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MostlyFiction.com Blogs:
| "Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?" Henry Ward Beecher | ||
| OCT 2, 2007 | ||
 THE INDIAN CLERK by David Leavitt Publisher: Bloomsbury USA (September 2007) Reviewer: Poornima Apte Amazon readers rating:  from 1 review
On a January morning in 1913, G. H. Hardy—eccentric, charismatic and, at thirty-seven, already considered the greatest British mathematician of his age—receives in the mail a mysterious envelope covered with Indian stamps. Inside he finds a rambling letter from a self-professed mathematical genius who claims to be on the brink of solving the most important unsolved mathematical problem of all time. Some of his Cambridge colleagues dismiss the letter as a hoax, but Hardy becomes convinced that the Indian clerk who has written it —Srinivasa Ramanujan— deserves to be taken seriously. (read review) |
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| SEP 30, 2007 | ||
 SALMON FISHING IN THE YEMEN by Paul Torday Publisher: Harcourt (April 2007) Reviewer: Mary Whipple Amazon readers rating:  from 2 reviews
"One of the most delightful and original satires I've read in ages, this debut novel pokes fun at just about every aspect of British society, from government spin-meisters and crass politicians to marriages of convenience, TV interview programs, consumerism, and the belief that many of the world's problems would be solved if only other people were 'more like us.' ..." (read review) |
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| SEP 29, 2007 | ||
 STALIN'S GHOST by Martin Cruz Smith Publisher: Simon & Schuster (June 2007) Reviewer: Eleanor Bukowsky Amazon readers rating: from 60 reviews
Investigator Arkady Renko, the pariah of the Moscow prosecutor's office, has been assigned the thankless job of investigating a new phenomenon: late-night subway riders report seeing the ghost of Joseph Stalin on the platform of the Chistye Prudy Metro station. The illusion seems part political hocus-pocus and also part wishful thinking, for among many Russians Stalin is again popular; the bloody dictator can boast a two-to-one approval rating. Decidedly better than that of Renko...(read review)  ALEX AND THE IRONIC GENTLEMAN by Adrienne Kress Publisher: Weinstein Books (September 2007) Reviewer: Amanda Richards Amazon readers rating:  from 2 reviews
A smart, funny mixture of fantasy and high adventure, tells the story of Alex Morningside, an inquisitive ten-and-a-half-year-old girl who lives with her uncle above a doorknob shop and attends the prestigious Wigpowder-Steele Academy. Luckily for Alex, the new school year brings an exciting new teacher, Mr. Underwood who has a mysterious family secret -- the swashbuckling and buried treasure kind -- and not everyone is glad he has come to Wigpowder-Steele. A new series for all ages. (read review) |
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| SEP 28, 2007 | ||
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| SEP 27, 2007 | ||
Rumi Vasi is 10 years, 2 months, 13 days, 2 hours, 42 minutes, and 6 seconds old. She’s figured that the likelihood of her walking home from school with the boy she likes, John Kemble, is 0.2142, a probability severely reduced by the lacy dress and thick woolen tights her father, and Indian émigré, forces her to wear. Rumi is a gifted child, and her father, Mahesh, believes that strict discipline is the key to nurturing her genius if the family has any hope of making its mark on its adoptive country. (read review) |
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| SEP 26, 2007 | ||
In a comic masterpiece following the misadventures of a simple but hugely ambitious waiter in pre-World War II Prague, who rises to wealth only to lose everything with the onset of Communism, Bohumil Hrabal takes us on a tremendously funny and satirical trip through 20th-century Czechoslovakia. (read review) |
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| SEP 25, 2007 | ||
Sharon McCone is hired by her husband's security firm to track down "the ever-running man," a shadowy figure who has been leaving explosive devices at their various offices. She doesn't have to search for long. When McCone narrowly escapes an explosion at the security firm's San Francisco offices, she catches a glimpse of his retreating figure.(read review and excerpt) |
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| SEP 24, 2007 | ||
"The Hindi movie industry has been much written about recently. In particular, Shah Rukh Khan is such an enormous star, and the appetite of his billions of fans so insatiable, that books on his life could fill a library. Just this year, a large coffee-table book on him by another journalist was released in the U.S. And yet, if you wanted to introduce your American friends to Bollywood, you didn't really have any good books to give them. Chopra's latest book King of Bollywood fills that need." (read review) |
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| SEP 23, 2007 | ||
In this collection of stories— originally published in 1997 and now updated with three new stories added—Edwards explores the lives of those who exist on the fringes of society: a fire-eater, an American and his Korean war bride, Madame Curie’s maid, and others. (read review) |
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| SEP 22, 2007 | ||
Chloe Dale’s life is in good order. Her only child, Toby, has started his junior year at New York University; her husband, an academic on sabbatical, is working at home on his book about the Crusades; and Chloe is busy creating illustrations for a special edition of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. Yet Chloe is disturbed—by the aggression of her government’s foreign policy, by the poacher who roams the land behind her studio punctuating her solitude with rifle fire, and finally, by Toby’s new girlfriend, a Croatian refugee named Salome Drago... (read review) |
