61. Devotion by Howard Norman

On August 19, 1985, newly married David Kozol gets into a fight with his new father-in-law, William Field, on a London street. William ends up falling into the street, and is run over by a taxi that contains a woman who William thinks David is having an affair with, even though David has been married only a few days to William’s daughter, Maggie. The remainder of the story focuses on David and William’s relationship when David nurses William back to health and takes over William’s job of caring for swans on a Nova Scotia estate. Since the accident, Maggie has refused to see her husband, except once, even though she is pregnant with their child.

This is a very quiet, beautifully written book by award-winning author Norman. At times it is funny (especially when William keeps threatening to beat David up), and at times it is so full of melancholy that readers wonder if David and Maggie will ever get together again. It is also a true depiction of how love can endure, especially when so many things seem to go wrong. The beautiful isolated setting of Nova Scotia and the quiet lives of the swans lend to the novel’s charm and beauty. This is for readers who enjoy the short stories of Alice Munro and Richard Russo.

60. Bloodshot by Stuart MacBride

The pounding rain of Aberdeen, Scotland is predominant in the third thriller by Scottish writer MacBride. Detective Sergeant Logan McRae is suffering under his superior, Detective Inspector Steel and her team of screw-up cops. Logan is extremely busy these days – he is involved in tracking soccer star Rob Macintyre, who is the prime suspect in a series of brutal rapes, and a porn star soon turns up dead following a horrible crime. To top it all off, an eight-year-old boy is on the run after killing an elderly man. Logan’s live-in girlfriend, Police Constable Jackie Watson, is growing increasingly distant to Logan as she works the Macintyre rape case and when Macintyre is found severely beaten, Logan wonders if Jackie is to blame.

At times bleak and at times funny, this series keeps getting better. There is a lot going on during the book all at once, but MacBride expertly keeps readers on track. Readers will sympathize with Logan and his wanting to do better for his team and solve the crimes, and his relationship with Jackie is explored more in this book than in the two previous books. MacBride is also the author of Cold Granite and Dying Light, and is a perfect Scottish crime author to explore if you love Ian Rankin and Val McDermid. He also has a great web site, http://www.stuartmacbride.com/en/, with photos of Aberdeen, including photos of real places featured in his first book, Cold Granite.

59. The Rest of Her Life by Laura Moriarty

Kara Churchill is a popular high school senior who is about to graduate high school in one week and then attend college in Boston. On her way back from picking up her graduation gown, she and her friend Willow notice a stray dog in the road. Kara pulls into a parking lot to try to rescue the dog, and as she drives out of the lot, she hits and kills a fellow student, Bethany Cleese.

The resulting tragedy that not only tears the Churchill family apart but also that of the dead girl’s mother and the community is told from Leigh Churchill’s perspective, Kara’s mother. While Leigh doesn’t understand how her daughter could have done something like this, she also fights to protect her daughter from the outcry of their small town. The novel also features flashbacks of Leigh’s young life and how she and her sister had to deal with a non-maternal mother who abandons Leigh when she is only sixteen. Full of many moral questions and complex characters, this would be a great choice for book discussion groups. This would also be a great title for readers who like Jodi Picoult, Jacquelyn Mitchard, and Chris Bohjalian.

58. Short Cuts by Raymond Carver

When Robert Altman made his film, Short Cuts, he based his movie on stories of Raymond Carver. The nine stories and one poem (“Lemonade”) that he chose to explore are collected in this slim volume of stories. Altman did take liberties with Carver’s work, and indeed if readers read the collection and watch the film, they will notice that characters sometimes cross over from story to story, and names or occupations may have changed. As a whole, the collection shows ordinary people dealing with innocent things such as watching a neighbor’s apartment, to the huge grief of the Weiss’s child being hit by a car.

For me, the highlights of the collection are two stories: “A Small, Good Thing”, and “So Much Water So Close to Home”. In the first story, Anne Weiss has just ordered a bakery birthday cake for her son Scotty. When Scotty is hit by a car, and later dies of his injuries, she is tormented by the baker when she doesn’t pick up the birthday cake. In the second story, Stuart and Claire try to work through the aftermath of Stuart finding a dead body while on a fishing trip and his staying on the trip and not reporting the body right away. This short story was also made into the new movie, Jindabyne (see http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0382765/). Carver’s stories have also been in the news lately due to the fact that his widow, Tess Gallagher, wants to publish unedited versions of some of Carver’s most famous short stories. For more on this story, see http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6492967.html.

