Edward P. Jones, The Known World
E. Annie Proulx, Accordion Crimes
E. Annie Proulx’s Accordion Crimes is a masterpiece of storytelling that spans a century and a continent. Proulx brings the immigrant experience in America to life through the eyes of the descendants of Mexicans, Poles, Africans, Irish-Scots, Franco-Canadians and many others, all linked by their successive ownership of a simple green accordion. The music they make is their last link with the past—voice for their fantasies, sorrows and exuberance. Proulx’s prodigious knowledge, unforgettable characters and radiant language makeAccordion Crimes a stunning novel, exhilarating in its scope and originality.
( from the sleeve, 431 pages )
Cathie Pelletier, The Funeral Makers
Catherine Lim, The Bond Maid
A popular Singapore writer makes her American debut with a maudlin take on doomed love between master and slave. It’s a supposedly shocking story–with its revelation that slavery was still practiced in 1950s Singapore–but, in fact, the shock is muted in a tale that has little modern resonance: Except for brief mentions of automobiles, the setting could be any time in Chinese history. The lack of concrete detail, the character’s cozy chats with gods, and the prophetic dreams punctuating the narrative also make it seem more a sentimental melodrama than a searing indictment of hidden viciousness. When Han turns four, her hard- pressed pregnant mother sells her to the rich House of Wu. Han is to be a bondmaid, one of the enslaved women who clean and who must endure the lascivious attentions of visiting priests as well as male family members. Little Han is so upset by the sale that she becomes extremely ill, or, as the household sees it, possessed by demons that have to exorcised. When she recovers, she attaches herself to young Master Wu, the six-year-old grandson of the Matriarch and Patriarch. The children become friends and secret playmates. Meanwhile, the older bondmaids, jealous of Han’s emerging beauty and spirit, plot her downfall. Finally, young Wu goes away to school, coming back only to marry the daughter of the House of Chang. Han, though, has never forgotten him. Eventually, the two become lovers, but when they’re discovered, Han, now pregnant, is forced to leave. She gives birth to a son, who’s taken from her and replaced with the baby girl Wu’s wife has just borne. As storm clouds gather, Wu embraces the dying Han; following her death, the narrative suggests, she becomes a goddess, one who “always saw and heard with compassion”
( Courtesy of Kirkus Reviews, 343 pages )
Catherine Lim, The Song Of Silver Frond
One morning in Singapore more than 50 years ago, a wealthy, respected, handsome Chinese patriarch, head of a large household of three wives and many children and grandchildren, takes a walk by a cemetery. There, a young village egg-seller, Silver Frond, is amusing herself with a comic song-and-dance act based on popular gossip—about him. The meeting instantly changes their lives. With characteristic verve and wit, Catherine Lim traces the struggles of an unusual couple through the jungle of human quandaries and predicaments created by the force of tradition, and celebrates the ultimate triumph of an even more extraordinary force—love.
( paraphrased from the sleeve by GoodReads, 392 pages )
Nicholas Monsarrat, The Cruel Sea, Classics Of Naval Literature
A powerful novel of the North Atlantic in World War II, this is the story of the British ships Compass Rose and Saltash and of their desparate cat-and-mouse game with Nazi U-boats. First published to great accalim in 1951, The Cruel Sea remains a classic novel of endurance and daring.
( Courtesy of GoodReads, hardcover 426 pages )
Wilbur H. Morrison, Point Of No Return
The story of the Twentieth Air Force is the story of the B-29 Superfortress and of strategic air power. When General Hap Arnold was made chief of the new Army Air Corps, classical army thought was that aircraft should support ground troops. General Billy Mitchell had already been hounded out of the service for bombing some target ships to show the navy that bombers have strategic uses. Nonetheless, Arnold and his boss General Marshall concentrated on developing a bombing plan that would allow for the strategic destruction of Germany from the air without need for a manned invasion of the Continent. Suddenly we were attacked by Japan and the design of the new B-29 became Arnold’s hottest concern. He ordered $3 billion worth of B-29s right off the drawing board even before a model had been made. Problems grew: the engines tended to catch fire, and when the plane was shipped to India for strikes against Manchuria and Japan, the Indian heat made the engines catch fire even more easily. (All B-29s went to the Pacific, none to Germany.) Every mission faced terrific attrition just from malfunctioning. On the B-29s’ first run ever, over railway shops at Bangkok, only 77 out of 112 scheduled bombers actually released their bombs, and few of those hit their targets. Even when the brilliant General Curtis LeMay, an experienced bomber strategist, took over the ChinaIndia command, the results were not spectacular; but eventually he came to plan the bombing of Japan and might, Morrison contends, have ended the war without the A-bombs or an invasion. Among the best accounts of tactics and air hardware in the Pacific war, and distinctly readable.
( Courtesy of Kirkus Reviews, 262 pages )
Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff
W.E.B. Griffin, The Captains, Brotherhood Of War
It was more than an incident. It was a deadly assault across the 38th parallel. It was the Korean War. In the fear and frenzy of battle, those who had served with heroism before were called again by America to man the trenches and sandbag bunkers. From Pusan to the Yalu, they drove forward with commands too new and tanks too old: brothers in war, bonded together in battle as they had never been in peace…
( from the sleeve, 406 pages )