Front Porch Books is a monthly tally of books—mainly advance review copies (aka "uncorrected proofs" and "galleys")—I've received from publishers, but also sprinkled with packages from Book Mooch, Amazon and other sources. Because my dear friends, Mr. FedEx and Mrs. UPS, leave them with a doorbell-and-dash method of delivery, I call them my Front Porch Books. In this digital age, ARCs are also beamed to the doorstep of my Kindle via NetGalley and Edelweiss. Note: most of these books won't be released for another 2-6 months; I'm just here to pique your interest and stock your wish lists. Cover art and opening lines may change before the book is finally released.
There’s no way to ignore the warmongering on Fox News, though Ava is trying. The screen takes up half the wall. Hours ago, it seems, she searched for the remote to lower the volume, but no luck. She went so far as to ask Murray to turn it off, but instead he began jabbering about our brave boys, keeping the country safe, on and on like he knew something no one else did. That sent her mind reeling back to the evening her son pulled her onto the couch to watch the invasion of Iraq. Shock and Awe, he said, repeating what he’d heard the newscasters call it. Then, too, she wanted to close her eyes. She told him the sights were frightening, nothing to celebrate, but it didn’t dampen Bobby’s childish excitement. That scared her, too. No one seems bothered by the TV. The party is in this room where the food table and bar are set up, where wraparound windows allow only blueberry darkness, where vaulted ceilings create echoes as people talk and gesture and take up space. If she could find a corner to be alone—to hide, actually—it would help, but no luck there either. She avoids parties, fears the expectations, the false gaiety, and worse, strangers’ idle curiosity.I'm looking forward to reading the rest of Stop Here—which, by all appearances, deserves to be heard above all that warmongering chatter on Fox News.
Maybe another glass of wine, but her head feels spacey, her fingers tingle, and when she tries to breathe deep her body tenses. It’s been a while since anxiety dogged her, though it happened a lot after her husband was killed. Damn TV. It’s boring through her senses.
Pitt stood shivering on the steps leading up from the areaway to the pavement and looked down at the clumps of blood and hair at his feet. There was blood on the shards of glass as well, and some of it had already congealed. Splinters lay on the steps below and above. The January wind whined across the open stretch towards the gravel pits in the distance.Here's the Jacket Copy to tell us more about the gore on those steps:
"And the maid is missing?" Pitt asked quietly.
"Yes, and sorry, sir," the police sergeant said unhappily. His young face was set hard in the grey early morning light. "Thought that seeing whose house it was, like, we should call you straight away."
"You did the right thing," Pitt assured him.
As commander of the powerful Special Branch, Thomas Pitt has the job of keeping Britain safe from spies and traitors. So there’s no obvious reason why he is suddenly ordered to investigate two minor incidents: the blood, hair, and shards of glass discovered outside the home of naval weapons expert Dudley Kynaston, and the simultaneous disappearance of Mrs. Kynaston’s beautiful lady’s maid. But weeks later, when the mutilated body of an unidentified young woman is found near Kynaston’s home, Pitt realizes that this is no ordinary police investigation. Far from it. Is Kynaston—one of Britain’s most valuable scientists—leading a double life? Is Pitt saddled with a conspiracy so devilishly clever that it will ruin him? A baffled Pitt has never needed his friends more desperately, including his indomitable wife, Charlotte; his canny old colleague Victor Narraway; and his personal drawing-room spy, Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould. But even these allies may not be able to save Pitt—or Britain.
Former foreign correspondent Lola Wicks is getting a little bored in Magpie, Montana, where she landed at a small local newspaper after being downsized from her job in Kabul. Then Judith Calf Looking, a local Blackfeet girl missing for several months, turns up dead in a snowbank with a mysterious brand on her forearm. The sheriff—whose romantic relationship with Lola provides Magpie with its most delicious gossip in years—thinks Judith probably froze to death while hitch-hiking back to the reservation from wherever she’d been. But Lola hears rumors that Judith had been working as an exotic dancer in the North Dakota oil fields, and further discovers that several Blackfeet girls, all known drug users, have gone missing over the past year. She heads out to the oil patch to check things out, only to find herself in a place where men outnumber women a hundred to one, the law looks the other way, and life—especially her own—is cheap. Dakota shows the frightening underside of a boom-and-bust economy; of the effect on a small town when big-city money washes in, accompanied by hordes of men far from their families; of what happens when the old rules no longer apply, but the new ones are yet to be determined.With the current boom-or-bust growth on the Bakken oil fields in Montana and the Dakotas, Florio's new mystery couldn't be more timely.
Dear Byrd,As you can see, there's some fine writing in those Opening Lines, a sparkle-promise of good things to come in the rest of the novel. I'm not even off the first page and I'm already invested in the lives of these characters. That's the power of tight, controlled writing—so, kudos to Ms. Church! Here's the Jacket Copy to tell us more about Byrd and his parents:
This is how I told your father.
