Kate’s 2¢: “Bleak Harbor” by Brian Gruley
“Bleak Harbor” by Brian Gruley
saying…
How many times have we condemned, looked down, or otherwise discounted someone who looked a bit different from us or acted strangely?
MacKenzie Beyer did a good job of reading this story. I enjoyed spending time on Bleak Harbor.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
www.bryangruley.com
Bryan Gruley (born November 9, 1957) is an American writer. He has shared a Pulitzer Prize for journalism[1] and been nominated for the “first novel” Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America.[2]
Career[edit]
Gruley studied at the University of Notre Dame where he majored in American Studies and graduated in 1979.[3] Gruley is currently a reporter for Bloomberg News, writing long form features for Bloomberg Businessweek magazine.[1][4] He worked more than 15 years for The Wall Street Journal[1] including seven years as Chicago bureau chief.[5][6]
With the Journal, he also helped cover breaking news including the September 11 World Trade Center attack, and shared in the staff’s Pulitzer Prize for that work, which cited “its comprehensive and insightful coverage, executed under the most difficult circumstances, of the terrorist attack on New York City, which recounted the day’s events and their implications for the future.”[1][7]
Gruley’s first novel, Starvation Lake: a mystery, was published in 2009 as a trade paperback original by the Touchstone Books imprint of Simon & Schuster. It is set in the fictional town of Starvation Lake, based on Bellaire, the seat of Antrim County, Michigan.[5] The real Starvation Lake is a lake in the next county, but the fictional town is on the lake, and the novel begins when the snowmobile of a long-missing youth hockey coach “washes up on the icy shores”.[5] Two sequels have followed in the so-called Starvation Lake series, The Hanging Tree (2010) and The Skeleton Box (2012). As of May 2013 Gruley is working on a new novel set in a different town with different characters.[citation needed]
Gruley played ice hockey as a boy and continues to play in his fifties, and to root for the Detroit Red Wings. He was schooled in Detroit, at Detroit Catholic Central, but the family vacationed up north and acquired a cottage in 1971 on Big Twin Lake near Bellaire, which the six siblings used until some time after their parents died. His first newspaper job was in the region as a 1978 summer intern at Antrim County News.[1][5]
Gruley and his wife Pam currently live on the North Side of Chicago.[5] They have three grown children.[1]
From NLS/BARD/LOC:
Bleak Harbor DB93541
Gruley, Bryan. Reading time: 11 hours, 29 minutes.
Read by MacKenzie Beyer.
Suspense Fiction
Psychological Fiction
Shortly before he turns sixteen, Danny Peters–who has autism–disappears from Bleak Harbor, the town his ancestors founded. Danny’s mother and stepfather–both alarmed that their own secret actions led to his abduction–scramble to obtain ransom funds. Strong language, some violence, and some explicit descriptions of sex. 2018.
Downloaded: January 8, 2024
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Comments Off on Kate’s 2¢: “Seasons of purgatory” by Shahriyār Mandanīʹpūr
Kate’s 2¢: “Seasons of purgatory” by Shahriyār Mandanīʹpūr
“Seasons of purgatory” by Shahriyār Mandanīʹpūr
Translated by Sara Khalili
This was a book chosen at random by NLS and sent to me on a cartridge that contained seven books.
I enjoyed reading about the myths and beliefs of these people. a
Fajer Al-Kaisi did a good job of reading this translation.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Shiraz, Iran, is an Iranian writer, journalist and literary theorist.[3]
Mandanipour was born and raised in Shiraz, Iran. In 1975 he moved to Tehran and studied Political Sciences at the University of Tehran, graduating in 1980. In 1981, he enlisted in the army for his military service. To experience war and to write about it, he volunteered to join the front during the Iran-Iraq war and served there as an officer for eighteen months.
Following his military service, Mandanipour returned to Shiraz, where he worked as director of the Hafiz Research Center and National Library of Fars. In 1998, he became chief editor of Asr-e Panjshanbeh (Thursday Evening), a monthly literary journal.
In 2006, Mandanipour traveled to the United States as an International Writers Project Fellow at Brown University. In 2007 and 2008, he was a writer in residence at Harvard University and in 2009 at Boston College. In September 2011, Mandanipour returned to Brown University as a visiting literary arts professor, teaching contemporary Persian literature and modern Iranian cinema. He is now a Professor of Practice at Tufts University.
