Annie's Picks

I could read The Orchard by Theresa Weir over and over again.  What makes this memoir so powerful and compelling is that it the story Theresa's of a life driven by her unbounded courage and strength to do her best with what little she has been given.  Her mother leaves the bedroom door open as her boyfriends slip through her life, eventually hating the sight of Theresa because she is a reminder of the husband who abandoned them. Theresa writes that "sometimes there are people you must forget because of the damage they cause - blood ties or not" and that "If my brothers and I had been dogs, she would have dumped us on a back road in the hopes that we would never find our way home."  Teenage life at her Uncle's bar revolves around moss in the toilet, pickled eggs, microwaved Stewart sandwiches and selling porn to customers in brown boxes with a beer at 8 in the morning.

Theresa can't resist the golden haired Adrian Curtis, scion of a many generational apple farm, although people warn her to stay away as the farm is cursed.  She finds herself married and living in a shack on a farm run by a domineering mother in law who "held people under until they gasped for air and succumbed to her will" and silent father in law who spends most of his day hiding from his overbearing wife.  Following long standing tradition, pesticides are used heavily resulting in tragic consequences "This is how we live.  This is how we do things.  It's how we've always done things." Weir writes.   As hard as Theresa tried to carve out a personal existence with Adrian, the farm held them tight and wouldn't let them go. Weir uses words to describe the ties to the farm so beautifully you want to read them over and over and savor them on your tongue.  You can almost taste the garlicky smell of the pesticide wafting through the windows in the stillness of night.  "It was always the farm that was more important than the individual.  The farm no longer existed to support and sustain the owners; it had become something the owners guarded and protected.  It wasn't working for them; they were working for it, keeping its secrets, building it up, making it more then it was because their self-worth and identity were tied to it.  Without the farm, they owners would cease to exist. The farm made them who they were, and they would keep its secrets."  And "Even the chemicals that saturated everything became in some strange way a part of the poetry, the man-made extrusion of death of nature."

Weir begins her memoir with the story of Lily, a young girl who drinks a glass of pesticide for her salesman father who is trying to convince the farmers that it is safe.  Pesticides abound in The Orchard, protecting the apples from coddling moths and fungus and rust.  No one wants to talk about he dangers of the spray and how "The chemicals were all around us.  In the cloths and sheets and towels  I removed from the line.  In the air we breathe and the water we drank.  We were all Lily."

The ending brought tears to my eyes and a realization that people can continue find strength to survive under so many different dire circumstances.  In The Orchard Weir manages to tell us her story in candid exquisite prose, so sublime that it reads like a love story about a marriage, love of nature and how we struggle to put adversity behind us even while running into it over and over again.  Weir describes life on the family farm in the Midwest with such clarity that you know such a life runs in her veins.  The Orchard is a perfect read, a life story so well written and told that you will succumb to its brilliance and beauty.

Many love stories end in marriage; rare is the love story that begins with one—already promised, already worn.  Set in San Francisco during the first year of Obama’s presidency, Three Stages of Amazement deftly charts the struggles and triumphs of Lena Rusch and her husband Charlie Pepper, still believe they can have it all--sex, love, marriage, children, career, brilliance. But life delivers surprises and tests--a stillborn child, an economic crash, a ruthless business rival and the attentions of an old lover. Touched by tragedy and by ordinary hopes unmet, Lena and Charlie must face, for the first time in their lives, real limitation.

With the Beauty Killer Gretchen Lowell locked away behind bars once again, Archie Sheridan—a Portland police detective and nearly one of her victims—can finally rest a little easier. Meanwhile, the rest of the city of Portland is in crisis. Heavy rains have flooded the Willamette River, and several people have drowned in the quickly rising waters. Or at least that’s what they thought until the medical examiner discovers that the latest victim didn’t drown: She was poisoned before she went into the water. Soon after, three of those drownings are also proven to be murders. Portland has a new serial killer on its hands, and Archie and his task force have a new case.

From a gorgeous cover to a fascinating read, Daphne Kolotay writes about Nina Revskaya, once a great star of the Bolshoi ballet, who has decided to sell her stunning collection of jewelry amassed over her years as a Soviet ballerina.
Nina has hidden her dark secrets for half a lifetime. But two people will not let the past rest—Drew Brooks, an inquisitive young associate director at the Boston auction house, and a Russian professor named Grigori Solodin who believes that a unique set of amber jewels may hold the key to his own ambiguous past.