57. A Year Without "Made in China" by Sara Bongiorni

On January 1, 2005, Sara Bongiorni’s family started a year long project that involved not buying goods that were made in China. During Christmas of 2004, Sara noticed that over 25 toys that her children received for Christmas were from China, while only 14 gifts they received were from other countries. Could her family survive a year without Chinese products, including toys, televisions, shoes, and coffee pots? Getting her husband on board was the first initial hurdle, and then trying to explain to her son why he couldn’t get things such as toys and Halloween decorations took up a large part of her year. Along the way, the Bongiorni family did make exceptions to their project – such as the allowance of gifts from friends or family of Chinese products, especially for birthday or Christmas celebrations. However, the remainder of the year saw the family double checking labels and placing calls to retailers to try to buy products not made in China.

This is a quirky study of a family that probably would be better suited for a magazine article than a full length book. There are many examples in the book about the difficulty of trying to buy toys for their children, whether it is for birthdays or holidays. There are also many plugs for Legos, one of the few toys the family found not to be made in China. This grew tiring after awhile, but it also showed how hard it is these days to buy items that aren’t made in China. It was also interesting to learn at the end of the book that the family decided that it couldn’t keep the project running after the year was up and went back to buying Chinese items in 2006. Will this book keep people from buying Chinese products? No, probably not. But it may get people interested in looking at labels and finding out where their items actually are made.

56. Sunday Suppers at Lucques by Suzanne Goin

Getting her start at some of the most famous restaurants in the world, including Chez Panisse, chef Suzanne Goin has created a beautiful cookbook featuring her comfort food based Sunday dinners at her restaurant. Lucques restaurant, located in Los Angeles, opened in 1998. It quickly became famous for their Sunday supper, where Goin has recreated the atmosphere of a family dinner at the restaurant. Served family style, each week the menu changes and the focus is on comfort food that is made up of seasonal produce.

This cookbook is filled with 130 recipes arranged into three course menus and is organized by season. Ninety color pictures are scattered throughout this cookbook. At the beginning of each seasonal section (the cookbook starts with Spring), a list of seasonal produce is listed in exhausting detail, and includes helpful hints such as different varieties of fruits and vegetables, how to tell if they are ripe, and how to simply prepare them. With a foreword by popular chef Alice Waters, this is a beautiful and helpful cookbook for the home chef looking to prepare something new for a Sunday dinner.

55. Heartsick by Chelsea Cain

Cain’s newest book has been one of the most anticipated new thrillers of the year. Two years ago, police officer Archie Sheridan was head of the Beauty Killer Task Force in Portland, Oregon when he was captured by the killer. Unlike her other victims, cunning serial killer Gretchen Lowell let Archie live after days of torturing him in her hideout and then calling 911 to turn herself in. Now addicted to painkillers, and having left his family, Archie is also addicted to Gretchen and feeds this addiction by visiting her in prison every Sunday. When a new serial killer targets young school girls in the Portland area, Archie decides to go back to work, although he insists that young female reporter Susan Ward must profile him in the local paper during his investigation. While Archie manipulates Susan and what she reports on the new killings to the public, what he doesn’t realize is that Gretchen is ultimately manipulating both Archie and Susan to horrible results.

This has a great twist to the more traditional psychological mysteries that typically have male serial killers. Make no presumptions – Gretchen is a very twisted serial killer and the flashbacks about her holding Archie are not for the squeamish. People will no doubt make comparisons to The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris, but a great setting featuring the cold drizzle of Portland and the struggle with Archie’s addictions help propel this book on its own. Readers of noir and classic pulp mysteries will find much to like about this clever thriller, and I certainly hope to see Archie and Susan again.

54. Unspoken by Mari Jungstedt

Following the success of her first mystery (Unseen), Jungstedt returns to the Swedish island of Gotland for her newest murder mystery. Detective Superintendent Anders Knutas and his partner, Detective Inspector Karin Jacobsson, start out investigating the murder of local alcoholic and gambler Henry Dahlstrom. Henry won five consecutive races at the local track and received 80,000 kronor. His body turns up a week later in his basement where he was developing photographs at the time of his death. Also on the island, 14-year-old Fanny Jansson goes missing after leaving her stable job after school. Her body soon is found strangled to death, and police also find pictures of Fanny that Henry Dahlstrom seems to have taken of Fanny having sex with an older gentlemen. Are the two murders connected? Is the man in the photographs the killer police are looking for?

Full of dramatic suspense and well-placed clues toward the end of this mystery makes the identity of the murderer unexpected for readers. The stark coastal Swedish winter is also a perfect setting for the two murderers. Also important to the book is the relationship between television reporter Johan Berg and Emma Winarve, who are continuing their love affair started in the first mystery. For a review of Jungstedt’s first book, please see http://www.tcpl.org/sarah/2007/01/test.html.

