Oskar Schell, the hero and chief narrator of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, is an amateur inventor, a Shakespearean actor, an astrophysicist, a jewelry designer, a tamborine player, a pacifist and a Francophile. He is also nine years old. Oskar’s journey begins when he finds a mysterious key labeled “Black” belonging to his father, who was killed in the World Trade Center attacks of 9/11. Oskar’s adulation for his late father combined with his innocent logic spurrs him to discover the background of the key by tracking down each person named Black in the New York City telephone book–all 262 of them. The result is a hilarious, touching, and epic search throughout all five boroughs of New York from Central Park to Coney Island to Harlem, with a patchwork assortment of characters, from a retired journalist who keeps a card catalogue of everyone he meets, to a tour guide who never leaves the Empire State Building.

Through the prism of Oskar’s precocious verbosity, Foer takes on the catastrophe and upheaval of recent American history. He puts it partially in context by addressing the broader scope of political trauma, interweaving the stories of Oskar’s grandparents, whose lives and homes were devastated in the firebombing of Dresden during WWII, and including an at once amusing and apalling sequence in which Oskar discusses the Hiroshima bombing for show-and-tell. In all of these respects, Foer follows up his brilliant and bestselling Everything Is Illuminated, filling the book with the kind of lingustic fireworks of distincitive voices that have distinguished him as an author. He also gilds the text with photographs, colored highlights, text overwritten to the point of illegibility, and a flip book. Above all, Foer demonstrates that contemporary malaise will not induce him to ignore the themes that have shaped human life as long as it has existed; his meditation on life and loss does not shy from addressing truth and beauty, death and love.

Read a review by John Updike here; read the New York Times review here.

Following her successes with novels illustrating the human-animal connection in her books Riding Lesson and Flying Changes, dealing with horses and horsemanship, Gruen brings in a new flavor with a take on life in the circus. The story is told through the lens of 93-year-old Jacob Jankowski, currently residing in an assisted living community, querulous about the limitations of age but still possessed of all of his mental faculties. A visiting circus nearby causes Jacob to revisit his past, when he belonged to the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth.

In a flashback of seventy years, 23-year-old Jacob finds himself penniless after both of his parents are killed in a car crash. After failing to sit for his veterinary exams at Cornell university, he is truly set adrift in the morass of poverty sweeping the country during the Great Depression. When he hops a train belonging to the Benzini Brothers’ show, he finagles his veterinary training into a position caring for the circus animals. Jacob grows to care for Marlena, the equestrian star performer–and unfortunately also the wife of one of the circus’s owners. August, Marlena’s husband, is abusive of both Marlena and the animals for which Jacob cares, while the other co-owner, Uncle Al, is devoted solely to business with a ruthless unconcern for any of the circus’s employees or animals. Jacob must navigate his way through this gritty world of sleazy entertainment while trying to keep safe all that becomes dear to him.

Though Gruen’s prose is often marked as only servicable, her characters are human and the story itself blends fictional memoir, adventure, romance, and mystery for an exciting read. She has clearly done substantial research on both travelling circuses of the earlier part of the century and on Depression-era America, lending the book historical interest as well. Historical buffs and romance fans alike will find a fun summer read in this novel.

Read a review here.

Read an interview with Sara Gruen here.

Eva von Rensberg, half English and half-Afrikaan, grew up unhappily on a Skinner’s Drift, a farm in South Africa during the severe political unrest of a post-Apartheid atmosphere. Now it’s ten years, and Eva’s made her escape to New York City only to find she has to return to the place of her childhood to take care of her estranged dying father and sell the farm. Her revisit, however, begins to unearth long buried memories, especially when she finds the diaries of her late mother Lorraine and is forced to go back in time and relive her troubled past and face her father’s terrible secret.

Read a review of this book here.

Whitney, Taylor, and Charisse are three Chicagoan friends who rely on each other for support when their personal lives take a downturn. Whitney is an overweight singleton who turns to Krispy Kreme and McDonald’s for comfort when she can’t get a man in her life to stay put. She decides there’s nothing like an upcoming 20th high school reunion to lose weight for, and handsome Rico at the gym wants to help her, but is it too good to be true? Taylor is a successful lawyer who can’t seem to subpoena a commitment out of her longterm boyfriend Cameron and faces a debilitating medical condition that makes her rethink her priorities. Charisse seems to have it all with two adorable children and a loving husband — but her relationship with her abusive and emotionally unavailable mother, dissatisfaction with her current life, and desperation to keep some secrets hidden threatens the bounds of friendship and her marriage.

After six generations of Iowan farming, Mack and his family are forced to give it up if they want to barely hold onto their house, but can they keep hold of themselves? Rita Mae Barnes had been trying to cope with the loss of her husband and one of her sons by trying to keep the farm going. Mack, her surviving son, is back from a psychiatric ward stay for clinical depression. His wife Jodie has become so desperate, she can’t recognize herself anymore while her daughter has turned to religion for her problems and her son to goth music and rebellion.