Daphne Kalotay’s luminous debut novel is a fabulous read, full of Soviet past and modern day intrigue, all seen through the eyes of a retired ballerina and a young graduate student who paths cross and bring to life a dark secret of one’s past.

Geek Love is the story of the Binewskis, a carny family whose mater- and paterfamilias set out–with the help of amphetamine, arsenic, and radioisotopes–to breed their own exhibit of human oddities. There’s Arturo the Aquaboy, who has flippers for limbs and a megalomaniac ambition worthy of Genghis Khan . . . Iphy and Elly, the lissome Siamese twins . . . albino hunchback Oly, and the outwardly normal Chick, whose mysterious gifts make him the family’s most precious–and dangerous–asset.

As the Binewskis take their act across the backwaters of the U.S., inspiring fanatical devotion and murderous revulsion; as its members conduct their own Machiavellian version of sibling rivalry, Geek Love throws its sulfurous light on our notions of the freakish and the normal, the beautiful and the ugly, the holy and the obscene. Family values will never be the same.

Growing up on the Bay of Fundy in the 1860s, Azuba Galloway is determined to escape the confines of her town and live at sea. When she captures the heart of Captain Nathaniel Bradstock, she is sure her dreams are about to be realized, only to have pregnancy intervene. But when Azuba becomes embroiled in a scandal, Nathaniel must bring his young family abroad to save his reputation. Azuba gets her wish, but at what price?

Alone in a male world, and juggling the splendor of foreign ports with the terror of the open seas, Azuba must fight to keep her family together. Blending the high-tension drama of missed chances and unexpected twists of the sort that made A Reliable Wife a bestseller with the pluck and spirit of a heroine in the vein of Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Sea Captain's Wife will captivate readers and critics alike.

Vivid, universal, and emotionally complex, NIGHT ROAD raises profound questions about motherhood, identity, love, and forgiveness.  It is a luminous, heartbreaking novel that captures both the exquisite pain of loss and the stunning power of hope.  This is Kristin Hannah at her very best, telling an unforgettable story about the longing for family, the resilience of the human heart, and the courage it takes to forgive the people we love.

Mary Sutter is a brilliant young midwife who dreams of becoming a surgeon. Eager to run away from recent heartbreak, Mary travels to Washington, D.C., to help tend the legions of Civil War wounded. Under the guidance of two surgeons, who both fall unwittingly in love with her, and resisting her mother's pleas to return home to help with the difficult birth of her twin sister's baby, Mary pursues her medical career against all odds. Rich with historical detail-including cameo appearances by Abraham Lincoln and Dorothea Dix, among others-My Name Is Mary Sutter is certain to be recognized as one of the great novels about the Civil War.

Nick Platt is a British lawyer working in Moscow in the early 2000s—a place where the cascade of oil money, the tightening grip of the government, the jostling of the oligarchs, and the loosening of Soviet social mores have led to a culture where corruption, decadence, violence, and betrayal define everyday life. Nick doesn’t ask too many questions about the shady deals he works on—he’s too busy enjoying the exotic, surreally sinful nightlife Moscow has to offer.

One day in the subway, he rescues two willowy sisters, Masha and Katya, from a would-be purse snatcher. Soon Nick, the seductive Masha, and long-limbed Katya are cruising the seamy glamour spots of the city. Nick begins to feel something for Masha that he is pleased to think is love. Then the sisters ask Nick to help their aged aunt, Tatiana, find a new apartment.

Of course, nothing is as it seems—including this extraordi­nary debut novel. The twists in the story take it far beyond its noirish frame—the sordid and vivid portrayal of Moscow serves as a backdrop for a book that examines the irresistible allure of sin, featuring characters whose hearts are as cold as the Russian winter.

In this inimitable, beloved classic—graceful, lucid and lyrical—Anne Morrow Lindbergh shares her meditations on youth and age; love and marriage; peace, solitude and contentment as she set them down during a brief vacation by the sea. Drawing inspiration from the shells on the shore, Lindbergh’s musings on the shape of a woman’s life bring new understanding to both men and women at any stage of life. A mother of five, an acclaimed writer and a pioneering aviator, Lindbergh casts an unsentimental eye on the trappings of modernity that threaten to overwhelm us: the time-saving gadgets that complicate rather than simplify, the multiple commitments that take us from our families. And by recording her thoughts during a brief escape from everyday demands, she helps readers find a space for contemplation and creativity within their own lives.

