The Buzz...About Books

Waiting to Be Heard: A Memoir by Amanda Knox

Waiting to be Heard: a Memoir by Amanda Knox promises to tell her side of a particularly brutal story.

Knox, an American student living in Italy, was sentenced to 26 years for the 2007 murder and sexual assualt of her British roomate, Meredith Kercher. Knox's boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito was also convicted for his role in this gruesome murder.

In 2011, the convictions were overturned on appeal and both were released.  In March 2013, these acquittals were reversed and a retrial ordered.

Sensational media coverage with reports of satanic rites, sex, drugs, police brutality, false allegations, conspiracies, and cover-ups makes it difficult to tell fact from fiction. 

Here is a timeline of the main events. 

One thing is clear: people just love to hate Amanda Knox. Social media and online communities are fixated on the 25-year old woman now living in Seattle. 

Her supporters claim she is a victim of a sexist and corrupt judicial system. Her haters (and there are many) claim she is simply a pretty little liar - a psychopath who might get away with murder.  

Here's some recent coverage of her book: Toronto Star, Globe, New Yorker, CBC, Telegraph, Guardian, and The New York Times.

Watch an excerpt from Knox's first interview after her release from prison with Diane Sawyer. Full interview (warning-some graphic content): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. 

Listen to her Canadian interview on the CBC. 

 

Meredith Kercher, Age 19 in England

 

The Kercher family responds to the release of Knox's book and her impending retrial. Meredith's father, John Kercher, is a journalist and has released a book in the UK about his daughter (to date, it's not available in Canada).

 Further reading available at the Toronto Public Library:

Edgar Awards: 2013 Winners Announced

The Edgar Awards, named after Edgar Allan Poe, celebrate crime writing in a number of different categories.

Fiction

Best Novel

Live By Night by Dennis Lehane
• Audiobook
• eAudiobook
• eBook
• Large Print
• Talking Book (restricted to Print Disabled patrons)

Best First Novel

The Expats by Chris Pavone
• Audiobook
• eAudiobook
• eBook
• Large Print
• Talking Book (restricted to Print Disabled patrons)

Best Paperback Original

The Last Policeman by Ben E. Winters
• eBook

Mary Higgins Clark Award

The Other Woman by Hank Phillippi Ryan
• eAudiobook
• Large Print

Non-Fiction

Best Fact Crime

Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China by Paul French
• eAudiobook
• Large Print

Best Critical/Biographical

The Scientific Sherlock Holmes: Cracking the Case with Science and Forensics by James O'Brien

Related Posts:

• "The Edgar" Nominees: The Best in Mystery

March 16 is Lips Appreciation Day.

According to Wellcat Holidays, March 16 is Lips Appreciation Day--a day to "do something nice for your lips". This is a list of novels that feature lips prominently on their covers. This won't do anything for your lips but I hope it does something nice for your leisure reading time.

The Bloodsucking Fiends Series by Christopher Moore
Set in San Francisco, this series begins when a nice, normal woman wakes up to discover that she's been turned into a vampire.

Bloodsucking Fiends: a Love Story

You Suck: a Love Story
• Audiobook
• eBook

Bite Me: a Love Story by Christopher Moore
• eBook

Dangerous Laughter: Thirteen Stories by Steven Millhauser
• eAudiobook
A collection of surrealistic short stories from Pulitzer Prize-winner Millhauser

Dare Me by Megan Abbott
• Audiobook
• eAudiobook
• Talking Book (restricted to Print Disabled patrons)
Jealousy and insecurity plague a group of high school cheerleaders.

A Killer's Kiss by William Lashner
• Large Print
DA Victor Carl becomes the prime suspect his ex-fiancée's husband is murdered.

Lolita by Vladimir Nabakov
• Audiobook
• eAudiobook
• eBook
• Talking Book (restricted to Print Disabled patrons)
The classic story of an aging man's obsessive love for a young girl.

Our Lady of the Forest by David Guterson
• Audiobook
• Large Print
A small town is forever changed when a 16-year-old mushroom picker claims to have seen the Virgin Mary.

