Books

Sarita researched the library catalogue and found that the library has an extensive collection of books that won the National Book Award for fiction and the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. They are listed below for your perusal. Take them out for your enjoyment.

National Book Award:

1950: The Man With The Golden Arm by Nelson Algren
1951: The Collected Stories of William Faulkner by William Faulkner
1952: From Here to Eternity by James Jones
1953: Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
1954: The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow
1955: A Fable by William Faulkner
1956: Ten North Frederick by John O'Hara
1957: The Field of Vision by Wright Morris
1958: The Wapshot Chronicle by John Cheever
1959: The Magic Barrel by Bernard Malamud
1960: Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth
1961: The Waters of Kronos by Conrad Richter
1962: The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
1963: Morte D'Urban by J.F. Powers
1964: The Centaur by John Updike
1965: Herzog by Saul Bellow
1966: The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter by Katherine Anne Porter
1967: The Fixer by Bernard Malamud
1968: The Eighth Day by Thornton Wilder
1969: Steps by Jerzy Kosinski
1970: Them by Joyce Carol Oates
1971: Mr. Sammler's Planet by Saul Bellow
1972: The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor by Flannery O'Connor
1973: Chimera by John Barth
Augustus by John Williams
1974: Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer
1975: Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone
The Hair of Harold Roux by Thomas Williams
1976: JR by William Gaddis
1977: The Spectator Bird by Wallace Stegner
1978: Blood Tie by Mary Lee Settle
1979: Going After Cacciato by Tim O'Brien
…
1984: Victory over Japan: A Book of Stories by Ellen Gilchrist
1985: White Noise by Don DeLillo
1986: World's Fair by E. L. Doctorow
1987: Paco's Story by Larry Heinemann
1988: Paris Trout by Pete Dexter
1989: Spartina by John Casey
1990: Middle Passage by Charles Johnson
1991: Mating by Norman Rush
1992: All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
1993: The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx
1994: A Frolic of His Own by William Gaddis
1995: Sabbath's Theater by Philip Roth
1996: Ship Fever and Other Stories by Andrea Barrett
1997: Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
1998: Charming Billy by Alice McDermott
1999: Waiting by Ha Jin
2000: In America by Susan Sontag
2001: The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
2002: Three Junes by Julia Glass
2003: The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard
2004: The News from Paraguay by Lily Tuck
2005: Europe Central by William T. Vollmann
2006: The Echo Maker by Richard Powers
2007: Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson
2008: Shadow Country by Peter Matthiessen
2009: Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

Pulitzer Prize:

2008 The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (Riverhead Books)

2007 The Road by Cormac McCarthy (Alfred A. Knopf)

2006 March by Geraldine Brooks (Viking)

2005 Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (Farrar)

2004 The Known World by Edward P. Jones (Amistad/ HarperCollins)

2003 Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (Farrar)

2002 Empire Falls by Richard Russo (Alfred A. Knopf

2001 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon (Random House)

2000 Interpreter of Maladies byJhumpa Lahiri (Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin)

1999 The Hours by Michael Cunningham (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

1998 American Pastoral byPhilip Roth (Houghton Mifflin)

1997 Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser (Crown)

1996 Independence Day byRichard Ford (Alfred A. Knopf)

1995 The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields (Viking)

1994 The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx (Charles Scribner's Sons)

1993 A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler (Henry Holt)

1992 A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley (Alfred A. Knopf)

1991 Rabbit At Rest by John Updike (Alfred A. Knopf)

On the website and in Facebook, we will be providing information on new acquisitions at the library along with recommendations of books, and occasional book reviews. We will welcome comments and suggested books by readers who can write on the Library’s wall in Facebook. The list of Recommended Books for our website has been prepared by Sarita. Take a look:

Recommended books

Andersen, Kurt. Turn of the century.

