Archived moves:

elsi asks Therubycanary to reveal Unbowed
Terra asks KathyB to reveal In the Palace of Repose
Potok fan asks Marlene to reveal: Oh My Stars
Xeyra steals In the Palace of Repose from Terra
terra asks root to reveal Change of Heart
Root steals Unbowed from elsi
elsi asks TITurtle to reveal The Good Women of China
Kathy asks Amber to reveal 'Remember Me?'
Marlene steals Remember Me? from Kathy
Kathy asks Xall to reveal "The Brief History of The Dead"
Turtle steals In the Palace of Repose from Xeyra
Xeyra steals Change of Heart from terra
Terra asks for Redhot-brat to reveal The Book Thief
SciFisstrs steals The Book Thief from Terra
Terra steals In the Palace of Repose from TITurtle1
TITurtle asks boogal to reveal Lean Mean Thirteen
Azuki steals The Book Thief from Scifisstrs
Sci steals Lean Mean Thirteen from her own flesh and blood
Turtle steals The Book Theif from Azuki
Azuki steals The Brief History of The Dead from KathyB
Kathy steals Remember Me from Marlene
Marlene steals Change of Heart from Xeyra
Xeyra steals Remember Me? from KathyB
KathyB asks Terra to reveal Once Bitten, Twice Shy
TheRubycanary asks NW to reveal: Kickboxing Geisha's+Madame Sadayakko
NWPassage asks Noumena to reveal The Bear Comes Home
Luckaye asks Elsi to reveal: Mercy
lmn60 steals Brief History of the Dead from azuki
Azuki steals the Geisha books from TheRubycanary
Ruby steals Oh My Stars from potok
Potok steals The Book Thief from Turtle

Unbowed
Wangari Maathai

From Booklist
*Starred Review* The mother of three, the first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctorate, and the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, Wangari Maathai of Kenya understands how the good earth sustains life both as a biologist and as a Kikuyu woman who, like generations before her, grew nourishing food in the rich soil of Kenya's central highlands. In her engrossing and eye-opening memoir, a work of tremendous dignity and rigor, Maathai describes the paradise she knew as a child in the 1940s, when Kenya was a "lush, green, fertile" land of plenty, and the deforested nightmare it became. Discriminated against as a female university professor, Maathai has fought hard for women's rights. And it was women she turned to when she undertook her mission to restore Kenya's decimated forests, launching the Green Belt Movement and providing women with work planting trees. Maathai's ingenious, courageous, and tenacious activism led to arrests, beatings, and death threats, and yet she and her tree-planting followers remained unbowed. Currently Kenya's deputy minister for the environment and natural resources, Nobel laureate, visionary, and hero, Maathai has restored humankind's innate if nearly lost knowledge of the intrinsic connection between thriving, wisely managed ecosystems and health, justice, and peace.

Unbowed link http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/6053779

KathyB's Reveal



In the Palace of Repose by Holly Phillips
Advanced readers copy 2006 (TBR)

From Publishers Weekly
This collection of nine fantasy and slipstream short stories from Canadian author Phillips, her first book, offers a neat package of quietly thoughtful, composed writing. In the title story and "The Other Grace," characters must deal with the unalterable changes caused when dream and reality diverge. Similarly, in "The New Ecology" and "One of the Hungry Ones," runaway girls learn that safety is relative and the easiest route is seldom the safest. Likewise in "Pen and Ink," "A Woman's Bones" and "By the Light of Tomorrow's Sun," the main character must discover the fate of a forebear before she may define her place in the world. "Summer Ice" and "Variations on a Theme" detail the efforts of artists to find completion in their lives and work. Indeed, each of the stories is a variation on a theme, illustrating the many methods--some successful, some not--one may attempt in search of a place to belong. Along the way, Phillips offers gentle epiphanies rather than more conclusive endings, often leaving her characters hanging in mid-revelation. Despite the thematic repetition, readers will find themselves drawn in by elegant imagery and evocative settings.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Horror-movie buffs may love monsters and mayhem, but many of them also laud the 1940s B movies produced by Val Lewton and famed for suggesting horrors rather than showing them. Canadian newcomer Phillips one-ups Lewton by refraining to characterize what menaces her protagonists as evil or necessarily threatening. The king locked away for five centuries in "In the Palace of Repose" may be too much for all society to handle, but when he emerges, the three men who assume his keeping seem up to the challenge. The spirit of the female conqueror interred in a barrow in "A Woman's Bones" is dreaded by the native peoples who know her legends, but the interpreter for the archaeologists digging at the barrow becomes prepared to welcome the violent wraith's release. The girl art thief in "Pen and Ink" seems threatened more by the mysterious curator who spurs her on than by her quest for her vanished father literally in his paintings. Often Phillips' protagonists' desire to bring magic back into the world is greater than any fear of supernatural forces. The heroine of Phillips' least fantastic story, "Summer Ice," succeeds at working magic, and her reward, like her accomplishment, is altogether natural, though wonderful indeed. Phillips writes dark fantasy mostly with the aura of heroic fantasy, aiming to awe far more than to frighten--and succeeding, awesomely. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Marlene's Reveal

