Company of Liars / by Karen Maitland

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By 1348, the strain of Bubonic plague known as The Black Death had ravaged much of western Europe, the pestilence wiping out entire towns and villages on its way to eliminating fully one-third of the continent's population. Still untouched, residents of the British Isles clung to the faint hope that the plague would die out before reaching them, that by some divine providence they would escape the clutches of the most deadly scourge ever to lay waste to Christendom. But it was not to be. Even the decreased the volume of ships passing across the channel--mercantile trade having been severely limited in the years 1346 & 1347--between England's coastal ports and western Europe could not keep the country quarantined. By midsummer, swarms of infected persons were reported in the south of the country, the outbreak striking first in coastal areas near Weymouth, Gloucester, Bristol and Dorset and steadily migrating north and east into the heart of the countryside and soon the major cities of London, Leicester, York and Newcastle.

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Suspecting the imminent outbreak, Camelot, a one-eyed old peddler of religious trinkets promptly decides to journey north away from his present station near Weymouth, hoping to outrun the plague before it firmly establishes itself on the isle. He and a ragtag assortment of other travelers--two minstrels, a storyteller, Zophiel the magician, a newlywed couple expecting their first child and a strikingly astute young girl, Narigorm, who can see into the future--slowly but surely make their way along the rough-trodden (and frequently muddied) path, through dense forests and cragged rocks, from village to village, town to town, often sleeping for days out in the cold before finding a bed. Theirs is a peculiar lot, full of odd, seemingly misplaced characters all wielding some special talent (or curse) and yet all are hiding something particular from the rest. Each has a secret just as each is conscious that death is never far behind, a mysterious, perhaps sinister confidentiality of which, for purposes unknown, must remain hidden.

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This is an exquisite book and a shining example of historical fiction at its best. A story conceived by a masterful storyteller and penned by a superior writer, it flows brilliantly off the page, immersing the reader into the mien of the oft-depicted, but seldom realized medieval period when life was truly delicate. Reminiscent of Canterbury Tales while reverberating the characteristics of Tolkien or Marion Zimmer Bradley, Maitland genuinely achieves a fascinating first novel, a "plague novel" in the truest sense.

Celebrate Native American Heritage Month: New Native American Fiction

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People of the Thunder / W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O'Neal Gear
Three wanderers--the prophet Old White, a noble warrior named Trader and a mysterious shaman woman, Two Petals--travel across the North American Southeast before it was ever America and long before it was ever civilized, striving to establish peace in a desparately savage land. The territory they cross is controlled by the Sky Hand tribe, ruled by the cunning and ruthless Chief Flying Hawk and his evil nephew Smoke Shield. Together this awkward, but curiously powerful trio must bring down Flying Hawk and Smoke Shield who themselves are bent on wiping out all but their own kind.
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The Red Convertible: Selected and New Stories, 1978-2008 / by Louise Erdrich
Erdrich, whose willowy novels and stories have mirrored her own Midwest-Native American heritage, has compiled a new collection of some of her most personal stories and essays. As expected, most of her protagonists are female and Indian, or Indian hybrids (Chipewa, Cherokee, Ottawa, etc. mixed with French & German ancestries) and their circumstances are embedded with varying degrees ambiguity over the fact. Some laugh, some cry and some simply ignore the constrasts present between their daily lives and the heritage of their ancestors, aspects of modern life overshadowing any semblance of customs and traditions their forefathers once shared even as Indian lore and mysticism crop up in the backs of their minds during things like thunderstorms, traffic jams, TV news and their children's gadgets.
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The Reason For Crows: A Kateri Tekakwitha Story / by Diane Glancy
The real life Kateri Tekakwitha (1656-1680, birth-name Kahenta), daughter to a Mohawk warrior during the period when the Europeans were infiltrating the Native tribes of North America, is rehashed in this extraordinary tale of two cultures colliding and a young girl's passion in the midst of violence, pestilence and death. Nearly blind after the smallpox has wiped out most of her camp and nearly killed all of her family, a young, still-ailing Kateri is pitied by a Jesuit priest, Jacques de Lambervilles who cares for her at the mission. After nursing her back to health and reading the scripture to her, Kateri is converted to Christianity and begins a life of chastity and penitence, wholly devoted to her faith until her death at 24. Today, Kateri Tekakwitha has been venerated as a Saint among Jesuit catholics and several churches, even a summer camp in Maine, bear her name.
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Runner / by Thomas Perry
Runner is Thomas Perry's sixth Jane Whitefield novel following Jane, a Native American female and skilled Indian guide with a knack for "disappearing" who aids people who themselves need hiding. Currently Jane's living in upstate New York, married to a surgeon and keeping her own, other calling pretty much under wraps. Sure enough, though, action finds Jane in the form of Christine Monahan, a pregnant woman on the run from her abusive husband and another, more grisly assortment of shady characters seemingly bent on hunting her down. Soon both women are fleeing cross-country as Jane works fast, doing what she does best, pairing her neo-mystical Native American talents with her own tech-savvy, identity-falsifying skills to help Christine and her baby ultimately find safety.
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War Dances / by Sherman Alexie
Alexie, himself a member of the Spokane tribe of the Pacific Northwest, is the award-winning author of Smoke Signals and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian. Much of his fiction has been labeled as a comedically scathing characterization of the plight of Native Americans, his penetrating voice expertly mixing humor with anger and tragedy with comedy. His newest collection of short stories, War Dances, confronts family life through various ordinary characters, each flawed in their own unique ways yet appealing in a quite real, naturalistic sense. In his title story "War Dances", a dying man reflects back on the death of his own alcoholic father while in "The Ballad of Paul Nonetheless", a married clothing salesman slowly falls out of love with his wife after she bears him three children. While all of his stories may not connect the same, the collection as a whole presents a "spiritedly provocative array of tragic comedies"*.

