At Home
A Short History of Private Life, by Bill Bryson
(Anchor, 9780767919395, $15.95)
“This literary horn-of-plenty is brimming with an astonishing amount of information, all relayed with Bryson’s trademark clarity and humor. To read this is to embark on a wonderfully meandering journey through history, sociology, science, and more. The thread that connects it all is Bryson’s own house. He guides us through his home, a charming former church rectory in a small English village. Enjoy the tour!”
—Christopher Rose, Andover Bookstore, Andover, MA Bird Cloud
(W.W. Norton, 9780393341133, $15.95)
”Eleven-year-old Gladys Cailiff tells the story of the teacher that turned her small town upside down. In 1938, Grace Spivey came to town as a WPA hired teacher. She believed in field trips, costumes, and reading aloud from The Thousand Nights and a Night. But the real trouble started when she decided to revive the annual town festival. Great storytelling is alive! The reader will delight in the characters (and the camels) in this tale of the depression era South.”
—Barbara Theroux, Fact & Fiction, Missoula, MT
by Philip Roth
(Vintage, 9780307475008, $15)
“This is a fiercely passionate, devastating book on the themes of hubris and retributive justice set in an elegiac summer camp during an unchecked polio epidemic in the mid 1940s. Roth has done nothing less than create an authentic American counterpart to Greek tragedy. It’s a disturbing, unnerving book that keeps you in an increasingly fearful nervous tension. This is Roth in top form.”
—Russ Barker, Brookline Booksmith, Brookline, MA
The Battles and Triumphs of FDR’s Great Supreme Court Justices,
by Noah Feldman
(Twelve, 9780446699280, $16.99)
”Franklin Roosevelt appointed the most Supreme Court justices of any president, but four—Hugo Black, William Douglas, Felix Frankfurter, and Robert Jackson—towered above the rest. The history of the judges and the development of their constitutional philosophies is also the story of social change in the United States during the middle of the 20th century, which culminated in the monumental Brown vs. Board of Education decision.”
—Bill Cusumano, Nicola’s Books, Ann Arbor, MI
by Tatiana de Rosnay
(St. Martin’s Griffin, 9780312553494, $14.99) ”In this evocative novel by the author of the bestselling Sarah’s Key, Parisian siblings Melanie and Antoine have grown up damaged by their mother’s premature death. Melanie is driving Antoine from a visit to the seaside where they had shared their mother’s final summer, when, just as she’s about to reveal to her brother a recovered memory from her childhood, she loses control of the car. A story of shocking family secrets and how childhood memories can continue to have effect far into adulthood, this is a haunting, yet hopeful read.”
—Karen Vail, Titcomb’s Bookshop, East Sandwich, MA
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