Fresh Ink: March 2020 edition

Fresh Ink is a monthly tally of new and forthcoming books—mainly advance review copies (aka “uncorrected proofs” and “galleys”)—I’ve received from publishers. Cover art and opening lines may change before the book is finally released. I should also mention that, in nearly every case, I haven’t had a chance to read these books, but they’re definitely going in the to-be-read pile.

The Last Bathing Beauty
by Amy Sue Nathan
(Lake Union Publishing)

Jacket Copy:  Everything seemed possible in the summer of 1951. Back then Betty Stern was an eighteen-year-old knockout working at her grandparents’ lakeside resort. The “Catskills of the Midwest” was the perfect place for Betty to prepare for bigger things. She’d head to college in New York City. Her career as a fashion editor would flourish. But first, she’d enjoy a wondrous last summer at the beach falling deeply in love with an irresistible college boy and competing in the annual Miss South Haven pageant. On the precipice of a well-planned life, Betty’s future was limitless. Decades later, the choices of that long-ago season still reverberate for Betty, now known as Boop. Especially when her granddaughter comes to her with a dilemma that echoes Boop’s memories of first love, broken hearts, and faraway dreams. It’s time to finally face the past—for the sake of her family and her own happiness. Maybe in reconciling the life she once imagined with the life she’s lived, Boop will discover it’s never too late for a second chance.

Opening Lines:  Any other bride might have gazed into the mirror, stepped away, and then glanced back over her shoulder for another peek. Not Betty. She hadn’t looked at herself once today, and in fact she’d avoided her reflection all week. She knew the person looking back from the mirror would not be her. Betty Claire Stern no longer existed. She wanted to say she died, but Betty was mindful of her reputation for melodrama.

Blurbworthiness:  “In this reimagining of Dirty Dancing, Nathan demonstrates expert storytelling when we meet the charismatic Betty ‘Boop’ Stern as a young woman, and also as an eighty-four-year-old as she looks back on a difficult choice that altered the path of her glittering future. Told with empathy and lyrical prose, The Last Bathing Beauty is a winning tale of friendship, regret, and second chances with a ring of endearing and spirited women at its heart.” (Heather Webb, author of Meet Me in Monaco)

Why It’s In My Stack:  It’s spring, there’s rotten snow clinging to the mountains in Montana, and I’m ready for something summery with beauty pageants, beach balls, and broken hearts. Even if that beach is in Michigan and not Atlantic City.

That Left Turn at Albuquerque
by Scott Phillips
(Soho)

Jacket Copy:  A hardboiled valentine to the Golden State, That Left Turn at Albuquerque marks the return of noir master Scott Phillips. Douglas Rigby, attorney-at-law, is bankrupt. He’s just sunk his last $200,000—a clandestine “loan” from his last remaining client, former bigshot TV exec Glenn Haskill—into a cocaine deal gone wrong. The lesson? Never trust anyone else with the dirty work. Desperate to get back on top, Rigby formulates an art forgery scheme involving one of Glenn’s priceless paintings, a victimless crime. But for Rigby to pull this one off, he’ll need to negotiate a whole cast of players with their own agendas, including his wife, his girlfriend, an embittered art forger, Glenn’s resentful nurse, and the man’s money-hungry nephew. One misstep, and it all falls apart—will he be able to save his skin? Written with hard-knock sensibility and wicked humor, Scott Phillips’s newest novel will cement him as one of the great crime writers of the 21st century.

Opening Lines:  Heading up the 5 and in a hyper-enervated state, he stopped in Mission Viejo at Manny’s Liquor and Variety Store, where he knew a working pay phone was attached to the brick wall outside. Scored and pitted, covered with graffiti and rust, for all Rigby knew it might have been the last one in Southern California. Next to it stood a skeletal derelict with a week’s growth of beard and stiff, ancient jeans gray with filth, looking as though he was waiting for a call. Rigby decided to go inside and buy a celebratory bottle, in case the tweaker decided to shove off on his own.
       This might be the seedier side of Mission Viejo, but that still meant a fine selection of champagnes and a patronizing sales clerk. “We have a nice Veuve Clicquot here for sixty-four ninety-nine,” he said, nostrils flaring, eyeing him sidelong. “I imagine that’d do you nicely.” Minus the condescension, that would have been fine for Rigby’s purposes, but he felt compelled to put the salesman in his place.
       “That’s white trash booze,” he said. “How much for the Krug?”
       “That’s vintage. 2003.”
       “Swell. How much?”
       “Three hundred nineteen dollars and ninety-nine cents.”
       “Great, and stick a bow on it.”

Blurbworthiness:  “Many writers bill themselves as noir, but if you want to experience what the word truly means, in its finest expression, then pick up That Left Turn at Albuquerque, a brutally funny, wickedly clever nightmare that heralds the triumphant return of Scott Phillips, the twenty-first century’s greatest purveyor of crime fiction.”  (Blake Crouch, author of Recursion)

Why It’s In My Stack:  I’m a huge fan of Phillips’ debut, The Ice Harvest; HUGE: as in, cut me with its pages and I bleed like a stuck two-timing embezzler caught with his red hands trying to hold his pants up. And my blood is black, noir black. I’m looking forward to suffering from many more cuts as I toss the pages to the left in That Left Turn at Albuquerque.