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| SEP 21, 2007 | ||
Mining engineer Philip Mercer is in the war-torn Central African Republic searching for precious metal. There, he meets Cali Stone, a field researcher for the CDC who is investigating why a certain village suffers from one of the highest rates of cancer in the world-a fact that intrigues Mercer. Once back in the states, Mercer's search for answers leads him to a long-lost safe and a cryptic note inside that may reveal a three thousand year-old deception... (read review) |
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| SEP 20, 2007 | ||
In the aftermath of the brutal violence that gripped western India in 2002, Karsan Dargawalla, heir to Pirbaag—the shrine of a mysterious, medieval sufi—begins to tell the story of his family and the shrine now destroyed. His tale opens in the 1960s: young Karsan is next in line after his father to assume lordship of the Shrine of the Wanderer. But he longs to be “just ordinary”—to play cricket and be part of the exciting world he reads about in the stacks of newspapers a truck driver brings him from all across India. (read review) |
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| SEP 19, 2007 | ||
In 1908, an Austrian psychiatrist visits southern England at the urgent request of a Boston colleague, who fears his brother's intention to rewrite his early novels may be the sign of debilitating neuroses. The Austrian doctor is Sigmund Freud. The Boston psychologist is William James, and the novelist is his brother Henry. Over ten days, the worlds of psychology and literature collide-giving rise to this charming novel of ideas. (read review) |
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| SEP 18, 2007 | ||
This is the story of Skip Sands—spy-in-training, engaged in Psychological Operations against the Vietcong—and the disasters that befall him thanks to his famous uncle, a war hero known in intelligence circles simply as the Colonel. This is also the story of the Houston brothers, Bill and James, young men who drift out of the Arizona desert into a war in which the line between disinformation and delusion has blurred away. Denis Johnson’s first full-length novel in nine years. (read review) |
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| SEP 17, 2007 | ||
In a stirring, lyrical tale that offers American readers a unique insight into the inner workings of Iranian society. In the decade before the Islamic Revolution, Iran is a country at the brink of explosion. Twelve-year-old Yaas is born in Tehran, into an already divided family: Her father is the son of wealthy Iranian Jews who are integrated into the country s upper-class, mostly Muslim, elite; her mother was raised in the slums of South Tehran, one street away from the old Jewish ghetto. (read review) |
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| SEP 16, 2007 | ||
When 10-year-old Gray Dausman discovers a skeleton on the banks of Montana's Clark Fork River, it launches him and Mineral County's new sheriff, Kip Edelson, on a search for the victim's identity, her killer and the emotional bonds that spring from the intersection of the sheriff's and the boy's own personal lives. A contemporary Western that is more than a murder mystery. (read review) |
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| SEP 15, 2007 | ||
When America fell, she fell hard. Now chaos and calamity fill the vacuum left by a collapsing federal government. The strong and the armed prey on the law-abiding. Only the wealthiest Americans, who have bought up and seized every available commodity, get by unscathed. Protected by the United States Army and their own hired guards, the rich have made their deals. John and Mary, a long-married couple, are starving to death in a suburb of Washington, D.C. In the delirium of starvation, John becomes convinced that an American king has risen up -- they walk to D.C. to find out if it is true. (read review) |
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| SEP 14, 2007 | ||
A deliciously funny novella that celebrates the pleasure of reading. When the Queen in pursuit of her wandering corgis stumbles upon a mobile library she feels duty bound to borrow a book. Thus begins the Queens transformation as she discovers the liberating pleasures of the written word. (read review) |
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| SEP 11, 2007 | ||
As Judge Deborah Knott presides over a case involving a barroom brawl, it becomes clear that deep resentments over race, class, and illegal immigration are simmering just below the surface in the countryside. 13th in this award winning series. (read review and excerpts) |
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| SEP 9, 2007 | ||
Things have never been easy for Oscar, a sweet but disastrously overweight, lovesick Dominican ghetto nerd. From his home in New Jersey, where he lives with his old-world mother and rebellious sister, Oscar dreams of becoming the Dominican J. R. R. Tolkien and, most of all, of finding love. But he may never get what he wants, thanks to the fukú that has haunted Oscar's family for generations, dooming them to prison, torture, tragic accidents, and, above all, ill-starred love. (read review) |
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HOOKED: A THRILLER ABOUT LOVE AND OTHER ADDICTIONS 
GIFTED 
I SERVED THE KING OF ENGLAND 
THE EVER-RUNNING MAN 
KING OF BOLLYWOOD 
SECRETS OF A FIRE KING 
TRESPASS 
HAVOC 
THE ASSASSIN'S SONG 
LIONS AT THE LAMB HOUSE 
TREE OF SMOKE 
CASPIAN RAIN 
MINERAL SPIRITS 
OUR AMERICAN KING 
THE UNCOMMON READER 
HARD ROW 
THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO 
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