The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks / Rebecca Skloot

Henrietta Lacks was the name of an African-American woman who died of a virulent form of cervical cancer in Baltimore in the early 1950s. What makes her case historically remarkable is that a colony of her cancerous cells were among the first human cells to thrive and multiply outside the body in a petri dish, making them a much sought-after commodity for lab experimentation and scientific discovery. For decades the cell line known as HeLa (for the first letters of her first and last name) made a huge positive impact on the development and advancement of cellular biology. On the flip side, partly due to its remarkable longevity and tenacity, HeLa contaminated other cell lines, ultimately compromising the integrity of experiments and responsible for the loss of millions of dollars in research money.

Further controversy surrounds the exploitation of Henrietta Lacks’s cell line without the informed consent of her next of kin, and much of the book chronicles the author’s attempts to win the surviving family’s trust and help them understand exactly what happened to their mother’s cells and in exactly what regard Henrietta Lacks has become immortal, as the title of the book suggests.

This is great scientific writing, but also provides an honest look at a family bulldozed by the modern medical establishment, never quite getting the simple answers to their questions that would help them allay their fears, confusion, and resentment about what had happened to their mother.

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Here we are / Graham Swift

This short novel offers a nostalgic look at England in the 1940s and 1950s. Evie, having just lost her husband after a long marriage, looks back at the fateful summer when they met up at the pleasure palace at the end of the Brighton pier. Evie was meant to marry someone else, Ronnie Doane, aka “The Great Pablo,” a magician whose talents really pull in the crowds in the days before television kept people in their front rooms (and to whom she serves as the feather-plumed magician’s assistant). The novel tells of Ronnie’s back story as a London child war evacuee, whose second family in Oxford is so nurturing and loving that he is conflicted about going back to his real home when the war is over. But Evie marries Jack instead and is ghosted (quite literally) by Ronnie even in her final years of life. A wonderful story about people and relationships.

Addie Pray / Joe David Brown (more recently published as Paper Moon ) Click here to check for availability at AFPLS This 1971 novel was the inspiration for the Peter Bogdanovich movie Paper Moon . Eleven-year-old Addie and her maybe-father “Long Boy” Moses Pray crisscross the Deep South “ramifying” (scamming) people during the Great Depression. Addie’s street smarts and perceived girlish innocence, along with Long Boy’s cleverness and shrewd business acumen build their operation until they are dealing in millions. The movie remained pretty true to the first half of the book (though it moved the location from Alabama to Kansas), but the adventures continue far beyond where the movie left off. The decades haven’t dimmed the magic of this rollicking adventure, either in the film or the book. ©Ken Vesey, 17 June 2010

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie / Alan Bradley

Pippi Longstocking meets Miss Marple in the character of precocious 11-year-old Flavia de Luce, the youngest of three daughters in a once well-to-do family in early 1950s rural England. This first mystery in an intended series finds Flavia beating the local police inspector at his own game in solving the mystery surrounding the murder of an old school mate of her father's in their back garden (in the cucumber patch no less). Clues include a bird indigenous to Norway, a rare stamp, and a bit of flaky pie crust. This nostalgic and innocent whodunnit will have you at the edge of your seat by its suspenseful climax. I can see BBC/PBS picking up on the popularity of this charming mystery. The second in the series has already been published and the third is soon to follow. And by the way, here's a great library quote from Flavia on page 50: "... it occurred to me that Heaven must be a place where the library is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. No

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