Sebold, Alice. The Lovely Bones (2002) Little, Brown, 328 pages, $21.95 hardcover ISBN 0-316-66634-3 “My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973” (p. 5). So begins Susie’s story, her narrative of watching from heaven as her family and friends go […]
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Flaherty, Alice W. The Midnight Disease Houghton Mifflin, 2004Hardcover, 307 pagesISBN 0-618-23065-3 Trained as a scientist, neurologist Alice W. Flaherty always enjoyed writing. But after the birth and death of premature twin boys, she had a mental breakdown that made her write nearly constantly, a condition known as hypergraphia. She took medication and was hospitalized for
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Grafton, Sue. “Q” Is for Quarry (2002)Putnam, 385 pages, $26.95 hardcover ISBN 0-399-14915-5 After her worst outing yet (“P” is for poor), Kinsey is back, this time helping two aging police detectives take another crack at a cold case—a still unsolved murder from 18 years earlier. Found with her hands
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Review: Lucky: A Memoir Sebold, Alice. Lucky: A Memoir Scribner, 1999Hardcover, 251 pagesISBN 0-684-85782-0 Simon & Schuster Audio, narrated by Alice Sebold In the tunnel where I was raped, a tunnel that was once an underground entry to an amphitheater, a place where actors burst forth from underneath the seats of a crowd, a girl had been
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Kidd, Sue Monk. The Dance of the Dissident Daughter (1996) HarperCollins, 238 pages, $12.95 trade paperback ISBN 0-06-064589-X Highly Recommended Long before Sue Monk Kidd’s novel The Secret Life of Bees hit the bestseller lists, Kidd was an established Christian inspirational writer and speaker. Then suddenly one day an incident involving her teenage daughter
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Philbrick, Nathaniel. In the Heart of the Sea Viking, 2000Hardcover, 289 pagesISBN 0-670-89157-6 Recommended At the beginning of the nineteenth century the American whaling industry centered around Nantucket Island. Young boys of Nantucket were taught to “idolize the form of a ship” and grew up anticipating the day when they, too, would join a whaling crew:
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Kidd, Sue Monk. The Secret Life of Bees (2002) Penguin, 302 pages, $14.00 trade paperback ISBN 0-14-200174-0 Highly Recommended Everyone is buzzing over The Secret Life of Bees. Every time I ask people if they’ve read any good books lately, I get the same answer: The Secret Life of Bees. “This book is
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Coben, Harlan. No Second Chance (2003) Dutton, 338 pages, $24.95 hardcover ISBN 0-525-94729-9 “Can you ever do the wrong thing for the right reason?” That’s the question Harlan Coben addresses in his latest thriller, No Second Chance. As we’ve come to expect from Coben, the novel grabs us with its opening line: “When the
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Lehane, Dennis. Mystic River (2001) HarperCollins, 448 pages, $7.99 mass market paperback ISBN 0 380 73185 1 Highly Recommended Dennis Lehane takes a break from Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro of Dorchester to tell the story of three boys from the fictional East Buckingham, a working-class district just west of downtown.
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Walters, Minette. The Dark Room (1996) Penguin Putnam, 339 pages, $7.99 mass market paperback ISBN 0-515-12045-6 Jinx Kingsley, a London photographer and daughter of a millionaire father with reputed underworld connections, wakes up in a private hospital. She has no recollection of how or why she got there. But she does have flashes
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