Oh my Stars by Lorna Landvik (TBR)



From Publishers Weekly
The author of Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons cooks up a novel of hard-won luck and the wonder of reaping blessing from calamity. It's 1937, and shy, homely, 18-year-old Violet Mathers—battered by a mother's desertion, a father's contempt and an accident that cost her her arm—has decided to travel from her Kentucky hometown to the Golden Gate Bridge, from which she plans to jump. But when her bus is totaled in North Dakota, she's put up by a warm local family, whose heartthrob son, Kjel, dreams of musical stardom with his black friend Austin, a guitar virtuoso. Pitying Violet, Kjel ropes her into a journey to retrieve Austin's brother, Dallas, a sullen but musically gifted ex-con. By happy accident, the three men fill in for a no-show band at a carnival, enthralling the first of many crowds. As the Pearltones, they soon inspire a mania of Elvis-like proportions, and Violet blooms in their company and proves a savvy manager. Landvik cuts her light, sweet prose with dashes of wryness and pinches of reality: appalled stares, clenched fists and even a burning cross greet the band as they make their way South, while bad apples threaten it from within. Landvik strings the escapades into a playful and poignant narrative, even as a backdrop of Ku Klux Klan violence and Depression-era hardship keeps the fairy tale in check.
out of 42 reviews on amazon.com

My BC link

Rootmartin's reveal:



Change of Heart (ARC) by Jodi Picoult

Can we save ourselves, or do we rely on others to do it? Is what we believe always the truth?

One moment June Nealon was happily looking forward to years full of laughter and adventure with her family, and the next, she was staring into a future that was as empty as her heart. Now her life is a waiting game. Waiting for time to heal her wounds, waiting for justice. In short, waiting for a miracle to happen.

For Shay Bourne, life holds no more surprises. The world has given him nothing, and he has nothing to offer the world. In a heartbeat, though, something happens that changes everything for him. Now, he has one last chance for salvation, and it lies with June's eleven-year-old daughter, Claire. But between Shay and Claire stretches an ocean of bitter regrets, past crimes, and the rage of a mother who has lost her child.

Would you give up your vengeance against someone you hate if it meant saving someone you love? Would you want your dreams to come true if it meant granting your enemy's dying wish?

Once again, Jodi Picoult mesmerizes and enthralls readers with this story of redemption, justice, and love.

TITurtle's reveal



The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices by Xinran Xue

In 1988, Xinran (ne Xue Hue) was selected to work in state media and ended up at the Nanjing radio station, where she began broadcasting "Words on the Night Breeze" a year later. The show featured letters and calls from ordinary women discussing their problems, and was hugely successful and revelatory, as women had few avenues, public or private, for talking about their lives, which were frequently grim and often harrowing. Xinran quit the show in 1995 to try to help her listeners directly, but by 1997 she had burned out. She persuaded the radio station authorities to let her travel to England, where she began teaching Chinese, met and married English book agent Toby Eady and wrote this memoir of her experiences on the program, including a compendium of some of the most painful of the "Night Breeze" stories. She presents narratives from women who live "in emotionless political marriages" and those, the majority, who struggle "amid poverty and hardship." They have commonly experienced sexual abuse: rape, frequently gang rape. Apparently designed to bring the women's horrific stories to light, the book doesn't do enough to situate them clearly in the context of the show as a state-produced product, or within Xinran's own difficulties in processing and presenting the material on the air (or in this book). The results will leave readers sympathetic to the grave enormity of the women's circumstances, but-due perhaps to minor translation problems and Xinran's lingering political worries-somewhat confused about how Xinran tried to deal with their plights.

http://bookcrossing.com/journal/6053822

Amberkatze's Reveal!