The Last Summer of Ada Bloom
by Martine Murray
(Tin House Books)

Jacket Copy:  In a small country town during one long, hot summer, the Bloom family is beginning to unravel. Martha is straining against the confines of her life, lost in regret for what might have been, when an old flame shows up. In turn, her husband Mike becomes frustrated with his increasingly distant wife. Marital secrets, new and long-hidden, start to surface―with devastating effect. And while teenagers Tilly and Ben are about to step out into the world, nine-year-old Ada is holding onto a childhood that might soon be lost to her. When Ada discovers an abandoned well beneath a rusting windmill, she is drawn to its darkness and danger. And when she witnesses a shocking and confusing event, the well’s foreboding looms large in her mind―a driving force, pushing the family to the brink of tragedy. For each family member, it’s a summer of searching―in books and trees, at parties, in relationships new and old―for the answer to one of life’s most difficult questions: how to grow up? The Last Summer of Ada Bloom is an honest and tender accounting of what it means to come of age as a teen, or as an adult. With a keen eye for summer’s languor and danger, and a sharp ear for the wonder, doubt, and longing in each of her characters’ voices, Martine Murray has written a beguiling story about the fragility of family relationships, about the secrets we keep, the power they hold to shape our lives, and about the power of love to somehow hold it all together.

Opening Lines:  Ada found a forgotten windmill. She was walking with PJ in the patch of bush between her house and Toby Layton’s. She was already nine and still wearing her jumper back to front. PJ was old and broad as a wombat, with three legs that worked, so he waddled along and Ada often had to stop and wait for him. She swished a stick, absentmindedly whacking at the teatree and singing over and over again, “Did you ever come to meet me, Farmer Joe, Farmer Joe?” She couldn’t remember the next line. She wasn’t sure the words were right, but because she was alone, and because it was her traveling-along song, she sang as loudly and confidently as a trumpet.

Blurbworthiness:  “The Bloom family will absolutely have your heart. Ada Bloom is a sweet, precocious girl traversing that strange territory on the edge of childhood. Her sister Tilly and brother Ben are testing the waters of adulthood, each in their own way. Their parents, Martha and Mark, are both tempted by people in their lives, old and new, in disastrous ways. Readers will be spellbound by this honest and tender accounting of each Bloom family member, told in a chorus of voices, revealing a intimate and flawed family portrait that leaves you feeling connected to everyone around you. Martine Murray's stunning debut is a true delight.”  (Julia Fierro, author of The Gypsy Moth Summer)

Why It’s In My Stack:  Frankly, just about anything Tin House Books decides to publish will get an automatic look from me. Their taste is impeccable and never disappointing. This debut novel looks especially good at glueing eyes to the page. A brief skim through the chapter openings assures me there is some good, tight writing waiting for me behind the deceptively-sunny cover.

A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth
by Daniel Mason
(Little, Brown)

Jacket Copy:  From the bestselling, award-winning author of The Winter Soldier and The Piano Tuner, a collection of interlaced tales of men and women facing the mysteries and magic of the world. On a fateful flight, a balloonist makes a discovery that changes her life forever. A telegraph operator finds an unexpected companion in the middle of the Amazon. A doctor is beset by seizures, in which he is possessed by a second, perhaps better, version of himself. And in Regency London, a bare-knuckle fighter prepares to face his most fearsome opponent, while a young mother seeks a miraculous cure for her ailing son. At times funny and irreverent, always moving and deeply urgent, these stories cap a fifteen-year project. From the Nile’s depths to the highest reaches of the atmosphere, from volcano-racked islands to an asylum on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, these are tales of ecstasy, epiphany, and what the New York Times Magazine called the “struggle for survival....hand to hand, word to word,” by “one of the finest prose stylists in American fiction.”

Opening Lines:  Born a winter child in the Bristol slums, in the quayside heap known only as “The Rat,” Jacob Burke, who would come to battle the great McGraw on that fateful day in 1824, was a son of the stevedore Isaac Burke and the seamstress Anne Murphy. He of Bristol, son of James, son of Tom, son of Zebedee, lifters all. She of Dublin and the cursed Gemini of Poverty and Fertility: Jacob was the twelfth of eighteen children, the third of the eight who lived.
       It was a common quayside childhood, of odd jobs and shoe-shining; of quinsy, croup, and the irresistible temptation of diving from the piers. He grew up quickly. Thick-necked, thick-shouldered, steel-fisted, tight-lipped, heavy-on-the-brow, the boy knew neither a letter nor the taste sweet until his tenth year, when, in the course of a single moon, he learned to sound out the rune on the shingle at Mulloy’s Arms and stole an apple from a costermonger on the road to Bath.

Blurbworthiness:  “An enchanting cabinet of curiosities and wonders... Mason is one of our best historical novelists, creating panoramas of rich detail, propulsive plot, and artful character development... In his first story collection, he shows how quickly and completely he can immerse readers in a foreign place and time... Nine tales of human endurance, accomplishment, and epiphany told with style and brio.”  (Kirkus Reviews)

Why It’s In My Stack:  The title hooks, but the contents reel me in. These stories have just enough variety in time and place to make me think I’m going to get a full package of entertainment in these pages. Register this one on my Must-Read List.

New Bad News
by Ryan Ridge
(Sarabande Books)

Jacket Copy:  In New Bad News, the frenetic and far-out worlds of fading celebrities, failed festival promoters, underemployed adjuncts, and overly aware chatbots collide. A Terminator statue comes to life at the Hollywood Wax Museum; a coyote laps up Colt 45, as a passerby looks on in existential quietude; a detective disappears while investigating a missing midwestern cam girl. Set in Kentucky, Hollywood, and the afterlife, these bright, bold short-shorts and stories construct an uncannily familiar, alternate-reality America.

