Category: Fiction

A work of fiction that takes the form of an autobiography of a 30-year-old, from birth to tentative initial recovery from devastating trauma. It is a narrative orchestrated by an outspoken “I” that is candid, intelligent, likable, life-embracing, protean, chatty, smug, and mischievous. A self busy being a self: watching itself, blind to itself. An eating disorder receives a couple of lines. Loss of parents is absorbed quietly. When, at university, the narrator suffers what she calls an “existential crisis,” she says, “But it doesn’t make for interesting reading, I’ll be the first to admit it,” and later adds, “We all go through it, we all cope with it, or try, so why talk about it?” So she doesn’t. This is primarily a self counting its satisfactions in that obsessive-complacent way that selves have. A self hugging itself and spinning round. A self dusting itself off after a spill before soldiering on. There are fine, largely celebratory accounts of earliest childhood memories; of masturbation (yes!) and shitting, a good deal of shitting; of life at a boarding school readers will think they recognize; of university days at a university readers will think they recognize; of the narrator’s work on that first unpublished fiction; of trips to Portugal, Greece, Turkey, Mexico, South America; of passionate love affairs (of which there are mainly four, one lesbian and three heterosexual – because twice the narrator, for reasons not clear, spontaneously changes sex).

( Courtesy of Quill & Quire,    paperback  330 pages )

I told you not to come…

Slipped under the door of her Georgetown home, the note was an ominous reminder of Pat Traymore’s past. The beautiful young television journalist had come to glamorous, high-powered Washington to produce a TV series. Her subject: Senator Abigail Jennings, slated for nomination as the first woman vice president of the United States.

With the help of an old flame, Congresman Sam Kingsley, Pat delves into Abigail’s life, only to turn up horrifying facts that threaten to destroy senator’s reputation and her career. Worse still, sinister connections to Pat’s own childhood and the nightmare secrets hidden within are surfacing — secrets waiting to destroy her

( Courtesy of Simon & Schuster,   hardcover  248 pages )

Get ready to paint the town green.”New York Times” bestselling authors Maeve Binchy and Marian Keyes top an impressive roster of the Emerald Isle’s most popular women writers as they celebrate the joys and perils of love and the adventure and constancy of female friendships.

In Maeve Binchy’s “Carissima,” an ex-pat returns to Ireland and shakes things up for her family, who finds her free spirit scandalous. In “Soulmates,” by Marian Keyes, one woman’s relationship is so bleedin’ perfect that it’s driving her friends crazy. In Cathy Kelly’s “Thelma, Louise and the Lurve Gods,” two women on a madcap Stateside road trip encounter a pair of insanely good-looking men….These fabulous stories and a baker’s dozen more prove that when it comes to spinning a good yarn, the Irish are the best in the business.

( Courtesy of Good Reads,   paperback   337 pages )

In this extraordinary collection of stories, the New York Times-bestselling author of Evening Class and This Year it Will Be Differentonce again reveals her incomparable understanding of matters of the heart. In The Return Journey, Maeve Binchy brings us sons and lovers, daughters and strangers, husbands and wives in their infinite variety–powerfully compelling stories of love, loss, revelation, and reconciliation.

A secretary’s silent passion for her boss meets the acid test on a business trip….A man and a woman’s mutual disdain at first sight shows how deceptive appearances can be….An insecure wife clings to the illusion of order, only to discover chaos at the hands of a house sitter who opens the wrong doors….A pair of star-crossed travelers take each other’s bags, and then learn that when you unlock a stranger’s suitcase, you enter a stranger’s life. In their company are many more, whose poignant, ironic, often humorous stories–unforgettable slices of life–make up The Return Journey, a spellbinding trip into the human heart.

Maeve Binchy was born and educated in Dublin. She is the author of the bestselling books Evening Class, This Year It Will Be Different, The Glass Lake, The Copper Beech, The Lilac Bus, Circle of Friends, Silver Wedding, Firefly Summer, Echoes, Light a Penny Candle,and London Transports, three volumes of short stories, two plays, and a teleplay that won three awards at the Prague Film Festival. She has been writing for The Irish Times since 1969 and lives with her husband, Gordon Snell, in Dublin.

( Courtesy of Good Reads,   paperback  225 pages )

A Few of the Girls brings together, for the first time, thirty-six of Maeve’s very best stories—some published in magazines, others written for friends as gifts, many for charity benefits, all of them filled with her trademark warmth, wisdom, and humor. Written over a period of decades, these stories show that while times change, people often remain the same: they fall in love, sometimes unsuitably; they experience heartbreak, compassion and redemption; they hold to hopes and dreams; and they have friendships—some that fall apart, and a few special ones that endure. A foreword by her husband, Gordon Snell, offers a privileged, intimate glimpse into the writing process behind her extraordinary work.

( Courtesy of Barnes & Noble,   paperback  404 pages )

Mistletoe Murder
The First Lucy Stone Mystery!
As if Lucy Stone’s Christmas schedule wasn’t busy enough, she’s also working nights at the famous mail-order company Country Cousins. But when she discovers its very wealthy founder, Sam Miller, dead in his car from an apparent suicide, Lucy’s gift for suspecting murder shines bright. Now she must track down an elusive killer–one who won’t be satisfied until everyone on his shopping list is dead, including Lucy herself . . .

Christmas Cookie Murder
One of the best things about Christmas in Tinker’s Cove has always been the annual Cookie Exchange. But when long-simmering petty rivalries and feuds finally come to a boil, accusations of recipe theft lead to an act of murder. Despite all of the ingredients for danger, Lucy sets out on the trail of a killer and soon uncovers a shocking Christmas secret best left unopened . . .

“Reading a new Leslie Meier mystery is like catching up with a dear old friend.” –Kate Carlisle, New York Times bestselling author

( Courtesy of Good Reads,   paperback   250  pages )