Book picks similar to
Rocket City by Cathryn Alpert
fiction
book-lust
southwest
nancy-pearl-s-book-lust
Red Sky at Morning
Richard Bradford - 1968
Navy and moves his wife, Ann, and seventeen-year-old son, Josh, to the family’s summer home in the village of Corazon Sagrado, high in the New Mexico mountains. A true daughter of the Confederacy, Ann finds it impossible to cope with the quality of life in the largely Hispanic village and, in the company of Jimbob Buel—an insufferable, South-proud, professional houseguest—takes to bridge and sherry. Josh, on the other hand, becomes an integral member of the Sagrado community, forging friendships with his new classmates, with the town’s disreputable resident artist, and with Amadeo and Excilda Montoya, the couple hired by his father to care for their house. Josh narrates the story of his fateful year in Sagrado and, with irresistibly deadpan, irreverent humor, describes the events and people who influence his progress to maturity. Unhindered by his mother's disdain for these "tacky, dusty little Westerners," Josh comes into his own and into a young man's finely formed understanding of duty, responsibility, and love.
The Bubble Reputation
Cathie Pelletier - 1993
Full of powerful scenes and down-home wisdom, this novel is the story of Rosemary O'Neal and her northern Maine family, including her slightly daft mother, garrulous sister Miriam who wears only green, and gay Uncle Bishop, a 300-pound know-it-all whose current boyfriend has a penchant for ladies' shoes. Add to this confusion a former college roommate, Lizzie, who uses Rosemary's house to hide from her husband and rendezvous with her lover. Rosemary had lived for eight years with William in a big, rambling house in rural Maine. Then William commited suicide on a trip to London, leaving Rosemary with a lot of questions, anger, and no way to say good-bye. Seeking solace from her cat - which seems to better understand human nature than the Homo sapiens - Rosemary retreats from the world, only to be shocked out of her cocoon by an unsettling turn of events. Yet, despite the chaos created by family and friends, Rosemary slowly comes to realize that the anchor that holds them all together is still firmly in place, and that life is but a fleeting, poignant experience to be savored.
The Milagro Beanfield War
John Nichols - 1974
Carefully (and also illegally), he tapped into the main irrigation channel. And so began-though few knew it at the time-the Milagro beanfield war. But like everything else in the dirt-poor town of Milagro, it would be a patchwork war, fought more by tactical retreats than by battlefield victories. Gradually, the small farmers and sheepmen begin to rally to Joe's beanfield as the symbol of their lost rights and their lost lands. And downstate in the capital, the Anglo water barons and power brokers huddle in urgent conference, intent on destroying that symbol before it destroys their multimillion-dollar land-development schemes. The tale of Milagro's rising is wildly comic and lovingly ter, a vivid portrayal of a town that, half-stumbling and partly prodded, gropes its way toward its own stubborn salvation.
At the Sign of the Naked Waiter
Amy Herrick - 1992
Navigating the mysterious path from childhood to adulthood, Sarah encounters a naked, winged man, rivalrous ghosts, and gods disguised as beggars.
Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream
John Derbyshire - 1996
He and his wife, Ding, are the parents of an infant and enjoy a contented marriage; he develops a fond obsession with President Calvin Coolidge, the taciturn New Englander whose wry wit and wisdom delights Chai. One day, a chance discovery leads him astray: He learns that a lover from his youth is now in Boston, living with her husband and their son. The son is Chai's very image, and the staid banker is inflamed by the implications of the resemblance. Confused by his emotions, he becomes determined to revive the affair. How Ding schemes to win back her wayward husband--and teach him the necessary truths about love--forms the plot and beguiling conclusion to John Derbyshire's tale.
The House on the Lagoon
Rosario Ferré - 1995
The House on the Lagoon is the story of Isabel Monfort and her husband Quintin Mendizabal--the history of a family whose secrets, conflicts and private mythologies add up to the larger story of a nation: Puerto Rico.
S.
J.J. Abrams - 2013
Two readers. A world of mystery, menace, and desire.A young woman picks up a book left behind by a stranger. Inside it are his margin notes, which reveal a reader entranced by the story and by its mysterious author. She responds with notes of her own, leaving the book for the stranger, and so begins an unlikely conversation that plunges them both into the unknown.THE BOOK: Ship of Theseus, the final novel by a prolific but enigmatic writer named V. M. Straka, in which a man with no past is shanghaied onto a strange ship with a monstrous crew and launched onto a disorienting and perilous journey.THE WRITER: Straka, the incendiary and secretive subject of one of the world’s greatest mysteries, a revolutionary about whom the world knows nothing apart from the words he wrote and the rumours that swirl around him.THE READERS: Jennifer and Eric, a college senior and a disgraced grad student, both facing crucial decisions about who they are, who they might become, and how much they’re willing to trust another person with their passions, hurts, and fears.