The Tin Horse by Janice Steinberg
• eAudiobook
• eBook
When octogenarian Elaine Greenstein goes through her possessions before she moves to a retirement community, she discovers a clue to the disappearance of her twin sister--a girl who went missing in 1939.

Unspoken by Lisa Jackson
• eAudiobook
• ebook
Shelby Cole had left her hometown following the death of her baby but returns when she begins receiving anonymous messages that her child is still alive.

Vintage Vampire Stories edited by Robert Eighteen-Bistang and Richard Dalby
A collection of vampire stories published between 1679 and 1909.

"The Edgar" Nominees: The Best in Mystery

Mystery Writers of America have announced its Nominees for the 2013 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, honoring the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction and television, published or produced in 2012.

BEST NOVEL
The Lost Ones by Ace Atkins
The Gods of Gotham by Lyndsay Faye
Gone Girl: A Novel by Gillian Flynn
Potboiler by Jesse Kellerman
Sunset by Al Lamanda
Live by Night by Dennis Lehane
All I Did Was Shoot My Man by Walter Mosley

 

BEST FIRST NOVEL BY AN AMERICAN AUTHOR
The Map of Lost Memories by Kim Fay
Don’t Ever Get Old by Daniel Friedman
Mr. Churchill’s Secretary by Susan Elia MacNeal
The Expats by Chris Pavone
The 500 by Matthew Quirk
Black Fridays by Michael Sears

 

BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL
Complication by Isaac Adamson
Whiplash River by Lou Berney
Bloodland by Alan Glynn
Blessed are the Dead by Malla Nunn
The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters

BEST FACT CRIME
Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China by Paul French
Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America by Gilbert King
More Forensics and Fiction: Crime Writers' Morbidly Curious Questions Expertly Answered by D.P. Lyle
Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies by Ben Macintyre
The People Who Eat Darkness: The Fate of Lucie Blackman by Richard Lloyd Parry

 

BEST CRITICAL/BIOGRAPHICAL
Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe: The Hard-Boiled Detective Transformed by John Paul Athanasourelis
Books to Die For: The World's Greatest Mystery Writers on the World's Greatest Mystery Novels edited by John Connolly and Declan Burke
The Scientific Sherlock Holmes: Cracking the Case with Science and Forensics by James O’Brien
In Pursuit of Spenser: Mystery Writers on Robert B. Parker and the Creation of an American Hero edited by Otto Penzler

Staff Favourites from 2013: Part 5: The Final Chapter

This is the last installment of our staff recommendations from 2012. Follow the links at the end of the blog post to see the other posts in the series.

Alan:

Are You My Mother? : a Comic Drama by Alison Bechdel
The follow-up to Bechdel’s autobiographical graphic novel Fun Home deals with her complex relationship with her mother as Fun Home addressed her father. Funny, moving and insightful into the process of artistic creation.

Luchadoras by Peggy Adam
Adams’ graphic novel Luchadoras focuses a lens on the ongoing violence against women in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juárez. Raw art and a melodramatic plot overlay complex themes of gender, race and class.

The Song of Roland by Michel Rabagliati
Quebec comic artist Rabagliati tells the story of the death of the family patriarch, in a celebration of a life fully lived.

Elsa:

Shanghai Girls by Lisa See
    • Audiobook
    • eAudiobook
    • Large Print
    • Talking Book (restricted to Print Disabled patrons)
This is the tale of two young sisters who learn that their father has gambled away all their wealth and they have been pretty much sold off as wives to American suitors.

KP:

The Phryne Fisher Series by Kerry Greenwood
They are really well-written with an exotic setting (Australia in the last 20s) and a fascinating heroine (Phryne, born poor, now a rich "Honourable," a jazz age free spirit and amateur sleuth).

The first three books in the series have been compiled in a single volume:
Introducing the Honourable Phryne Fisher

M:

Farthing by Jo Walton
A traditional country house murder with a twist. It's the first volume of an alternative history series that takes place after World War II ended with a peace treaty that handed most of Europe to the Nazis. The whole trilogy is fabulous.