Remember Me? by Sophie Kinsella



Book Description

Lexi wakes up in a hospital bed after a car accident, thinking it’s 2004 and she’s atwenty-five-year-old with crooked teeth and a disastrous love life. But, to her disbelief, she learns it’s actually 2007 – she’s twenty-eight, her teeth are straight, she’s the boss of her department – and she’s married! To a good-looking millionaire! How on earth did she land the dream life?!
She can’t believe her luck – especially when she sees her stunning new home. She’s sure she’ll have a fantastic marriage once she gets to know her husband again. He’s drawn up a ‘manual of our marriage’, which should help.
But as she learns more about her new self, chinks start to appear in the perfect life. All her old colleagues hate her. A rival is after her job. Then a dishevelled, sexy guy turns up… and lands a new bombshell.
What the **** happened to her? Will she ever remember? And what will happen if she does?

Xallroyx's reveal is:

[http://bookcrossing.com/journal/5670102]A Brief History of the Dead[/url]
by Kevin Brockmeier

A deadly virus has spread rapidly across Earth, effectively cutting off wildlife specialist Laura Byrd at her crippled Antarctica research station from the rest of the world. Meanwhile, the planet's dead populate "the city," located on a surreal Earth-like alternate plane, but their afterlives depend on the memories of the living, such as Laura, back on home turf. Forced to cross the frozen tundra, Laura free-associates to keep herself alert; her random memories work to sustain a plethora of people in the city, including her best friend from childhood, a blind man she'd met in the street, her former journalism professor and her parents. Brockmeier (The Truth About Celia) follows all of them with sympathy, from their initial, bewildered arrival in the city to their attempts to construct new lives. He meditates throughout on memory's power and resilience, and gives vivid shape to the city, a place where a giraffe's spots might detach and hover about a street conversation among denizens. He simultaneously keeps the stakes of Laura's struggle high: as she fights for survival, her parents find a second chance for love—but only if Laura can keep them afloat. Other subplots are equally convincing and reflect on relationships in a beautiful, delicate manner; the book seems to say that, in a way, the virus has already arrived.

Redhot-brat's Reveal

My reveal is:




Lean Mean Thirteen by Janet Evanovich

New secrets, old flames, and hidden agendas are about to send bounty hunter Stephanie Plum on her most outrageous adventure yet!

MISTAKE #1
Dickie Orr
Stephanie was married to him for about fifteen minutes before she caught him cheating on her with her archnemesis, Joyce Barnhardt. Another fifteen minutes after that, Stephanie filed for divorce, hoping never to see either one of them again.

MISTAKE #2
Doing favors for super bounty hunter Carlos Manoso (aka Ranger)
Ranger needs Stephanie to meet with Dickie and find out if he’s doing something shady. Turns out, he is. Turns out, Dickie’s also back to doing Joyce Barnhardt. And it turns out Ranger’s favors always come with a price. . . .

MISTAKE #3
Going completely nutso while doing the favor for Ranger, and trying to apply bodily injury to Dickie in front of the entire office
Now Dickie has disappeared, and Stephanie is the natural suspect in his disappearance. Is Dickie dead? Can he be found? And can Stephanie Plum stay one step ahead in this new, dangerous game? Joe Morelli, the hottest cop in Trenton, New Jersey, is also keeping Stephanie on her toes---and he may know more than he’s saying about many things in Stephanie’s life. It’s a cat-and-mouse game for Stephanie Plum wherein the ultimate prize might be her life.

With Janet Evanovich’s flair for hilarious situations, breathtaking action, and unforgettable characters, Lean Mean Thirteen shows why no one can beat Evanovich for blockbuster entertainment.