A blockbuster fiction debut for media insider Anderson (formerly editor-in-chief of New York magazine, co-founder of Spy), this brilliantly conceived, keenly incisive social satire draws fresh humor out of the overhyped territory of millennial madness. Beginning his myopically futuristic novel on February 28, 2000, Anderson employs a future-present tense in which he mischievously tweaks current attitudes regarding marriage, friendship, the mass media, Wall Street and the computer industry, just to name a handful of his numerous targets. With ferocious energy, he also captures the essence of New York, Las Vegas, L.A. (its permanent sunniness, annoying and even slightly scary after a while, like a clowns painted-on-smile) and Seattle (... like a gawky guy with a great body whose bald and stammers and wears dorky clothes). These are not new topics for mockery, but Anderson's eye is fresh and his irony carries a potent sting. George Mactier, executive producer of a controversial TV series called NARCS, and his wife, Lizzie Zimbalist, owner of a computer software company, serve as Andersons 21st-century poster couple. They are self-conscious enough to recognize the embedded ironies in their fast-paced, high-profile lifestyle (Lizzie voted reluctantly for Giuliani twice, but spent election day giving a five-dollar bill to anyone who happened to ask for money, as penance). Their already troubled marriage is being vaporized by the hysterical pace of their respective professional lives. The couple have three cyber-precocious children (Lizzie e-mails her son's bedroom from the kitchen to announce dinner), as well as a host of eccentric friends (Ben Gould is a multimillionaire investor whose latest venture is a Vegas theme park called Barbie World) and colleagues (Harold Mose, the egomaniacal owner of the MBC Network, becomes both George and Lizzie's boss). The convoluted plot boldly defies summary, but it ultimately achieves a mad convergence highlighted by an intricate, hilarious plan to manipulate Microsoft's stock by virtually killing Bill Gates. Anderson employs a biting topical humor that is always exaggerated, yet seldom actually seems inconceivable (the cover story in Teen Nation, an offshoot of the Nation magazine, is headlined: Jimmy Smits and Jennifer Lopez in Mexico: This Revolution Will Be Televised). Cell phones and computers are ubiquitous, but the vaunted Information Age is illusory at best. The characters are constantly thrown off kilter by disinformation, missed information and miscommunication. Yet while the tone is hyperbolic and beyond the cutting edge, the core issues are curiously old-fashioned: love, ethics, friendship, even happiness. Anderson brilliantly sustains the comic pace throughout the lengthy narrative, though his ultimate message may be disappointing to millennial idealists: The future ain't what it used to be

Boyle, T.C. A friend of the earth

Mordantly funny and inventive, this take-no-prisoners novel revolves around a few of Boyle's favorite themes: obsessive hygiene, compulsive consumerism, uneasiness in the natural world and fear of technology. As the Vonnegutishly named Tyrone "Ty" O'Shaughnessy Tierwater reminds readers, "to be a friend of the earth you have to be an enemy of the people." In the year 2025, Ty is 75, by contemporary standards a young-old man, and zookeeper for a private menagerie in Santa Ynez, Calif. Most mammals are extinct, and the environment as 20th-century humans knew it is destroyed. Besieged by floods, drought and Force 8 winds, people tramp through pestilential mud, eat farm-grown catfish and drink rice wine. In flashbacks from the frenetic 21st-century sections to Ty's past as a rabid environmentalist in the late '80s and early '90s, Boyle choreographs a syncopated dance, riffing on the mores and manias of environmental crusaders. To prove a point in their early campaign, Ty and wife Andrea spend 30 days naked and unprovisioned in the wilderness, emerging triumphant. But otherwise, Ty is subjected to a lifelong series of humiliations, and his forthrightness about them makes him sympathetic, while eco-warriors in general are skewered as relentlessly as the bulldozer-driven corporations. A bad time is had by all, most notably by Ty's daughter, the tree-sitting Sierra, who, unlike Julia Butterfly Hill (the real-life tree-sitter who surely influenced Boyle), does not descend from her perch to publishing contracts and public radio interviews. Boyle (The Tortilla Curtain) allows for a hint of redemption in the end, but his depiction of the cruel fate of humankind - the fate of monkey wrenchers, lumber companies, the not-quite-engaged and the engaged, too - is as unflinching as it is satirical.

Feynman, Richard. "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman!" adventures of a curios character

A series of anecdotes shouldn't by rights add up to an autobiography, but that's just one of the many pieces of received wisdom that Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman (1918-88) cheerfully ignores in his engagingly eccentric book, a bestseller ever since its initial publication in 1985. Fiercely independent (read the chapter entitled "Judging Books by Their Covers"), intolerant of stupidity even when it comes packaged as high intellectualism (check out "Is Electricity Fire?"), unafraid to offend (see "You Just Ask Them?"), Feynman informs by entertaining. It's possible to enjoy Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman simply as a bunch of hilarious yarns with the smart-alecky author as know-it-all hero. At some point, however, attentive readers realize that underneath all the merriment simmers a running commentary on what constitutes authentic knowledge: learning by understanding, not by rote; refusal to give up on seemingly insoluble problems; and total disrespect for fancy ideas that have no grounding in the real world. Feynman himself had all these qualities in spades, and they come through with vigor and verve in his no-bull prose. No wonder his students--and readers around the world--adored him.

