A Hologram for the King / Dave Eggers

Alan Clay, a man who has made a lifetime of poor decisions, is staging a last-ditch effort to put things right. If he can win a contract to provide telecom infrastructure for King Abdullah’s Economic City in Saudi Arabia, the windfall would set his life back on track, allow him to pay off his debts, see his daughter through college, set him up for the remainder of his life. As he and his team wait days and then weeks for a chance to make a pitch to the king, they find themselves in a situation a little like Waiting for Godot, whiling away time in a desert purgatory, waiting for someone who may never come, for an opportunity which may never materialize. Alan is quick to make friends, and his interactions with driver Yousef, expat Hanne, and a local doctor provide interesting episodes in a novel that is essentially plotless (and I don’t mean that as a criticism). Saudi Arabia is a fascinating study of contrasts, which makes it an ideal setting for a world turned topsy-turvy-- the certainties that Alan grew up with no longer hold true in the new global economy. I really enjoyed this one.

Dave Eggers is the author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, You Shall Know Our Velocity, What is the What, and Zeitoun.

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Murder in Passy, An Aimée Leduc Investigation / Cara Black

If you like your mysteries set in European locales, here’s a Parisian detective series that is sure to please. Aimée Leduc is a private eye, born of a French career detective and an absentee American mother (brief hints of angst over this in this installment). She’s appeared in about ten adventures, always set in iconic Parisian neighborhoods : Murder in the Marais, Murder in the Bastille, Murder in Montmartre, and Murder in the Latin Quarter , to name a few. In Murder in Passy (Paris’s tony XVIe arrondissement), Aimée finds herself mixed up in a murderous intrigue involving the French arm of the Basque nationalist movement. The final chase involves the kidnapping of a Spanish princess, a secret torture chamber used by the Gestapo in WWII, and a rooftop escape. The author sprinkles enough French words into the dialogue to either annoy you or make you feel your French 101 was not for nothing— Zut alors! très chic, c’est parfait, désolé, c’est tout! Oh, and Aimée’s frequent stop...

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 Silent Patient / Alex Michaelides

A woman viciously murders her seemingly doting husband. We meet up with her several years later in a mental facility, where a therapist tries to get her to speak and to reveal her story. Who is innocent and who is the victim? The answer isn’t straightforward. The resolution to the novel features a real twist that will have the reader questioning the chronology of the different narrative threads in the book. A real page-turner.

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