Library Love Fest

The Heroine's Bookshelf

Check out this great post about the Heroine's Bookshelf by Lesa Holstine, Library Manager from Arizona.  If you haven't picked up the Heroine's Bookshelf, please add it to your reading list today!

Thanks Lesa!

Enjoy,

-Bobby

Playing with the Moon

Just for fun…A very cool site with some very cool photos….

http://funnbee.info/2008/08/playing-with-moon.html

- Virginia

Stiltsville - Guest Review

We are so happy about the huge response we received for Stiltsville, by Susanna Daniel.  The love for Stiltsville continues! 

We received a great review from Lisa Steckhahn, Reference Librarian from the West Allis Public Library in Wisconsin.  Here is Lisa's review of Stiltsville:

This book is a look at the lifespan of a marriage and a friendship starting at the beginning and checking in at all of the major milestones along the way.  Frances meets Dennis and Marse at the same time.  Marse likes Dennis but he ends up falling for Frances.  Even with this rocky start Marse and Frances become best friends.  This is a testament to the author’s ability to create characters that are likeable but still fully realized with authentic flaws and strengths.  Susanna Daniel manages to avoid clichés and craft a believable story filled with a marriage’s mistakes and triumphs.  The Miami setting is another character in the book that lends an unforgettable setting.  It would be a great book to return to during the coldest days of winter. 

-Lisa Steckhahn
Reference Librarian
West Allis Public Library

Many thanks to Lisa and everyone at the West Allis Public Library.  If you have not added Stiltsville to your reading list, what are you waiting for? I believe you will love Stiltsville as much as we do!

Enjoy,

-Bobby

Man In The Woods gets the Trifecta!

Scott Spencer delivers the goods in his new novel and receives STARRED reviews in Kirkus and Booklist and Publishers Weekly.

The Washington Post says:
“This is a book to savor and read aloud, a book that is variously wise, funny and heartbreaking...The outcome must not be revealed here, except to say that it is as powerful as everything else in the book... ‘MAN IN THE WOODS’  is one of the three best novels I've read this year... and if you pressed me, I'd put it at the top of the list."

Want to read Man in the Woods?
Send an email to librarylovefest at harpercollins dot come and we’ll send a copy your way – with our compliments!

- Virginia

Praise for Bloody Crimes

Congratulations are in order for James L. Swanson!  He just received a starred review from Library Journal for his new book, Bloody Crimes! 

*Swanson, James. Bloody Crimes: The Chase for Jefferson Davis and the Death Pageant for Lincoln's Corpse. Morrow. Oct. 2010. 448p. ISBN 9780061988479. $26.99.

Swanson, Edgar Award–winner for his best-selling Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer, now brilliantly reveals how, when Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis each relinquished executive power in April 1865, one as a result of assassination and the other through military defeat, they set in motion two enduring myths—the legend of the Union's emancipating, secular saint and the South's cult of the Lost Cause. Lincoln's assassination, national mourning, and funeral pageant, and Davis's manhunt, imprisonment, exoneration, release, and long postwar life, insists Swanson, continue to unsettle Civil War and Reconstruction historiography, not to mention American society, to this very day. Despite an artful job of portraying the rebel president of the Confederate States of America in a benign light, Swanson concludes that the 20th and 21st centuries belong to Lincoln, not Davis, whose legacy of favoring sectionalism and slavery has been lost through time, much as his beloved Beauvoir plantation was swept away during the Katrina disaster of 2005.

Verdict: Swanson successfully fuses the strengths of historical integrity, balance, and masterful prose into one compelling work. Bloody Crimes should be required reading for every American.

—John Carver Edwards

Job well done James!  Keep that star shining bright!