Cohan, William D. House of cards: a tale of hubris and wretched excess on Wall Street

A blistering narrative account of the negligence and greed that pushed all of Wall Street into chaos and the country into a financial crisis.

At the beginning of March 2008, the monetary fabric of Bear Stearns, one of the world’s oldest and largest investment banks, began unraveling. After ten days, the bank no longer existed, its assets sold under duress to rival JPMorgan Chase. The effects would be felt nationwide, as the country suddenly found itself in the grip of the worst financial mess since the Great Depression. William Cohan exposes the corporate arrogance, power struggles, and deadly combination of greed and inattention, which led to the collapse of not only Bear Stearns but the very foundations of Wall Street.

Jackson, Joshilyn. Between, Georgia

The biological daughter of poor, scared teenager Hazel Crabtree, Nonny Frett was left at birth with the wealthy, respectable Frett clan—a secret that doesn't keep long in a rural Georgia town of 90 people. Growing up at the center of a Crabtree-Frett feud begun by her birth, Nonny is caught between her biological family and her adopted one, between contempt for her philandering husband and the comfort of marriage, between an apartment in Athens, Ga., and her childhood home, Between. When a Doberman belonging to Nonny's biological grandmother Ona Crabtree attacks Nonny's adopted mom, deaf and blind Stacia Frett, and Stacia's twin sister, Genny, the families' dormant "war" awakens. Though Jackson (Gods in Alabama) might cut a few corners plotwise, her strengths more than make up for it: plenty of Southern sass ("Don't call me again unless you are personally on fire") and rueful, charming confidences ("I wanted the divorce with all my heart. I did. Only I wasn't sure I wanted it tomorrow") make this a theatrical and well-paced Southern family drama.

Scottoline, Lisa. Devil's corner

Assistant U.S. attorney Vicki Allegretti's meeting with a confidential informant goes terribly wrong when the routine appointment turns into a bloodbath, leaving Vicki's ATF partner, Morty, dead along with the informant and her unborn child. Vicki's bosses tell her to move on to her next case, but Vicki, determined to find the killer, launches her own investigation, in the course of which she takes on an unlikely partner, Reheema, an African American woman whose mother was killed in a drug-related murder that may connect to Vicki's case. Vicki and Reheema--the former a product of privilege and private school and the latter a product of Devil's Corner, an aptly named, drug-riddled Philly neighborhood--make an unlikely but very appealing pair. The interplay between the two women shows Scottoline at her best--chatty but intelligent, biting but respectful. Although we miss the all-female Philadelphia law firm of Rosato & Associates, whose members are the heroines of Scottoline's popular series, this stand-alone thriller (inspired by a real-life case) makes an entertaining and exciting change of pace.

LLosa, Mario Vargas. The feast of the goat.

"This wasn't an enemy he could defeat like the hundreds, the thousands he had confronted and conquered over the years, buying them, intimidating them, killing them." So thinks Rafael Trujillo, "the Goat," dictator of the Dominican Republic, on the morning of May 30, 1961 a day that will end in his assassination. The "enemy" is old age at 70, Trujillo, who has always prided himself on his grooming and discipline, is shaken by bouts of incontinence and impotence. Vargas Llosa divides his narrative between three different story lines. The first concerns Urania Cabral, the daughter of one of Trujillo's closest associates, Agustín Cabral. She is 14 at the time of the Trujillo assassination and, as we gradually discover, was betrayed by her father to Trujillo. Since then, she has lived in the U.S. At 49, she impulsively returns on a visit and slowly reveals the root of her alienation. Urania's character is a little too pat, however. Vargas Llosa's triumph is Trujillo's story. We follow the sly, vile despot, with his petty rages, his lust, his dealings with his avaricious family, through his last day, with mingled feelings of repulsion and awe. Like Stalin, Trujillo ruled by turning his rage without warning against his subordinates. Finally, Vargas Llosa crosscuts Urania's story and Trujillo's with that of Trujillo's assassins; first, as they wait to ambush him, and then as they are tracked down, captured and tortured to death, with almost medieval ferocity, by Trujillo's son, Ramfis. Gathering power as it rolls along, this massive, swift-moving fictional take on a grim period in Dominican history shows that Nobel-Prize laureate Vargas Llosa is still one of the world's premier political novelists.

