Luis Urrea

A patron asked for The devil's highway : a true story.  The hummingbird's daughter and  Into the beautiful North also look interesting.

www.luisurrea.com

Inspector Darko Dawson

Wife of the gods : a novel

by Kwei J Quartey. New York : Random House, 2009.

Kirkus liked it (thought, for Kirkus, these are tame words): Move over Alexander McCall Smith. Ghana has joined Botswana on the map of mystery. Quartey's approach to detective work is less charming and more sociological than McCall Smith's, his setting more rural and susceptible to the ways of magicians. There's plenty of room for them both, and the newcomer is most welcome.

Border songs

Lynch, Jim. (2009).Border songs. New York : Alfred A. Knopf.

Kirkus: Tensions on the U.S.-Canadian border disrupt a neighborhood in Lynch's entertaining second novel. Forget the shaky plot. What's memorable is the masterful use of Brandon as a bridge between the human world, foolish and chaotic, and the more ordered universe of birds.

Borges and the eternal ornagutangs

Not sure how I came across this; I'd guess Book-a-day calendar.

A hard-boiled genre exercise

Kirkus sort of liked it, but not completely: There are no good guys, or gals, in this novel. And there's no mystery, with police peripheral to the plot. Instead, Johnson seems to be paying homage to and subverting the conventions of the era of pulp fiction at its seediest. There's some dirty fun here, but plenty of authors are better at this sort of novel.

Book-a-day calendar liked it more (breezy, enjoyable read), and called Johnson "one of our contemporary masters."

Both mentioned Johnson's Tree of smoke, a Vietnam work (Kirkus: After his award-winning Vietnam epic, Johnson takes a busman's holiday with this hard-boiled genre exercise.While his previous novel Tree of Smoke (2007) elevated Johnson to a new level of renown

Stalin terror

Montefiore, Simon. (2008). Sashenka. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Kirkus: deft fiction debut: Inspired by a true story, historian Montefiore turns novelist to profile a young revolutionary who leads an exemplary Marxist life until a romantic misadventure puts her in Stalin's sights.Sashenka, teenage daughter of a Jewish oil magnate, is exiting an exclusive prep school for daughters of the Russian nobility in 1916 when, instead of being picked up by her father's chauffeur, she's arrested by the Tsarist police, who have gotten wind of her subversive activities as "Comrade Snowfox."

Hisham Matar

His new book,‘Anatomy of a Disappearance’, was reviewed in the book section of the Sunday Times.His first book was In the country of men.

Amost Archers

Kirkus: She's a welcome new member to the short list of authors with the power to fully inhabit her characters (think Bobbie Ann Mason or Jane Smiley), leaving the chick-lit purveyors in the dust.A richly crafted tale of redemption and reinvention that stands out from the crowd.

Book-a-day calendar: Like George Cukor's film Rich and Famous, this novel succeeds brilliantly as fun and also on a deeper level as an exploration of identity and family.

Bible salesman

Kirkus: The Lord works in humorously mysterious ways in this Southern picaresque teaming a jaded car thief and a young, impressionable Bible salesman.

Perennial classic

Book-a-Day calendar praises this Defoe book.

Resurrection men

Rankin, Ian. (2003). Resurrection men : an Inspector Rebus novel. Boston : Little, Brown.

Redbreast

Kirkus: it's well worth sticking with the story; both the hero and the villain are as compelling as the portrayal of Norwegians doing whatever it takes to survive the war and then paying the price.

Skin deep

Danzy Senna's collection of short stories. Her novels include Caucasia. Times review (Though Senna’s stories address race, class and gender, they never devolve into simple case studies. Rather, her collection offers nuanced portraits of characters confronting anxieties and prejudices that leave them not as free as they would like to be.) last Sunday quoted Langston Hughes's poem, I, Too: I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.

Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed--

I, too, am America.

John Mortimer

He wrote Rumpole, which, the very little I know, is not (dare I say it?) my cup of tea. Yet, when I read Mortimer was a real Communist, and a rabid anti-Thatcherite, well, I had to look closely: a British barrister, dramatist, screenwriter and author.

Balso Snall and Miss Lonelyhearts

Fool

by Christopher Moore. on Book-a-Day calendar.

Black Mamba Boy

Mohamed, Nadifa. (2010). Black mamba boy. London: Harper Collins.

Mixed reviews.

Lorriane Adams, in the NY Times: Had she dived deeply into just one city in this atlas of misery, Mohamed might have told us more about what it is like to be a scavenger child in Africa than this novel does. Perhaps one day, with her considerable talents, she will write such a book.

Kirkus: With one glorious exception, an eccentric intellectual in Djibouti, the author shows little talent for characterization. Pulled this way and that, Jama reflects Mohamed's own indecision, torn between naturalism and magic realism.

On the other side:
Library Journal Reviews: A pleasure to read, with descriptive language that allows readers to envision themselves in the story, this novel shows a distinctly non-European way of life in mid-20th-century Africa that is captivating. Highly recommended.

Publishers Weekly Reviews: Mohamed's beautifully rendered debut

Portraits of a marriage

Márai, Sándor. (2011). Portraits of a marriage. translated from the Hungarian by George Szirtes. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

The adults

Espach, Alison. (2011). The Adults. Simon & Schuster.

Well regarded by Kirkus: Wry rather than out-loud funny, laced with melancholy and angst, this book is an enviable first effort.

Reviewed in Sunday Times Books, less favorably: It saddened me to watch the small marvel of this fierce, tender adolescent narrative being submerged by waves of extra storytelling. Too much storytelling. I also had some minor factual quibbles. Lehman Brothers was never known for having a bustling office in Prague in the mid-1990s, and to suggest this detracts from the authenticity of Espach’s portrayal of Emily’s father, even Espach’s understanding of the world of finance.

Beat the reaper

Bazell, Josh. (2009). Beat the reaper. New York : Little, Brown.

Kirkus: The past comes knocking for a physician with a fistful of secrets.Medical resident Bazell opens his debut novel with a bone-crunching interlude between Manhattan ER doctor Peter Brown and a mugger whom he beats senseless, then treats for injuries. Brown soon confesses that his real name is Pietro Brnwa. He's a former hit man whose lethal trade drove him into the witness-protection program, where he reinvented himself as a pill-popping trauma physician. "It's a weird curse, when you think about it," says the killer turned doc. "We're built for thought, and civilization, more than any other creature we've found. And all we really want to be is killers." The past catches up with Brown when a terminal patient at the hospital recognizes him as the mob assassin called "Bearclaw." The patient threatens to out Brown if he does not work to save the man's life. Bazell's profane, hyperactive novel is readable and fun, and no fan of shoot-'em-ups or medical dramas can afford to miss it. Among the book's highlights is a riotous set of doctor's rounds that find Brown making out with a cancer patient, chasing down a wheelchair-bound fugitive and suffering a particularly vile needle stick.A wildly funny mashup between genres that makes ER and St. Elsewhere look tame