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February
2005

SNOW IN AUGUST
by Pete Hamill

In postwar working-class Brooklyn, eleven-year-old Michael is witness to an anti-Semitic crime, which puts candy store owner Mr. Greenberg into a coma.  Michael’s leg is broken by the same gang as a warning against becoming an informer.  Against this background of hate and violence, Irish-Catholic Michael meets Rabbi Judah Hirsch and a rare and beautiful friendship begins.  Michael is entranced by the rabbi’s stories of ancient magic and wisdom.  Michael’s patient instruction on the language of baseball opens up an equally new world for the rabbi.

This is an intelligent, heartfelt, and charming coming-of-age tale with a hearty dose of magic realism mixed in.

March
2005

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
by Harper Lee

Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning first (and only) novel is rightly lauded throughout the world as a classic. It tells the tale of Jen and Scout, brother and sister and children of lawyer Atticus Finch. When a young black man is accused of the rape of a white woman, Atticus agrees-amidst tremendous controversy- to defend the accused in the town’s court of law. Though her Depression era story explores big themes, Lee chooses to tell it through the eyes of eight-year-old Scout. The result is a tough and tender novel of race, class, justice, and the pain of growing up.

By turns funny, wise, and heartbreaking, To Kill a Mockingbird is one classic that continues to speak to new generations, and deserves to be reread often.

April
2005

A DARKER SHADE OF CRIMSON
by Pamela Thomas-Graham

The author, the first black woman partner at a New York consulting firm, launches a series starring Nikki Chase, an attractive black economics professor at Harvard. When the university's dean of students, an opinionated black woman, dies in a suspicious accident, Chase is drawn to investigate. Suspects abound, from the charismatic Harvard professor to the victim's radical husband. The academic setting offers not only Ivy League ambience but also an opportunity to explore the issue of multiculturalism on campus. Add to the mix a rocky romance for Nikki with the dishy Dante Rosario.

Thomas-Graham's precisely rendered campus background, vivid characters, easy dialogue and fluidly entertaining narrative mark a talented new voice in the mystery genre.

May
2005

LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF MURDER
by Karen Swee

The author is from Highland Park and her engaging debut novel is set in New Brunswick in 1777, during the British occupation. Abigail Lawrence, widow and mistress of the Raritan Tavern, finds the body of a guest pinned to the floor of his room with a British army sword. Patriot Abigail is soon caught up in a web of espionage as British and American spies vie for a valuable packet of letters hidden by the dead man.

The one and only historical mystery set during the Revolutionary War, this artful blend of history and mystery features an imaginative plot, local color and a compelling central character. Abigail is a feisty heroine willing to take risks and make sacrifices for her family and her new country.

June
2005

READING LOLITA IN TEHRAN: A MEMOIR IN BOOKS
by Azar Nafisi

After resigning from her job as a professor at a university in Tehran due to repressive policies, Azar Nafisi invited seven of her best female students to attend a weekly study of great Western literature in her home.  Since the books they read were officially banned by the government, they were forced to meet in secret.  At first they were tentative and reserved, but gradually they bonded and the discussions were used as a springboard for debating the social, cultural and political realities of living under strict Islamic rule. 

Threaded into the memoir are superb analyses of the work of  Vladimir Nabokov, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jane Austen and others who provided the women with inspiring examples of those who successfully asserted their autonomy despite great odds.  Nafisi’s book is a celebration of the power of the novel and a cry of outrage at the reality in which these women are trapped.

July
2005

AN ALMOST PERFECT MOMENT
by Binnie Kirshenbaum

Columbia University fiction professor Binnie Kirshenbaum mixes biblical lore with Brooklyn culture in her latest novel, a tragicomic tale of mah-jongg, thwarted love and the mysteries of faith in 1970's Canarsie.  We meet two powerful social groups, middle-aged and young.  The first is Miriam and "The Girls"-her immaculately groomed, perpetually chattering, mah-jongg playing friends.  The second is Miriam's slightly spacey daughter Valentine's high school, a place of brutal social Darwinism where the attention of nerds, geeks and dorks may contaminate you forever.

This smart, provocative novel is the product of the author's high imagination, mischievous wit and a whole lot of chutzpah.

September
2005

OUR KIND: A NOVEL IN STORIES
by Kate Walbert

This novel in stories tells the collective tale of wealthy suburban women who came of age in the 1950s and are now facing life long after their husbands and children have flown the coop.  For the most part, these ladies are not sitting around crying.  They’re taking action: calling old boyfriends in the middle of the night, organizing to save the geese at the country club, and holding an intervention for a revered man-about-town. 

Walbert subtly depicts all the anger, disappointment, vulnerability and pride of her characters: “Years ago we were led down the primrose lane, then abandoned somewhere near the carp pond.”  This is a witty and incisive novel about the lives and attitudes of a group of women who were once country club housewives, but today are divorced, independent and breaking the rules.

October
2005

I'M NOT SCARED
BY NICCOLO AMMANITI

“Stop all this talk about monsters, Michele.  Monsters don’t exist.  It’s men you should be afraid of, not monsters.”

During a sweltering summer in a tiny village in southern Italy, nine-year-old Michele decides to explore an old, abandoned farmhouse.  There he discovers a weak, disoriented boy who is unable to explain his presence.  Michele brings the boy food and water and listens as his story begins to unfold.

Ammaniti has an almost cinematic eye for detail and the ability to convincingly recreate a child’s perspective. This novel is a powerful tale of how one boy finds the courage to overcome his fear, risk his life, and make wrenchingly difficult moral choices.

November
2005

UP THE DOWN STAIRCASE
By Bel Kaufman

This novel was first published in 1965 and spent sixty-four weeks on the best-seller list. Its non-traditional format tells the story of new teacher Sylvia Barrett's first year of teaching in a public school in the city. The plot is advanced largely through memos from the office, fragments of notes dropped in the trash, student essays, lesson plans, suggestion box notes and letters written by Barrett to her friends. These snippets tell the tale of petty bureaucracy in a school hobbled by inadequate space and supplies and filled with problem students and overworked teachers.

Humor is paramount but the novel is also quite touching and poignant...and still relevant after forty years. In a recent introduction to a new edition, the author writes "Everything described in my fiction is today reality. Only computers and condoms are new."

December
2005

THE RED TENT
by Anita Diamant

The red tent is the place women go to give birth or have their monthly periods and also where songs, stories and wisdom are handed down by generations of women.

Skillfully interweaving biblical tales with events and characters of her own invention, the author’s first novel re-creates the life of Dinah, daughter of Jacob and Leah.  Denied a voice of her own in the Old Testament, she finds one here as the tale is told from her perspective. 

When Jacob decides to move the clan back to his birth lands, Dinah must forge a life for herself in a world which does not take easily to a strong-minded foreign woman.  The grace she shows as she tackles this difficult task makes her an appealing character.

Diamant has written a thoroughly enjoyable and illuminating portrait of a fascinating woman and the life she might have lived.