Happy Monday, lovely librarians! Let's kick of the week with some great reads.
- For the SHADES OF MILK AND HONEY fans out there, tor.com posted a nice long excerpt from the beginning of the sequel, GLAMOUR IN GLASS. It begins,
"There are few things in this world that can at once delight and dismay to the same extent as a formal dinner party."
- Shelf Awareness reviewed Esi Edugyan's Scotiabank Giller-winning novel, HALF-BLOOD BLUES. They said,
"One of the risks of historical fiction is that the history can get in the way of the fiction; the author's imagination is often crammed into a box of flat characters and plodding narrative in the name of accuracy. Such is not the case with Esi Edugyan's atmospheric second novel. [...] Edugyan's prose sparkles not only with the jive and banter of jazz musicians, but also with the metaphors of a music built on improvisation."
- NPR did a feature on Tupelo Hassman's GIRLCHILD (which you will recognize as the Featured Cover from our January e-newsletter!).
"Tupelo Hassman writes with such an eye for rough-and-tough detail, she obviously knows something about kids who have been given the dubious gift of premature autonomy."
- Author S.J. Bolton posted a piece on Goodreads called "Why we need our libraries." She talks about the experience of her local library (in the U.K.) transferring into the hands of the community after the government withdrew support. Bolton was then asked to manage the future purchase and rotation of books which she gladly accepted. Here are a few choice quotes from the article:
Read more"A library, like the pub, the post office, the village shop, is part of the fabric of the community."
"No one, especially not my neighbours, should imagine the battle is over. Passing libraries into community ownership hasn't saved them, it has given them a stay of execution. If we are to keep them into the future, we'll need the ongoing commitment of our volunteers and the financial support of our sponsors. Most of all, though, we will need our libraries to be used."
We are very proud to have so many excellent books, both fiction and nonfiction, nominated for the Edgar Awards this year.
In their press release the Mystery Writers of America say that the Edgar Awards are "honoring the best in mystery fiction, nonfiction and television published or produced in 2011."
Our 2012 nominees:
THE DEVOTION OF SUSPECT X by Keigo Higashino
LAST TO FOLD by David Duffy
PURGATORY CHASM by Steve Ulfelder
THE TATTOOED GIRL by Dan Burstein, Arne de Keijzer & John-Henri Holmberg
NOW YOU SEE ME by S.J. Bolton
DEATH ON TOUR by Janice Hamrick
MURDER MOST PERSUASIVE by Tracy Kiely
The awards will be presented to the winners on April 26, 2012 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, NYC.
See all of the 2012 Edgar Award Nominees here.
See the full press release from the Mystery Writers of America here.
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