Opening Lines:  These days he strums his guitar with an unregistered handgun in an alleyway at the Psychedelic Street Fair. The acoustics are astonishing.

Blurbworthiness:  “New Bad News is tenderness and mordancy awash with California moonlight and Kentucky ghosts, too. Ryan Ridge’s strange transmissions glow like buzzing neon in the dim and make us feel less weird and alone. This! This is a book of brilliant, zappy echoes we can touch.” (Leesa Cross-Smith, author of So We Can Glow)

Why It’s In My Stack:  Earlier in this space, I mentioned how my 2020 reading year was shaping up to be full of short stories (thus far, four collections have been added to the book log I keep). So what do the good folks at Sarabande Books do? They add balance another interesting-looking collection of short fiction at the top of the already teetering stack of my “must-reads.” In all honesty, I’m a sucker for flash fiction—the very very very short stories that are sometimes no longer than a few sentences (and occasionally not even that long)—and Ryan Ridge’s book looks like it’s full of some good quick-as-lightning, strong-as-thunder stories. The good news is I’ll be reading these soon.

The Mystery of Charles Dickens
by A. N. Wilson
(Harper)

Jacket Copy:  Charles Dickens was a superb public performer, a great orator and one of the most famous of the Eminent Victorians. Slight of build, with a frenzied, hyper-energetic personality, Dickens looked much older than his fifty-eight years when he died—an occasion marked by a crowded funeral at Westminster Abbey, despite his waking wishes for a small affair. Experiencing the worst and best of life during the Victorian Age, Dickens was not merely the conduit through whom some of the most beloved characters in literature came into the world. He was one of them. Filled with the twists, pathos, and unusual characters that sprang from this novelist’s extraordinary imagination, The Mystery of Charles Dickens looks back from the legendary writer’s death to recall the key events in his life. In doing so, he seeks to understand Dickens’ creative genius and enduring popularity. Following his life from cradle to grave, it becomes clear that Dickens’s fiction drew from his life—a fact he acknowledged. Like Oliver Twist, Dickens suffered a wretched childhood, then grew up to become not only a respectable gentleman but an artist of prodigious popularity. Dickens knew firsthand the poverty and pain his characters endured, including the scandal of a failed marriage. Going beyond standard narrative biography, A. N. Wilson brilliantly revisits the wellspring of Dickens’s vast and wild imagination, to reveal at long last why his novels captured the hearts of nineteenth century readers—and why they continue to resonate today.

Opening Lines:  “I have no relief, but in action. I am become incapable of rest...Much better to die, doing,” the hyper-energetic, over-sexed, tormented, exultant, hilarious, despondent Charles Dickens had written to a friend, thirteen years before he actually died.
       Dickens was good at dying. If you want a good death, go to the novels of Dickens.

Why It’s In My Stack:  If, at one of my public appearances, you have stood up and asked me to name my favorite author; if you have ever visited my home and spent any amount of time browsing my bookshelves; if you are a regular reader of this blog and have noticed that Charles Dickens is the most-tagged author in the ten-year history of The Quivering Pen, then it should be no mystery why A. N. Wilson’s biography of the great writer is in my stack. It is, in short, a rather big “duh.”

Last Mission to Tokyo
by Michel Paradis
(Simon and Schuster)

Jacket Copy:  In 1942, freshly humiliated from the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States was in search of a plan. President Roosevelt, determined to show the world that our nation would not be intimidated or defeated by enemy powers, demanded recommendations for a show of strength. Jimmy Doolittle, a stunt pilot with a doctorate from MIT, came forward, and led eighty young men, gathered together from the far-flung corners of Depression-era America, on a seemingly impossible mission across the Pacific. Sixteen planes in all, they only had enough fuel for a one-way trip. Together, the Raiders, as they were called, did what no one had successfully done for more than a thousand years. They struck the mainland of Japan and permanently turned the tide of the war in the Pacific. Almost immediately, The Doolittle Raid captured the public imagination, and has remained a seminal moment in World War II history, but the heroism and bravery of the mission is only half the story. In Last Mission to Tokyo, Michel Paradis reveals the dramatic aftermath of the mission, which involved two lost crews captured, tried, and tortured at the hands of the Japanese, a dramatic rescue of the survivors in the last weeks of World War II, and an international manhunt and trial led by two dynamic and opposing young lawyers—in which both the United States and Japan accused the other of war crimes—that would change the face of our legal and military history.

Opening Lines:  How do you tell a man that he will be killed tomorrow? Sotojiro Tatsuta confronted this question on the evening of Wednesday, October 14, 1942. He had just gotten off the phone with his boss in Nanking. As the warden of the Jiangwan Military Prison, the Japanese Army’s brig on the outskirts of Shanghai, China, this execution would be his responsibility.
       Tatsuta gathered the three American prisoners who would soon hear this news together. Higher-ups had spared the five other Americans, who were still back in their cells. Only these three men would be shot through the head the next morning. Tatsuta’s job was to organize it all, and at this moment, his job was to tell them.
       A skinny man with a gold tooth that tended to flash when he talked, Tatsuta was conflicted. Yes, these men were his enemies—or at least the enemies of Japan. Yes, they had been duly convicted of atrocities against his people. And yes, only three men would have to die tomorrow, instead of all eight, thanks to the mercy of Emperor Hirohito. But these kinds of rationalizations, all perfectly good and reasonable, were hard to keep at the front of his mind as he looked at the still living, breathing, blinking young men—barely more than boys, really—whose every hope, dream, fear, ambition, and debt would soon be rendered moot. A single bullet was scheduled to break through their foreheads, scramble their brains, and leave nothing but paperwork.