We climbed up on his roof. We could see the ocean, wrinkles of light in the distance. I was wearing a billowy cotton skirt. I wanted to look soft, unthreatening, unselfconsciously pretty. I wanted your father to love me. My legs were pale, not used to sun in winter. I had painted my toenails lavender. I wanted him to be a little sorry he hadn't loved me all along.
The roof of his apartment was flat, asphalt. All grit and sparkle.
He was glad to see me, he said. He didn't ask why I'd come back.
He unfolded an orange blanket from his sofa bed and we laid out our picnic: smoothies, crinkle-cut fries from his favorite stand on the beach, canned peaches from his kitchen, and barbecue I'd brought from home, packed on dry ice. So much food. I had to make myself eat. I chewed slowly, counting each bite, the way you're supposed to, though I couldn't remember how high to count.
A warm breeze ruffled my skirt.
Your father offered to spike my smoothie, but I covered my cup with my hand.
I wish I could tell you we were young, inexperienced, not yet grownups or ready to be. That's the story you're expecting, isn't it?
We were thirty-two. We'd grown up together. Everything about the afternoon—our picnic, the roof, the sun, the salty air, your father's pilled orange blanket, him sitting close and warm beside me—had been coming all our lives.
Addie Lockwood believes in books. Roland Rhodes believes in blues guitar. Coming of age in the small-town South of the 1970s, they form an unlikely friendship that makes each of them feel, if only for a little while, extraordinary. They meet again in their disillusioned thirties, this time in California, where Roland’s music career has landed him. Venice Beach is exotic, a world away from North Carolina and Addie’s cloistered life as a bookstore clerk. But when their whirlwind reunion leaves Addie pregnant, reality sets in. Conflicted, unready to be a mother, she gives birth and surrenders her baby for adoption without telling Roland, little imagining how the secret will shape their lives. Told through sharply-drawn vignettes and Addie's letters to her son, Byrd is an unforgettable story about making and living with the most difficult, intimate, and far-reaching of choices.Blurbworthiness: "This protagonist is so appealing, with her unflinching moral candor, her mistakes based on generous instincts. The prose is lilting, joyous. This novel—about young lives that start out full of promise, falter, then recover—is a hard luck story that will make you feel good." (Debra Monroe, author of On the Outskirts of Normal)
Afghan Post begins in 2001 with the attack on the World Trade Center and follows Adrian’s journey from Yale English major to U.S. Army captain in letters and journal entries. Over the course of the memoir, under the strain of war, Adrian’s identity splits and splits again as he maintains different correspondences with friends and family, fellow veterans, and himself. The tectonic shifts in relationships, mental states, and levels of physical danger cause Adrian to reevaluate his rejection of the many paths that were available to him post-graduation in favor of volunteering for military service. He left the Army as a decorated captain in 2012 after two tours.Blurbworthiness: "This is one of the best memoirs to emerge from our recent wars. It is painfully honest as we see the author grow from being a narcissistic Yalie weenie who judges the 'aesthetics' of paratrooping to an Airborne captain who revels in commanding an infantry company in combat—and then is crushed by it. One way to thank vets for their service is to read this book." (Thomas E. Ricks, author of The Generals)
So there's video footage of me not washing my hands in the bathroom at work. My dad says it's the kind of the thing that can tank his whole business. That he has to be extra careful. Don't I understand?The Jacket Copy only offers a small hint of the plot—but it's enough for me: "Over the course of one shift working the window of his father's drive-through urinal, our sixteen-year-old Flushboy will have to not only juggle gallons of warm pee and deal with the worst flood ever (it's not water), but he'll also have to fend off the urine mafia, solve the citywide mystery of Chickenstein, and win his girlfriend back." Wait—did he just say drive-through urinal? Hmmm....I'd better sit down for this.
Usually when he's spewing all this, I just stand there.
Last week I was his show-and-tell for Sunday school class. We wore matching ties, and I was under strict orders not to smile or look sly. Some of those people were his customers, after all.
I don't know.
Anyway, bam, yeah, the camera caught me: I ran the water but didn't wash my hands. Even pulled down a paper towel or two because that's the kind of thing you can hear through a metal door.
So, really, it's two crimes: bad hygiene and wasting paper towels.
For the last twenty years Sir James Monmouth has journeyed all over the globe in the footsteps of his hero, the great pioneering traveler Conrad Vane. In an effort to learn more about Vane’s early life—and his own—Sir James sets off for the remote Kittiscar Hall on a cold and rainy winter night. But he soon begins to feel as though something is warning him away at every turn; there are the intense feelings of being watched and the strange apparitions of a sad little boy. And as he learns more about his hero’s past, he discovers that they are only the beginning, for Kittiscar Hall is hiding terrible secret that will bind their lives together in ways he could never have imagined.Remote English manors, boy ghosts, terrible secrets? Yep, I'm already on my way. I look no further than the Opening Lines to help set the mood:
London, and the library of my Club, toward the end of an afternoon in late November, that bleak, dispiriting time of year when the golden Indian summer days that lingered on through October seem long gone, and it is yet too early to feel the approaching cheer of Christmas.Blurbworthiness: "Thanks to Hill’s deceptively simple plots and straightforward prose, you won’t even notice the noose she’s slipping around your throat." (The Seattle Times)
Outside in the streets the air was raw and a light mizzle greased the pavements, and had chilled my face and damped the sleeves of my coat.
