Westport Public Library BOOK blog

Two new titles have been added to the Library’s magazine collection just for our mystery fans!

Mystery Scene Magazine includes articles and reviews on books, films, TV shows, audio-books, children's mysteries, and more.

Edgar-winning mystery writer Jan Burke calls it “An indispensable guide to what's happening and who's who in the world of crime writing."

Mystery Scene – which recently published its 100th issue – publishes five issues each year: Winter (February), Spring (April), Summer (June), Fall (September), and Holiday (November).

In between issues you can keep up to date with goings on in the mystery world and catch up on previous issues on their website.

Mystery News features interviews and articles, columns on a variety of mystery-related subjects, reviews, and previews of upcoming mysteries.

Mystery News – which has been in publication for 10 years – is published every 2 months.

They also have a website where you can access excerpts from past interviews, including the one where Phyllis Dorothy James reveals that the “P.D.” was chosen not so much to conceal her sex as to create a better book jacket graphic.

These are two great tools for finding new titles and authors to read. If you find something you would like that we don’t own, just ask for a purchase request form and we will see if we can get hold of a copy for you.

Just recently I ordered copies of Moral Disorder by Margaret Atwood for one of our book clubs. Although Atwood is probably best known for one of her many novels, such as The Handmaid’s Tale or The Blind Assassin, Moral Disorder is not a novel but a collection of interrelated, somewhat autobiographical stories that are both humorous and heartbreaking. It chronicles a troubled Canadian family over the course of 60 years. If your club is looking for a something a little different to read, why not try a short story collection next time?

Alice Munro is another Canadian who is considered one of the premier short story writers. Her books often focus on human relationships and in particular, the lives of women. Runaway and The View from Castle Rock are two of her most recent collections.

There are Jews in My House is a collection of stories about Moscow and Brooklyn, written by Lara Vapynar. Vapynar, a recent immigrant from Russia, learned English by watching TV and reading Alice Munro stories!

Edward P. Jones, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of The Known World, has written two collections of short stories that deal with the African-American working class in 20th century Washington, D.C., Lost in the City and All Aunt Hagar’s Children.

Mothers and Sons by Colm Toibin is a collection of haunting and moving stories exploring the relationships of mothers and sons. Ann Packer, author of The Dive From Clausen’s Pier, and just published Songs without Words began her writing career with Mendocino and other Stories, a collection about men and women in their 30’s whose lives have not quite fallen into place.

So before your group submits its list for the fall, consider adding a short story collection to your choices. If you need multiple copies or a discussion guide, contact me.

A few weekends back I spent a pleasant Sunday afternoon in dog-friendly Woodstock, New York. Woodstock has long been a haven for those who travel to the beat of a different drum. And now the stores and restaurants in town have signs that not only welcome hippies and wiccans, but dogs, too.

They also have a lot of “please don’t feed the bears” signs as there has been a huge increase in the Catskill bear population.

Woodstock actually borders on a town called Bearsville, where two of my favorite restaurants can be found. There is the Bear Café, which offers fine food and excellent wines and The Little Bear Restaurant, which serves Chinese food in a more casual atmosphere. Both are set back in the woods in a streamside setting.

No bear sightings to report.

If you are a dog lover who longs to take your dog along for the ride the Library can offer you Dog-Friendly New England: a Traveler’s Companion, Traveling with Your Pet: the AAA Petbook (covers the US and Canada), and Globetrotting Pets: an International Travel Guide.

If you would like to do some armchair traveling there is John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley which is about his coast-to-coast 1960 road-trip with his standard poodle Charley.

Or you can go international with Michael Konik’s Ella in Europe which is about Konik’s six-week European tour with is Lab/greyhound mix Ella.

Go, dog, go!

Sooner or later, those of us who work in a public library are confronted with someone looking for a reading recommendation. We spend considerable effort learning to ask the right questions (for example, "what have you read that you liked?") and to rely on our knowledge of what is in the Library collection to come up with suggestions.And they are suggestions, not recommendations. If we get feedback- negative or positive- that's great!

Recently, I read a new novel, Life on the Refrigerator Door: a Novel in Notes by Alice Kuipers. As the mother of two daughters, I could not resist the story of a single mom and her teenage daughter. The story is told entirely in notes the mother and daughter leave for each other and it all ends in sadness. It's a book with appeal for teenage girls, as well as their mothers and it's especially good for the person trying to help that teenage girl whose mother may be seriously ill. Maybe I will have the opportunity to put this book in the hands of the reader who most "needs" it. Or to suggest it to someone looking for a touching tribute to mother-daughter love. Or to add it to a list of suggested "good reads."

Are you looking for a good book? Ask for some suggestions on your next visit to the Library.
Or email your inquiry and the suggested selections will be waiting for you.

The Usual Suspects Mystery Reading Group has two award winners up for discussion this fall.

This coming Sunday, September 16th, at 2 p.m. our title will be The Janissary Tree by Jason Goodwin, which was the winner of the this year's Edgar Award for Best Novel.

It is set in 1836. Europe is modernizing and the Ottoman Empire must follow suit. But just before the sultan announces sweeping changes, a wave of murders threatens the fragile balance of power in his court. Who is behind them? Only one intelligence agent can be trusted to find out: Yashim, a man both brilliant and near-invisible in this world, an investigator who can walk with ease in the great halls of the empire, in its streets, and even within its harems—because Yashim is a eunuch.