Single, thirtysomething, working as a writer in New York City, Kristin Kimball was living life as an adventure. But she was beginning to feel a sense of longing for a family and for home. When she interviewed a dynamic young farmer, her world changed. Kristin knew nothing about growing vegetables, let alone raising pigs and cattle and driving horses. But on an impulse, smitten, if not yet in love, she shed her city self and moved to five hundred acres near Lake Champlain to start a new farm with him. The Dirty Life is the captivating chronicle of their first year on Essex Farm, from the cold North Country winter through the following harvest season—complete with their wedding in the loft of the barn.

Kimball and her husband had a plan: to grow everything needed to feed a community. It was an ambitious idea, a bit romantic, and it worked. Every Friday evening, all year round, a hundred people travel to Essex Farm to pick up their weekly share of the "whole diet"—beef, pork, chicken, milk, eggs, maple syrup, grains, flours, dried beans, herbs, fruits, and forty different vegetables—produced by the farm. The work is done by draft horses instead of tractors, and the fertility comes from compost. Kimball’s vivid descriptions of landscape, food, cooking—and marriage—are irresistible.

This is an intense story told in four different voices of a Korean family whose mother disappears while following her husband in the Seoul subway.   Each has a different way of reacting and digesting their grief.  I couldn't put this down and I will never think of my late mother or even myself as a mother the same way after reading this book.  What secrets do I have that would unfold if I disappeared?

From the beloved New York Times bestselling Luanne Rice comes a heartwarming yet heart-wrenching portrait of three far-flung sisters who come home to Martha's Vineyard one last time. Their mother's beach house is the only place any of them ever found true happiness and they need to begin the difficult process of letting go. Memories of their grandmother, mother, and their Irish father, who sailed away the year Dar turned twelve, rise up and expose the fine cracks in their family myth-especially when a cache of old letters reveals enough truth to send them back to their ancestral homeland.

Set in the fictional town of Port Bonita, on Washington State 's rugged Pacific coast, "West of Here" is propelled by a story that both re-creates and celebrates the American experience it is storytelling on the grandest scale. With one segment of the narrative focused on the town 's founders circa 1890 and another showing the lives of their descendants in 2006, the novel develops as a kind of conversation between two epochs, one rushing blindly toward the future and the other struggling to undo the damage of the past.

A delightfully quirky story that takes place at the Tower of London with odd characters with names like Balthazr and Hebe, and an unusual menagerie of animals like a huge tortoise named Mrs. Cook, and a zorilla that produces a pungent aroma when agitated. With grace and good writing, Stuart intertwines all these characters and their daily lives in her novel to the reader's delight.

"A man's dying is more his survivors' affair than his own"--Thomas Mann

Nicola arrives at Helen's home much sicker than Helen expected. Helen has set up her spare room with fresh towels and flowers. Does this matter to Nicola? Female friendships are tender yet complicated--in The Spare Room they are unrelenting in honesty and love.

Beautifully written, this is the story of Rachel, born to a white Danish mother and a black G.I., who are killed. Not white, not black, Rachel lives with her black grandmother and wonders who she is, and why the color of her skin is so important. Great read!

I love Carol Goodman's novels. They are passionate, thrilling, and full of secrets that are unraveled layer by layer. this one is set at a girls' boarding school in Upstate New York, where the past erupts into the present, creating another secret--Wonderful!

A true, honest memoir by a nurse-midwife in West Virginia, dealing with her own health issues, marriage, money, and life. You hear many stories from women in all walks of life--a deeply moving story.

A novel recreating the bombing of Coventry, England, during World War II, in vivid imagery. Harriet Marsh is a fire-watcher with Jeremy, a young man whom she learns to love under the circumstances of war.

A journey with Little Bee will leave you haunted, make you cry and love the character of Little Bee, a Nigerian refugee. Set in England and Nigeria during the rebel war, Little Bee is a book that reminds us of the humanity left in our world.

A gorgeous picture of this farm on Martha's Vineyard. Stunning photos complement delicious recipes and a lovely story of an island farm family.