ETA linky: http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/5522952

Terra's Reveal

Once Bitten, Twice Shy by Jennifer Rardin



I'm Jaz Parks. My boss is Vayl, born in Romania in 1744. Died there too, at the hand of his vampire wife, Liliana. But that's ancient history. For the moment Vayl works for the C.I.A. doing what he does best--assassination. And I help. You could say I'm an Assistant Assassin. But then I'd have to kick your ass.

Our current assignment seemed easy. Get close to a Miami plastic surgeon named Assan, a charmer with ties to terrorism that run deeper than a buried body. Find out what he's meeting with that can help him and his comrades bring America to her knees. And then close his beady little eyes forever. Why is it that nothing's ever as easy as it seems?


Bookcrossing linky

NWpassage reveal

A Geisha 2-fer!



Kickboxing Geishas: How Modern Japanese Women Are Changing Their Nation
by Veronica Chambers
Link: http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/5461747

Forget the stereotypes. Today's Japanese women are shattering them -- breaking the bonds of tradition and dramatically transforming their culture. Shopping-crazed schoolgirls in Hello Kitty costumes and the Harajuku girls Gwen Stefani helped make so popular have grabbed the media's attention. But as critically acclaimed author Veronica Chambers has discovered through years of returning to Japan and interviewing Japanese women, the more interesting story is that of the legions of everyday women -- from the office suites to radio and TV studios to the worlds of art and fashion and on to the halls of government -- who have kicked off a revolution in their country.

Japanese men hardly know what has hit them. In a single generation, women in Japan have rewritten the rules in both the bedroom and the boardroom. Not a day goes by in Japan that a powerful woman doesn't make the front page of the newspapers. In the face of still-fierce sexism, a new breed of women is breaking through the "rice paper ceiling" of Japan's salary-man dominated corporate culture. The women are traveling the world -- while the men stay at home -- and returning with a cosmopolitan sophistication that is injecting an edgy, stylish internationalism into Japanese life. So many women are happily delaying marriage into their thirties -- labeled "losing dogs" and yet loving their liberated lives -- that the country's birth rate is in crisis.

With her keen eye for all facets of Japanese life, Veronica Chambers travels through the exciting world of Japan's new modern women to introduce these "kickboxing geishas" and the stories of their lives: the wildly popular young hip-hop DJ; the TV chef who is also a government minister; the entrepreneur who founded a market research firm specializing in charting the tastes of the teenage girls driving the country's GNC -- "gross national cool"; and the Osaka assembly-woman who came out publicly as a lesbian -- the first openly gay politician in the country.

Taking readers deep into these women's lives and giving the lie to the condescending stereotypes, Chambers reveals the vibrant, dynamic, and fascinating true story of the Japanese women we've never met. Kickboxing Geishas is an entrancing journey into the exciting, bold, stylish new Japan these women are making.

--- AND ---



Madame Sadayakko: The Geisha Who Bewitched the West
by Lesley Downer
Link: http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/5461749

A critically acclaimed author tells the enthralling true story of the real Madame Butterfly, a woman who became the most celebrated geisha in Japan and the first to tour the West.

At twenty-nine, she captivated the world’s stage. From San Francisco to New York, Paris, and Berlin, audiences thrilled to her mesmeric acting and exquisite dancing. She performed for the American President and for the Prince of Wales in London. Picasso painted her. Gide, Debussy, Degas, and Rodin were among her devoted fans. She was Sadayakko, Japan’s most notorious geisha -— and its first international superstar.

In Italy, Puccini was working on Madame Butterfly. He had the plot for his opera; but he had yet to see a real live flesh-and-blood Japanese woman -— until Sadayakko arrived with her troupe of traveling actors.