Jones, Sadie. Small wars

In her excellent second novel (after The Outcast), Jones sets a couple down in turbulent 1956 Cyprus as the Cypriots seek union with Greece and resist British rule. British army major Hal Treherne is dispatched to Cyprus, taking along his wife, Clara, and their young twin girls. There, they fight separate, but equally maddening, battles—Clara as an army wife with babies in an increasingly dangerous land, and Hal on the front lines where, yearning for firefights, he is instead haunted by his lack of control when torture and rape occur at the hands of his own men. While Hal dodges mortal danger, Clara tries to keep the home front together, struggling to remain supportive of him as she remains isolated with the twins and he is tormented by the violence he witnesses. After Clara narrowly avoids death, Hal makes a split-second decision with powerful implications for their future. The narrative is excruciatingly tense and also graced with real emotion as a marriage is pushed to the brink and loyalties are stretched and broken. It's the perfect mix of poig

Crichton, Michael. Disclosure.

This novel is centered on corporate politics in a high-tech computer firm in Seattle. A high level executive in the company has been passed over for promotion by a woman from another division in the firm. This woman, with whom he had a relationship ten years earlier when she wasn't a part of the company, sexually harasses him. He now finds himself in a serious predicament. How can he keep his current position, how can he address the issue of harassment by a female superior, and can he find the underlying political reasons why he has been placed in this situation?

O'Brien, Tim. Going after Cacciato

The theater of war becomes the theater of the absurd as a private deserts his post in Vietnam, intent on walking 8,000 miles to Paris for the peace talks. The remaining members of his squad are sent after him, but what happens then is anybody's guess: "The facts were simple: They went after Cacciato, they chased him into the mountains, and they tried hard. They cornered him on a small grassy hill. They surrounded the hill. They waited through the night. And at dawn they shot the sky full of flares and then they moved in.... That was the end of it. The last known fact. What remained were possibilities." It is these possibilities that make O'Brien's National Book Award-winning novel so extraordinary. Told from the perspective of squad member Paul Berlin, the search for Cacciato soon enters the realm of the surreal as the men find themselves following an elusive trail of chocolate M&M's through the jungles of Indochina, across India, Iran, Greece, and Yugoslavia to the streets of Paris. The details of this hallucinatory journey alternate with feverish memories of the war--men maimed by landmines, killed in tunnels, engaged in casual acts of brutality that would be unthinkable anywhere else. Reminiscent of Joseph Heller's Catch-22, Going after Cacciato dishes up a brilliant mix of ferocious comedy and bleak horror that serves to illuminate both the complex psychology of men in battle and the overarching insanity of war.

Seth, Vikram. An equal music: a novel

Seth finds his true voice in this lyrical, ravishing tale of star-crossed lovers - an English violinist and the pianist he desperately pursues. This novel is tightly controlled, original in design, awash in the music - and spirit - of Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Haydn, Brahms and Bach. Even readers not familiar with specific pieces of Western classical music will be caught up in the contemporary love story, set mainly in London and Vienna with excursions to Venice and northern England. Michael Holme, brooding member of an English string quartet, endlessly adrift a decade after breaking up with pianist Julia McNicholl, suddenly bumps into her again in London. They resume their affair - with guilty reluctance on her part, as she's married to an American banker and has a son, but with reckless abandon by Michael, who betrays and then ditches his girlfriend, a needy French violin student 15 years his junior. Beyond mere erotic duplicities, a far more tragic obstacle emerges - Julia is rapidly going deaf. Music, her lifeblood, is slipping away from her, a secret she keeps from her fellow musicians until Michael clumsily reveals it. Around this simple plot, Seth weaves an exploration of the creative process as he delves into the quartet members' quirks and neuroses, their romances, states of exaltation, their synchronous vision. All the rehearsals, shoptalk, fiddling and ruminations blunt the impact of Julia's tragedy and the love story's momentum, but Seth's musical, quicksilver prose keeps the narrative aloft.

