By John Irving
Random House | 576pgs
Release Date: October 27, 2009
John Irving’s latest novel opens in a small logging camp near the Twisted River in 1954. The status quo of Dominic Baciagalupo’s life as the camp cook is violently shaken when his 12 year old son, Danny, mistakes the Constable’s girlfriend for a bear and kills her. Father and son are forced to flee the New Hampshire camp, followed relentlessly by the obsessed Constable Carl. Last Night in Twisted River spans 50 years and traces Dominic and Danny’s movement from state to state, in an effort to escape Carl and thwart his vengeance. The only connection to their old life is Dominic’s best friend Ketchum, a gruff logger with a warm heart. Over the decades Dominic works a series of restaurant jobs as Danny develops his writing talent and becomes a bestselling author under the pen name Danny Angel. The narration of this novel has been described as chaotic, jumping forward and backward in time with little transition, but at its core, is a touching story about the love between a father and son.
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Concept cover (left) and final cover (right). ©2009 Scribner
Almost everyone judges a book by its cover. A compelling cover design helps cut through the media clutter; even book covers for today’s best selling authors have become more creative and elaborate. When designing the cover art for Jeannette Walls’ latest novel Half Broke Horses (Scribner, 270pgs), designers at Scribner explored several different cover concepts before finding the right fit. Walls’ family memoir The Glass Castle topped the best sellers list in 2005, and Half Broke Horses is a follow up of sorts. The “true-life novel” recounts the experiences of her larger-than-life grandmother, Lily Casey Smith.
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By Jane Kamensky and Jill Lepore
Spiegel & Grau ©2008 | Hardback 500pgs
Blindspot opens in Boston on the eve of the American Revolution, during the spring of 1764. When portrait painter Stewart Jameson sets foot on the docs of Boston Harbor, he arrives not hoping for a new life, but running from an old one. Wanted in his homeland of Scotland for outstanding debts, he has come to the Colonies to escape jail time and find his only true friend. Accompanied by his mastiff, Gulliver, he quickly sets up a small artist studio on Queen Street and advertises for a young man to apprentice him in his art.
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By John Jeter
Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press ©2009 | Hardback 295pgs
Central to The Plunder Room are four generations of men in the Duncan family. The patriarch, Colonel Edward Duncan has just passed on, and his grandson Randol is now tasked with upholding the family honor. “Like virginity…Once you lose…your honor, it’s gone…forever.” With this responsibility, comes a skeleton key to an upstairs bedroom. Among the rumored ghosts, The Plunder Room holds the Colonel’s entire history, stuffed into U.S. Army footlockers. But succeeding generations have done much to tarnish the family honor, and Randol is unsure if he is up to the task.
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