New Biography: The Life of Toussaint L’Overture: The Negro Patriot of Hayti by John R. Beard

First published in 1853, this book is now back in print.  It is the classic biography of the brilliant black military leader who defeated Napoleon’s best generals and liberated Haiti from French colonial rule.

New Audiobook: Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, read by Ralph Cosham

A new audiobook version, unabridged on CD, of the classic horror tale Frankenstein. “ In the summer of 1816, a young, well-educated woman from England traveled with her lover to the Swiss Alps. Unseasonable rain kept them trapped inside their lodgings, where they entertained themselves by reading ghost stories. At the urging of renowned poet Lord Byron, a friend and neighbor, they set their own pens to paper, competing to see who could write the best ghost story. The young woman, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, took the prize, having composed a story creepy enough not only to take its place alongside the old German tales that she and her Alpine companions had been reading, but also to become a bestseller in her time and a Gothic classic that still resonates with readers almost two centuries later.” Spark Notes 

Review of Burn My Heart by Beverley Naidoo

Burn My Heart is set in Kenya in the fifties. At this time, there is unrest between a sect of militant natives called Mau Mau and the white settlers. We see life on the Graysons’ farm as the troubles are escalating. Matthew, the Grayson’s son, has always played with Mugo, the kitchen toto (boy) and son of Kamau, who has worked on the Grayson farm since he was a boy. This is also how it had been when Mr. Grayson, the bwana (owner), was little; Kamau watched out for him. Lance Smithers, a boarding school friend of Matthew’s, wants Matthew to play a game of Mau Mau at the club house. Lance acts as General and Matthew is his adjutant. They round up the younger children as Mau Mau and imprison them in the tennis courts. Colonel Smithers, Lance’s father, believes that Mr. Grayson is naive to be so trusting of his native help. When Colonel Smithers’ mother is widowed, he comes to manage the family farm, despite her protests that she can manage by herself and that her servants are loyal. He volunteers for the Kenya Police Reserve after the governor declares a state of Emergency to defeat the Mau Mau. He is convinced that all of the natives are part of the Mau Mau. In fact, all adults and boys of a mature age are forced (in many instances much against their will) to take the Mau Mau oath. The Mau Mau instigate an uprising and are defeated. In January of 1960, the Emergency finally ends. The book shows the terrible turmoil Matthew goes through. Above all he wants to stay loyal to Mugo, but he is not allowed. His relationship with Lance is also confusing: it is nice to be friends with the most popular boy in the school, but he finally comes to realize that his priorities were not right. Review by Teresa Kerrigan

Review of Reality Check by Peter Abrahams

This is the latest book by the author of the Echo Falls mystery series, as well as a number of adult mysteries too graphic for me to read.  He also wrote the wonderful mystery Dog On It, under the pen name Spencer Quinn, a very funny story told first person by a sometimes goofy, sometimes dangerous dog named Chet.  Reality Check is not quite as engaging as any of these, but it’s still a pretty good read.  The main character is Cody, a sort of average high school quarterback whose girlfriend Clea is much cleverer, much richer, and destined for much greater things.  When Clea’s father forces her to attend a posh boarding school in Vermont to bolster her chances of getting into an Ivy League School, Cody breaks up with her.  Things go from bad to worse for him when he suffers a knee injury that might mean the end of his dreams of playing college and maybe professional football.  Since Clea and football were the only good things in his life, he doesn’t see much point in staying in school, so he drops out and takes a job delivering lumber.  So you’re probably wondering, where’s the mystery?  I personally liked the long set-up of this book, but I have heard people complain about it.  Here it comes…Clea goes missing from her fancy school.  Cody heads immediately (and without any idea of what his plan is) to Vermont to find her.  Everyone assumes that Cody is from the local high school when he joins the search, and he tries to keep his former relationship with Clea to himself, until the local cop needles him into taking a swing at him, then uses that offense to blackmail him into spying for him.  The cop gets him a job and living quarters at the school stable where Clea’s horse is kept.  Cody gets to know some of the students at the school, and Clea’s words from the last letter she wrote keep haunting him, “It’s hard to know who to trust sometimes.”  There is a tie-in with gambling, and some nice references to recent financial events.  The ending felt rushed to me, especially the final wrap-up.  Don’t let that keep you from reading it, though.  Review by Stacy Church