*Booklist

Jar City: A Reykavik Thriller / by Arnaldur Indridason; trans. by Bernard Scudder

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Ten years ago, no one would have considered Scandinavia a hotbed of mystery and crime literature. Recently though, Nordic crime fiction writers from countries such as Norway, Sweden, Denmark and even Iceland (a country of only 200,000 residents) have become a fixture on bestsellers lists. Icelandic crime novelist Arnaldur Indridason, winner of the 2005 Gold Dagger award, is the author of the bestselling Detective Erlendur series, which as of 2009 includes ten novels. His 2006 novel Jar City follows Erlendur as he investigates the murder of one of Reykavik's oldest residents. .

Crime in general, but murder especially, is a rarity in the insular, self-contained island nation of Iceland, a country so small that everyone calls everyone else by their first name. So when one of the city's oldest residents, a man called Holberg, is found murdered in his Reykjavík apartment, everybody knows about it but few are talking when 50-year-old detective inspector Erlendur Sveinsson, a chain-smoking, divorced father of one, is called in to investigate. Holberg, it turns out, was no pleasant old man; Erlendur soon finds out about several vicious rapes likely perpetrated by the old man over the years, those crimes possibly being linked to two wrongful deaths and a suicide of the girls involved. The winding, twisted search full of stubborn witnesses and crotchety old loners soon brings Erlendur to a old, closed down forensic lab, "jar city". So named for housing an assortment of old research organs, the lab may have certain forgotten tissue samples which could hold some pivotal answers towards the case.

Meanwhile, Erlendur's personal life is fraught with its own problems. His daughter Eva, periodically on and off methamphetamines, is pregnant and never quite settled enough for Erlendur to find out where she's staying or what her exact situation is. Still paying alimony to his out-of-the-country, married again ex-wife, Eva is all Erlendur has for family and while she barely speaks to him, he's eager to make things right with her.

Like many popular mystery series, the character of Erlendur is rendered in the most familiar manner possible as a method of bridging the gap between reader and authority figure--in this case a detective who investigates murders. But Indridason's writing renders Erlendur not so much as obligatorily flawed as a character perfectly fitted to his situation. Iceland's not New York, LA or London; but it's also not small town USA or a cozy English country village. It's its own defamiliarized, isolated-unlike-any-other-place-on-earth locale with its own peculiar identity, customs, practices and secrets. No one but Erlendur could fit this scenario because no one else knows not only the city locals but the entire island. The story exposes Erlendur's familiarity with Icelandic culture, its atmosphere with its inclusive attitudes and colloquial customs which bind witnesses to their mistrust, indignation and obstinacy and makes for one well-conceived, expertly written mystery.