The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters
    • eBook
I loved this this book about how people behave at the end of the world. It's a wonderful story about a man who is determined to do the right thing, even though it doesn't seem to matter anymore.

Let's Pretend this Never Happened: a Mostly True Memoir by Jenny Lawson
    • Audiobook
    • Talking Book (restricted to Print Disabled patrons)
The author describes her memoir as "Little House on the Prairie with more cursing"; I can't write a better summary than that.

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
    • Audiobook
    • eAudiobook
    • eBook
I knew the story but I'd actually never read the book, although I had played a computer game based on it. Hercule Poirot must solve a murder on a train that has been trapped by a blizzard. It was delightful.

Related Posts:

• Staff Favourites from 2012: Part 1
• Staff Favourites from 2012: Part 2
• Staff Favourites from 2012: Part 3
• Staff Favourites from 2012: Part 4
  

October 11 is the International Day of the Girl

The United Nations has declared October 11 the International Day of the Girl Child. The day was established to raise awareness about gender bias and the obstacles preventing girls from reaching their full potential.

Girls around the world are more likely to be victims of violence and less likely to receive education. Girls who receive less schooling are far more likely to marry as children, before the age of 15. Girls are less likely to learn to read and write. By 2015 it is estimated that 64% of the world's illiterate will be female.

Females are also 3 times more likely to be malnourished than are boys.

Girls face challenges in our country also. In Canada, young woman are the victims of dating violence ten times more often than young men and are 70% more likely to face intimidation from online predators. Girls and young women suffer from mental illnesses like depression twice as often as boys and young men.

These are some of the amazing girls in fiction:

Anne Shirley: The heroine of Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables was no shrinking violet, shocking the citizens of Avonlea with her antics and her irrepressible spirit.

She's featured in these books:
Anne of Green Gables
Anne of Avonlea
Anne of the Island
Anne's House of Dreams
Anne of Windy Poplars
Anne of Ingleside

Flavia de Luce: The main character in the mystery novels of Alan Bradley, Flavia is a precocious 11-year-old girl whose intelligence, determination and encyclopedic knowledge of chemistry allows her to solve crimes.

She's featured in these books:
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag
A Red Herring Without Mustard
I Am Half-Sick of Shadows

Jane Eyre: Orphaned at a young age, the protagonist of Charlotte Bronte's novel, is strong, intelligent and self-reliant. Her beliefs in justice, human dignity and social equality set her apart from others in Victorian England.

 

 

Lyra Belacqua: In Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, the headstrong and intelligent Lyra finds herself playing a crucial role in a cosmic war.

She is featured in these books:
The Golden Compass
The Subtle Knife
The Amber Spyglass

 

 

Scout Finch: The narrator and protagonist of To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout must come to terms with the racism that pervades her hometown when her father defends a black man accused of raping a white woman.

 

There are lots of wonderful girls in fiction--Nancy Drew, the March sisters, Hermione Granger among others. Ask library staff for more suggestions.

The Law According to Raylan Givens

If you enjoy gritty mysteries with an old-school crime fighter, who follows his own set of morals, you may enjoy Elmore Leonard's books, on which the TV series Justified is based. 

Raylan Givens is a Deputy U.S. Marshal, who wears a Stetson hat, enjoys ice cream and tends to shoot criminals. He tries to resolve things peacefully, but in Harlan County, Kentucky, the bad guys do not give up easily and Raylan is not the type to forgive and forget.

In the novels, Pronto and Riding the Rap, Raylan is working in Miami Beach, Florida. However, after shooting a few too many bad guys, Raylan is sent back to his home town of Harlan County. In the short story "Fire in the Hole," which can be found in the collection, When the Women Come Out to Dance: Stories, Raylan meets many old home town friends; unfortunately, the majority have become career criminals.

The most recent novel, Raylan, finds two pot dealing brothers branching out into black market organ trafficking. Of course Raylan will not stand for this, but what will the Marshal do when he wakes up in a bathtub with his own kidney on the chopping block?