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, conceived by filmmaker J. J. Abrams and written by award-winning novelist Doug Dorst, is the chronicle of two readers finding each other in the margins of a book and enmeshing themselves in a deadly struggle between forces they don’t understand. It is also Abrams and Dorst’s love letter to the written word.
The Drowning Season
Alice Hoffman - 1979
But he has been watching Esther, too. And his love for her is growing wild enough to uproot them all.The author of Here on Earth and The River King presents a "stunning and hypnotic" novel that "interweaves past and present with piercing images and unfailing energy" (Publishers Weekly).
The Plover
Brian Doyle - 2014
He sets course west into the Pacific in search of solitude. Instead, he finds a crew, each in search of something themselves, and what at first seems a lonely sea voyage becomes a rapturous, heartfelt celebration of life’s surprising paths, planned and unplanned.
Awesome
Jack Pendarvis - 2008
A giant who builds robots, sweats mescaline, and kisses like a dream. From the rocky coast of New England to the golden hay fields of Stockton, California, he searches for America’s greatest treasures. You might recognize him by the twinkle in his eye or the lustrous derby hat perched on top of his boulder-sized head.But for a dude who has it all, he sure seems sad a lot of the time — what’s up with that? And what exactly does he plan to do with all of those wonderful treasures, besides cart them around the country in his enormous red wagon? Is there someone, a beautiful lady named Glorious Jones, perhaps, who has asked him to gather the bounty of America in order to prove his love for her?There’s no way to know, unless you buy Jack Pendarvis’s awesome new novel and read it. Or have someone read it to you. Either way, laughter, wisdom, and good times are sure to follow…
The Comet Seekers
Helen Sedgwick - 2016
And everything changes.While Róisín grew up in a tiny village in Ireland, ablaze with a passion for science and the skies and for all there is to discover about the world, François was raised by his beautiful young mother, who dreamt of new worlds but was unable to turn her back on her past.As we loop back through their lives, glimpsing each of them only when a comet is visible in the skies above, we see how their paths cross as they come closer and closer to this moment.Theirs are stories filled with love and hope and heartbreak, that show how strangers can be connected and ghosts can be real, and the world can be as lonely or as beautiful as the comets themselves.
The Last Will of Moira Leahy
Therese Walsh
So busy that she leaves little time for memories of her lost twin, Moira; her fractured family in Castine, Maine; and the music she left behind in the wake of tragedy nine years ago.Until a childhood relic and a series of anonymous notes resurrects her dreams, a lost language, and her most painful recollections; and prompts her to cross an ocean in search of ancient history. There, Maeve will learn new truths about her past, and come face to face with the one thing she truly fears. Only then can she choose between the safe life she's built for herself and one of risk, with bonds she knows can be both wrenchingly delicate and more enduring than time.
The Sense of Paper
Taylor Holden - 2006
How ubiquitous it is in everyday life….A material of paradoxes, it can be used and abused in a thousand ways and still be the same under its skin. It is the embodiment of man’s achievement, yet it is as transient and as flimsy as tissue…. In its strengths and weaknesses, faults and flaws, it is intensely human….”A lush and intoxicating blend of art history, eroticism, and suspense, Taylor Holden's The Sense of Paper is like no other debut novel you’ve ever read. An enthralling exploration of the role of paper in art, it is also the sumptuous story of a woman living on the dangerous edge of obsession, passion, and murder.
The Mine
John A. Heldt - 2012
But when the college senior, days from graduation, enters an abandoned Montana mine, he discovers the price of reckless curiosity. He emerges in May 1941 with a cell phone he can't use, money he can't spend, and little but his wits to guide his way. Stuck in the age of swing dancing and a peacetime draft, Joel begins a new life as the nation drifts toward war. With the help of his 21-year-old trailblazing grandmother and her friends, he finds his place in a world he knew only from movies and books. But when an opportunity comes to return to the present, Joel must decide whether to leave his new love in the past or choose a course that will alter their lives forever. THE MINE is a love story that follows a humbled man through a critical time in history as he adjusts to new surroundings and wrestles with the knowledge of things to come.