish priest, is really guilty of the alleged sexual abuse of a child. This is 2002, when the Archdiocese of Boston is in the whir of sexual scandal—the exposure of crimes of pedophilia.

May 10, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: ,  Â· Posted in: Contemporary, Family Matters, NE & New York, y Award Winning Author