                                 

Pronto  by Elmore Leonard

    eAudiobook

    eBook

    Large Print

Riding the Rap by Elmore Leonard

    eAudiobook

    eBook

    Large Print

When the Women Come Out to Dance: Stories by Elmore Leonard

    Audiobook

    Large Print

    Talking Book (Restricted to print disabled patrons)

Raylan by Elmore Leonard

    Audiobook

    eAudiobook

    Large Print

Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher? Really?

It was a big week for Tom Cruise news.  Overlooked in the frenzy over the TomKat break-up was the trailer for Jack Reacher, a film based on the best-selling thrillers by Lee Child.  Although Child approved of the casting, many of the author's fans did not.  In the books Reacher is a mountain of a man, tall and broad with hands the size of canned hams.  Tom Cruise is not quite as physically imposing.

Jack Reacher is based on One Shot, the ninth book in the series.  The movie is not being released until December 21, 2012, so there's plenty of time to catch up on the books.

The Jack Reacher Series

Killing Floor
Die Trying
Tripwire
Running Blind

Echo Burning
Without Fail
Persuader
The Enemy

One Shot
The Hard Way
Bad Luck and Trouble
Nothing to Lose

Gone Tomorrow
61 Hours
Worth Dying For
The Affair
A Wanted Man

Check out the trailer for Jack Reacher!

Pemberley Revisited

Sequels to Jane Austen's novels are often greeted by fans of Austen's works with a variety of reactions, which can range anywhere from curiousity and enthusiasm through distain and resentment.  

P.D. James (or Baroness James of Holland Park, to use her official title) is one of a few well-known authors to publish a sequel of one of Jane Austen's books.  P.D. James is one of Britain's best known detective fiction authors.  She has published 19 novels, most of which feature policeman Adam Dalgliesh. 

In Death Comes to Pemberley, she continues the story of  Pride and Prejudice, revealing the six years between the end of that book and the beginning of this story in the Prologue.   I think Austen fans will particulary enjoy this part of the book, as it is quite "Austen-esque".

The story itself begins on the eve of Lady Anne's Ball, with Jane and Bingley, Colonel Fitzwilliam, Georgiana and the Bingleys' friend Henry Alveston all visiting Pemberley.  Just as they are about to retire for the night, a chaise arrives driven quite unexpectedly.   As the galloping horses come to a stop, a hysterical Lydia Wickham throws herself out of the carriage and screams that her husband Wickham has been murdered in the Pemberley woods.   Darcy, Colonel Fitzwilliam and Alveston soon set off, only to discover  Wickham over the body of Captain Denny crying "He's dead! Oh God, Denny's dead! He was my friend, my only friend, and I've killed him! I've killed him! It's my fault".  Has Wickham really killed Denny?

Publishing a sequel to such a enduring classic is not done lightly, paricularly by a well-respected author.  P.D. James discusses her motivation for writing this story in a interview with the Telegraph and in this video interview, which took place in her home in October 2011.

 

 

Quite a number of reviews of this book have been written, including in the New York Times and Globe and Mail.  The Toronto Public Library also has it available in audiobook format.

 

Related Posts:

• Spinning Austen or Jane has the last laugh
• Jane Austen Ruined My Life
• Mashed up Fiction and the "ick" factor

Criminally Entertaining Book Club

Colonel Mustard in the Library is the perfect book club for mystery lovers or for readers who just want to try something new.

Located at the Mount Pleasant branch, it runs Sep to June (except December) on the last Tuesday of the month at 7pm. Usually there is a book or a series of books for discussion, but sometimes we have special speakers or events.  On January 31 Detective Constable Wade Knapp, Training Officer for the Forensic Identification Services will share information about techniques used to solve real life crimes.

Colonel Mustard is intended to introduce you to authors and titles you might not have heard of before, and a great opportunity for that is our Tea and Murder session in March. The members of the book club will present reviews of mysteries they've enjoyed and you'll be able to borrow them right away to try them for yourself.

Check Mount Pleasant's program listings for the events planned for other months.