Works[edit]
Mandanipour started writing at fourteen and published his first short story, Shadows of the Cave, in 1985 in the literary journal Mofid Magazine. In 1989, his first collection of short stories was published under the same title.
Regarded as one of the most accomplished and promising writers of contemporary Iranian literature, Mandanipour’s creative approach to the use of symbols and metaphors, his inventive experimentation with language, time, and space, as well as his unique awareness of sequence and identity have made his work fascinating to critics and readers alike.[citation needed] In his stories, Mandanipour creates his unique surreal world in which illusion seems as natural as terrifying reality. The nightmares and realism of his stories are rooted in the historical horrors and sufferings of the people of Iran.
At the outset, Mandanipour’s stories are enigmatic. Yet, they jolt awake the reader’s imagination and provoke him or her to peel away the intricately woven and fused layers in which past, present, tradition, and modernity collide. His characters do not conform to conventional molds. Traditional identities are blurred as the lines between right and wrong, friend and foe, and sanity and insanity become fluid. Often driven by the most basic human instincts of fear, survival, and loneliness, Mandanipour’s characters struggle in a world of contradictions and ambiguities and grapple with self-identity, social dilemmas, and everyday life.
In a collection of essays on creative writing, The Book of Shahrzad’s Ghosts (Ketab-e Arvāh-e Shahrzād), Mandanipour discusses the elements of the story and the novel, as well as his theories on the nature of literature and the secrets of fiction. He writes, “Literature is the alchemy of transforming reality into words and creating a new phenomenon called fictional reality.”
His novel The Courage of Love (Del-e Del Dadegi), published in 1998, is structured around a love quadrangle with the four main characters representing earth, fire, water, and wind. The novel’s events occur during two different periods of war and earthquakes. Mandanipour compares the devastation, savagery, futility, and dark consequences of war and earthquakes by placing the two timeframes laterally, like mirrors facing each other. In the novel, Mandanipour employs a stream of consciousness. Numerous critics, including Houshang Golshiri, have regarded the 900-page work of fiction as a masterpiece of contemporary Iranian literature. In 2008, he cooperated in writing the screenplay of a documentary named Chahar Marge Yek Nevisandeh (Four Deaths of a Writer). It is about the life of a writer showing how he dies four times in his works, and the screenplay was directed by Ali Zare Ghanat Nowi.[4]
In 2009, Mandanipour published Censoring an Iranian Love Story, his first novel to be translated into English. Ostensibly a tale of romance, the book delves deeply into themes of censorship as the author struggles, in the text, with writing a love story that he’ll be able to get past Iran’s Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance’s Office of Censorship to publish an account of life in post-Islamic Revolution Iran.
In the novel, two narratives are intertwined. In one, we read of the difficulties, fears, and trepidations that surround the meeting of a young couple in modern-day Iran at a time when gender separation is forcefully imposed on society. Scene by scene, we become more familiar with their struggles to preserve their love and their creative schemes to lessen the risk of discovery and arrest. In a parallel storyline, Mandanipour enters as his alter ego and takes us along as he composes each sentence and scene, revealing his frustrations and his methods of battling against censorship. The penalties that the writer self-censors appear as strikethroughs in the text. The writer’s comical efforts at surmounting censorship and advancing his story resemble the struggles of the young lovers to preserve their love.
Translated into English by Sara Khalili, Censoring an Iranian Love Story was well received by critics worldwide. The New Yorker named it one of the Reviewers’ favorites from 2009, and National Public Radio listed it as one of The Best Debut Fictions of 2009.
In his review for The New Yorker, James Wood wrote, “Mandanipour’s writing is exuberant, bonhomous, clever, profuse with puns and literary-political references.”[2] For The New York Times, Michiko Kakutani wrote, “Some of Mr. Mandanipour’s efforts to inject his story with surreal, postmodern elements feel distinctly strained (the intermittent appearances of a hunchbacked midget, in particular, are annoyingly gratuitous and contrived), but he’s managed, by the end of the book, to build a clever Rubik’s Cube of a story, while at the same time giving readers a haunting portrait of life in the Islamic Republic of Iran: arduous, demoralizing and constricted even before the brutalities of the current crackdown.” And writing in the Los Angeles Times, Susan Salter Reynolds commented, “Censorship, seen as its art form, is just another way of messing with reality. It’s hard enough to generate ideas without someone else’s superimposed over them. Still, the fictional Mandanipour tries … He writes a love story that is convincingly, achingly impossible in a place where men and women cannot even look at each other in public. The effect (as every good Victorian understood) is deliriously sensual prose.
