BOOKSHELF
New Releases for January
BY KAY GRISMER AND ANGIE TALLY FOR THE COUNTRY BOOKSHOP FICTION – HARDCOVER BENEATH THE LION’S GAZE by Maaza Mengiste. Set in Addis Ababa, Ehtiopia, 1974, on the eve of a revolution, Mengiste’s novel tells the story of a father and two sons, of betrayals and loyalties, and of a family unraveling in the wake of Ethiopia’s revolution. REMARKABLE CREATURES by Tracy Chevalier. In her new historical novel set on the English coast, a young woman who was struck by lightning as a baby realizes she has “the eye” to find what no one else can see. When she uncovers an unusual fossilized skeleton, she sets the religious fathers on edge, the townspeople to vicious gossip, and the scientific world alight. SAVING CEECEE HONEYCUTT by Beth Hoffman. After her psychotic mother is hit by a truck and killed, 12-year-old CeeCee is rescued by her great-aunt Tootie and whisked off in her vintage Packard convertible to Savannah’s perfumed world of prosperity and Southern eccentricity in Hoffman’s charming debut novel.
PineStraw : The Art & Soul of the Sandhills
SUMMERTIME by J. M. Coetzee. In his inventive work of fiction the Nobel Prizewinning author of DISGRACE imagines his own life through the eyes of a biographer researching a book about “the late South African writer John Coetzee” during a time, he is convinced, when Coetzee was finding himself as a writer. SWAN THIEVES by Elizabeth Kostova. When a renowned painter attacks a canvas in the National Gallery of Art, psychiatrist Andrew Marlowe tries to understand the secret that torments the genius. FICTION – PAPERBACK LITTLE GIANT OF ABERDEEN COUNTY by Tiffany Baker. A young girl who grew to epic proportions uncovers a local witch’s legendary spell book. Armed with this dangerous knowledge, she must face her own larger-than-life demons. THE SWEETNESS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PIE by Alan Bradley. In the summer of 1950, at the once-grand mansion of Buckshaw, an aspiring young chemist with a passion for poison, is intrigued by a series of inexplicable events. When she finds a man
lying in the cucumber patch and watches him take his dying breath, life begins in earnest. THE WETTEST COUNTY IN THE WORLD by Matt Bondurant. Bondurant weaves a compelling tale of violence, desperation, and greed, as three brothers run moonshine in Franklin County, VA during prohibition, in a story based on the exploits of the author’s grandfather and two uncles. NON-FICTION – HARDCOVER AMERICANS IN PARIS by Charles Glass. Glass’s tales of adventure, intrigue, passion, deceit, and survival chronicles some of the stories of the 5,000 American expatriates living in Nazi Paris during France’s dangerous occupation years from 1940 to 1944. NON-FICTON – PAPERBACK HOW TO LIVE: A Search for Wisdom from Old People (While They Are Still on This Earth) by Henry Alford. Armed with medical evidence that supports the cliche that older people are wiser, Alford inter-
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January 2010
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