I loved this! After Rhoda's husband leaves her for Bob on gay.com, she is injured in a car accident and finds herself back in her family's Mennonite home. In the process she finds life in her youth wasn't so bad. A sharp and intelligent memoir, and a fun read.

A strong novel of love, despair, and the strength that can arise when they meet. Tim has a mysterious illness that causes him to walk away from life. Ferris is a fine writer who leaves you wanting more.

A cinematic read--a lovely novel set in coastal England. May finds herself in a man's world of fossil hunting--fascinating and strong women's friendships and their resiliency. I learned so much about early fossil hunting! 

An honest and hilarious account of fatherhood. Some of the funniest and most serious moments of child-rearing are brought alive by Lewis--a fun read.

This couple traveled and worked all over Northern Italy studying farming and food, and they were very popular when they came to the bookstore. This is a beautiful book full of local lore and containing over 150 recipes that will tantalize your palate--makes a wonderful gift.

The author of These Granite Islands writes a vivid novel, moving from her past to present. Set in Ireland, this is a lovely story of love and past feelings and their reconciliation.

A lavely novel, but unknown to many. As Amy Tan writes, "the ghosts of our mothers are always with us." A poignant novel of three generations of strong, independent Japanese women. A unique journey.

A father's fall from grace threatens to destroy his family, but not as much as his best friend's older daughter, who returns to town, seduces the son, and inserts herslf into a family already struggling. A moving, complex tale.

One of the best books of 2009--three disparate lives intertwine in Chaon's brilliant novel of mystery. Elegantly written, a favorite of many, including NPR, and many adult book buyers.

All Ralph Truitt wanted was a "reliable" wife for his wealthy life in northern Wisconsin. Catherine Land declared she was a simple and honest woman--she turned out to be much more. A page-turner--part thriller, part mystery, part love story--it's a complex, mesmerizing read!

This delightful book will inspire even the most novice gardener Each chapter is like entering the world of the authors' garden--a true gem!

You won't believe the ending of this book! Hannah creates another masterpiece of psychological suspense. If you like this, try her first one, Little Face.

What would you do as a young mother if you went away, leaving your newborn with your husband, and came home to find the baby in the crib was not yours? And everyone thinks you are crazy, including the police. A superb novel of psychological suspense!

A chilling novel involving a young family that is confronted by Munchausen by Proxy, when a mother intentionally harms her child. A complicated situation makes for a good read.

Set in small-town Alabama in the 1930s, this first novel follows nine-year-old Tess as she trys to understand why a woman threw her baby down their well. Mystery, love, and compassion move throughout this beautifully written novel with a strong sense of place.

This is a coming-of-age story set in nineteenth-century Korea, during its occupation by the Japanese. Najin Han is a young woman of privilege who wants more than marriage to an aristocrat. A moving, engrossing story of "old" Korea.

A gem of Southern writing--the words float above the page! Velva Jean can't wait to leave her North Carolina hill town, and the gift of a yellow truck makes her dream come true.

A great read by a talented young woman who is completing her Ph.D. in New England Studies. The plot travels back and forth between present-day Salem, Massachusetts, and the witch trials of 1692. Read it! And if you want to meet the author at the AAUW luncheon on Saturday, October 17, call the bookstore at 860-536-3795 for information. 

Still Alice is a heart-wrenching debut novel about Alice Howland, a 50-year-old Harvard professor who is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's disease. Being almost 50 myself, I found it almost terrifying to watch Alice's mental capacity diminish so rapidly, and to see her life unravel despite the efforts of her loving husband and grown children. How would it feel not to recognize your own daughter? Or your husband? Genova writes with clarity and emotion, for example describing Alice's panic when she wanders her own house trying to find the door to the bathroom. Frightening in its realism, Still Alice is a book not to miss.

Here comes the Alexander McCall Smith of India with Detective Vish Puri and his extended family in The Case of the Missing Servant by Tarquin Hall. This is a delightful mystery, full of twists and turns as well as lively descriptions of life in modern India behind the gates and cement walls. Puri's comrades have names like Flush, Tubelight, and Facecream, and his delight at eating all the street foods of Delhi are delightful. Hall's first work of fiction could be the start of a whole new mystery series set in modern India. I loved this fun read!