March 13^th – Chris Bohjalian will join our book group via speakerphone to talk about his novel Double Bind. Book group begins at 7PM, Chris will call us at 7:30.

March 25^th – Doug Ohman photography/publishing workshop, sponsored by Beagle Books and Jackpine Writers Bloc at Northwoods Bank Community Room 2:00. Doug’s workshop will cover both photography and his path to becoming published. The cost of the workshop is $36 (includes one of Doug’s Byways books!), contact Cindie at Beagle Books to sign up!

      

March 27^th – William Durbin signing at 5:00 at Beagle Books. Durbin’s newest book is Winter War.

Book Reviews

Now You See Him by Eli Gottlieb

Reviewed by Sally
A few weeks ago, I received a copy of the novel Now You See Him from the publisher. On the back of the book, I read that one of the characters was Rob Castor, who wrote a well-received book of short stories and a few years later, murdered his girl friend and committed suicide. I set the book on the “do not read” stack. 
Last month the book was released, and immediately hit the best seller list. Curious, I pulled it out of the stack and began reading.
Now You See Him is a novel of suspense which is also beautifully written. It’s told in the voice of Nick Framingham, Rob’s childhood friend. As Nick’s grief following Rob’s death grows, the problems in his marriage are exacerbated. As Nick explores the past and reconsiders the present, he discovers secrets which force him to reevaluate what he believed to be true about his own life. His story is startling, believable, and heartbreaking. 
Once I started reading the book, it was hard to put it down. When I finished reading it, I put it on the “recommend” stack.  
Now You See Him is available in hardcover at Beagle Books for $22.95. 

Mudbound by Hillary Jordan
Reviewed by Jen

I heard this book was comparable to To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, but was skeptical. Well, it IS comparable to Lee’s classic. I was sucked in by a scene where two brothers are burying their father. Mudbound is set in 1946 and told from a number of voices. City-bred Laura McAllan reluctantly follows her husband Henry, along with the couple’s children, to Henry’s Mississippi Delta farm — a place Laura finds foreign and frightening. Soon after their arrival, two young men return from the war to work the land. Jamie, Henry’s much younger brother, is everything Henry is not — charming, handsome, and haunted by his memories of combat. Ronsel Jackson, eldest son of the black sharecroppers who live on the McAllan farm, has come home with the shine of a war hero. But no matter his bravery in defense of his country, he is still considered less than a man in the Jim Crow South.  
The characters are intriguing, the story is engaging, and the writing is so good --Jordan has nailed the voices of the characters.
Mudbound was the 2006 Bellwether Award winner. The Bellwether Award is awarded by writer Barbara Kingsolver for works that address social justice. Kingsolver sings Jordan’s praises, saying: "Her characters walked straight out of 1940s Mississippi and into the part of my brain where sympathy and anger and love reside, leaving my heart racing. They are with me still."
Mudbound is available in hard cover at Beagle Books for $22.95.

Staff Reads

Bob-
  Atomic Lobster by Tim Dorsey

Brian-  
 The Witches by Roald Dahl

Dracula by Bram Stoker

Chris-

Kabul Beauty School by Deborah Rodriguez

Linda-

Change of Heart by Jodi Picoult (Just Released!)

Jennifer-

Holes by Louis Sachar

Playing for Pizza by John Grisham on audio 

Hannah-

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

Pretty Birds by Scott Simon

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

Vision Quest by Terry Davis (he's a professor at MSU!)

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner 

Gail-

The House on Beartown Road: A Memoir of Learning and Forgetting by Elizabeth Cohen
Gail says: “This is a true story about a newspaper reporter who is a single mother raising a one-year old child and taking care of her father with Alzheimer’s.”

Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons by Lorna Landvik

Money and the People You Love by Bruce Helmer

Million Dollar Dilemma by Judy Baer 

Cindie-

Ordinary People by Judith Guest

Rhoda-

Grayson by Lynne Cox;

Rhoda’s favorite excerpt (so far):
Wait as long as you need to. The waiting is as important as the doing: it’s the time you spend training and the rest in between; it’s the reading and the thinking about what you’ve read; it’s the written words, what is said, what is left unsaid, the space between the thoughts on the page, that makes the story, and it’s the space between the notes, the intervals between fast and slow, that makes the music. It’s the love of being together, the spacing, the tension of being apart, that brings you back together. Just wait, just be patient, he will return. 

Madonnas of Leningrad by Debra Dean 

Sally-

The Florist's Daughter by Patricia Hampl 

The Shapeshifter by Tony Hillerman on audio 

Youth Yak
by Jen

Winter War by William Durbin
Durbin has taken on a challenge in Winter War. How do you write a children’s book about war without softening it so much as to give a false sense of war? How do you write a children’s book about war without writing scenes so gruesome and horrific it will give readers nightmares? Durbin does it with a character named Marko who leads the reader by the hand along the line between sugar-coated and all-out gruesome.
When the Soviet Union invades its tiny neighbor Finland in November 1939, Marko volunteers to help the war effort. Even though his leg was weakened by polio, he can ski well, and he becomes a messenger on the front line, skiing in white camouflage through the dark, terrifying forests at night. The odds are against the Finns: the Russians have 4 times as many soldiers and 30 times as many planes. They have 3,000 tanks, the Finns have 30. But a tank in a snowy forest is no match for a boy skis. And the Russians don’t know winter the way the Finns do, or what tough guerrilla warriors the Finns are. Marko teams up with another messenger, Karl, learning that Karl’s whole family was killed by the Russians. And Karl has a secret that demonstrates the power of loyalty. 
Winter War is available in hardcover at Beagle Books for $15.99. Author William Durbin will be at Beagle for a book signing on Thursday, March 27^th at 5:00.

Tunnels by Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams
14-year-old Will Burrows has little in common with his strange, dysfunctional family. In fact, the only bond he shares with his eccentric father is a passion for archaeological excavation. So when his dad mysteriously vanishes, Will is compelled to dig up the truth behind his disappearance. He unearths the unbelievable: a subterranean society that time forgot. "The Colony" has existed unchanged for a century, but it's no benign time capsule of a bygone era--because the Colony is ruled by a merciless overclass, the Styx. Will must free his father--is he also about to ignite a revolution? (Scholastic)
Tunnels is available in hardcover at Beagle Books for $17.99. 

I’ve recently started carrying a new series in our young adult non-fiction section called Who Was… Each book is a short biography of a famous person, illustrated with pencil drawings. These are great little books to give readers a manageable amount of information, limited to the most interesting bits. The books are $4.99 paperbacks. There are 33 books in the series, and more are coming!