53. The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies

In 1944, English troops build a base deep in the northern Welsh hills to house German POWS in this fictional first novel by Davies. Esther Evans is a young 17 year old Welsh girl helping her father run his sheep farm and works in the local pub. When troops move into the small town, her life changes forever. Soon pregnant by an English soldier, she lies to her father and claims the child is from a local boy gone missing in the war. Karsten, a young German corporal who is ashamed that he had to surrender in France, moves to the POW camp in the town, and is soon aided by Esther when he decides to escape. Also woven into the novel is the story of a British intelligence officer, Rotherdam, who is sent to question captured Rudolph Hess to see if his claims of amnesia are correct. Rotherdam, although born to a Canadian mother and German Jewish father, struggles with his identity and tries to determine if he is Jewish or not.

Davies himself is half Welsh and relied on his father’s memories of Wales during WWII to help write this extremely poignant and beautiful book. From the lush Welsh landscape, to the wonderfully drawn local characters, this novel deals with themes such as identity, heritage, duty, honor, patriotism, and sacrifice. For other World War II recent novels, check out these reviews: http://www.tcpl.org/sarah/2007/07/35-consequences-by-penelope-lively.html and http://www.tcpl.org/sarah/2007/09/41-my-french-whore-by-gene-wilder.html.

52. The Water's Lovely by Ruth Rendell

Water is key to the newest psychological mystery by veteran author Ruth Rendell. The book starts with a murder in a bathtub and ends with the tsunami in Indonesia. Years before the novel takes place, 13-year-old Heather Sealand is thought to have drowned her stepfather, Guy, in the family bathtub. This results in her sister, Ismay, to always wonder if and why she killed him and for their mother, Marion, to slip into mental illness. The novel focuses on the Sealand sisters now grown up and Heather falling in love with Hospice nurse Edmund Litton. Should Ismay inform Heather’s fiancé that he might be marrying a murderer?

Full of lots of atmospheric tension and wonderful plotting, this is a very psychologically creepy book. There are two subplots also featured that draw readers into the story – one about Marion Melville, who takes care of elderly people hoping to inherit their houses after she poisons them, and another about a killer who is haunting London parks. A very suspenseful story, this is more reminiscent of Rendell writing as Barbara Vine.

51. The Dinner Club by Saskia Noort

Karen and Michel are a thirty-something Dutch couple unhappy with the city life in Amsterdam once they have two small girls. When they decide to move to a small, quiet country village, their lives change. Friends who once eagerly came for weekend visits stopped their trips, and life especially for Karen became quieter and filled with transporting her kids to and from school. When Karen meets Hanneke at the school yard, they become instant friends and decide to start a dinner club with other couples their age. Soon five women and their husbands start meeting for drinks and dinner at their upscale houses – and start sharing more than meals. Infidelity, business deals with dubious backing, and suicide or even possibly murder start to creep into the group, with horrible results.

This was an extremely popular book in the Netherlands when Noort published it in 2004. Most readers will probably compare it to Desperate Housewives, but it is much darker and actually very well written. The ending comes of as a little unbelievable, and unfortunately it turns almost into a murder mystery near the end, but overall this is a fast, fun, and intriguing story.

50. Raven Black by Ann Cleeves

The cold, harsh, snowy winter of Scotland’s Shetland Islands is the setting for this dark mystery. Fran Hunter is walking home after dropping her young daughter off at school when she sees a spot of red on white snow with a circle of black ravens flying above it. The red is actually from the scarf of a dead girl who Fran finds strangled to death. Teenager Catherine Ross was known throughout the small community for making a documentary about the Shetland Islands and was last seen getting off a bus with local eccentric Magnus Tait. Magnus not only was the last person to see Catherine, but was also questioned eight years ago when another local girl went missing. Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez must sort through all the clues and local characters to find young Catherine’s killer.

Setting is key for the success of this mystery novel. The bleak landscape perfectly set during the harsh winter months adds to the dark mystery surrounding the death of the young girl. The community is especially close to one another and full of eccentric characters and rituals. A popular writer in the UK, this is the first in a new series for Cleeves.

49. How to Read a Novel by John Sutherland

With tens of thousands of books being published each year, how do readers know what books are the best ones they should read? Sutherland, a professor of Modern English Literature at University College London and the committee chairman for the 2005 Man Booker Prize, attempts to answer this question. He looks at what it means to be well read, how novels are determined to be good or bad, and how to talk about books. With clever title chapters such as “Famous First Words”, “Hardback or Paperback?”, and “Can Reviews Help?”, this book on how to get the most out of novels has something for all lovers of fiction.

