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The Dewey Divas and the Dudes Blog:
The Adventures (Reading and Otherwise) of Book Reps on the Road

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Lahring Tribe's Spring 2011 Adult Book picks

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Fiction

Tru Newman’s comfortable Upper East Side life of retail therapy, personal maintenance and mothering is shattered when she discovers her husband has been out of work for three months and Amex is about to come calling. Resourceful Tru and a downsized friend open a “cougar” escort service with “working girls” all over the age of forty and their smart, sexy, seasoned escorts become a big hit with a roster of thirty-year-old clients. Then life gets complicated… If you enjoy engrossing escapist reading, pick up Jane Johnson’s The Salt Road and feel the world go away!

When she sees a small boy being thrown from a ferry into Lake Champlain, Troy Chance dives into the icy water without thinking. She rescues the frightened boy, then discovers that he is from Canada, speaks only French – and that he has been kidnapped. When Troy meets the boy’s recently-separated businessman father, she is deeply suspicious – and so is he -- but they gradually team up to unravel recent events. For more who-can-you-trust suspense with a kidnapping theme, pick up Elizabeth Arnold’s When We Were Friends (March).

Hannah ha-Levi, a midwife in the Jewish ghetto, is known throughout sixteenth-century Venice for her skill in midwifery. When a Christian count appears at Hannah's door imploring her to attend his labouring wife who is near death, Hannah agrees, despite the possible consequences, partly out of compassion and partly because she needs to raise ransom money to free her husband, being held as a slave in Malta. Lovers of well-researched, authentic historical fiction featuring strong female characters will also like Michelle Moran’s Madame Tussaud (February), Karleen Koen’s Before Versailles (June)or Melanie Benjamin’s The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb (July).

This novel tells Ernest Hemingway’s story from the point of view of his first wife, Hadley. Through her eyes and voice, we experience Paris of the Lost Generation, meeting Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and Gerald and Sara Murphy. The city and its inhabitants provide a vivid backdrop to this engrossing and wrenching story of love, literature and betrayal. Think Loving Frank set in Toronto and the City of Light. For more fiction featuring creative types, try Susan Vreeland’s Clara and Mr. Tiffany or Carol Wallace’s Leaving Van Gogh(April).

“Jason Bourne meets Jack Reacher with a bit of Gillian Flynn thrown in for good measure.” Vanessa Munroe, known as Michael when necessary or expedient, acquires information – expensive information – for corporations, governments and anyone else able to afford her asking price. When a Texas oil baron hires her to find his daughter who disappeared in central Africa four years ago, she returns to her birthplace, and confronts the demons she thought she left behind when she escaped from her missionary parents’ grip a decade earlier. Based in part on the author’s personal experiences. If intrigue intrigues, try Robert and Dayna Baer’s The Company We Keep: A Husband-and-Wife True-Life Spy Story(March).

Ever wonder what might have happened after Puccini’s opera Madame Butterfly ends? This exquisitely emotional novel imagines that three-year-old Benji is taken from Nagasaki to live with his father and stepmother on their Illinois farm. There, Frank longs for the deceased Butterfly while Kate struggles with her resentment at raising another woman’s child. When Benji is revealed not to be an orphan, as had been claimed, the family shatters and he embarks on a convoluted journey that ultimately takes him back to Japan. Readers who like to speculate on the continued life of fictional characters will also find Linda Urbach’s Madame Bovary’s Daughter (July) intriguing.

In a Balkan country mending from years of conflict, Natalia, a young doctor, arrives at an orphanage by the sea. As she begins to inoculate the children there, she feels age-old superstitions and secrets gathering around her. But Natalia is also confronting a private, hurtful mystery of her own: the inexplicable circumstances surrounding her beloved grandfather’s recent death. Grief struck and searching for clues, she turns to the stories he told her when she was a child, eventually uncovering the one tale he never shared. There is plenty of buzz about this young author – find out why! If you like involved and involving family narratives, try Stephan Merrill Block’s Storm at the Door (June).

One afternoon, Julia Evarts and her five-year-old daughter, Gracie, arrive home to find an unexpected gift on the front porch: a homemade loaf of Amish Friendship Bread, a bag of starter, instructions on how to make the bread, and a request to share it with others. Still reeling from a personal tragedy that left her estranged from the sister who was once her best friend, Julia is reluctant, but agrees to bake the bread to humour her daughter. Then, she makes more to share with a pair of newcomers, and soon the whole town is connecting and reconnecting – including Julia and her sister. A perfect feel-good, restore-your-faith-in-humanity read.

Arthur’s con artist father, near death after decades in jail, tells him of a secret family legacy: an undiscovered play by William Shakespeare, titled The Tragedy of Arthur, and directs him to take it to Random House to be published. Is it his father’s gift to the world, or his last, greatest con job? This brilliant novel in faux memoir form contains the text of the play – read it and see how well Phillips “bardifies.” For more literary pyrotechnics, try Keith Donohue’s Centuries of June (June).

