Author: Claire Blechman

  • This Dark Road to Mercy

    This Dark Road to MercyWiley CashHarperCollins, January 2014240 pages$25.99 In This Dark Road to Mercy, Wiley Cash has married the literary family drama to the dark heist comedy, drawing heavily on America’s pastimes: baseball, custody disputes, and tortured pasts. Easter Quillby’s father, Wade Chesterton, is back in town. At first Easter tries to protect her…

  • The Other Typist

    The Other TypistSuzanne RindellAmy Einhorn Books/Putnam, May 2013368 pages$25.95 The Other Typist, a crime mystery nestled inside a lovely period piece, is the story of Rose Baker, a stenographer at a Manhattan police station in the early 1920s. Rose is particularly well-suited to her job: an unflappable, meticulous person, she was raised by nuns to…

  • Lovestar

    LovestarAndri Snǣr MagnasonSeven Stories Press, November 2012320 pages$16.95 In the not-so-distant future, a team of Icelandic scientists has discovered the revolutionary science of birdwaves, opening up a world of massive, cordless, instantaneous communication. This future is presided over by LoveStar, the cultish leader of the company that bears his name. His empire includes LoveDeath, in…

  • Arcadia

    ArcadiaLauren GroffHyperion Voice, March 2012304 pages$25.99 The further we proceed into this new millennium, the greater our nostalgia for the 20th century past. Each decade has its myths and tropes, cultivated in the space between what we imagine and what we desire: the swinging 60s, the psychedelic 70s…even the Just Say No 80s.  In Lauren…

  • The Last Holiday

    The Last HolidayGil Scott-HeronGrove Press, January 2012384 pages$25.00 “The first change that takes place is in your mind. You have to change your mind before you change the way you’re livin’ and the way you move.” —1991 We remember him as the bluesologist, the godfather of rap. But for a long time, Gil Scott-Heron thought…

  • Lost Memory of Skin

    Lost Memory of Skin Russell Banks Ecco, September 2011 432 pages $25.99 Outside of freshman philosophy classes and Republican presidential debates, morality is not a hot topic these days. Books that moralize are considered old-fashioned at best and insulting at worst. Leave it to Russell Banks to write a subtle, thoughtful novel about what would…