2010 Summer Newsletter - New Fiction

All Summer Newsletter titles are discounted 20% to members through Labor Day.
This summer brings some wonderful new books which you shouldn't miss. Among them are:

My Name Is Mary Sutter (Hardcover)

By Robin Oliveira
$26.95
ISBN-13: 9780670021673
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Viking Adult, 5/2010
Other Editions of this Title
A story that combines feminist striving with Civil War history, MY NAME IS MARY SUTTER (Viking, $26.95), by first-time novelist Robin Oliveira, is a lovely work. Mary Sutter, a privileged young woman from Albany, New York, trained as a midwife, wishes to become a surgeon. Rejected by medical school and rebuffed by a physician she wanted to work with, and having watched her beautiful sister win the affection of her friend Thomas, Mary leaves for Washington to work in a wartime hospital. There she observes Union forces woefully unprepared for battle carnage. Mary is proud and determined; apprenticing herself to the hospital doctors, she becomes an accomplished field physician. Oliveira has done great work recreating real events and real places, but the story is never weighed down by research. I found myself thinking about Mary long after I finished the book. Carla Cohen

The Invisible Bridge (Hardcover)

By Julie Orringer
$26.95
ISBN-13: 9781400041169
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Knopf, 5/2010
Other Editions of this Title
In her ambitious book, THE INVISIBLE BRIDGE (Knopf, $26.95), Julie Orringer has created a family overwhelmed by the events of European history in the 1930s and ’40s. Andras Lévi travels from Budapest to Paris to study architecture. Everywhere there are portents of the deluge which will follow, but Andras, his friends, and his brother Tibor conduct their lives as though everything is normal. Paris is beautiful and the opportunities for the young architect are substantial. Meanwhile, the Nazis are closing in. Andras and Tibor return to Hungary and are eventually conscripted into work battalions; Orringer details the indignities visited on the Jewish population. Her expert writing and believable cast of characters results in a substantial retelling of World War II as experienced by one family in Hungary. Carla Cohen

The Lake Shore Limited (Hardcover)

By Sue Miller
$25.95
ISBN-13: 9780307264213
Availability: Special Order - Subject to Availability
Published: Knopf, 4/2010
Other Editions of this Title
Sue Miller has written a lovely, touching book about the complications of the lives of middle-aged men and women. The novel revolves around a new play, THE LAKE SHORE LIMITED (Knopf, $25.95), being tried out in Boston. Billie, the playwright, has incorporated her own experience from six years earlier when her lover, Gus, was on one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center. Leslie, Gus’s sister, wants very much to fix up Billie with Sam, an architect and a good friend. Miller weaves the story like a piece of music, focusing chapters on four lead characters, all of whom are expertly portrayed, as are the relationships of spouses, lovers, parents and adult children in this fast paced story. Carla Cohen

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand (Hardcover)

By Helen Simonson
$25.00
ISBN-13: 9781400068937
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Random House, 3/2010
Other Editions of this Title
MAJOR PETTIGREW'S LAST STAND (Random House, $25) is without a doubt my favorite novel of the year. Helen Simonson's extraordinary debut brings us to the small English village of Edgcombe St. Mary, where the widowed Major Ernest Pettigrew lives a quiet, refined life in his family home. Unexpected circumstances bring him into contact with Mrs. Jasmina Ali, the village's widowed Pakistani shopkeeper. The two soon develop a friendship over cups of tea, and their shared love of literature slowly blossoms into love. Not only was it a pleasure to read about older characters finding love the second time around, but there is also a lot of fun along the way involving the eccentricities of the village and its residents. Rose Levine

Work Song (Hardcover)

By Ivan Doig
$25.95
ISBN-13: 9781594487620
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Riverhead Hardcover, 6/2010
Other Editions of this Title
Ivan Doig's charming character, Morrie Morris, returns to the world of historical fiction, this time stepping off a train at Butte, Montana in 1919. WORK SONG (Riverhead, $25.95) follows his quest to make a fortune in the copper-mining boomtown. Morrie quickly finds himself caught between Anaconda, the company controlling the town, and the union representing the men who risk their lives every day. Work Song is filled with quirky characters who always have something clever to say; with its constant, heartwarming reassurance that people will rise to the occasion when the situation seems at its worst, this novel is a pleasure to read. Bill Leggett

The Passage (Hardcover)

By Justin Cronin
$27.00
ISBN-13: 9780345504968
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Ballantine Books, 6/2010
Other Editions of this Title
It’s 1:00 a.m. and I have to be up early, but I am still reading this book, I CAN’T PUT IT DOWN!  What is wrong with me?  I don’t want to do anything but read THE PASSAGE (Ballantine, $27) by Justin Cronin. I don’t want to go out, I don’t want to go to work, I don’t want to sleep.  If you think you don’t like horror fiction, think again--I guarantee that once you read the first few pages of this book you, too, will be hooked. Cronin's is a story about a virus the army hopes will turn soldiers into super-weapons.  The only problem is that, once infected, humans become super-scary, bloodsucking creatures.  When the American population is exposed to and then ravaged by the virus, only small enclaves of people survive.  The tale of how these survivors go on is utterly enthralling, adventurous, creepy, and exciting. Susan Skirboll

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (Hardcover)

By Stieg Larsson
$27.95
ISBN-13: 9780307269997
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Knopf, 5/2010
Other Editions of this Title

Stieg Larsson's addictive Millennium Trilogy just got better! The long-awaited and thrilling conclusion, THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST (Knopf, $27.95) picks up where the cliffhanging The Girl Who Played with Fire left us. Incapacitated, under arrest, and strapped to a hospital bed with no ability to defend herself, computer-hacker Lisbeth Salander must rely on the more orthodox methods of journalist Mikhail Blomkvist and her lawyer Annika Giannini as she battles for retribution against the sex-trafficker and crime boss Zalachenko, his thug Niederman, the corrupt psychiatrist Teleborian, and the secret society buried within the bureaucracy of the Swedish State Security Agency. I couldn't put it down and barely slept for three nights straight! Andrew Getman

 

To read on, click one of the pages listed below. Or click here to read our recommendations for children.

Click here to download a PDF of the Politics & Prose 2010 Summer Newsletter.