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New Books - Fiction

Recent Additions to the Ferguson Library Collection.

The Painter of Battles Pérez-Reverte, Arturo. FIC PEREZREV   Review Former war photographer Andrew Faulques is holed up in a tower, where he's painting a mural displaying the human experience of war as filtered through the great war paintings. Then a stranger arrives and calmly announces his plans to kill Faulques, bringing us uncomfortably close to human violence and questions of both culpability and sheer human evil. Often called a master of the literary thriller, Perez-Reverte is much more than that, and his talent has never been on better display than it is here. Source: Library Journal, Jan 01, 2008       Nice To Come Home To Flowers, Rebecca. FIC FLOWERS   Review Pru Whistler is blindsided by life--she's lost her job and gotten dumped by her boyfriend. Neither was the love of her life, but suddenly free of the security of a regular paycheck and a steady boyfriend, Pru flounders. After settling her job situation by becoming a consultant, she reenters the dating world only to find the most interesting man around carries more baggage than she does. This is a debut novel with a heartwarming charm and genuine humor. Source: Library Journal, April 01, 2008     The Eye of Jade Liang, Diane Wei. MYS LIANG   Summary Private investigator Mei is no stranger to the dark side of China. She was six years old when she last saw her father behind the wire fence of one of Mao's remote labor camps. Now she has been hired to find a Han Dynasty jade of great value, looted from a museum during the Cultural Revolution, when the Red Guards swarmed the streets, destroying so many traces of the past. The hunt for the jade leads Mei through seedy gambling dens and cheap noodle bars near the Forbidden City, forcing her to delve into China’s brutal past and her family’s own tragic secrets. Source: From the Publisher     The Crazy School Read, Cornelia. MYS READ   Review Madeline is up to her eyebrows in trouble when she takes a teaching job at cultish Santangelo Academy, a boarding school for troubled teens. At Santangelo, humiliation and harsh discipline await students and teachers who act out or misbehave. Life goes from unsettling to sinister after a student and his pregnant girlfriend are found dead under mysterious circumstances, and on the same night, Madeline is poisoned within an inch of her life. A swiftly plotted mystery peppered with wonderful one-liners. Source: Booklist, Oct 15, 2007     Lush Life Price, Richard. FIC PRICE   Review On New York's gentrifying Lower East Side, two boys from the projects kill a man during a hold-up. The cops investigate, but Price's investigation is no mere police procedural. Such is Price’s talent that we care about all the vividly drawn characters equally, whether they are the cops whose interrogation reduces an innocent man to emotional wreckage or the kid whose abuse leaves him unable to comprehend the value of human life. Price is a writer of acute social conscience, worthy of the most discriminating crime-fiction fanship. Source: Booklist, Dec 01, 2007     The Delivery Man McGinniss, Joe, Jr. FIC MCGINNISS   Review Chase couldn't cut it as an NYU art student and now finds himself mired in old, self-destructive patterns. Fired from his high-school teaching job following a fistfight with one of his students, he falls into a job chauffeuring a ring of teenage call girls to clients' homes. McGinniss never wavers from his ruthless portrayal of the morally bankrupt, and this atmospheric page-turner gains increasing depth as it barrels toward a gut-wrenching conclusion. A searing portrait of young wastrels adrift in a vacuous Las Vegas. Source: Booklist, Nov 01, 2007     The Hakawati: Or, the storyteller Alameddine, Rabih. FIC ALAMEDD   Review With his father dying in a Beirut hospital, Osama al-Khattar, a Los Angeles software engineer, returns in 2003 for the feast of Eid al-Hada. As he keeps watch with his sister, Lina, and extended family, Osama narrates the family history, going back to his great-grandparents, and including his grandfather, a hakawati or storyteller. Author Alameddine's own storytelling ingenuity seems infinite: out of it he has fashioned a novel on a royal scale, as reflective of past empires as present. Source: Publishers Weekly, Jan 25, 2008     Cadillac Orpheus Woodward, Solon Timothy. FIC WOODWARD   Review Woodward's darkly comic first novel is situated in the fictional town of Johnsonville, Florida where bail bondsman Teo competes with Medgar Coots, a despicable doctor, over local real estate. This densely populated debut teems with suicide, killer bees, and sex in the several days leading up to the cataclysmic appearance of a category-four storm, Hurricane Aretha. Both humorous and tragic, the book will leave readers relishing the unique craftsmanship and zany plotline. Source: Library Journal, Jan 01, 2008