Picks of the Week

I.O.U., by John Lanchester

(Originally posted on December 29, 2009)

Does the cause and effect of the economic crisis make your head spin? Are you irrationally angry about how much debt you and your country owe but cannot possibly pay back anytime soon? Then Lanchester's tome, a distillation of articles about the boom and bust of various bubbles he's written for the NYRB and the New Yorker, is the book for you. It's concise, beautifully written and full of dry observations of what put us in this collective mess -and how on earth we can possibly get out of it.

Indiebound | Powell’s | Borders | Amazon | B & N

BAD PENNY BLUES, by Cathi Unsworth

(Originally posted on December 29, 2009)

Unsworth has crafted one of the most definitive fictional accounts of London just as it was about to swing, just as the Beatles grew their hair long, as the art world radicalized and attitudes towards sex, drugs and rock 'n roll left behind stiff upper lips and embraced a brasher, more open culture. At the center of this fine work of noir are two wholly disparate souls: PC Pete Bradley, tasked with investigating the increasingly brutal, Yorkshire RIpper-esque murders of prostitues, and Stella Reade, a clothing designer plagued by dreams eerily mimicking the last moments of these doomed women. Holding my breath until the surprising finish, captured by the dead-on descriptions of a London on the cusp of great change, I salute the former music journalist's major leap forward as a novelist with this wonderfully rendered effort.

B & N | Borders | Indiebound | Amazon | Powell’s

WINTERLAND, by Alan Glynn

(Originally posted on December 29, 2009)

A decade or so from now, when serious history books recount the hazy crazy days of the Celtic Tiger, its unstoppable boom and calamitous bust, those who seek those books out will also know that WINTERLAND got there first. Through a kaledescopic lens that only fiction - and especially crime fiction - can provide, Alan Glynn shows the depth of greed, the slow slide into corruption, the brutality of murder, and the bonds of family that glue a city, a country, and scores of people together. Is it a masterpiece? I won't say that now, not yet. But ask me again in ten years.

Indiebound | B & N | Powell’s | Amazon | Borders

THROUGH THE HEART, by Kate Morgenroth

(Originally posted on December 29, 2009)

Nora is poor, lives with her mother and works a dead-end job in Kansas. Timothy is rich, charged with managing his family's money and, lives the playboy lifestyle in Manhattan. How on earth can they possibly meet, let alone fall in love? No wonder, when the impossible happens, everything goes acidly, fabulously, shockingly wrong. Morgenroth, bless her satire-minded heart, tells the fairy-tale minded to take their fantasies and shove it.

B & N | Borders | Powell’s | Amazon | Indiebound

ALICE I HAVE BEEN, by Melanie Benjamin

(originally posted on December 29, 2009)

Benjamin skillfully unravels the tale of Alice Liddell, who as a young child was Charles Dodgson's photographic muse - and, of course, the inspiration for ALICE IN WONDERLAND. But that part of the story stops a third of the way in; what makes ALICE I HAVE BEEN so riveting is how Benjamin re-imagine's Liddell as an adult, seeking romantic love, suffering tragedy, then later, coming to terms with unwanted fame and the residue left over from her strange more-than-acquaintanceship with the man who made her immortal. In a way, we've all gone through that same looking glass; but through this book, we see how Alice does it - and emerges very much her own woman.

Indiebound | Amazon | Borders | B & N | Powell’s