Blurbworthiness:  “Last Mission to Tokyo is a thoroughly compelling true story of legal intrigue in the most unexpected of settings. Impeccably researched and beautifully written, it captures the reader with the first sentence and never lets go.” (John Grisham, author of Camino Winds)

Why It’s In My Stack:  I’ve seen (and loved) the 1944 Spencer Tracy movie Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, but Paradis’ book adds an intriguing coda to the story of the mission with a courtroom drama that even has John Grisham applauding. And how about the final sentence of those opening lines I quoted above? Wowzers!

In the Valley
by Ron Rash
(Doubleday)

Jacket Copy:  From bestselling and award-winning writer Ron Rash comes a collection of ten searing stories and the return of the villainess who propelled Serena to national acclaim, in a long-awaited novella. Ron Rash has long been a revered presence in the landscape of American letters. A virtuosic novelist, poet, and story writer, he evokes the beauty and brutality of the land, the relentless tension between past and present, and the unquenchable human desire to be a little bit better than circumstances would seem to allow (to paraphrase Faulkner). In these ten stories, Rash spins a haunting allegory of the times we live in—rampant capitalism, the severing of ties to the natural world in the relentless hunt for profit, the destruction of body and soul with pills meant to mute our pain—and yet within this world he illuminates acts of extraordinary decency and heroism. Two of the stories have already been singled out for accolades: “Baptism” was chosen by Roxane Gay for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories 2018, and “Neighbors” was selected by Jonathan Lethem for The Best American Mystery Stories 2019. And in revisiting Serena Pemberton, Rash updates his bestselling parable of greed run amok as his deliciously vindictive heroine returns to the North Carolina wilderness she left scarred and desecrated to make one final effort to kill the child that threatens all she has accomplished.

Opening Lines:  They came at dawn, ground crackling beneath the trample of hooves, amid it the sound of chickens flapping and squawking.

Why It’s In My Stack:  This will be a good excuse to re-read one of my favorite books of the early 2000’s: Serena. As if I ever needed an excuse to read anything by the great Ron Rash.

My Year of Reading: Every Book I Read in 2016

This Was the Year

This was the year I killed it, reading-wise: 130 books, a new record since I started keeping track of my habits in 2005 (the year I was deployed to Iraq with the U.S. Army, I had loads of free time on my hands, and I read what now looks like a paltry 50 books).

This was the year when I read fewer new books (i.e., those released in the past 12 months) than ones published in other years: 56 vs. 74. Part of that had to do with my commitment to making headway on my Five-Year Reading Plan of the Essentials (though I still have a long way to go on that list), but part of it also had to do with the fact that I occasionally let my fancy go free and footloose through my library, pinballing from one book to the next, no matter what the publication date.

This was the year I re-discovered audiobooks. Rather than listening to Bruno Mars, Electric Light Orchestra, or Sia on my daily commute to and from the Day Job, I opted for Audible.com and the aural pleasures of Timothy West rolling the prose of Anthony Trollope trippingly off his tongue through The Warden, Barchester Towers, Doctor Thorne and Can You Forgive Her?. Richard Armitage also brought David Copperfield back to life for me on my second time through the classic novel (which now might just be my favorite Dickens of all time, nudging Dombey and Son from the top of the list).

This was the year of Anthony Trollope. When I go all in, I go really deep.

This was the year I got a library card. After being appointed to the Butte-Silver Bow Public Library Board earlier this year, I realized—with a bucketload of chagrin—that I had rarely darkened the doorway of our beautiful 122-year-old library here in Butte, Montana (and never to check out a book—gasp!). I quickly corrected the error of my ways by taking out a book by Lee Child.

This was the year of Lee Child. For years, family friend Marilyn has politely badgered me to read the bestselling author. “I think you’ll really like him,” she says every time she sees me. I mean every frickin' time, without fail. Finally, caving in and attempting to silence Marilyn’s hectoring once and for all, I checked out a copy of A Wanted Man from the library. Within twenty pages, I was convinced Marilyn was the smartest person on the planet. Not only did I “really like” Child, I loved him. I immediately started binging on Jack Reacher. He turned out to be the Lay’s potato chip of action heroes. At our Christmas party a few weeks ago, I pulled Marilyn aside and told her of my new-found love for all things Lee Child. “Great!” she said. “Now, let’s talk about David Baldacci...”

This was the year I read a book about a horrific plane crash (Fireball) while I was flying cross-country from Montana to Georgia. I survived my flight; Carole Lombard, unfortunately, did not walk away from hers.

This was the year I should have revived The Biography Project here at the blog since I read books about The Lives of Others (author Anthony Trollope, baseball legend Ted Williams, film actress Carole Lombard, and author Sinclair Lewis—the latter which I haven’t completely finished, so I’m carrying it over to my 2017 book log).

This was the year of Sinclair Lewis. I originally read Main Street as part of my Five-Year Plan, but enjoyed it so much, I moved on to several other time-tested classics by the Midwestern satirist. I binged him hard. Like Lee Child hard, like Anthony Trollope levels of intensity. (Come to think of it, this was the Year of Binge.) I’m not through with Lewis yet. I plan to read at least two more of his before this year is out: It Can’t Happen Here (because, sadly, it did, it did) and Dodsworth.

