Tom Parker

Cane River

admin — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 06:55:55 +0000

Author: Lalita Tademy. Lalita Tademy’s riveting family saga chronicles four generations of women born into slavery along the Cane River in Louisiana. It is also a tale about the blurring of racial boundaries: great-grandmother Elisabeth notices an unmistakable “bleaching of the line” as first her daughter Suzette, then her granddaughter Philomene, and finally her great-granddaughter Emily choose (or are forcibly persuaded) to bear the illegitimate offspring of the area’s white French planters. In many cases these children are loved by their fathers, and their paternity is widely acknowledged. However, neither state law nor local custom allows them to inherit wealth or property, a fact that gives Cane River much of its narrative drive.

The Man Who Took a Bite Out of His Wife and Other Stories

admin — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 06:52:07 +0000

Author: Bev Jafek. Jafek’s surreal, postmodern debut story collection features stories that have previously been selected for the Pushcart Prize and The Best American Short Stories anthologies.

The Omega Point

admin — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 06:39:39 +0000

Author: Mark Mozden. THE OMEGA POINT, a new science thriller by Mark Mozden, is the story of a heroic FBI agent, a twisted assassin, and a beautiful NASA astronaut, in a world full of sex, danger, and… brain candy! Emergence, quantum mechanics, neuro-science, the Singularity, and other topics ripped from today’s science headlines infuse the action with a deep fascination of our rapidly changing world.

Arranged Marriages

admin — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 06:35:10 +0000

Author: Chitra Divakaruni. Poet Divakaruni, who was born in India and now teaches in America, makes her fiction debut with 11 stories about transformation and immigration.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women

admin — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 06:29:47 +0000

Author: Susan Faludi. A Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The Wall Street Journal, Faludi lays out a two-fold thesis in this aggressive work: First, despite the opinions of pop-psychologists and the mainstream media, career-minded women are generally not husband-starved loners on the verge of nervous breakdowns. Secondly, such beliefs are nothing more than anti-feminist propaganda pumped out by conservative research organizations with clear-cut ulterior motives. This backlash against the women’s movement, she writes, “stands the truth boldly on its head and proclaims that the very steps that have elevated women’s positions have actually led to their downfall.” Meticulously researched, Faludi’s contribution to this tumultuous debate is monumental and it earned the 1991 National Book Critics Circle Award for General Nonfiction. –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

All We Ever Wanted Was Everything

admin — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 03:35:13 +0000

Author: Janelle Brown. In Brown’s withering Silicon Valley satire, a family wakes up on a June day to realize that patriarch Paul’s company has hit the big time with a phenomenal IPO. But instead of rejoicing about being newly rich, the family’s three women each find themselves in the throes of a major crisis. Paul has fled with his new amour, who happens to be wife Janice’s tennis partner. Desperate housewife Janice discovers the soothing power of the pool boy’s drug stash and sinks into addiction and denial. Meanwhile, 20-something daughter Margaret learns the price of living a Hollywood lifestyle on an artsy hipster’s budget—gargantuan credit card debt. Finally, 14-year-old Lizzie wades deeper and deeper into a sea of adolescent trouble without an adult to confide in. From the ashes of their California dreams, the three must learn to talk to each other instead of past each other, and build a new, slightly more realistic existence—but not without doses of revenge and hilarity. Brown’s hip narrative reads like a sharp, contemporary twist on The Corrections. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. –This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

The Year of the Buck

admin — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 03:32:21 +0000

Author: Susan Harper. In these 10 stories, most previously published, Harper ( The Oakland Paramount ) composes the lives of women from girlhood to middle age with enough finesse to draw the reader in, although most are offered in a similar melancholy key. During an informal lunch, two friends, a single woman who is seeing a married man and a wife whose husband is having an affair, compare their flawed relationships to “the blue plate special”–to get what you want, you have to take whatever goes with it. A woman fleeing her husband, children and suburban home feels that her escape is a little like getting out of prison but even more like exile. An orphaned girl who pictures her late parents as beautiful, stylish and in love recognizes, when she reaches adulthood, that her romantic images were founded on illusion. This child is typical of Harper’s heroines, for whom the image of the perfect husband and family often hovers just out of reach. And while individual stories sometimes dangle the sense of possibility that can come with change, overall this hope is largely undercut: escape from the situation in one story can plunge one into the quandaries of the next.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

My Wartime Summers

admin — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 03:29:42 +0000

Author: Susan Harper. A sensibility more adult than childlike colors Cutler’s episodic novel about an American girl growing up during WWII. Ellen, first met in the summer of 1942, when she is 11, has no way of grasping the meaning of war. When a German Jewish refugee family moves into her neighborhood, she is certain that they are spies, and she leaps out from behind a bush to tackle the young daughter, yelling, “Geronimo!” By the time the war ends, however, Ellen has greater understanding, having seen her soldier uncle shattered by his experiences fighting the Germans. Throughout, laconic wit replaces the ready humor of Cutler’s (No Dogs Allowed) previous writing. The author’s use of period details is so convincing that the book reads like autobiography, but the elliptical structure of her novel, which jumps from one summer to the next, undermines the mood-unlike Ellen, the reader is not sufficiently exposed to the historical climate to appreciate the incidents Cutler relates; rather than entering Ellen’s world, the reader is left to hopscotch through it. Ages 10-up.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. –This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Happiness Sold Separately

admin — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 03:26:27 +0000

Author: Lolly Winston. The marriage of Ted and Elinor Mackey, a yuppie podiatrist-lawyer couple in their early-40s living in Northern California, is pushed to the brink when Elinor learns that Ted is having an affair with his trainer, Gina Ellison. Elinor’s reaction—pity—surprises her. Winston (Good Grief) adroitly makes it clear that Ted’s affair is a symptom: infertility problems have caused years of emotional turmoil. And Gina’s no bimbo: she has a loving but difficult relationship with Ted, complicated further by her young son, Toby, and his immediate attachment to Ted as a stable father figure. When Elinor confronts Ted and Gina, Ted quickly ends the affair; neither is sure if infidelity or infertility should end their marriage. During their separation, Elinor takes a sabbatical from her law firm and casually dates Noah Orch, a hunky but dull arborist. Ted haphazardly resumes his relationship with Gina. As he realizes that his connection to her is more than an escape from a bad marriage, all concerned have decisions to make. Winston has a real feel for the push and pull of a marriage in crisis, and delivers it in a brisk, funny, no-nonsense style that still comes off as respectful of the material. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. –This text refers to the Unknown Binding edition.

California’s Over

admin — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 03:22:19 +0000

Author: Louis B. Jones. In this uncohesive new novel, Jones (Particles & Luck, Pantheon, 1993) explores themes of decay and dysfunction that unfortunately end up afflicting his own work. Narrator Baelthon has long been involved with the family of famed poet James Farmican, who shot himself in the 1960s. Nothing in the world of the Farmicans has solid foundations, from their crumbling, condemned house to their personal relationships, which are colored by family myths, truths untold, and history denied. Each of the characters is on a quest to discover what really happened in the early 1970s, when the Farmicans were forced from their home?the storehouse of their family history. They must find the truth or a version of it to make a claim on the Farmican estate in the 1990s. Although Jones writes with style, his characters are too quirky to be convincing, and the reader wanders through the novel, never able to piece together the essential truths. Recommended only for larger collections where interest warrants.?Caroline M. Hallsworth, Cambrian Coll., Sudbury, Ontario
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. –This text refers to the Hardcover edition.