His investigation points to the Janissaries, who, for four hundred years were the empire's elite soldiers. Crushed by the sultan, could they now be staging a brutal comeback? And can they be stopped without throwing Istanbul into political chaos?

This first book in the Investigator Yashim series is a richly entertaining mystery, full of exotic history and intrigue. A second book, The Snake Stone, is expected in mid-October.

On Sunday, October 21st our title will be The Virgin of Small Plains by Nancy Pickard, which was the winner of this year's Agatha Award for Best Novel.

It is set in Small Plains, Kansas, January 23, 1987. In the midst of a deadly blizzard, eighteen-year-old Rex Shellenberger makes a shocking discovery: the naked, frozen body of a teenage girl. It is a moment that will forever change his life and the lives of everyone around him. In the two decades following her death, strange miracles visit those who faithfully tend to her grave; some even believe that her spirit can cure deadly illnesses.

But what really happened in that snow-covered field? Why did Mitch Newquist disappear the day after the body was found, leaving behind his distraught girlfriend, Abby Reynolds? Why do the town’s three most powerful men – Dr. Quentin Reynolds, former Sheriff Nathan Shellenberger, and Judge Tom Newquist – all seem to be hiding the details of that night?

Three families, their worlds inexorably altered in the course of one night, must confront the ever-unfolding consequences in this remarkable novel of suspense.

This is a stand-alone novel from Nancy Pickard, who is the creator of the acclaimed Jenny Cain mystery series She has also won an Anthony Award for Say No to Murder, a Macavity Award for Marriage is Murder, and two Agatha Awards for Best Novel, for Bum Steer (1990) and I.O.U. (1991).

I hope you can join us. Even if you don’t have time to read (or re-read) the books please feel free to take advantage of an opportunity to meet with some fellow mystery fans.

To reserve a copy of either book, call 291-4821.

Eighty years after its publication and 150 years since the actual events it fictionalizes took place it is still possible to use Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop as a visitor’s guide to some of New Mexico’s historic pueblos.

As Cather’s Jean Marie Latour (the fictional name for John Baptist Lamy) approaches his third stop, at the Acoma pueblo, he passes magnificent rock mesas that jut upwards nearly 700 feet. Latour notes that these look to be the remnants of possible “vast cathedrals” of an ancient monumental city.

An August 26th New York Times travel piece entitled Entering the World of Willa Cather’s Archbishop brought my visit to Acoma to mind.

Apparently the writer of this piece had the same tour I had, complete with the condemnation of the exploitation of the Acoma natives by the Spanish who used them as forced labor to erect a church atop the mesa and required them to denounce their ancient religion and observe Catholic rituals. The article does not mention the story of the priest that was thrown over the side, though, so I may actually have had the deluxe tour.

A guided tour is required and you are taken by bus to the top of the mesa, although you are allowed to walk back down along a footpath on your own – but make sure you have sturdy shoes on if you are going to try it. Trust me.

You can buy wonderful pottery directly from the local artists there, but we found none of the traditional home baked items that were described to us in mouth-watering detail on the bus ride up. A few enterprising souls were selling big M&M cookies in baggies, but there were no pinon cookies or hearth-baked breads to be found.

The Library has a nice selection of Santa Fe and New Mexico travel guides available. If literary travel is your thing – as it is mine – and you are headed that way, make sure to take a look at Walks in Literary Santa Fe.

Meet Brian McNulty, an Upper West Side bartender and sometime actor, who, like all good bartenders, respects the confidences he hears and what he learns about the people who drink in his establishment.

In his first outing, Beware the Solitary Drinker, McNulty is unwillingly drawn into a quest for the killer of a young woman who frequented Oscar’s, the bar where he works. All of the suspects are regulars at Oscar’s and in order to figure out who the murderer is, he must violate the sacred rule of bartender–boozer confidentiality.

Calling author Con (Cornelius) Lehane’s writing “compelling and enthralling,” Mystery Scene magazine adds “This is a fine novel with a wonderful sense of place, filled with real characters who seem to experience real emotions.”

The action moves to the East Side in the second book in the series, What Goes Around Comes Around, when McNulty discovers a stiff in a tux floating in the nearby East River while on his way to fill in for a friend at The Ocean Club, a fancy watering hole.

The recently released Death at the Old Hotel finds McNulty -- described by Lehane as “brave, perhaps foolhardy” -- joining forces with a motley crew of workers from the old down-at-the heels Savoy Hotel to tackle a cheating union bureaucrat and a corrupt, tyrannical hotel boss.

A vicious attack on one of his fellow bartenders raises the stakes and puts everyone on edge, so it doesn't take much for the hotel manager to provoke the outraged workers into a strike.

When the manager subsequently turns up dead, McNulty sorts through his collection of reprobate pals to figure out who might be the murderer.

Award winning Irish crime novelist Ken Bruen raves that Death at the Old Hotel is “A fierce novel in the Irish sense...it may well prove to be the definitive Irish American saga. A dark emerald, lit by old glory...a true masterpiece of slow burn.”

Shades of Gangs of New York!

Jason Starr’s latest book The Follower, an updated version of Looking for Mr. Goodbar, is also set in the Big Apple. Ken Bruen’s take on this one is “The Follower does for dating what Jaws did for swimming.”

So, set ‘em up, Joe …