This was the year I was surprised by how bad some books could be, given their popularity and the bestselling reputation of the author (the children’s classic The Black Stallion and Alan Furst’s A Hero of France to name just two), but I was also pleasantly surprised by how truly great some relatively-unheralded titles turned out to be (Searching for John Hughes; Not All Fires Burn the Same; Wilderness; and every book by Nickolas Butler, which I gobbled down in quick succession—by the way, The Hearts of Men, which comes out this March, is the best of them all). I was also left feeling flatlined by books I expected to love but only liked (The Sisters Brothers, Zero K, Then We Came to the End, I’m Thinking of Ending Things).

This was the year my wife, feeling like a “book widow,” sighed in exasperation, “You know, you’ll never be able to read ALL THE BOOKS.”

This was the year I turned to her and replied, “Maybe not, but I’m gonna try.”

Crunching the Numbers

Sure, I read a lot of poetry books which typically clock in at less than 100 pages. And, yes, I read quite a few stand-alone novellas (mostly from the fabulous Ploughshares Solo series) that were often less than 50 pages. But for every whisper-thin poetry chapbook or novella, there were books the size of small Pacific islands (I’m looking at you, Mr. Anthony Trollope Novel!). The proof in my book pudding comes when I crunch the numbers to determine the average page count (yes, I note the number of pages in my book log—don’t you?). In 2016, I read a total of 32,584 pages (not counting the 606 pages in the Sinclair Lewis biography, which I’m rolling over into the 2017 book log). That puts me at an average page count of 251, lower than last year’s average of 304 (note to my 2017 self: fewer novellas, more Trollope). But nearly 33,000 pages still feels like a whole helluva lot. I mean, I could never eat 33,000 Oreos in one year no matter how hard I tried.

More stuff which is possibly interesting only to me:

• The shortest book was Confession (24 pages) by Bill Roorbach, the longest was David Copperfield (877 pages) by Charles Dickens
• 44 of the 130 were e-books
• 5 were audiobooks
• 56 were published in 2016, 3 were advance copies destined to be released in 2017 or beyond, and the rest were from prior years
• 89 were written by men, 37 by women, 4 were a mix of both (anthologies or collaborations), and 0 were written by cats

And now, without further ado, I give you...

ALL THE BOOKS I READ THIS YEAR

Mrs. McGinty’s Dead by Agatha Christie
Battleborn by Claire Vaye Watkins
Escape and Reverse by Chelsey Johnson
Confession by Bill Roorbach
Over on the Dry Side by Louis L’Amour
The Revenant by Michael Punke
Wilderness by Lance Weller
Up From the Blue by Susan Henderson
The Detroit Frankfurt Discussion Group by Douglas Trevor
All I Want Is What You’ve Got by Glen Chamberlain
This is What I Want by Craig Lancaster
The House on the Cliff by Franklin W. Dixon
Selected Poems by Theodore Roethke
A Walk in the Sun by Harry Brown
Dog Run Moon by Callan Wink
The Darkening Trapeze by Larry Levis
Hollywood and the Holocaust by Henry Gonshak
Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
The Other Felix by Keir Graff
Zero K by Don DeLillo
Galaxie Wagon by Darnell Arnoult
Tin House #66
Building Stories by Chris Ware
Look by Solmaz Sharif
Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
A Wanted Man by Lee Child
By the Iowa Sea by Joe Blair
Make Me by Lee Child
Dead Man’s Float by Jim Harrison
Daredevils by Shawn Vestal
Legends of the Fall by Jim Harrison
Men Be Either Or, But Never Enough by Andria Nacina Cole
Killing Floor by Lee Child
Cordoba Skies by Federico Falco
Unquiet Things by James Davis May
Reacher Said Nothing: Lee Child and the Making of Make Me by Andy Martin
The Black Stallion by Walter Farley
The Virginity of Famous Men by Christine Sneed
Little Known Facts by Christine Sneed
One Summer by Bill Bryson
Battle Rattle by Brandon Davis Jennings
Poems: New and Selected by Ron Rash
Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett
Night Sky With Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong
Into the Sun by Deni Ellis Bechard
Mississippi Noir edited by Tom Franklin
They Could Live With Themselves by Jodi Paloni
Still Come Home by Katey Schultz
56 Counties by Russell Rowland
The Warden by Anthony Trollope
The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett
Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
The Soul in Paraphrase by Robert Boswell
Beach Plum Jam by Patricia Buddenhagen
The Art of Departure by Craig Lancaster
They Were Strong and Good by Robert Lawson
McWhinney’s Jaunt by Robert Lawson
Canoe Country by Florence Page Jaques
Shotgun Lovesongs by Nickolas Butler
Sketchy Stories by Kerby Rosanes
The Echoing Green: Poems of Fields, Meadows, and Grasses edited by Cecily Parks
Marrow Island by Alexis M. Smith
ShallCross by C. D. Wright
I’m Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid
Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis
Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler
Liar’s Code by Rich Chiappone
Beneath the Bonfire by Nickolas Butler
The Hearts of Men by Nickolas Butler
The Walking Dead #1 by Robert Kirkman
Classic Penguin: Cover to Cover by Paul Buckley
There Now by Eamon Grennan
Bestiary by Donika Kelly
Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope
Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury
Exceptional Mountains by O. Alan Weltzien
Glimmer Train Stories #96 Spring/Summer 2016 (with a story by Yours Truly)
Melancholy Accidents by Peter Manseau
Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis
The Queen of the Night by Alexander Chee
Closer All the Time by Jim Nichols
99 Poems by Dana Gioia
Searching for John Hughes by Jason Diamond
Nancy’s Mysterious Letter by Carolyn Keene
Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan
The Hour of Land by Terry Tempest Williams
The State We’re In by Ann Beattie
Splitting an Order by Ted Kooser
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
The Confusion of Languages by Siobhan Fallon
Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson
The Good Soldiers by David Finkel
Footing Slow: A Walk with Keats by Eli Payne Mandel
Trending Into Maine by Kenneth Roberts
The Pugilist at Rest by Thom Jones
Koppargruva by Hugh Coyle
Ghosts by Raina Telgemeier
Landscape with Headless Mama by Jennifer Givhan
The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt
Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King
The Iliad by Homer (Robert Fagels, translator)
A Hero of France by Alan Furst
Fireball: Carole Lombard and the Mystery of Flight 3 by Robert Matzen
Anthony Trollope by Victoria Glendinning
Not All Fires Burn the Same by Francine Witte
Night School by Lee Child
Dr. Wortle’s School by Anthony Trollope
The Door That Always Opens by Julie Funderburk
The Black Echo by Michael Connelly
Ninety-Nine Stories of God by Joy Williams
Can You Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope
The Wrong Side of Goodbye by Michael Connelly
My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout
The Snow Goose by Paul Gallico
The Mothers by Brit Bennett
The Clothing of Books by Jhumpa Lahiri
Snowflake by Paul Gallico
Miracle in the Wilderness by Paul Gallico
Afterward by Edith Wharton
One Who Saw by A. M. Burrage
The Crown Derby Plate by Marjorie Bowen
The Diary of Mr. Poynter by M. R. James
The Mistletoe Murder and Other Stories by P. D. James
Waterlines by Alison Pelegrin
The Signalman by Charles Dickens
Christmas Days by Jeanette Winterson
Wintering by Peter Geye
The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams by Ben Bradlee Jr.