Sutherland’s book is a great asset to book discussion groups, as well as to people who like to explore fiction in their leisure reading. Readers learn you can judge a book by its cover, what genres might be for them to read, and why certain books are bestsellers. Also helpful to serious fiction readers is the ten page bibliography at the back of the book that lists in alphabetical order all the books Sutherland mentions throughout this book.

48. Judgment of the Grave by Sarah Stewart Taylor

Searching for elusive round-skull gravestone carvings in a Concord cemetery, gravestone art expert Sweeney St. George meets a frail young boy named Pres Whiting. Sweeney learns Pres is a descendent of the gravestone carver she is searching for, Josiah Whiting, and when they hear shots fired, Pres assures her they are from a Revolutionary War reenactment taking place. Walking Pres home, Pres finds a dead man dressed in a Revolutionary War soldier’s British uniform, and Sweeney immediately gets involved in solving the mystery. At the same time, Detective Tim Quinn is looking into a missing person case – a professor who liked to take part in historical reenactments and was in Concord recently. The stonecutter Sweeney is researching, Josiah, also was in a missing person in the area – in 1775 – and Sweeney and Tim pair up to find out if the three cases could be connected.

The third in her Sweeney St. George series, Sarah Stewart Taylor weaves the Revolutionary past together with modern day war reenactments. There is less gravestone art talk in this mystery compared to her other three novels, but the historical feel to the book is similar to her other titles. This book also explores a possible budding relationship between Sweeney and single father Tim, while Sweeney must evaluate her long distance relationship with Ian. For other reviews of this series, check out http://www.tcpl.org/sarah/2007/02/10-oartful-death-by-sarah-stewart.html and http://www.tcpl.org/sarah/2007/04/19-mansions-of-dead-by-sarah-stewart.html.

47. Revolution in Hungary: the 1956 Budapest Uprising by Erich Lessing

Photographer Erich Lessing has always been interested in politics, and is often referred to as a Cold War photographer. Lessing proposed that Life magazine do a series of articles on Communist countries, including Hungary, when Eastern European politics started to heat up in 1956. When a mass rally in Budapest on October 23, 1956 quickly escalated into the Hungarian Revolution, Lessing was able to enter Hungary by car from the Austrian border the following day and become the first photographer to arrive in Hungary to document the Revolution. Within days, millions of Hungarians were supporting the rallies, until it was stopped on November 4th by Soviet tanks and Hungarian police. In total, thousands of Hungarians and Soviets died, and close to 250,000 people fled the country.

This photography book is filled with 190 duotone photographs captured during those few days by Lessing. Filled in with text from Lessing, and Hungarian authors George Konrad and Francois Fetjo, readers get a sense what those days were like for normal Hungarians trying to protest in Budapest. Konrad’s essay, “A stroll in Budapest 1956” is especially well-written, and begins with the line: “On 23 October, I had never held a weapon; on 4 November, on the other hand, I had.” The book is separated into three parts, with photographs capturing Communist Hungary, the actual Revolution, and the failure of the Revolution. I was in Hungary last summer, shortly before the September 2006 protests, when anti-government protests erupted because of the Prime Minister’s leaked speech revealing that the Hungarian Socialist Party had lied to win the election, so I am interested in learning more about Hungary. This is a truly stunning photography book that also has excellent historical writing included.

46. The Various Haunts of Men by Susan Hill

A popular series in the UK, this is the first time Hill’s mysteries have been published in the US. The small town of Lafferton is generally quiet and picturesque. Police Detective Freya Graffham is new to the area and is enjoying the quiet country side compared to the busy hustle and bustle of being a London cop. Under her supervisor, Chief Inspector Simon Serrailler, she starts investigating a series of missing women in the area. First missing is nurse Angela Randall while she goes out for her morning run and is never seen again. When a young girl who has been suffering from depression and seeking alternative medicine cures disappears while walking on the Hill, police soon realize that a serial killer is involved.

Full of excellently drawn female characters, a perfect English country side setting, and the police team of Freya and Simon, this is a great English mystery writer to watch. There is definite sexual tension between Freya and Simon, and although Simon is barely developed in this novel, I have a feeling he will become a larger character as the series develops. The mystery novel also has a pretty shocking ending, one readers won’t necessarily expect, where a major character is killed off. Hill follows this mystery with Pure in the Heart, which comes out in the US in early November.