Nuland, Sherwin. How we die : reflections on life's final chapter

Drawing upon his own broad experience and the characteristics of the six most common death-causing diseases, Nuland examines what death means to the doctor, patient, nurse, administrator, and family. Thought provoking and humane, his is not the usual syrup-and-generality approach to this well-worn topic. Fundamental to it are Nuland's experiences with the deaths of his aunt, his older brother, and a longtime patient. With each of these deaths, he made what he now sees as mistakes of denial, false hope, and refusal to abide by a patient's wishes. Disease, not death, is the real enemy, he reminds us, despite the facts that most deaths are unpleasant, painful, or agonized, and to argue otherwise is to plaster over the truth. The doctor, Nuland stresses, should instill in dying patients the hope not for a miraculous cure but for the dignity and high quality of the remainder of their lives as well as of what they have meant--and will continue to mean--to family, friends, and colleagues. Nuland also has strong feelings about suicide and "assisted death": the doctor should be prepared psychologically and practically to help the longtime patient slip off the scene in relative comfort.

Connolly, John. The black angel

In the fifth Charlie Parker novel, the private investigator, recently remarried (after the murders of his wife and child), has been trying to pull his life back together. But when his partner's cousin goes missing, Parker can't avoid getting back in the game. And when he realizes the young woman's disappearance is connected to an older, darker mystery, he once again is forced to risk life and sanity in a desperate good-versus-evil battle. Connolly, who resides in Ireland but writes about the U.S. like he's lived there all his life, once again blends the -private-eye novel and the supernatural thriller in a way that's altogether unique. Parker himself, one of the genre's more disturbed heroes, is a complex creation whose depths have still, even through five novels, been barely explored. The Charlie Parker novels are not for everyone (especially those who like their private-eye yarns unencumbered by philosophical or theological overtones), but Connolly has been building a cadre of devoted fans who clamor for his edgy take on the genre.

McCracken, Elizabeth. The giant's house : a romance

A platonic, decorous and achingly poignant love affair between a young man who suffers from gigantism and a librarian who is 14 years his senior is the focus of this remarkable debut novel. McCracken is not merely a born raconteur; she is also an assured stylist and an astute student of human nature. Narrator Peggy Cort, spinster librarian in a small town on Cape Cod, first becomes aware of James Sweatt when he comes into the library with his grade-school class. At age 11, James is already 6'2" and destined to keep growing. Peggy finds herself drawn to the gentle, lonely young man, both because he fills a void in her own life and because she is in effect adopted by James's loving but eccentric family. The reader is mesmerized by this low-key narrative, first lured by Peggy's alternately acerbic and tender voice, then captivated by James's situation and intrigued by his family, later engulfed by pathos as James's body begins to fail and, finally, amazed by a turn of events that ends the novel with a major surprise. McCracken also invests the narrative with humor, sometimes through Peggy's astringent comments and more often through the use of minor characters who add vivid color and their own distinctive voices.

Glickfeld, Carole. Swimming toward the ocean : a novel

Set in Brooklyn and uptown Manhattan in the 1950s, Flannery O'Connor Award-winner Glickfeld's (Useful Gifts, 1989) first novel employs a seductive narrative voice. The atmospheric story focuses on Chenia Arnow, a Russian-Jewish immigrant wife and mother whose emotional turmoil shapes the life of her unwanted but not unloved youngest daughter. Looking back from the vantage point of adulthood, Devorah reconstructs her mother's life, beginning with the 45-year-old Chenia's efforts to abort her third child or, failing that, commit suicide. Bright but unschooled, Chenia agrees with her philandering husband, Ruben, on only one thing: they cannot afford another baby. Chenia gives birth to Devorah despite fears and superstitions, raising her alongside Devorah's older siblings in Brighton Beach until Ruben moves them closer to his girlfriend in Manhattan. Although Ruben regularly lies, it is Chenia who collapses with guilt when four-year-old Devorah is accidentally injured during Chenia's quarrel with her shoe salesman lover. In anguish, Chenia briefly disappears, leaving precocious, outspoken Devorah in the care of New Jersey relatives. Spiritual insights and financial gifts from unexpected sources fortify the family as it rebuilds itself, and the tale heads toward a teary-eyed conclusion where two generations forgive each other's weaknesses and their own. Glickfeld's prose is precise, poignant and painfully personal, and her tale touches many emotional hot buttons - unfulfilled talent, repressed desire, and self-defeating despair - while almost perfectly recreating the physical and psychological geography of the times. Obvious plot devices (a financial windfall, a new suitor, an old lover) move the narrative along, but it is feisty Chenia and perpetually curious Devorah who invest the novel with glorious life. Having captured a time and place with perfection, Glickfeld's novel may resonate with many readers.