From NLS/BARD/LOC:
Seasons of purgatory DB109146
Mandanīʹpūr, Shahriyār; Khalili, Sara Reading time: 5 hours, 44 minutes.
Fajer Al-Kaisi
Short Stories
“The first English-language story collection from “one of Iran’s most important living fiction writers” (Guardian). In Seasons of Purgatory, the fantastical and the visceral merge in tales of tender desire and collective violence, the boredom and brutality of war, and the clash of modern urban life and rural traditions. Mandanipour, banned from publication in his native Iran, vividly renders the individual consciousness in extremis from a variety of perspectives: young and old, man and woman, conscript and prisoner. While delivering a ferocious social critique, these stories are steeped in the poetry and stark beauty of an ancient land and culture.” — Provided by publisher. Unrated. Commercial audiobook. 2022.
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Comments Off on Kate’s 2¢: “After the Fire” by Henning Mankell
Kate’s 2¢: “After the Fire” by Henning Mankell
“After the Fire” by Henning Mankell
saying…
Sean Barrett did a great job of reading Marlene Dellagi’s translation of this story from Swedish. I never could have gotten all the Swedish words pronounced correctly.
The Narrative arc was well done, blending in the retired doctor’s memories with the current events on the small island he inherited from his grandparents The descriptions of how life surrounded by the Baltic was vivid and compelling.
A few take-aways:
–My medical collegues and I would the werst fate would be to be dementia, evene more so that physical pain.
–The stones used to build the foundations, were on their way backto the places from which they’d come.
–Anger rarely helps to solve the problem. –People are never completely what we believe they are.
–Even thought I am a doctore, death is just a mercilessly unwanted; just as difficult to prepare for.
–The truth is always provisionaly, while lies are often solid.
–Death must be freedom from fear, the ultimate freedom.
—
–Death is a natural part of our lives.
–Xenifobia is based on nothing more than myth, heresay and what the friend of a friend allegedly experienced.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Henning Georg Mankell (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈhɛ̂nːɪŋ ˈmǎŋːkɛl]; 3 February 1948 – 5 October 2015) was a Swedish crime writer, children’s author, and dramatist, best known for a series of mystery novels starring his most noted creation, Inspector Kurt Wallander. He also wrote a number of plays and screenplays for television.
He was a left-wing social critic and activist. In his books and plays he constantly highlighted social inequality issues and injustices in Sweden and abroad. In 2010, Mankell was on board one of the ships in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla that was boarded by Israeli commandos. He was below deck on the MV Mavi Marmara when nine civilians were killed in international waters.
Mankell shared his time between Sweden and countries in Africa, mostly Mozambique where he started a theatre. He made considerable donations to charity organizations, mostly connected to Africa.
Life and career[edit]
Mankell’s grandfather, also named Henning Mankell, lived from 1868 to 1930 and was a composer.[1] Mankell was born in Stockholm, Sweden in 1948. His father Ivar was a lawyer who divorced his mother when Mankell was one year old. He and an older sister lived with his father for most of their childhood. The family first lived in Sveg, Härjedalen in northern Sweden, where Mankell’s father was a district judge. In the biography on Mankell’s website, he describes this time when they lived in a flat above the court as one of the happiest in his life.[2] In Sveg, a museum was built in his honour during his lifetime.[3]
Later, when Mankell was thirteen, the family moved to Borås, Västergötland on the Swedish west coast near Gothenburg.[2] After three years he dropped out of school and went to Paris when he was 16. Shortly afterwards he joined the merchant marine, working on a cargo ship and he “loved the ship’s decent hard-working community”.[2] In 1966, he returned to Paris to become a writer. He took part in the student uprising of 1968. He later returned to work as a stagehand in Stockholm.[3] At the age of 20, he had already started as author at the National Swedish Touring Theatre in Stockholm.[4] In the following years he collaborated with several theatres in Sweden. His first play, The Amusement Park dealt with Swedish colonialism in South America.[2] In 1973, he published The Stone Blaster, a novel about the Swedish labour movement. He used the proceeds from the novel to travel to Guinea-Bissau. Africa would later become a second home to him, and he spent a big part of his life there. When his success as a writer made it possible, he founded and ran a theatre in Mozambique.[2]
From 1991 to 2013, Mankell wrote the books which made him famous worldwide, the Kurt Wallander mystery novels. Wallander was a fictional detective living in Ystad in southern Sweden, who supervised a squad of detectives in solving murders, some of which were bizarre. As they worked to catch a killer who had to be stopped before he could kill again, the team often worked late into the nights in a heightened atmosphere of tension and crisis. Wallander’s thoughts and worries about his daughter, his health, his lack of friends and a social life, his worries about Swedish society, shared his mental life with his many concerns and worries about the case he was working. There were ten books in the series. They were translated into many languages and sold millions of copies worldwide. The series gave Mankell the freedom and wherewithal to pursue other projects which interested him.