Beatrice’s younger sister, Tess, has been found dead, and the verdict – accepted by everyone else – is suicide. But only Bee knew that Tess was pregnant, and is convinced that there is a more sinister explanation. She insists on pursuing justice for her sister, at great peril to her own safety. Read this and find out why it sold 60,000 copies in three weeks in the U.K. For more mysteries involving family secrets, turn to Dawn Tripp’s A Game of Secrets (July) orAmanda Eyre Ward’s Close Your Eyes (August).

A single day in Paris changes the lives of three visitors – a neglected housewife, the husband of a famous film star, and a heartbroken and pregnant young woman – as they wander its streets with three separate French tutors, discovering not just the city’s famous sights and language, but also broken and missing pieces of themselves. Natalie Portman’s studio has optioned the rights to this charming and romantic tale. If reading this makes you want to book a plane ticket, pick up David Downie’s Paris, Paris (April) to experience a series of magical walks off the beaten tourist tracks.

Dr. Jennifer White, a brilliant former surgeon in the early grips of Alzheimer's, is suspected of murdering her best friend, Amanda, whose body was found with four of her fingers severed in a precise, surgical manner. As the police pursue their investigation and Jennifer searches her own mind for fractured clues to Amanda's death, a portrait emerges of a complex relationship between two uncompromising, unsentimental women, lifelong friends who were at times each other's most formidable adversaries. If you insist on “cerebral” along with your suspense, try Morag Joss’ Among the Missing (June) or John Verdon’s Shut Your Eyes Tight(July).

Non-Fiction

Depression-era America needed someone who could distract and excite, and found it in Gypsy Rose Lee, an erudite stripper who appeared at the Algonquin Round Table when not strutting her stuff for the Minsky brothers. Abbott delves into Gypsy’s world, including her dramatic relationship with her sister, actress June Havoc, and their formidable mother, who seduced men and women alike and literally killed to get her daughters on the stage. For more revealing biography, try Frank Brady’s Endgame: Bobby Fischer’s Remarkable Rise and Fall (February).

Described by Anthony Bourdain as “simply the best memoir by a chef ever”, Blood, Bones & Butter follows Hamilton’s journey through the many kitchens she has inhabited, from her rural childhood home where her parents often hosted huge parties, to those in France, Greece and Turkey where she experienced true hospitality, to her own New York restaurant, Prune, as she constantly sought to recapture the family feeling she recalled from her youth. Fans of culinary memoirs will also enjoy Amy Finley’s How to Eat a Small Country (April), about her experiences trying to reconcile fame on a Food Network show with her family’s wellbeing.

Stop the madness! Whether it’s anxiety about the blinking red light on your Blackberry, the urge to text while driving, the impulse to tweet every observation or the inclination to google the answer to every question, we all need a digital diet. Technology has overwhelmed our daily lives to the point of distraction – we’re entangled in power cords and enslaved by demanding devices. Learn how to discard what doesn’t work and keep what is truly useful in navigating this brave new world. For more quirky-but-effective advice about everyday issues, seek out Spousonomics: Using Economics to Master Love, Marriage and Dirty Dishes by Paula Szuchman and Jenny Anderson (February).

In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin by Erik Larson

Crown | Nonfiction/History | 448 page | May 2011 | 9780307408846 | $30.00HC

The time is 1933, the place, Berlin. Mild-mannered professor William E. Dodd becomes America’s first ambassador to Hitler’s Germany, taking along his wife, son and flamboyant daughter, Martha, who has one affair after another with the handsome young men of the Third Reich. As evidence of Jewish persecution mounts, her father telegraphs his concerns to a largely indifferent State Department. Conveying the tense atmosphere of the period, and with unforgettable portraits of Göring and Goebbels, In the Garden of Beasts offers an eyewitness perspective on events as they unfold, demonstrating why the world did not recognize the grave threat posed by Hitler until it was too late. History buffs will also enjoy Scott Miller’s The President and the Assassin (June).

Sandra Beasley has had severe allergies to certain foods her entire life. When butter is deadly and eggs can make your throat swell shut, routine celebrations can be awkward: guests were warned against a toxic, frosting-tinged kiss with "Don't kill the birthday girl!" Sandra’s captivating memoir combines a cultural history and sociological study of food allergies with her own humorous and sometimes heartbreaking experiences, including a short-lived gig as a restaurant reviewer and dates that ended with trips to the emergency room. Two more memoirs that ponder “what would it be like to be…?” are Long Journey Home (May) by Margaret Robison (mother of Augusten Burroughs and John Elder Robison) and Lucia Greenhouse’s fathermothergod (August), about growing up in a Christian Science household.

View more picks for our Dewey Divas and Dudes.