On to Part 4 of our series on Hot Fall Book Club Picks from the BEA panel a couple of weeks ago. Hard to believe all this great information came out of just one talk. Imagine how much total book knowledge was in that place!! I'm still kind of overwhelmed trying to get my head around all the new authors, titles and technologies I heard about! But back to this series. Next up at the panel was Talia Sherer (rhymes with terror), the Director of Library Marketing, Adult Trade for MacMillan. She presented some great titles:
WOLF HALL by Hilary Mantel
Trade Paperback on sale August 31st, 2010
Winner of the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Awards, this paperback edition has been highly anticipated. The story of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn but this time from the perspective Thomas Cromwell.
With a vast array of characters, overflowing with incident, the novel re-creates an era when the personal and political are separated by a hairbreadth, where success brings unlimited power but a single failure means death. It would be really interesting to compare it to some of the other literary fiction written about the same characters and time period.
A SECRET KEPT by Tatiana de Rosnay
Hardcover on sale September 14th, 2010
By the author of the hugely popular SARAH'S KEY, this is the story of Antoine Rey. He thought he had the perfect surprise for his sister’s birthday: a weekend by the sea, at Noirmoutier, where he and Mélanie used to spend their childhood holidays and where they had never returned. Antoine is at a fragile point in his existence: his job no longer holds any excitement, his children are surly teenagers, and he hates being a divorced, single Dad. Noirmoutier triggers off a flock of forgotten memories and Mélanie has a shocking flashback. Trapped between a taboo family secret and a new crisis when his daughter is confronted with the death of her best friend, nothing is easy for Antoine as a son, a husband, a brother and a father. But then he meets streetwise, sexy Angèle, a mortician who will give new meanings to the words life, love and death.
FREEDOM by Jonathan Franzen
Hardcover on sale August 31st, 2010
In his first novel since THE CORRECTIONS, Jonathan Franzen has given us an epic of contemporary love and marriage. Freedom comically and tragically captures the temptations and burdens of liberty: the thrills of teenage lust, the shaken compromises of middle age, the wages of suburban sprawl, the heavy weight of empire. In charting the mistakes and joys of Freedom’s intensely realized characters as they struggle to learn how to live in an ever more confusing world, Franzen has produced an indelible and deeply moving portrait of our time. THE CORRECTIONS made for a lively discussion at my book club meeting, and I'm thinking FREEDOM
Talia also recommends:
CITY OF TRANQUIL LIGHT by Bo Caldwell
Hardcover on sale September 28th, 2010
PASSION PLAY by Beth Bernobich
Hardcover on sale October 12th, 2010
