Peachy Reads

Georgia’s own Karin Slaughter published her first crime novel in 2001 and has enjoyed international success ever since, selling over 30 million copies of her books worldwide. I read one of her earlier novels, set in fictional Grant County. Fractured is set in Atlanta, more precisely Ansley Park, the upscale neighborhood that abuts Peachtree Street in Midtown Atlanta (and is the immediate neighborhood this library serves). Readers who are looking for local color and familiar landmarks may be disappointed, since Slaughter’s imagining of Ansley Park and Atlanta has a lot of poetic license in it (though she does mention the Varsity). The plot of Fractured involves murder, kidnapping, child predation, orphanages, private schools, illiteracy, and more. In fact, if anything, the plot is almost too intricate. If you're looking for a Southern-fried thriller with a contemporary twist, you may want to give Karin Slaughter a try.

I stumbled across this graphic novel from 2010 quite by accident-- one of those serendipitous discoveries that happen when you work in a library. The Night Bookmobile is written (and illustrated--who knew?) by Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler’s Wife, and the title, The Night Bookmobile , was rather intriguing to this librarian. It was first serialized in the UK's Guardian newspaper. Alexandra wanders the streets of Chicago in the hours before dawn after an argument with her partner. She stumbles upon a Winnebago camper parked on the roadside which she learns is the Night Bookmobile, "open dusk to dawn". Upon entering she discovers the shelves lined with every book she’s ever read in her lifetime. Her bookmobile is elusive, however, and only appears to her several times during her life. Understanding the premise of its existence and how the collection expands, she reads voraciously to fill the shelves of her own library of record with suitable titles

It was rather fascinating being a fly on the wall for a short time in the lives of the interesting (but not so remarkable) characters in Jeffrey Eugenides's latest novel, The Marriage Plot . Time-travel back to the 1980s where co-ed Madeleine is finishing up her bachelor's degree at Brown and trying to sift through the debris of her less than successful college romances. She seems to want to remain true to Leonard, but his ups and downs as a manic-depressive throw a monkey wrench into her vision of a stable life. Mitchell has had a crush on Maddy since high school, but his love remains unrequited as he continues to pine for her even after his quest for spirituality takes him to faraway India. In addition to Madeleine, Leonard, and Mitchell, we get to know Maddy's stalwart and nurturing (but ever so slightly interfering) parents, her flighty sister, Leonard's whacked-out family, as well as a slate of other memorable characters. Eugenides seems to be doing a Jonathan Fra

I tracked this book down after enjoying the author’s more recent release, The Summer of the Bear . Maggie is a feisty American journalist/correspondent who is used to dodging bullets in the world’s hotspots. When she gets a rather soft assignment documenting the decay of the British landed gentry, she is out of her element and is not well-pleased, but seems surprised to find that her new subjects are bit trickier to interview than her normal revolutionaries and street protesters. Quite by accident she uncovers a skeleton in the closet of one of the more eccentric families, and decides to include it in an expose. To complicate matters there is a love affair between Maggie and Rory, the son of the landed family she is featuring in her story (the connection is not known to her-- so much for her skills as investigative reporter). This was an enjoyable read, but didn’t hold me the way The Summer of the Bear did. It seemed like it was written as a screenplay for a madcap British comedy wi