Nightwoods


Charles Frazier - 2011
    Now, with his brilliant portrait of Luce, a young woman who inherits her murdered sister's troubled twins, Frazier has created his most memorable heroine.Before the children, Luce was content with the reimbursements of the rich Appalachian landscape, choosing to live apart from the small community around her. But the coming of the children changes everything, cracking open her solitary life in difficult, hopeful, dangerous ways.Charles Frazier is known for his historical literary odysseys, and for making figures in the past come vividly to life. Set in the twentieth century, Nightwoods resonates with the timelessness of a great work of art.

The Hamilton Affair


Elizabeth Cobbs - 2016
    Croix. He went to America to pursue his education. Along the way he became one of the American Revolution’s most dashing—and unlikely—heroes. Adored by Washington, hated by Jefferson, Hamilton was a lightning rod: the most controversial leader of the American Revolution.She was the well-to-do daughter of one of New York’s most exalted families—feisty, adventurous, and loyal to a fault. When she met Alexander, she fell head over heels. She pursued him despite his illegitimacy, and loved him despite his infidelity. In 1816 (two centuries ago), she shamed Congress into supporting his seven orphaned children. Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton started New York’s first orphanage. The only “founding mother” to truly embrace public service, she raised 160 children in addition to her own.With its flawless writing, brilliantly drawn characters, and epic scope, The Hamilton Affair will take its place among the greatest novels of American history.

The Engagements


J. Courtney Sullivan - 2013
       Evelyn has been married to her husband for forty years, but their son’s messy divorce has put them at rare odds; James, a beleaguered paramedic, has spent most of his marriage haunted by his wife’s family’s expectations; Delphine has thrown caution to the wind and left a peaceful French life for an exciting but rocky romance in America; and Kate, partnered with Dan for a decade, has seen every kind of wedding and has vowed never, ever, to have one of her own. As the stories connect to each other and to Frances’s legacy in surprising ways, The Engagements explores the complicated ins and outs of relationships, then, now, and forever.

Mudbound


Hillary Jordan - 2008
    It is 1946, and city-bred Laura McAllan is trying to raise her children on her husband's Mississippi Delta farm - a place she finds foreign and frightening. In the midst of the family's struggles, two young men return from the war to work the land. Jamie McAllan, Laura's brother-in-law, is everything her husband is not - charming, handsome, and haunted by his memories of combat. Ronsel Jackson, eldest son of the black sharecroppers who live on the McAllan farm, has come home with the shine of a war hero. But no matter his bravery in defense of his country, he is still considered less than a man in the Jim Crow South. It is the unlikely friendship of these brothers-in-arms that drives this powerful novel to its inexorable conclusion. The men and women of each family relate their versions of events and we are drawn into their lives as they become players in a tragedy on the grandest scale. As Kingsolver says of Hillary Jordan, "Her characters walked straight out of 1940s Mississippi and into the part of my brain where sympathy and anger and love reside, leaving my heart racing. They are with me still."

The Girl in the Spider's Web: by David Lagercrantz | Recap and Analysis


Instarecap - 2015
    It brings back two memorable characters from the blockbuster trilogy by the late Stieg Larsson; “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”, “The Girl Who Played with Fire”, and, “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest” . Like the three books, “The Girl in the Spider’s Web” is translated from the original Swedish language, and most of the action happens in and around Stockholm. Lisbeth Salander, the brilliant anti-social hacker once again teams up with Michael Blomkvist, a relentless reporter, to help infiltrate a murderous technology organization with links to powerful corporations, law enforcement agencies, and nothing less than the the United States’ National Security Administration, or NSA. There appears to be a distinct difference in storytelling between the three Larsson books and Lagercrantz’s Spider, which can be attributed to the subject matter on hand or the writer’s style, and maybe even both. Larsson seemed to let events unfold slowly, since he did, after all, have three books to gradually introduce us to, and develop, the characters especially Lisbeth Salander. Some critics decry Lagercrantz’ narrative as fragmentary and confusing, with dozens of characters in a wide array of backgrounds: journalists, spies, hackers, law enforcement officers, scientists and of course killers, who at times seem to briefly emerge, vanish, and then turn up again. Then there is the sometimes arcane language of hacking, cryptography, physics, and artificial intelligence, where there are complicated moments when the characters discuss such prime-number factorization (PNF), self-teaching algorithms, singularity theory, black holes, prime-number factorization and black holes. Many of the characters are indeed geniuses and Lagercrantz mostly succeeds in allowing the science to be decipherable. The original trilogy’s anti-heroine, Lisbeth Salander, isn’t much seen in the first half of the book, but is quickly inserted into the action, and of course, turns into the main focus of events. Most of the characters from the original trilogy show up in the book, including the shadow of Lisbeth’s horrendous dead father, Zalachenko, and the traitorous Hans Faste. Two new compelling characters are introduced: Camilla Salander/Zalachenko, Lisbeth’s evil twin, and 8-year old August Balder, and autistic savant and mathematical genius, who shares most of the spotlight with Salander. The action is fast paced and the characters, many, and like the first three Larsson novels, may be a tough read to put down. Read more.... Download your copy today! for a limited time discount of only $2.99! Available on PC, Mac, smart phone, tablet or Kindle device. © 2015 All Rights Reserved by Unlimited Press Works, LLC