A Man Called Ove
by Fredrik Backman
337 pages
Paperback
Meet Ove. He’s a curmudgeon—the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him “the bitter neighbor from hell.” But must Ove be bitter just because he doesn’t walk around with a smile plastered to his face all the time?
Behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove’s mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul. All of which will change one cranky old man and a local residents’ association to their very foundations.
A feel-good story in the spirit of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, Fredrik Backman’s novel about the angry old man next door is a thoughtful exploration of the profound impact one life has on countless others. “If there was an award for ‘Most Charming Book of the Year,’ this first novel by a Swedish blogger-turned-overnight-sensation would win hands down” Behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove’s mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul. All of which will change one cranky old man and a local residents’ association to their very foundations.
by Martine Leavitt
216 pages
Paperback
The romance is intense, the writing is startling, and the story is spellbinding--and it is as difficult to turn away from as the tales beautiful Keturah tells to the people of her village, Tide-by-Rood. But one day Keturah must use her storytelling skills with quite a different audience. Lost and hungry after following a stately hart through the forest, Keturah encounters Lord Death, who is ready to take her. Like Scheherazade, Keturah spins a story that she leaves unfinished and extracts from Lord Death a promise that if she finds her true love in a day, she can go free. But Lord Death is falling in love with her, and as the villagers begin to sense her alliance with this horrifying figure, her life twists and turns on itself. This novel gets so many things just right. Leavitt brings together a large cast of characters, but she personalizes them and weaves their stories into Keturah's, making it richer, denser, and more intricate. The plotting moves in and out of the everyday and the supernatural, but it's so finely tuned that the worlds seem one. Readers will be carried away on the wind of Leavitt's words, and few will be able to guess how she finally ends her story.
Moonraker’s Bride
by Madeleine Brent
354 pages
Paperback
Born in a mission in China, Lucy Waring now finds herself with 15 small children to feed. How she tackles this task gets her thrown into the grim prison of Chengfu, where she meets a man about to die. He asks her a cryptic riddle, and its mystery echoes through all that befalls Lucy in the months that follow, even when she is brought to England, trying to make a new life with the Gresham family. Unused to English ways, she is constantly in disgrace and is soon involved in the long and bitter feud between the Greshams and the family who live across the valley in the house called Moonrakers. In England Lucy discovers danger, romance, heartache, and mystery as strange events lead her to doubt her own senses. It is only when Lucy returns to China that she finds the answers to the mysteries of her past. It is there, at the moment when all seems lost, that she finally finds where her heart belongs.
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