Madeline Altimari is a smart-mouthed, precocious nine-year-old and an aspiring jazz singer. As she mourns the recent death of her mother, she doesn't realize that on Christmas Eve Eve she is about to have the most extraordinary day—and night—of her life. After bravely facing down mean-spirited classmates and rejection at school, Madeline doggedly searches for Philadelphia's legendary jazz club The Cat's Pajamas, where she's determined to make her on-stage debut. On the same day, her fifth-grade teacher Sarina Greene, who's just moved back to Philly after a divorce, is nervously looking forward to a dinner party that will reunite her with an old high school crush, afraid to hope that sparks might fly again. And across town at The Cat's Pajamas, club owner Lorca discovers that his beloved haunt may have to close forever, unless someone can find a way to quickly raise the $30,000 that would save it. As these three lost souls search for love, music and hope on the snow-covered streets of Philadelphia, together they will discover life's endless possibilities over the course of one magical night.I'm already entranced by the Opening Lines:
Silent flurries fall in the city. Actors walking home from a cast party on Broad Street try to catch them on their tongues. The ingenue, landing one on her hot cheek, dissolves into a fit of laughter. In Fishtown a nightmare trebles through the nose and paws of a dog snoozing under construction flats. The stone deity that rules the Rittenhouse Square fountain switches to life with a pronouncement of water while Curtis Hall musicians, late for final rehearsal, arpeggiate through the park. The flurries somersault, reconsider, double back. The alleys of 9th Street bear witness as they softly change their minds.Blurbworthiness: "2 a.m. at the Cat's Pajamas is as winning and funny as the nine year-old at its heart, and I love it for the way its protagonists turn their back on their city’s cruddiness and their own losses to proclaim their happiness to be in this world. They offer wryness as the antidote to self-pity and benevolence as the antidote to isolation, and they demonstrate how even the most forsaken can turn themselves into a warm, dry house." (Jim Shepard, author of Like You’d Understand, Anyway)
The German puts his hands behind his head, biting at his lower lip, and gets down on his knees. He's looking at the ground, and his helmet tilts forward over his eyes, but he's too scared to move it. "Nicht Schießen," he says. "Nicht Schießen." He keeps repeating that in these short, stabbing whispers, like he's talking to himself, talking to God. Sergeant McKnight's watching him, kicking at the dirt, that vein in his forehead getting fat. He orders Rakowski and Dufresne to take the Jerry to the rear, so they each grab an elbow and haul the German off the ground and start heading back toward the wall....When Vanderbes first mentions that fat vein on McKnight's forehead, we just know there's going to be trouble. I also love the movement in that last sentence—linguistically and literally—which starts off at a walk, then breaks into a run, hurrying toward the finality of the pop just before the period. If the remainder of the book is this good, then we're all in for a treat. But what is the rest of the novel about, you ask? Here's the Jacket Copy to explain:
McKnight's looking at me. "Stop batting your fucking eyelashes at every Jerry," he says. Just as Rakowski and Dufresne get close to the wall, McKnight signals them to let go of the sniper. So the German's standing there all alone, his helmet still tilted, and McKnight trains his rifle on him. McKnight's just waiting, waiting for him to start moving, and finally the Jerry takes one step, then another, and soon he's walking, walking faster, staring at the ground, breaking into a run, and I hear a gun go pop.
1943: When seventeen-year-old Juliet Dufresne receives a cryptic letter from her enlisted older brother pleading for help, and then finds out he’s been reported missing overseas, she lies about her age and volunteers as an army nurse to find him. Shy and awkward, Juliet is thrust into the bloody chaos of a field hospital, living in a sprawling encampment north of Rome where she forges new friendships with her fellow nurses and is increasingly consumed by the plight of her patients. One in particular, Christopher Barnaby, a deserter awaiting court martial, may hold the answer to her brother’s fate—but the trauma of war has left him unable to speak. Racing against the clock, Juliet works with an enigmatic young psychiatrist, Henry Willard, to heal Barnaby’s psychic wound before the authorities take him away and any clues as to her brother’s fate are forever lost. Plunged into the horrifying depths of one man’s combat memories, Juliet and Willard are forced to plumb the moral nuances of a so-called just war, and to face the dangers of their own deepening connection. Reminiscent of Pat Barker’s Regeneration, The Secret of Raven Point is a war saga capturing the experiences of soldiers after the battles have ended. And as few novels have done, it depicts the ravages of war through the eyes of a young woman.I can't be certain, but I think the person narrating the prologue might be the shell-shocked Barnaby; and, unless I'm further mistaken, Vanderbes is hinting that he's gay ("Stop batting your fucking eyelashes at every Jerry"). If so, this is setting up a nice tension for an already-promising narrative.
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