-Bobby

Book Giveaway! Kill the Dead by Richard Kadrey

Richard Kadrey returns with high-octane follow-up to his addicting SANDMAN SLIM. Publishers Weekly has given it a nice shout-out:

“James Stark, antihero of 2009's Sandman Slim, returns in this gritty, over-the-top tale of supernatural mayhem. Having taken his revenge on the rival magician who got him sent to Hell, Stark settles in sorcery-infested Los Angeles and gets a part-time gig with the Golden Vigil, an angelic hit squad of dubious morality that's somehow allied with Homeland Security. He spends the rest of his time as a freelance slayer of monsters. When Lucifer comes to Earth, supposedly to oversee a Hollywood biopic of his life, he hires Stark to be his bodyguard, but something isn't quite right and soon the city is awash in murderous zombies. Stark has to get to the bottom of the mystery or risk being sent back to Hell, along with everyone he cares about.
Profane, intensely metaphoric language somehow makes self-tortured monster Stark sympathetic and turns a simple story into a powerful noir thriller.”
- Publishers Weekly
Eos, $22.99 (448p) ISBN 978-0-06-171431-3; October 2010

Richard Kadrey’s series is snarky, sarcastic, dark, twisted, and totally addicting. If you haven’t read this author, you’re in for a treat. 

“If Simon R. Green wrote an episode of Dog the Bounty Hunter, it would read much like Sandman Slim—violent, vivid, non-stop action of the supernatural kind. I couldn’t put it down.”
—Charlaine Harris

Send an email to librarylovefest at harpercollins dot com and we’ll get you started with a copy of SANDMAN SLIM.

-Virginia

Little Princes

We are so excited about the upcoming release of Little Princes, by Conor Grennan.  Last month, I wrote about this amazing story.  If you missed it, click here.

We received a great review from Lisa Steckhahn, Reference Librarian from the West Allis Public Library in Wisconsin.  Here is Lisa's review of Little Princes:

A three month stint volunteering in an orphanage in Nepal on a trip around the world became a life mission that not only changed Conor Grennan’s life but the lives of many of Nepal’s children forever. Most of these orphans are not really orphans at all.  Their parents were conned by human traffickers who convinced them that they could give their children a better life by allowing them to be taken away.  So inspired by his time volunteering he started a nonprofit foundation called Next Generation Nepal (NDP).  This book recounts his story from his arrival in Nepal to trekking across the Himalayas in search of the children’s parents.  When I started this book I knew next to nothing about Nepal. But this engaging story has educated and touched me about this little know part of the world.  This book is sure to become a hit when it's released in January.

-Lisa Steckhahn
Reference Librarian
West Allis Public Library

Many thanks to Lisa and everyone at the West Allis Public Library.  If you would like a copy of Little Princes and didn't request one previously, please post a comment or email us at librarylovefest at harpercollins dot com and I would be more than happy to send you one.  I'd love to hear your comments!  I truly believe you will love Little Princes as much as we do!

Enjoy,

-Bobby

Women Power!

90 years ago today women got the right to vote.

When election time rolls around, nothing gets my Irish up like an indifferent person – especially a woman - who doesn’t exercise her right to vote.

It took a lot of moxie, smarts and guts for women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony to stand up for their rights – which are now our rights.

We get to pull the lever, punch a card, raise a hand, have our say because of the bravery and fortitude of these women.

Worth remembering today.

-Virginia

http://www.dontknowmuch.com/2010/08/dont-know-much-about%C2%AE-the-19th-amendment/

Meet Dolen Perkins-Valdez

If you are a follower of Library Love Fest, you know I am a fan of a book entitled, Wench, by Dolen Perkins-Valdez.  Wench is the story of three female slave mistresses and the friendship they built despite living in a period of oppression.   If you missed my article, read it right here.

Check out this video where author Dolen Perkins-Valdez goes into her motivation for writing Wench and why it was such an important story to tell:

If you haven't read Wench yet, please add this to your reading list.  You will NOT be disappointed!

Enjoy!

-Bobby

The "BUZZ" is LIVE!

For those of you that could not come to the American Library Association's Annual Conference in Washington, D.C. this past June, you definitely missed a lively and energetic "Book Buzz" given by the Harper Library Marketing Team. 

HOWEVER...you can listen to the highlights and obtain additional information on all the titles we presented just by clicking here!  Our Seasonal "Book Buzz" is available for your listening pleasures on EarlyWord.com.

Listen and enjoy!

-Bobby