Madame Sadayakko is the true story of this extraordinary woman -— muse to writers, artists, and fashion designers. Her adventures lift the veil on the secretive world of the geisha and reveal a missing piece of history from the turn of the last century, when Japanese women wore bustles and learned the waltz and women in the West wore Sadayakko kimonos.

noumena12 reveals:

The Bear Comes Home by Rafi Zabor
Image: http://images.amazon.com/images/P/03933186...SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

Book Description:
As Rafi Zabor's PEN-Faulkner Award-winning novel opens, the Bear shuffles and jigs with a chain through his nose, rolling in the gutter, letting his partner wrestle him to the ground for the crowd's enjoyment. But as soon becomes clear, this is no ordinary dancing bear. "I mean, dance is all right, even street dance. It's the poetry of the body, flesh aspiring to grace or inviting the spirit in to visit," he muses, but before all else, the Bear's heart belongs to jazz. This is, in fact, one alto-sax-playing, Shakespeare-allusion-dropping, mystically inclined Bear, and he's finally fed up with passing the hat. One night he sneaks out to a jazz club and joins a jam session. On the strength of the next day's write-up in the Village Voice, the Bear begins to play around town and hobnob with some of jazz's real-life greats. A live album, a police raid, a jailbreak, a cross-country tour, and no small amount of fame later, Bear finds himself in love with a human woman--and staring down the greatest improbability of all.

Elsi's reveal

Mercy by Jodi Picoult



Police chief of a small Massachusetts town, Cameron McDonald makes the toughest arrest of his life when his own cousin Jamie comes to him and confesses outright that he has killed his terminally ill wife out of mercy.

Now, a heated murder trial plunges the town into upheaval, and drives a wedge into a contented marriage: Cameron, aiding the prosecution in their case against Jamie, is suddenly at odds with his devoted wife, Allie -- seduced by the idea of a man so in love with his wife that he'd grant all her wishes, even her wish to end her life. And when an inexplicable attraction leads to a shocking betrayal, Allie faces the hardest questions of the heart: when does love cross the line of moral obligation? And what does it mean to truly love another?

Praised for her "personal, detail-rich style" (Glamour), Jodi Picoult infuses this page-turning novel with heart, warmth, and startling candor, taking readers on an unforgettable emotional journey.

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/6003616

XEYRA'S REVEAL:

The Confessions of Max Tivoli
by Andrew Sean Greer



An extraordinarily haunting love story told in the voice of a man who appears to age backwardsWe are each the love of someone's life.So begins The Confessions of Max Tivoli, a heartbreaking love story with a narrator like no other. At his birth, Max's father declares him a "nisse," a creature of Danish myth, as his baby son has the external physical appearance of an old, dying creature.

Max grows older like any child, but his physical age appears to go backward--on the outside a very old man, but inside still a fearful child.The story is told in three acts. First, young Max falls in love with a neighborhood girl, Alice, who ages as normally as any of us. Max, of course, does not; as a young man, he has an older man's body. But his curse is also his blessing: as he gets older, his body grows younger, so each successive time he finds his Alice, she does not recognize him. She takes him for a stranger, and Max is given another chance at love.

Set against the historical backdrop of San Francisco at the turn of the twentieth century, Max's life and confessions question the very nature of time, of appearance and reality, and of love itself. A beautiful and daring feat of the imagination, The Confessions of Max Tivoli reveals the world through the eyes of a "monster," a being who confounds the very certainties by which we live and in doing so embodies in extremis what it means to be human.

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/5937444

BOOMDA'S REVEAL:



BCID: http://bookcrossing.com/journal/6053738

Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O'Neill

Book Description

Amazon.com
Baby is born to two 15-year-olds, and her mother dies a year later. Her father, Jules, is not a bad man, but he is a perpetual kid, without money, education, purpose, moral compass, or any idea of what being a parent is about or how ordinary people live. When the novel begins, Baby is almost 12, and her 12th year turns out to be a very big one indeed. She smokes pot, shoots heroin, loses her virginity, and lives in foster homes, a state detention home, and one seedy, squalid apartment after another. She comes under the spell of Alphonse, a neighborhood pimp, and is so hungry for male affection that she mistakes what he offers for love and care.
Baby and her equally neglected and abused friends long for adulthood, whatever that means. They look up to sophisticated druggies and efficient thieves. Baby says, "I don't know why I was upset about not being an adult. It was right around the corner. Becoming a child again is what is impossible. That's what you have a legitimate reason to be upset over." Baby is matter-of-fact about her predicament. She knows that other kids have lives very different from hers but says, "It never occurs to you when you are very young to need something other than what your parents have to offer to you." This poignant story is beautifully written, sprinkled throughout with humor, pathos, unbelievable privation, and, in the end, the hope of redemption. At least we know that Heather O'Neill grew up to be a writer of no mean accomplishment. --Valerie Ryan