Friday Freebie: Above the Waterfall and Something Rich and Strange by Ron Rash and Darkness the Color of Snow by Thomas Cobb

Congratulations to Barbara Aiello, winner of last week’s Friday Freebie: The Sweetheart Deal by Polly Dugan.

This week’s book giveaway is the triple crown of Above the Waterfall and Something Rich and Strange: Selected Stories by Ron Rash and Darkness the Color of Snow by Thomas Cobb. Read on for more information about the novels and the short story collection.

In Above the Waterfall, a poetic and haunting tale set in contemporary Appalachia, New York Times bestselling author Ron Rash illuminates lives shaped by violence and a powerful connection to the land. Les, a long-time sheriff just three weeks from retirement, contends with the ravages of crystal meth and his own duplicity in his small Appalachian town. Becky, a park ranger with a harrowing past, finds solace amid the lyrical beauty of this patch of North Carolina. Enduring the mistakes and tragedies that have indelibly marked them, they are drawn together by a reverence for the natural world. When an irascible elderly local is accused of poisoning a trout stream, Les and Becky are plunged into deep and dangerous waters, forced to navigate currents of disillusionment and betrayal that will force them to question themselves and test their tentative bond—and threaten to carry them over the edge. Echoing the heartbreaking beauty of William Faulkner and the spiritual isolation of Carson McCullers, Above the Waterfall demonstrates once again the prodigious talent of “a gorgeous, brutal writer” (Richard Price) hailed as “one of the great American authors at work today” (Janet Maslin, New York Times).

And now a word about Something Rich and Strange: From the acclaimed, New York Times bestselling award-winning author of Serena and The Cove, thirty of his finest short stories, collected in one volume. No one captures the complexities of Appalachia—a rugged, brutal landscape of exquisite beauty—as evocatively and indelibly as author and poet Ron Rash. Winner of the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, two O Henry prizes, and a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, Rash brilliantly illuminates the tensions between the traditional and the modern, the old and new south, tenderness and violence, man and nature. Though the focus is regional, the themes of Rash’s work are universal, striking an emotional chord that resonates deep within each of our lives. Something Rich and Strange showcases this revered master’s artistry and craftsmanship in thirty stories culled from his previously published collections Nothing Gold Can Stay, Burning Bright, Chemistry, and The Night New Jesus Fell to Earth. Each work of short fiction demonstrates Rash’s dazzling ability to evoke the heart and soul of this land and its people—men and women inexorably tethered to the geography that defines and shapes them. Filled with suspense and myth, hope and heartbreak, told in language that flows like “shimmering, liquid poetry” (Atlanta Journal Constitution), Something Rich and Strange is an iconic work from an American literary virtuoso.

Like No Country for Old Men and Snow Falling on Cedars, Darkness the Color of Snow is a haunting, suspenseful, and dazzlingly written novel of secrets, corruption, tragedy, and vengeance from the author of Crazy Heart—the basis of the 2009 Academy Award-winning film. Darkness the Color of Snow is an electrifying crime drama and psychological thriller in which a young cop becomes the focal point for a community’s grief and rage in the aftermath of a tragic accident. Out on a rural highway on a cold, icy night, Patrolman Ronny Forbert sits in his cruiser trying to keep warm and make time pass until his shift ends. Then a familiar beater Jeep Cherokee comes speeding over a hill, forcing the rookie cop to chase after it. The driver is his old friend turned nemesis, Matt Laferiere, the rogue son of a man as beaten down as the town itself. Within minutes, what begins as a clear-cut arrest for drunk driving spirals out of control into a heated argument between two young men with a troubled past and ends in a fatal hit and run on an icy stretch of blacktop. As the news spreads around town, Police Chief Gordy Hawkins remains certain that Ronny Forbert followed the rules, at least most of them, and he’s willing to stand by the young cop. But a few manipulative people in town see opportunity in the tragedy. As uneasy relationships, dark secrets, and old grievances reveal themselves, the people of this small, tightly woven community decide that a crime must have been committed, and someone—Officer Ronny Forbert—must pay a price, a choice that will hold devastating consequences for them all.

