By Kyung-sook Shin
Knopf | 256pgs
Release Date: April 5, 2011
Summary:
Korean literary star Kyung-sook Shin makes her English language debut with the heartrending Please Look After Mom. Translated by Chi-Young Kim, the story deals with a grief stricken family searching for a mother who has disappeared from a bustling Seoul subway station. Voiced in four distinct narratives: the son, daughter, father, and finally the mother, Park So-nyo’s own point of view, a family portrait is drawn full of love, guilt and regret. Park So-nyo has spent a lifetime delaying her own dreams for the benefit of her family, but it is not until she is absent from their lives that her children and husband appreciate the enormity of her sacrifices. Though they love her, they realize they do not truly know her. Read more…
Before there was Bella and Edward, tweens of the ’80′s were captivated by the exploits of twins Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield, the main characters in Francine Pascal’s Sweet Valley High series. Young girls around the world delighted in the drama that surrounded the duo with flowing blond hair, sparkling aquamarine eyes and perfect bodies. Those avid fans are all grown up now, and Pascal has written her new book, Sweet Valley Confidential (St. Martin’s Press, 304pgs), with these women in mind. The book revisits the idyll of Sweet Valley, California ten years after the original series ended, with the beautiful Wakefield twins now 27 years old. Read more…
©2011 Simon & Schuster.
Stephen King set his fandom abuzz earlier this month with the announcement that his new novel 11/22/63 will be released on November 8th. The plot of the 1,000 page epic follows Jake Epping, a high school English teacher, through a portal in his friend Al’s storeroom into the year 1958. Al sends Jake on a mission to change history by preventing the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. As he settles into a culture of sock hops and Elvis under the name George Amberson, he falls for Sadie Dunhill, a lovely librarian, and encounters disturbed loner Lee Harvey Oswald. The premise of time travel in a novel is not new, but some fans question whether or not King can approach this device in an interesting, yet believable, way. “Time travel, though – even when it’s done brilliantly by Kim Stanley Robinson in Galileo’s Dream, even when it’s done humorously by Tim Powers in The Anubis Gates – sends me a bit mad. It Just Doesn’t Add Up and it messes with my mind,” writes Alison Flood in a post for The Guardian‘s Blog. Read more…
By Sarah Vowell
Riverhead Hardcover | 256pgs
Release Date: March 22, 2011
Summary:
Bestselling author and popular NPR contributor, Sarah Vowell, studies the history of Hawai’i during the 19th century in her new book Unfamiliar Fishes. The arrival of priggish New England missionaries in 1820 sets off a series of events that leads to eventual American annexation and U.S. statehood. While converting the native population to Christianity and attempting to tamp out prostitution with the visiting whalers, the missionaries also managed to nearly destroy the indigenous island way of life and begat a generation of children that would conspire with the U.S. military to overthrow the Hawaiian queen in 1893. With her rapier wit, Vowell describes the events of 1898, where in a spate of orgiastic imperialism, the U.S. annexed Hawaii, Guam, and Puerto Rico in addition to invading Cuba and the Philippines, thus establishing the nation as an international superpower. Read more…
By Gabrielle Hamilton
Random House | 304pgs
Release Date: March 1, 2011
Summary:
New York chef Gabrielle Hamilton traces her unlikely path to gastronomic success in her new memoir Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef. The culinary entrepreneur spent her early childhood living with bohemian parents in rural Pennsylvania. But, her family fell apart during her early teens when her parents divorced, leaving Hamilton and her brother largely on their own. Though she became a bit of a wild child, experimenting with drugs, she was always drawn to the food business, and moved to New York at 16 to work as a waitress. She moved through several restaurant and catering jobs, and later back-packed through France, Greece and Turkey, often relying on meals provided by generous strangers to stave of her hunger. The culmination of all these experiences prompted Hamilton to open her small 30-seat restaurant Prune in the East Village during the late 1990′s. The chef had never ran a restaurant before, but achieved enormous success with the small eatery, winning acclaim with critics and the patronage of serious foodies. Her memoir, like her restaurant, emphasizes the link between food and human comfort. In Prune, Hamilton created a place where your server “would bring you something to eat or drink that you didn’t even ask for when you arrived cold and early and undone by your day in the city.” Read more…