GateGypsy's Reveal:



The Rug Merchant by Meg Mullins

From Booklist
Ushman Khan lives a lonely and anonymous life in New York City, selling the exquisite handwoven rugs he imports from his home in Iran. He waits for the day when he has enough money saved to send for his wife, Farak, to join him. But Farak, embittered by her fifth miscarriage and weary of caring for Ushman's demanding elderly mother, leaves him for another man--a devastating act, barely comprehensible to Ushman, which leaves him stuck in America with his "lousy sham of a life." A chance encounter at Kennedy Airport introduces him to Stella, a Barnard student half his age who has recently experienced the first sorrow in her young life--her mother's failed attempt at suicide. The two are intuitively drawn to one another, each one sensing the other's unspoken bereavement--an emotional bond leading to a powerful sexual relationship that transforms them both. Ushman lingers in the reader's mind--a wounded soul, comfortable in his "routine of solitary misery," who is able to transcend sorrow, however fleetingly. Deborah Donovan

BCID http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/6053805

SciFisstrs reveal



The Hungry Ocean : A Swordboat Captain's Journey

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
The term fisherwoman does not exactly roll trippingly off the tongue, and Linda Greenlaw, the world's only female swordfish boat captain, isn't flattered when people insist on calling her one. "I am a woman. I am a fisherman... I am not a fisherwoman, fisherlady, or fishergirl. If anything else, I am a thirty-seven-year-old tomboy. It's a word I have never outgrown." Greenlaw also happens to be one of the most successful fishermen in the Grand Banks commercial fleet, though until the publication of Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm, "nobody cared." Greenlaw's boat, the Hannah Boden, was the sister ship to the doomed Andrea Gail, which disappeared in the mother of all storms in 1991 and became the focus of Junger's book. The Hungry Ocean, Greenlaw's account of a monthlong swordfishing trip over 1,000 nautical miles out to sea, tells the story of what happens when things go right--proving, in the process, that every successful voyage is a study in narrowly averted disaster.
There is the weather, the constant danger of mechanical failure, the perils of controlling five sleep-, women-, and booze-deprived young fishermen in close quarters, not to mention the threat of a bad fishing run: "If we don't catch fish, we don't get paid, period. In short, there is no labor union." Greenlaw's straightforward, uncluttered prose underscores the qualities that make her a good captain, regardless of gender: fairness, physical and mental endurance, obsessive attention to detail. But, ultimately, Greenlaw proves that the love of fishing--in all of its grueling, isolating, suspenseful glory--is a matter of the heart and blood, not the mind. "I knew that the ocean had stories to tell me, all I needed to do was listen." --Svenja Soldovieri

http://bookcrossing.com/journal/4136378

Azuki's Reveal:

The Girls
by Lori Lansens



Meet Rose and Ruby: sisters, best friends, confidantes, and conjoined twins.

Since their birth, Rose and Ruby Darlen have been known simply as "the girls." They make friends, fall in love, have jobs, love their parents, and follow their dreams. But the Darlens are special. Now nearing their 30th birthday, they are history's oldest craniopagus twins, joined at the head by a spot the size of a bread plate.

When Rose, the bookish sister, sets out to write her autobiography, it inevitably becomes the story of her short but extraordinary life with Ruby, the beautiful one. From their awkward first steps--Ruby's arm curled around Rose's neck, her foreshortened legs wrapped around Rose's hips--to the friendships they gradually build for themselves in the small town of Leaford, this is the profoundly affecting chronicle of an incomparable life journey.

As Rose and Ruby's story builds to an unforgettable conclusion, Lansens aims at the heart of human experience--the hardship of loss and struggles for independence, and the fundamental joy of simply living a life. This is a breathtaking novel, one that no reader will soon forget, a heartrending story of love between sisters.

lmn60's reveal



Carry Me Down by M.J. Hyland

Short listed for the Booker Prize in 2006, on 13 wishlists from Cliffs - including geishabird and zzz's!!

Personally I didn't love this one, though I suspect that said more about events going on in my life at the time I was reading it rather than the quality of the book itself. At times a little confronting and sad, this is also a beautifully written novel that reminded me at times of 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time'.

