Antigone Books

If you are in the mood for a psychologically creepy read with lots of twists and turns, Gone Girl is for you!  Wow! Narrated by a husband and wife in a failing marriage (to put it mildly!), this book is riveting.  The reader must wade through the unreliable accounts of both characters to try to figure out what is really going on.  A page-turner.

This debut novel is a beautifully written and realistic portrait of homesteading in Alaska in the 1920's combined with a magical side that draws from the fairy tale of the snow child. Wonderful.

A witty, sad, moving and politically astute look at ordinary life in Nigeria. Blessing, the narrator, is a bright 12-year-old who experiences the clash between traditional and modern Nigeria.

A great read!

The Lacuna works on many levels:
-as an historical novel, featuring Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Trotsky.
-as a political novel, examining the Red Scare in the US, and
-as a tender (and surprising) story of a writer attempting to protect his privacy and the stenographer who quietly helps him.

I loved The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (read it first!) but Stieg Larsson’s second is even better.  A complex thriller with explicit feminist sensibilities, this tale of corruption and sexual abuse is at times horrifying but always gripping and wonderfully written.  It has a cast of unusual characters, but the protagonist is unforgettable.  Lisbeth Salander is angry, punk, fearless, and a brilliant computer hacker.  She has a clear (but not typical) moral code and will stop at nothing to fight the abuse of women.   A fabulous heroine!

A truly unique novel! A cut-and-paste of text found in women's magazines from the early 1960's, this novel is a visual and linguistic treat. It's also a funny and disturbing and compelling story about the meaning of gender. Highly recommended.

Looking for a new literary, quirky mystery series? Check out this French series by Fred Vargas. Vargas's central character is Chief Inspector Adamsberg, a bumbling, forgetful, eccentric, often irritating, highly intuitive detective. But, Vargas populates her work with other quirky characters that add to the depth of the series...I just love some of the women characters. I read this book first, but you should start with the earlier Have Mercy on Us All and meet the amazing cast of characters.

This is my (slightly belated) Thanksgiving pick. Forget the myth of the first Thanksgiving and read this book. Nathaniel Philbrick is a great storyteller and manages to convey the complex and contradictory motives of the Plymouth Colony settlers (characterized by piety, duplicity, gratitude, intolerance, stupidity, and violence) and the complicated set of problems faced by native societies even before the settlers arrived. Fifty years after a shaky beginning, during which the Pilgrims were saved from almost certain death by the Wampanoag Indians, an overcrowded cluster of colonies push the now well-armed natives to the point where they have little choice but to push back. This is an important, and bloody, part of U.S. history that we should not forget.