Literary Fiction

The mirror & the light

Hilary Mantel

eAUDIO
Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction

""If you cannot speak truth at a beheading, when can you speak it?" England, May 1536. Anne Boleyn is dead, decapitated in the space of a heartbeat by a hired French executioner. As her remains are bundled into oblivion, Thomas Cromwell breakfasts with the victors. The blacksmith's son from Putney emerges from the spring's bloodbath to continue his climb to power and wealth, while his formidable master, Henry VIII, settles to short-lived happiness with his third queen before Jane dies giving birth to the male heir he most craves. Cromwell is a man with only his wits to rely on; he has no great family to back him, no private army. Despite rebellion at home, traitors plotting abroad and the threat of invasion testing Henry's regime to the breaking point, Cromwell's robust imagination sees a new country in the mirror of the future. But can a nation, or a person, shed the past like a skin? Do the dead continually unbury themselves? What will you do, the Spanish ambassador asks Cromwell, when the king turns on you, as sooner or later he turns on everyone close to him? With The Mirror & the Light, Hilary Mantel brings to a triumphant close the trilogy she began with Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. She traces the final years of Thomas Cromwell, the boy from nowhere who climbs to the heights of power, offering a defining portrait of predator and prey, of a ferocious contest between present and past, between royal will and a common man's vision: of a modern nation making itself through conflict, passion, and courage"--

It has been 8 years since the last installment of Hilary Mantel's Thomas Cromwell trilogy and "The Mirror and the Light" was well worth the wait. Beautiful written and rich in detail and character, Mantel's writing is absorbing. For fans of audiobooks, Ben Miles provides a fantastic reading. In anticipation for this book, I immersed myself in the world of Thomas Cromwell, rereading "Wolf Hall" and "Bring up the Bodies" by listening to the audiobooks. I missed so much from the first reading, I was glad I did. Now I'm a little sad to leave the Tudor court. Unlike most of the people in Henry VIII's circle, I'm just happy I get to do so by choice. -Anne M

A tale of two cities

Charles Dickens

FICTION Dickens, Charles
Literary Fiction, Classics, Historical Fiction

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair...in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only." This may be my favorite Dickens, be ready to shed some tears! I'm planning on picking this one up again in March. -Casey

The bookshop

Penelope Fitzgerald

FICTION Fitzgerald, Penelope
Fiction, Literary Fiction

In 1959 Florence Green, a kindhearted widow with a small inheritance, risks everything to open a bookshop the only bookshop in the seaside town of Hardborough. By making a success of a business so impractical, she invites the hostility of the town's less prosperous shopkeepers. By daring to enlarge her neighbors lives, she crosses Mrs. Gamart, the local arts doyenne. Florence s warehouse leaks, her cellar seeps, and the shop is apparently haunted. Only too late does she begin to suspect the truth: a town that lacks a bookshop isn t always a town that wants one.

Need a book to put you in the mood for Fall? The Bookshop is a biting, moody little book that takes on the attitudes of the provincial residents of a British coastal town. It is a sad book, but it is also a funny book. And it is a book about books. -Anne M

History of wolves : a novel

Emily Fridlund

FICTION Fridlund Emily
Literary Fiction

""So delicately calibrated and precisely beautiful that one might not immediately sense the sledgehammer of pain building inside this book. And I mean that in the best way. What powerful tension and depth this provides!"-Aimee Bender. Fourteen-year-old Linda lives with her parents in the beautiful, austere woods of northern Minnesota, where their nearly abandoned commune stands as a last vestige of a lost counter-culture world. Isolated at home and an outlander at school, Linda is drawn to the enigmatic, attractive Lily and new history teacher Mr. Grierson. When Mr. Grierson is charged with possessing child pornography, the implications of his arrest deeply affect Linda as she wrestles with her own fledgling desires and craving to belong. And then the young Gardner family moves in across the lake and Linda finds herself welcomed into their home as a babysitter for their little boy, Paul. It seems that her life finally has purpose but with this new sense of belonging she is also drawn into secrets she doesn't understand. Over the course of a few days, Linda makes a set of choices that reverberate throughout her life. As she struggles to find a way out of the sequestered world into which she was born, Linda confronts the life-and-death consequences of the things people do-and fail to do-for the people they love. Winner of the McGinnis-Ritchie award for its first chapter, Emily Fridlund's propulsive and gorgeously written History of Wolves introduces a new writer of enormous range and talent"--

This novel reverberates beyond the page. This had been on my to-read list since it came out, and I'm glad I finally got around to it. I loved the portrayal of the rural Minnesota landscape. I was haunted by the ending. I can't wait to read future books by Emily Fridlund! -Heidi K