Good Reads & Views

The Eleventh Man by Ivan Doig
FIC Doig, Ivan

Ben Reinking, captain of an undefeated Montana football team in 1941 called the “Supreme Team,” is the “eleventh man” when the entire team volunteers in various branches of the armed services during World War II. Much to Ben’s chagrin, a prominent politician with clout pulls strings to have Ben, who has journalistic experience on his father’s newspaper, to write stories about the heroism of other team members rather than complete his own training as a pilot. But to write the stories for wartime propaganda, Ben takes turns joining former teammates in front-line battles from the Aleutians to Guam, thus providing fascinating glimpses of what the war was like. Ben also has to deal with his infatuation and doomed romance with a married Women’s Air Corp pilot who is captain of her squadron and separated from her overseas husband.

The Assassins of Isis by P.C. Doherty
FIC Doherty

A gang of violent tomb robbers is desecrating the royal dead, and Pharaoh Queen Hatusu is livid. Not only are they threatening the eternal lives of her ancestors, there is something buried in the tomb of her greatest enemy which no one must ever see. So she orders judge Lord Amerotke to investigate. The deaths which follow almost include his own as he attempts to unravel the threads of multiple plots, including murder, kidnapping, and treason, and restore the balance of Ma’at, the goddess of truth. Fifth in a series.

The Maytrees by Annie Dillard
FIC Dillard

Set in the nonconformist artists and writers colony in Provincetown, Massachusetts, during the forty years after World War II, Dillard’s second novel focuses on the lives and loves of Toby Maytree, a poet who can earn enough to get by in building construction, his first wife Lou Bigelow, a reclusive painter who loves Toby first and last, and Toby’s second wife, Deary Hightoe, a beach bum with an architecture degree who sleeps in the sands rolled in sailcloth but who discovers a love for fine furniture and crystal during a period in Maine with Toby. Dillard’s love for nature and the environment shines through in her fiction as well as in her numerous nonfiction works such as  Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974), which won the Pulitzer Prize, and her recent  For the Time Being (1999).

The Witch’s Grave by Phillip DePoy
FIC  DePoy
 
Born in Appalachia, folklorist and college professor Fever Devilin has never been able to fit in anywhere else. Now he’s home, and the folklore which fascinates him seems to be springing to life all around him. The body of the town’s unpleasant mortician turns up near his home, naked. The local witch is missing and her crazy brothers are on the hunt. There are people living in the graveyard. One is his great-grandmother, long dead, and he’s not the only one to see her. He’s beginning to remember why he left…The first of a series.

Love Walked In by Marisa de los Santos
FIC De Los Santos

Cornelia, a born romantic, tells the story of how love walked in to her coffeehouse – only to disappear and re-appear in a surprising way. Martin, whose resemblance to Cary Grant is notable, sweeps Cornelia off her feet. Meanwhile, across town, pre-teen Clare is deserted by her troubled mother. Circumstances bring the two storylines together, and the wonderfully likeable characters just might experience a Hollywood ending to their story.

Double Shot by Diane Mott Davidson
FIC Davidson

The latest adventure of gourmet detective Goldy Schultz. Shortly after Goldy’s charismatic and abusive ex-husband is released from prison, she becomes the victim of threats and violence. When he is found dead with Goldy’s missing gun nearby, she has to get to the bottom of a crime that could tear her family apart.

Black Wind by Clive Cussler
FIC Cussler

This latest adventure in the Dirk Pitt Series centers around two WW2 Japanese submarines carrying biological weapons to the West coast of the U.S. The subs never made their intended destination and were sunk in the Pacific, but are now linked to a 2007 plot by a North Korean to release a rocket full of viruses on Los Angeles. Action packed and filled with international intrigue.

Dead is Forever by David Cray
FIC Cray

Philip Beckett has distanced himself from his blue-blood family and given up being the heir apparent to Beckett Industries. He has been augmenting the interest from his trust fund by doing investigative work for friends to support his antique jade habit. Family obligation calls just when a sculpture he wants is about to be auctioned off. He agrees to help take care of his cousin's husband's gambling debt, but is soon the prime suspect of his murder. Hopefully just the beginning of this series.

Book Doctor: A Novel by Esther Cohen
FIC Cohen

Troubled by writer’s block and a would-be novel that just won’t quite shape up? Book doctor Arlette Rosen constantly receives letters asking for help and frequently manages to wrestle an unwieldy manuscript into being fit for publication. But it’s more of a challenge when she starts working with Harbinger Singh, a Sikh tax lawyer in New York who still loves his ex-wife and meets her regularly for dinner but nevertheless wants to revenge himself in print. Arlette, who has a merely adequate relationship with film-buff Jake, and increasingly realizes neither loves the other, gets drawn into some of Harbinger’s fictional imaginings that involve her. Fluently written and humorous.

Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee
FIC Coetzee

David Lurie, a college professor, finds his life dangerously transformed when he begins an affair with a college student. This searing novel, by Nobel Prize winner, J.M. Coetzee, speaks to the momentous changes that have occurred in post-apartheid South Africa.