Faderman, Lillian. Naked in the Promised Land : a memoir

Faderman's mother and aunt left Latvia in 1923 to work in New York and send back money to their family. They did, but neither could save their loved ones from Hitler's Holocaust, which tormented Faderman's mother endlessly. Mother and daughter moved to Los Angeles, where they supported each other's fragile mental health with a single dream: Lillian could become a movie star. She took acting classes, suffered various crushes and even endured advances by her mother's suitors, all in a blind stumble to find herself, or at least to escape the burden of her mother's unhappiness. While a guidance counselor steered Lillian back to school, she still had to fumble her own way to a sexual identity. Pre-liberation, this meant cop hassles, job paranoia and fake marriages to gay men, as well as the usual broken hearts. Still, by the end, Faderman became a bigwig at Cal State, with a baby and a lover and a gay studies program. Exceedingly honest, endearing and profound, Faderman truly shows readers the distance she's traveled, from "little momzer" to esteemed academic.

Christensen, Lars S. The half brother

Epic yet startlingly contemporary, this massive novel charts 50 years in the life of an unconventional Oslo family, lighted by gleams of the frozen north and the glow of movie screens. Narrator Barnum, an award-winning screenwriter, retraces his family's history, which begins with the rape of his mother, Vera, as a young girl at the end of World War II. From this crime, Barnum's half-brother, Fred, is conceived. Fred is angry, prone to mood swings and outbursts of verbal cruelty. But he is also street-smart, self-reliant and fiercely—if erratically—protective of Barnum, a small, sensitive boy who never grows to full height. The boys live with Vera and an extended family of spirited, loving women, including the Old One, Barnum's great grandmother (a former silent movie actress), and his beer-drinking grandmother, Boletta. Barnum's father is Arnold Nilsen, an itinerant con man, who woos and marries Vera. When Barnum is almost grown up, unpredictable Fred goes to sea and disappears, leaving Barnum angry and confused. Barnum finds companionship and love through his relationships with friends Peder and Vivian, eventually marrying Vivian, but their connection unravels, particularly with Vivian's pregnancy—a pregnancy that torments Barnum, who is secretly infertile. Barnum's conflicted, complicated love for his brother anchors the novel, but Christensen tenderly explores all sorts of human connection, examining the emotions aroused by absence and persistence, and the complex nature of family and forgiveness. Like Péter Nádas's Book of Memories and Péter Esterházy's Celestial Harmonies, this is a challenging, marvelously rich novel steeped in European history and charged by present-day anxieties

Fluke, Joanna. Chocolate chip cookie murder

Independent-minded Hannah Swenson makes her debut in a cleverly plotted cozy, full of appealing characters and delicious cookie recipes. Returning after her father's death to her hometown of Lake Eden, Minn., Hannah opens her own shop, the Cookie Jar, where much of the town's gossip percolates along with the strong coffee. Early one morning, she finds the driver of a delivery truck shot dead in the alley behind her shop. Hannah's brother-in-law, Bill, the county's deputy sheriff, recruits her to help him chase down the culprit. A surprising number of suspects emerges, but due to her cafe business and catering of local social events, Hannah is admirably placed to hear all, see much and investigate a little. Motives ranging from blackmail to extortion abound, as do descriptions of clothing and shopping. Cat fanciers will appreciate knowing how Hannah found her cat, but separating the wheat of the significant from the chaff of the irrelevant can be challenging. Fluke also stretches the imagination when Bill leaves most of the sleuthing to Hannah and when the sheriff's men fail to discover a second body at the dairy where the first victim was employed. But these are minor lapses in a story satisfyingly packed with plot twists and red herrings. The Pecan Chews recipe is especially recommended. More books in the series: Blueberry muffin murder, Strawberry shortcake murder, Lemon meringue pie murder, etc., etc. All with wonderful cookie recipes!!