The Big Sort: Why The Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart / by Bill Bishop

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In his first book, Bishop, a free-lance reporter from Austin, states that while American demographics may reflect increased diversity, sociological trends over the past few decades imply a wholly different landscape. In recent years, lifestyle choices among Americans have been leading "like-minded" groups to live together within exclusive, largely homogenous communities, a symptom of society Bishop refers to as "The Big Sort".
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In an interview with Matthew Dowd, a chief campaign strategest for both George's W. Bush's 2000 and 2004 campaigns, it's revealed that it was clearly understood by the mid-nineties that American communities were becoming homogenous and that, to a large degree, this 'clustering' trend was a defensive reaction to a society which was becoming beyond the control of the individual, far more so than in decades previous. For generations, people derived their sense of personal security from their clubs, their trust in a national government, and long-established religious denominations. Yet these older, more established institutions were no longer providing the stability Americans wanted.

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Bishop states that personal wealth and prosperity had dented these social institutions because individuals could now make choices independent of the church, neighborhood and even family constructs which had previously provided the social moorings for community solidarity. In turn, Americans have sought refuge among people and places who share their "lifeworlds", or situations in which more fundamentally segregating creeds such as race, class or political orientation are the norm. Now, more than ever, personal tastes, beliefs, styles, opinions, and values are becoming important in choosing where and how persons want to live. "When people move [nowadays], they are also making choices about who their neighbors will be and who will share their life views." Not only is this trend an alarming reflection of modern times, it could have significant impact and negative ramifications for the future of the country. Bishop backs his claims through the theory that "mixed company moderates and like-minded company polarizes . . . heterogeneous communities restrain group excesses while homogeneous communities march toward extremes."
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Bishop manages to deal with his subject comprehensively, even providing a somewhat even-handed approach to the topics of gender, class, race and political agendas. For the more politically minded, it's a book which investigates some of the key reasons for bi-partisanship in America today. Overall, it's an important book covering an important topic which will be sure and catch on with readers.

The Girls of Slender Means / by Muriel Spark

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Award-winning Scottish novelist Muriel Spark (1918-2006) lived quite a globe-trotting life during her illustrious career as a writer, having her only child with her first husband in Zimbabwe, working for Allied Intelligence in London during WWII, and making a home in New York, Rome, Budapest and Israel prior to becoming a permanent resident of Tuscany by the time of her death. Her most well-known work, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, was well-received at its 1963 publication and continues to receive acclaim as a novel, a 1965 film starring Dame Maggie Smith and, most recently, an off-broadway play. Her short, poignant novella The Girls of Slender Means follows several young single women bonded together during London's post-war years.

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In Britain in 1945, the severe economic strain means that the practices of rationing and partitioned work duties must continue for a time while the infrastructure, particularly in London, is collectively rebuilt. For this reason, establishments like "The May of Teck Club" have been founded to aid the cause, its primary purpose being to house women of a young age so that they could safely live and work in London apart from their families. The women of the May of Teck are concerned with the news that Nicholas Farringdon, an anarchist intellectual writer and inspirational friend known to all the girls as Nicky, has been suddenly killed in Haiti. As news about the death catches hold, reminisces about Nicky coincide with each girl's lives, loves and convictions. Their current romances, past love affairs, ambitions and dreams are mutually conveyed as their daily routines are collectively imbued with demanding duties, meager salaries and longing for a better situation.

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This is one of Spark's most concise, well-written books; winningly realistic and consistently witty with rare, appealing characters from familiar circumstances. All readers may not catch on to Spark's style immediately. The narrative tends to jump around a bit and a takes some re-perusing to get the characters right, but its a story which seems to mesh well more as a collective, first-person plural narrative--a singular tone amidst multiple voices. Fans of Spark's other works are sure to enjoy this one.

The Stranger Beside Me / by Ann Rule

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American non-fiction author Ann Rule has made quite a career out of profiling true crime cases, illuminating the scene, the situation, the motives involved and, particularly, the intimate lives of the victims and villains. Yet a special twist is added to Rule's 1980 (and later 2000 reprint) book The Stranger Beside Me. Rule herself is, chillingly, one of the characters, having worked beside notorious serial killer Ted Bundy in a crisis center during her days as a Seattle policewomen, then considering him a "true gentleman" and "likeable co-worker". Only here does she reveal the shocking revelation of Bundy as not only a man she once referred to as "dear friend", but as a monster of unspeakable atrocities she herself can scarcely fathom.

