Celia's Book Suggestion for July, 2016

At our May meeting, we will vote on Celia's suggestions.  They are:

Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda
Secret Daughter, a first novel by Shilpi Somaya Gowda, explores powerfully and poignantly the emotional terrain of motherhood, loss, identity, and love through the experiences of two families—one Indian, one American—and the child that binds them together. A masterful work set partially in the Mumbai slums so vividly portrayed in the hit film Slumdog Millionaire, Secret Daughter recalls the acclaimed novels of Kim Edwards and Thrity Umrigar, yet sparkles with the freshness of a truly exciting new literary voice.  Available from Amazon for $ .01 plus $3.99 postage.

 

A Place of Execution by Val McDermid

On a freezing day in December 1963, Alison Carter vanishes from her rural village, an insular community that distrusts the outside world. For the young George Bennett, a newly promoted inspector, it is the beginning of his most difficult and harrowing case--a suspected murder with no body, an investigation with more dead ends and closed faces than he'd have found in the anonymity of the inner city, and an outcome that reverberates through the years.
Decades later Bennett finally tells his story to journalist Catherine Heathcote, but just when the book is poised for publication, he unaccountably tries to pull the plug. He has new information that he refuses to divulge, new information which threatens the very foundations of his existence. Catherine is forced to reinvestigate the past, with results that turn the world upside down.
A Greek tragedy in modern England, Val McDermid's A Place of Execution is a taut psychological thriller that explores, exposes, and explodes the border between reality and illusion in a multi-layered narrative that turns expectation on its head and reminds us that what we know is what we do not know.
A Place of Execution is winner of the 2000 Los Angeles Times Book Prize and a 2001 Edgar Award Nominee for Best Novel. Made into a Masterpiece Movie.  Available from Amazon for $ .01 plus $3.99 postage.

Me before You

Synopsis

They had nothing in common until love gave them everything to lose.

Louisa Clark is an ordinary girl living an exceedingly ordinary life—steady boyfriend, close family—who has never been farther afield than their tiny village. She takes a badly needed job working for ex–Master of the Universe Will Traynor, who is wheelchair bound after an accident. Will has always lived a huge life—big deals, extreme sports, worldwide travel—and now he’s pretty sure he cannot live the way he is.

 

Will is acerbic, moody, bossy—but Lou refuses to treat him with kid gloves, and soon his happiness means more to her than she expected. When she learns that Will has shocking plans of his own, she sets out to show him that life is still worth living.

 

A Love Story for this generation, Me Before You brings to life two people who couldn’t have less in common—a heartbreakingly romantic novel that asks, What do you do when making the person you love happy also means breaking your own heart? (From the publisher.

 

The Art in the Rain of Racing

The novel follows the story of Denny Swift, a race car driver and customer representative in a high-end Seattle auto dealership, and his dog Enzo, who believes in the Mongolian legend that a dog who is prepared will be reincarnated in his next life as a human. Enzo sets out to prepare, with The Seattle Times calling his journey "a struggle to hone his humanness, to make sense of the good, the bad and the unthinkable."[2]

 

Enzo spends most of his days watching and learning from television, gleaning what he can about his owner's greatest passion, race car driving — and relating it to life. Enzo eventually plays a key role in Denny's child-custody battle with his in-laws, and distills his observations of the human condition in the mantra "that which you manifest is before you." Enzo helps Denny throughout his life, through his ups and downs.

 

                                   

Fates and Furies

Fates and Furies is a 2015 novel by American author Lauren Groff.[1] It is Groff's third novel and fourth book. The book takes place in New York, and is essentially about how the different people in a relationship can have disparate views on the relationship. It has drawn many comparisons to the novel Gone Girl, based on its themes, structure, and the dominance of the female in the key relationship of the plot.[2] It is narrated first by the husband, Lancelot (Lotto), and subsequently by the wife, Mathilde. The novel was widely and highly praised by critics, with only a few occasional negative remarks focusing on moments of implausibility in the novel's second half.[3][4][5][6] It was perhaps the most talked about English-language novel of 2015, and was on more critics' end-of-year lists than any other.[2]