If you’d like a chance at winning all three books, simply email your name and mailing address to

thequiveringpen@gmail.com

Put FRIDAY FREEBIE in the e-mail subject line.  One entry per person, please.  Despite its name, the Friday Freebie runs all week long and remains open to entries until midnight on Aug. 27, at which time I’ll draw the winning name.  I’ll announce the lucky reader on Aug. 28.  If you’d like to join the mailing list for the once-a-week newsletter, simply add the words “Sign me up for the newsletter” in the body of your email.  Your email address and other personal information will never be sold or given to a third party (except in those instances where the publisher requires a mailing address for sending Friday Freebie winners copies of the book).

Want to double your odds of winning?  Get an extra entry in the contest by posting a link to this webpage on your blog, your Facebook wall or by tweeting it on Twitter.  Once you’ve done any of those things, send me an additional e-mail saying “I’ve shared” and I’ll put your name in the hat twice.

Book Radar: Ron Rash, Geraldine Brooks, Rick Moody, Mark Lawrence

Book Radar rounds up some of the latest publishing deals which have caught my eye, gathered from reports at Publishers Marketplace, Galley Cat, office water-coolers and other places where hands are shaken and promises are made.  As with anything in the fickle publishing industry, dates and titles are subject to change.


1.  From Publishers Lunch comes the announcement of this sale:

Ron Rash's untitled novel, about two brothers who share responsibility for a murder, and a collection of poetry, to Megan Lynch at Ecco.

If it weren't for the Oxford comma, I might have thought this was a single work about two killers who also write poetry. But I assume this is a two-fer deal, which means we'll get a novel and another poetry book from one of my favorite contemporary authors. Here's hoping this new collection follows in the footsteps of his earlier release, Waking, which I particularly enjoyed.

2.  This next novel coming from Geraldine Brooks (author of People of the Book and March) really has me intrigued: Horse, about a famous racehorse and a missing masterpiece, moving from match races in the antebellum South to the salons and paint-spattered studios of the 1950s New York art world at the dawn of abstract expressionism, set as the Civil War ignites, threatening both a beloved horse and an irreplaceable painting. It's forthcoming from Viking....in 2020. In the meantime, Brooks fans can anticipate this Fall's release: The Secret Chord, a novel about Biblical King David's life. Cue "Hallelujah."

3.  Here's another book to put on your long-range radar: Rick Moody's The Long Accomplishment, a new memoir on marriage and love. It will be a month-by-month account of the first year of his second marriage, to artist Laurel Nakadate,  and will be published in 2017.

4.  Finally, of possible interest for those of you who are fans of Nuns With Guns literature comes Red Sister by Mark Lawrence, author of Prince of Thorns. This new one is billed as an "epic fantasy trilogy about a girl of unique abilities who is taken away by an abbess to join an order of fighting nuns" and is scheduled for publication in Spring 2017.

My First Time: Jennifer Murphy

Nataworry Photography

My First Time is a regular feature in which writers talk about virgin experiences in their writing and publishing careers, ranging from their first rejection to the moment of holding their first published book in their hands.  Today’s guest is Jennifer Murphy, author of I Love You More, a debut novel about a murdered serial lover which Kirkus calls "a thoughtfully written, original and entertaining exploration of events ignited by love and lies."  Over the course of her writing career, Jennifer has studied writing with Joyce Maynard, Ann Hood, Ursula Hegi, Lynn Freed, Helena Maria Viramontes, Stacey d'Erasmo, Helen Schulman, Karen Shepard, Whitney Otto, and Ron Rash.  She is a regular attendee of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference as well as the Tin House conference.  Jennifer holds a BFA, MA, and MFA in visual art and architecture and is the founder and president of Citi Arts, a public art and urban planning firm.  She is currently pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Washington in Seattle.  Click here to visit her website.

My First Non-Pretend Published Novel

I used to fly a lot for my (real) job, and I don’t know what it is about me, but no matter how hard I tried to ignore the person sitting next to me, he or she wasn’t having it.  It was like cats–you know, whenever you ignore them, they rub all over you?  What’s worse is that I looked forward to those few hours in the air.  It was “virtual” time, time without borders, time without physicality, time when I could fade into my own space and write.

“What are you writing?” he or she would ask, even though I was clearly engrossed.

I’d get immediately irritated.  “I mean, seriously,” I wanted to say.  “Can’t you see that I don’t want to talk to you?  I haven’t made eye contact with you.  I haven’t smiled.  I didn’t even look up when you were loudly and chaotically organizing your person, or when you hemmed and hawed about getting the aisle instead of the window.”  Invariably, being the polite person I was taught to be, I’d try to think up some nice, but curt response that would nip the conversation.  I couldn’t tell him or her that I was writing a novel because though I was, technically I wasn’t.  Can you call it a novel when you don’t have an agent or publishing contract?  Because certainly the next question my row mate would ask is when and where they could buy it, or they’d tell me about the novel they planned to write.  I didn’t want to say I was working on some sort of report for work because then I was risking the, “What do you do?” question.

Now my job wasn’t easy to describe.  I wrote master plans for the creation of public art programs.  Not surprisingly, most people didn’t know what a master plan was, or a public art program for that matter, which just raised a bunch more questions.  So usually I just smiled and said, “A thesis on the mating rituals of the Pygmy Marmoset.”  Generally, that shut them up.