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At first glance, no one would have taken Ted Bundy for a serial killer. His conventional, handsome visage, amiable demeanor and intelligent speech had everyone fooled, so much so that his killing spree ran into the dozens, covering 5 states prior to his initial apprehension. And even then, due to lazy police work, he managed to escape, committing at least three more grisly killings in Florida prior to his final capture, conviction and death sentence.

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A child born into rather unfortunate circumstances (the fact that his sister was actually his mother was hid from him until he was a teenager), Ted remained shy and introverted for most of his youth, never much of a troublemaker nor singled out by the institutional system as a potential problem for society. Through his stepfather's extensive collection of adult magazines, Ted had been exposed to assorted pornography, much of it particularly graphic, at an especially sensitive age, a symptom he would later attribute to sparking his acute interest in sexual violence. By his twenties, Ted had mastered a dual persona: well-mannered, socially-adept white collar professional vs. "the entity", his own term characterizing his pathologically motivated, sexually-driven need to kill. He effectively appropriated each in a more or less routine fashion, easily able to manipulate others (mostly women, all his victims were female) and conceal his motives and any criminal evidence after the fact. His first murder, an unidentified hitchhiker whose remains were never found, occurred in 1973 when Ted was 26. Successively in the years between 1974 and 1978, Bundy murdered over thirty women (the true count is still unknown), each killed in excessively brutal fashion, often bludgeoned to death, impaled, or otherwise sexually maimed.

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This book is actually two stories. One describes the gradual disintegration of a seemingly normal, affable, intelligent man into a sexual psychopath so evil, so preternatural in his vicious killings, that one wonders if he was human at all. The other story is that of Ann Rule herself, a decent, hard-working, middle-aged mother of four who meets and befriends a nice young man working beside her in a crisis clinic. The slow but inexorable realization on Rule's part that this man whom she'd accepted as a "dear friend" is in fact an unspeakably violent serial killer is almost painful to read, her new afterward penned in 2000 revealing that she still hasn't "recovered" and "moved on". Yet, all told, it makes for a great read for anyone interested in true crime.

The Last Convertible / by Anton Myrer

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American novelist and WWII veteran Anton Myrer (1922-1996) wrote several well-received books, many of them on war, combat experiences the personal repercussions involved. The Last Convertible chronicles the intertwining paths of several youths entering their college years just prior to World War II.

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"One minute we were a group of awkward,ill at ease strangers thrown together by chance, the next we were a force...comrades, partners, band of brothers, call us what you will."

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The group of friends who would become known as the "Fusiliers" (George, Jean-Jean, Terry, Dal, Chris) all arrive at Harvard's freshman orientation in the early autumn of 1940, soon establishing solid mutual friendships among themselves and building loyalty to one another even amid attachments with several likable though somewhat garish females. Collectively, as each are caught up in the ensuing tumultuous years of the Second World War, their lives and subsequent relationship characterized and defined by the turmoil at home and abroad--also, to a lesser extent, through the affection each share for the "Empress", the green 1938 custom convertible.

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Preserving the memories for all is George Darrow, the leader of the group, who understands the importance of memory, legacy and, above all, love. George knows that love, with it's loyalty, pain, schisms, dreams; its essence often questioned, often broken, yet somehow is always redeemed defines the substance of life. Through George's eyes, we watch as the group's fortunes rise and fall, their marriages bloom and are strained even as their own bonds of friendship grow, solidify and ultimately fall away. We read as their children grow, suffer, live and, in George's case, die (his son Ronny in Veitnam), carrying on the paradox and pathos of love and brotherhood vs. war and death as a way of life.

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With fine, lyrical prose, Myrer describes the pivotal World War II years and the impact and legacy the events surrounding the lives of those who lived it years after the fact. Thrilling and vivid descriptions of WW2 activity with it's inevitable trauma and loss are portrayed accurately even as romance away from the battlefield abounds with the flowery pursuit of true love throughout. This is an exceptional work by Anton Myrer, written almost as if he had lived the story himself.