Book Description
From Booklist...
At 11, John Egan is nearly six feet tall with a deep voice, and he feels like a freak, especially after he wets himself in class. John believes he is a gifted human lie detector, and he himself is a great liar; his obsession is to be famous and have his gift recognized in the Guinness Book of World Records. But why is Dad lying? The child's naive first-person, present-tense narrative brings achingly close his helplessness in a powerful adult world. He may be a giant, but he has no control. Why suddenly is the family moving? Where to? What is wrong? When they land up in the public-housing projects in Dublin, the scary threat seems to be from a brutal street gang, but the real terror turns out to be in the intimacy of his home. Focused on small things, the quiet plain scenes of daily life lead to the surprising and unforgettable climax. Pain is harder than ignorance. Who needs the truth?

(my cover is red)

The Jane Austen Bookclub by Karen Joy Fowler

In California’s central valley, five women and one man join to discuss Jane Austen’s novels. Over the six months they get together, marriages are tested, affairs begin, unsuitable arrangements become suitable, and love happens. With her eye for the frailties of human behavior and her ear for the absurdities of social intercourse, Karen Joy Fowler has never been wittier nor her characters more appealing. The result is a delicious dissection of modern relationships.

Dedicated Austenites will delight in unearthing the echoes of Austen that run through the novel, but most readers will simply enjoy the vision and voice that, despite two centuries of separation, unite two great writers of brilliant social comedy.

nimrodiel's reveal is:

Without Blood by Alessandro Baricco



Synopsis from Barnes & Noble.com

An unforgettable fable about the brutality of war – and one girl's quest for revenge and healing, from the author of the acclaimed international bestseller Silk.

When – in an unnamed place and time – Manuel Roca's enemies hunt him down to kill him, they fail to discover Nina, his youngest child, hidden in a hole beneath his farmhouse floor. After this carnage Tito, one of the murderers, discovers Nina's trapdoor. Enthralled by the sight of Nina's perfect innocence, he keeps quiet. By the time she has grown up, Nina's innocence will have bloomed into something else altogether, and one by one the wartime hunters will become the peacetime hunted. But not until a striking old woman calls upon a familiar old man selling newspapers in town can we know what Nina will ultimately make of her brutal legacy.

Potok fan's reveal is :

Plum Lovin'

Plum Lovin' is a “between the numbers” comic mystery by Janet Evanovich.
It's on the wishlist of at least one player in this swap, plus it's fairly recent (published just last year).

Mysterious men have a way of showing up in Stephanie Plum's apartment. When the shadowy Diesel appears, he has a task for Stephanie - and he's not taking no for an answer. Annie Hart is a "relationship expert" who is wanted for armed robbery and assault with a deadly weapon. Stephanie needs to find her, fast. Diesel knows where she is. So they make a deal: He'll help her get Annie if Stephanie plays matchmaker to several of Annie's most difficult clients. But someone wants to find Annie even more than Diesel and Stephanie. Someone with a nasty temper. ... With Stephanie Plum in over her head, things are sure to get a little dicey and a little explosive, Jersey style!

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/5183184

Sorry, Marlene :blush: Here's the missing link for my reveal.

Flicki's Reveal:




Michel Houellebecq: Platform


The controversial French author of The Elementary Particles (2000) turns in another unremittingly bleak novel. In addition to amplifying his views on the decadence of Western civilization, Houellebecq displays an absolutely chilling prescience in his depiction of a violent Muslim sect. Misanthropic, sexually frustrated bureaucrat Michel embarks on a "Thai Tropic" package tour, amusing himself with snide commentary on his fellow vacationers and frequent visits to sex clubs. Although he is attracted to business executive Valerie, he has trouble engaging her in small talk. However, when they return to Paris, their relationship quickly turns passionate as they explore sadomasochism and public sex. Michel talks Valerie and her business partner into marketing sex tours to the Third World, selling them on his theory that Westerners have lost touch with their own sexuality. But when they decide to sample one of their own tours, their resort becomes a flashpoint for Islamic hatred. Houellebecq is unrelenting as he meticulously constructs a world that mirrors his own cold vision and that cuts uncomfortably close to the bone.