I remember the exact day I told a woman sitting next to me the truth.  There was just something about her, a kind face, warm smile.  Or maybe it had something to do with my long day, the politics of the job I was working on, or the three glasses of wine each of us had had, but I was feeling like I’d met my new BFF.  I was aglow with bonding potential and the prospect of sharing my deepest secrets with her like I once had with my best friend Cindy Bishop, who lived down the street from me.

“I’m writing a novel,” I said.

“You are?” she asked.  “How wonderful.  I love to read.  What’s it about?”

I gave her some long explanation, which included a bunch of plot points and character names, which should have been my first clue to the fact that I wasn’t writing a novel at all.  More like a long, drawn out manifesto.  But, this woman being the sweet, nurturing person she was, took out a pad and paper and wrote down my name and the title of the book.  And I mean, wow.

Sometimes I think about that woman, and I wonder if she’s still looking for that book, which of course she’ll never find, because it never got published, and neither did the next one I wrote.  But the thing is, during those few flight hours, with her help, I’d allowed myself to pretend otherwise.  In that moment I was a soon-to-be published author, and the way that felt, the exhilaration, the pride, the sense of accomplishment was like nothing else.  After that whenever I flew, though I didn’t tell anyone else the truth of what I was writing, I told myself.  I’d pretend I had an agent.  I’d pretend the novel was getting published.  I’d pretend I was an author.  Sometimes I’d pretend so well that I could actually see it.  But then the pilot would announce our landing, and I’d close my notebook or my computer, and really and literally come back to earth.

For many years I only wrote on airplanes, or late at night after my daughter was asleep.  I was a single mom, and balancing my writing life with my work and family lives was challenging.  For many years (the exact number will go unsaid) I wrote and wrote and wrote whenever I could fit it in, and as previously indicated I finished more than one novel.  Sometimes what I finished went right into a drawer or a computer file, but twice I thought what I’d finished was worthy of publication, so I did what every starry-eyed (read green) writer does.  I sent it out.   And I got the standard rejection letters.   Always polite.  Generally more than merely form letters.  Often encouraging.  But by then I’d all but convinced myself that writing was no more than a guilty pleasure.  I’d gotten remarried, so I was clearly writing at the expense of more important obligations.  I needed to be a better friend, a better mom, a better wife.  And who was I fooling?  What made me think that I, out of all the brilliant and talented writers out there, would be published?

Seven years ago, I decided to give up.  Not on writing.  I’ll never give up on writing.  I gave up on pretending.  Instead, I decided to just write without the pressure of worrying about publication.  I decided to explore the craft of writing.  I decided that meant I should attend a writing conference.  I lived in North Carolina and there was this small conference in the Blue Ridge Mountains called Wildacres.  I sent in my writing sample, got in, went, and met the folks that would change my life: actual writing friends, and an actual novelist workshop teacher–Ann Hood.  Ann was the first person other than my good friends who told me I was a good writer.  The next year I went to Tin House and then Bread Loaf.  I got thrown some hard criticism.  I cried.  I thought I sucked.  I received positive feedback.  I thought I didn’t suck.  I was told, “this is an interesting concept (about my synopsis) but it’s not on the page.”  I had no idea what that meant.  I thought I more than sucked.  I met a few agents, all of whom very nicely told me to send them my novel when it was finished, all of whom I saw again the following year, all with whom I periodically checked in.  But, though I guess you could call this networking, that’s all I did.

In those six conference years, which included two Wildacres, two Tin Houses, and five Bread Loafs, I never once sent anyone anything.  Perhaps all those previous rejections and the tough workshop feedback had shattered my confidence, or perhaps it had something to do with being around all that amazing talent–clearly people much more talented than I–or perhaps I’d just not been sending stuff out for so long that it had become my story, but I’d take the cards those agents or editors gave me, stare at their names and their agency or publisher logos, and for whatever reason tell myself I wasn’t ready yet.  I needed to get better, I needed to write something more amazing, and in the meantime I just needed to write.  Write for the sake of writing.

You’ve probably figured out by now that this story has a happy ending, but I must say it came about in the most unusual manner.  My husband and I were having an argument.  I’d cut back my real job work schedule because it was giving me major anxiety attacks and, truthfully, so I could also write more.  AND I’d decided I wanted to get my MFA in Creative Writing.  My diminished workload had greatly challenged our financial situation, and this on top of spending even more money for school, had gotten us to the point that we’d need to consider lifestyle changes.  So maybe it wasn’t exactly an argument as much as it was a Come-to-Jesus.  We said a lot to each other that night–all good and valuable of course–but what I remember the most was him saying something like, “Jen, if you want to write instead of work you might want to consider taking a risk and sending something out,” which ticked me off.  So I went upstairs, opened the novel I’d just finished and pushed Send.

Three days later I had an agent, Mitchell Waters with Curtiss Brown, a few months later I Love You More was purchased by Doubleday, and around a year-and-a-half later, it was a real book.

I’ve heard many stories about how authors got their first novels published, and everyone has a unique story, but there are three things most of us seem to have in common: it took several years to get there, the ride was circuitous, and no matter how many years it took them or how many stops and starts there were along the way, ultimately the ride was worth it.

So my advice to other writers out there is this: Keep writing and keep sending your work out.  It just takes one agent.  It just takes one editor.  I say this while thinking back on that plane ride with that woman whose name I now can’t remember.  I’ll call her Josephine.  She looked kind of like a Josephine.

“Josephine, if you’re out there, just in case you’re still looking for a book by some slightly inebriated woman you met on a flight from San Diego to Charlotte eight years ago, there really is one now.”