Even before the debut of The Tiger’s Wife, Téa Obreht’s freshman novel, the young author was getting literary accolades. Last year, at just 24 years of age, Obreht was named as one of The New Yorker‘s 20 under 40. At the tender age of 23, The Atlantic included her short story The Laugh in their Fiction Issue. This media buzz built up very high expectations for Obreht to deliver a stunning first novel, and judging by most early critical reviews, the young writer has succeeded. The Tiger’s Wife, which will be released on March 8, takes place in an unspecified war-torn Eastern European country, where young doctor Natalia Stefanovi learns of her beloved grandfather’s death. Natalia delves into the circumstances of her grandfather’s passing and reflects on his many mythical stories, including one about a tiger escaping the zoo in 1941 and the deaf-mute that develops a friendship with the beast. By and large, critics have been charmed by Obreht’s rising talent. Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly calls the Belgrade-born author a “Balkan Scheherazade” and describes her literary voice as “so enchanting that the mesmerized reader wants her never to stop.” Read more…
Comedian and musician “Weird Al” Yankovic has been entertaining audiences for almost 30 years with his musical parodies, amassing dozens of gold and platinum albums and winning three Grammy awards. Earlier this month, the performer explored a new creative outlet with the release of his first children’s book When I Grow Up, which debuted at #4 on the New York Times Bestsellers list. Written by Yankovic, who dropped the “Weird” moniker for the book cover, and illustrated by Wes Hargis, the picture book follows the musings of 8-year-old Billy after his teacher asks him what he wants to be when he grows up. Billy considers some very unique careers, such as a lathe operator for X-14 rocket parts, a world famous Twinkie cooking French chef, and a gorilla masseuse. The story is told with Yankovic’s trademark offbeat humor, but it does have a heartfelt message at it’s core. “You don’t need to be defined by your job,” Yankovic explains in a interview with NPR. “You can really kind of follow your muse.” Read more…
By Eleanor Brown
Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam | 336pgs
Release Date: January 20, 2011
Summary:
Sisterly love comes to the fore in Eleanor Brown’s debut novel The Weird Sisters. When their mother is diagnosed with breast cancer, three sisters unite at their childhood home to help care for her. The girls, all named after Shakespearean characters by their father, a Bard scholar, each bring their own personal baggage back to their mid-western homestead. The oldest sister, Rose (named after Rosalind in As You Like It) has remained in their small town of Barnwell, pursuing a career as college math professor. But, the comfortable, structured life she has carefully built becomes threatened when her fiancé is offered a job in England. Middle sister Bean (named after Bianca in The Taming of the Shrew) is escaping a disastrous life in New York, where she was recently fired from her job and accused of embezzlement. Baby sister Cordy (named after Cordelia in King Lear) has been living a free-spirited vagabond life, until she finds herself unexpectedly pregnant, without any real idea of where to settle down or how to raise a family. Dealing with their ailing mother, their eccentric father who communicates primarily in Shakespearean verse, and their own inner turmoil brings the sisters closer together and cements not just love, but a genuine liking and respect for one another. Read more…
Romance is in the air as Valentine’s Day quickly approaches, and the subject matter of Lana Citron’s new book A Compendium of Kisses (Harlequin, 224pgs) couldn’t be more appropriate. The British actress and author has compiled numerous facts, stories and quotes about locking lips and discusses the kiss in all its forms, from an expression of eroticism to its role in politics and religious ceremonies. A short story Citron wrote years ago about a woman saving kisses in jars, and later an art installation she created exhibiting labeled kisses in glass containers inspired her to write the book. “It was almost like opening a Pandora’s chest and just being overwhelmed by all the different ways a kiss is expressed, the meanings attached to it and the things it symbolizes,” she explains in an interview with Reuters. “I fell in love with it, I really did. I was submerged in the world of kisses for a year and came out of it with a book.”
Read more…
By Angela Balcita
Harper Perennial | 240pgs
Release Date: February 1, 2011
Summary:
Angela Balcita’s sweet and amusing biography about life and love Moonface: A True Romance, arrives as many minds turn to romance in anticipation of Valentine’s Day. Yet, her story is anything but a fairytale romance. Suffering kidney failure in her late teens, Balcita was already dealing with the complications of her first kidney transplant, donated by her brother, when she met Chris Doyle in her junior year of college. As it became apparent that she would need another kidney, Doyle selflessly volunteered to be a donor, though their relationship was still new. This was the beginning of a deep love affair that has lasted 14 years and produced two-year-old daughter, Nico. “My big feeling was like we were transcending something magical – we were being united. I saw it as very emotional and spiritual, this gift,” Balcita expresses in an interview with USA Today. Doyle, now the author’s husband, has been her champion and cheerleader, helping her through illness and pain (she would eventually need an third transplant), and focusing their lives on a positive future. The couple’s coping mechanism of wit and humor is evident in the books narrative, and helps to craft an inspiring testimony of love’s endurance. Read more…