Review of Me, the Missing, and the Dead by Jenny Valentine

This is a story about looking for clues to solve one mystery, only to find that the solution is inextricably linked to the central mystery of your life. The story starts with Lucas finding “a tenner” in his coat pocket after staying too late at his friend’s house and deciding to take a cab home. In the mini-cab office, he sees an urn up on a shelf and when he asks about it, is told that it was left in a cab 18 months ago. Lucas can’t stop thinking about the abandoned urn; in fact, he thinks the inhabitant is talking to him. He finds out her name is Violet Park, and he concocts a plan with his grandmother, Pansy, (who swears all the time, but without actually saying the word, “just mouths it with her face screwed up”) to liberate Violet from her purgatory. One of the things I really love about this book is how detailed and original the descriptions are. For instance, when Lucas is looking out over the heath, unable to sleep: That part of the heath is covered with enormous crows. They’ve got massive feet like they can’t believe how big they are. They all look like actors with their hands behind their backs, rehearsing the bit in that play when the king says, “Now is the winter of our discontent…” Lucas’s family is pretty messed up –his father disappeared five years ago, and they’ve never been able to move on. Lucas idolizes his father, which drives his mother insane, and his sister is just angry. Lucas has quite a funny voice, and the story is broken up by lists, such as this one about parents. “You start off thinking they own the world, and everything is downhill from there. Parents do so many things to wake you up to the idea that they are less than perfect.

• Speak like they think teenagers speak (always wrong, excruciatingly wrong).
• Get drunk too quickly or too much.
• Be rude to people they don’t know.
• Flirt with your teacher and your friends..
• Forget their age.
• Use their age against you.
• Get piercings.
• Wear leather trousers (both sexes).
• Drive badly (without admitting it).
• Cook badly (ditto).
• Go to seed.
• Sing in the shower/car/public.
• Don’t say sorry when they’re wrong.
• Shout at you or each other.
• Hit you or each other.
• Steal from you or each other.
• Lie to you or each other.
• Tell dirty jokes in front of your friends.
• Give you grief in front of your friends.
• Try to be your mate when it suits them.”

As I’ve already hinted, by the end of the book, Lucas has solved more than one mystery, and has come to some sort of peace with the world, and his mother especially.  Review by Stacy Church

Review of Nation by Terry Pratchett

There are really three beginnings to Nation, the latest book by Terry Pratchett (well, four, if you count the prologue, How Imo Made the World). It’s a little hard at first to sort out what’s going on, but I was well on the way to being hooked when I read the second (or third) part which begins, “At the other end of the world the sea burned, the wind howled, and roaring night covered the face of the deep...” and ends with, “Captain Roberts went to Heaven, which wasn’t everything that he’d expected, and as the receding water gently marooned the wreck of the Sweet Judy on the forest floor, only one soul was left alive. Or possibly two, if you like parrots.” I was completely hooked when I got to the third (fourth?) part, which begins with the line, “On the day the world ended Mau was on his way home.” I listened to this book on audio, and if you have the opportunity, I highly recommend that you do the same. The reader, Stephen Briggs, has a wonderful tongue-in-cheek way of doing the different voices, and his comic sense of timing really adds to the laugh-out-loud quality of the book. The story is basically about the meeting of two worlds, through Daphne (formerly Ermintrude), who is the lone survivor (besides the parrot) of the wreck of the British ship Sweet Judy on the island called Nation, and Mau, who was on his way back to his home on Nation when the tsunami that caused all of the trouble hit. Mau was off on the Boys’ Island, where he left his boy’s soul and paddled back to Nation, where he should have been met by all the islanders, and then, after “the thing with the sharp knife, where you didn’t scream…” he would become a man and have a man’s soul. But because the tsunami killed everyone on Nation, he was left with no soul, which later was the source of the nickname he was given by the priest --Demon Boy. Both Mau and Daphne hear the voices of their ancestors in their heads, and they both question their religious and cultural upbringings. The conclusion brings everything together nicely, with a bit of a view into the future (which is still the past to us). Review by Stacy Church

New books

Just in:

Hunger, Michael Grant’s sequel to Gone

Broken Soup, by Jenny Valentine, author of Me, the Missing, and the Dead

No Such Thing as the Real World, Stories about Growing up and Getting a Life, by An Na, M.T. Anderson, K.L. Going, Beth Kephart, Chris Lynch and Jacqueline Woodson

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Need help finding a good book?

Check out this website that finds read-alike authors for you.  Just type in the name of an author you like, and the literature map brings up a very cool-looking graphic display of similar authors.  You may not agree with every suggestion, but it’s one more way to find out about new authors you might like.  For instance, when I put in Terry Pratchett, the two closest names were Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) and Neil Gaiman (Coraline, Interworld). If you want to explore one of the names that are brought up, just click on it, and that author becomes the focus of a new web.

http://www.literature-map.com/