Mark Childress sets your typical coming-of-age novel against the racial tensions of the recently desegregated Deep South during the early 1970’s in his latest novel, One Mississippi. Just before Daniel Musgrove is to enter the 11th grade, a number of things happen to turn his life upside down: his salesman father transfers the family from Indiana to rural Mississippi, an accident en route leads to all their possessions being destroyed, their crazy uncle comes to live with them, and his older brother enlists in the army, leaving Daniel alone in a strange place.

Fortunately, Daniel finds a quick friend in Tim Cousins, a bright, witty boy who loves to find the humor in everything life has to throw at him. The two fast friends bond over their mutual love for Sonny and Cher, involvement in an amateur Baptist church musical, avoiding quarterback and bully Red Martin, and mooning over a beautiful, popular black girl in the recently desegregated high school, Arnita Beecham . But while on a double date at the junior prom, the two teens get into an accident that leaves Arnita in a coma. Daniel and Tim manage to blame the accident on Martin, despite her mother’s suspicions. Things only begin to spiral out of control when Arnita awakes from her coma and believes she is white - promptly falling for the guilty Daniel and instigating extreme jealousy from Tim.

Daniel knew that transferring schools wouldn’t be easy, but throw in new love, jealousy, inner demons, racial tensions, manipulations, and cover-ups, and things quickly go from simple adolescent confusion to swift, mutual destruction.

One Mississippi feels like you’ve stepped into a world where the air is thick enough to chew, the lemonade is tart enough to kill a three-day thirst and the neighbours are friendly enough to invite y’all over for some southern fried chicken. This is the perfect read for the long, hot days of summer.

- Read the rest of this review at Electric Closet.

Judith Lindbergh lays out an epic historical tale of a time when the Vikings were exploring the new world and the replacement of paganism with Christian religion through the eyes of three women: a beautiful slave, her twisted and vengeful daughter, and their powerful mistress. Katla is a the Christian daughter of a Viking and the slave he took during a raid and brought back to Iceland. Her faith sets her apart from everyone else of the pagan Norse religion, but her beauty draws the attentions of her master’s eldest son Torvard, who violently rapes her. After this, she is bought and nursed back to health by Thorbjorg, a healer and seeress. Katla gives birth to a mute daughter, Bibrau, but her despisement of the child causes Bibrau to grow up with a thirst for vengence.

John Updike’s newest book, Terrorist, tells the story of Ahmad Mulloy Ashmawy, an eighteen-year old boy living in New Prospect, New Jersey. Ahmad is the son of an Irish-American woman and an Egyptian exchange student who abandoned his wife and son when Ahmad was three. Disgusted by his mother and her constant string of boyfriends, and unable to connect with the other students at Central High School, Ahmad falls under the guidance of Saikh Rashid, the imam of the local mosque. Ahmad has been attending the mosque since the age of 11, a decision left up to him by his free-spirited mother, and only informed by his father in so far as Ahmad seeks to identify with the man who left. With an entire boyhood and adolesence spent hearing the cynical Saikh Rashid preach against the “devils,” the Ahmad that we meet has a finely distilled disdain for American culture. “I of course do not hate all Americans,” he says. “But the American way is the way of infidels. It is headed for a terrible doom.”

The direction that the protagonist is heading stands out boldly to its contemporary American audience, and the story has clearly evolved out of the post-9/11 fear of terrorism that lines the media and society. Other characters enter into the narrative arc that brings Ahmad to his crucial decision, such as a girl at his high school, Joryleen, and her boyfriend, Tylenol; Jack Levy, the Jewish guidance counselor, and his offensively obese wife. This gripping story, told with all of the alternatingly elevated and gritty elements of Updike’s prose, seeths with the fears that pervade modern culture.

Read a review here.

The Kindness of Strangers is a powerful study into how a tragic event can affect not just its direct victims, but everyone around them. Recently widowed Sarah Laden struggles with her professional catering business and holding her two troubled sons afloat in a small Ohio town. Things go from bad to worse when Sarah finds Jordan, young son of her best friend and neighbor Courtney Kendrick, sick and alone. She rushes him to the hospital only to find out that he is a child sexual abuse victim who had tried to commit suicide by overdose. Worse still, evidence comes up to implicate his parents as being the perpetrators — Sarah is horrified to learn that the food she had catered for the Kendricks was used attheir sex parties and that Courtney, a doctor, was trying to treat her son’s contracted gonorrhea on the sly. Can Sarah help a young, emotionally traumatized boy to heal? Can she and her two sons learn to heal themselves?

Read some of author Katrina Kittle’s thoughts behind her writing this book here.

Read a review of The Kindness of Strangers here.

Philip, Gilbert, and Claire are a trio of writers get a chance at biting the Hollywood apple when they seal a deal to write the screenplay for a big Hollywood flick in this LA glitz and glamor parody. They encounter far more than that when they also end up getting a deal to write the tell-all memoirs of a fading Hollywood starlet, which ruffles more than a few feathers of those who are worried about the secrets she has to tell. Things quickly spiral out of control, involving bordellos, male prostitutes, blackmail, videotapes, and vindictive DAs. This fun and bitchy satire comes from the comedic genius mind of Joe Keenan, a staff writer for Frasier.