After living in Zambia and other African countries, Mankell was invited from 1986 onward to become the artistic director of Teatro Avenida in Maputo, Mozambique. He subsequently spent extended periods in Maputo working with the theatre and as a writer. He built his own publishing house, Leopard Förlag, in order to support young talented writers from Africa and Sweden.[5] His novel Chronicler of the Winds, published in Sweden as Comédie infantil in 1995, reflects African problems and is based on African storytelling.[6] On 12 June 2008, he was awarded an honorary Doctorate from the University of St Andrews in Scotland “in recognition of his major contribution to literature and to the practical exercise of conscience”.[7]
Around 2008, Mankell developed two original stories for the German police series Tatort. Actor Axel Milberg, who portrays Inspector Klaus Borowski, had asked Mankell to contribute to the show when they were promoting The Man from Beijing audiobook, a project that Milberg had worked on. The episodes were scheduled to broadcast in Germany in 2010.[8][9] In 2010, Mankell was set to work on a screenplay for Sveriges Television about his father-in-law, movie and theatre director Ingmar Bergman, on a series produced in four one-hour episodes. Mankell pitched the project to Sveriges Television and production was planned for 2011.[10] At the time of his death, Mankell had written over 40 novels that had sold more than 40 million copies worldwide.[11]
Personal life[edit]
Mankell was married four times and had four sons, Thomas, Marius, Morten and Jon, by different relationships. In 1998 he married Eva Bergman, daughter of film director Ingmar Bergman. They remained married until his death in 2015.[3]
Death[edit]
In January 2014, Mankell announced that he had been diagnosed with lung cancer and throat cancer.[12] In May 2014, he reported that treatments had worked well and he was getting better.[13][14]
He wrote a series of articles inspired by his wife Eva, describing his situation, how it felt to be diagnosed,[15] how it felt to be supported,[16] how it felt to wait,[17] and after his first chemotherapy at Sahlgrenska University Hospital about the importance of cancer research.[18] Three weeks before his death he wrote about what happens to people’s identity when they are stricken by a serious illness.[19] His last post was published posthumously 6 October.[20]
On 5 October 2015, Mankell died at the age of 67, almost two years after having been diagnosed.[21]
From NLS/BARD/LOC:
After the fire DB89647
Mankell, Henning. Reading time: 11 hours, 58 minutes.
Read by Sean Barrett. A production of the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, Library of Congress.
Psychological Fiction
Surgeon Fredrik Welin retired in disgrace to a tiny island as its only resident. He rarely sees his daughter, and his mailman is the closest thing he has to a friend, and to an adversary. He is perfectly content. And then a fire changes everything. Translated from the 2015 Swedish original. Some strong language. Commercial audiobook. 2017.
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Comments Off on Kate’s 2¢: “The White Lady” by Jacqueline Winspear
Kate’s 2¢: “The White Lady” by Jacqueline Winspear
“The White Lady” by Jacqueline Winspear
saying…
This story was on the NLS cartridge with seven books they thought I’d enjoy.
Orlagh Cassidy did a great job of reading “The White Lady”. I enjoyed this story and learned a lot about behind the scenes of WWI and WWII.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jacqueline Winspear (born 30 April 1955) is a mystery writer, author of the Maisie Dobbs series of books exploring the aftermath of World War I. She has won several mystery writing awards for books in this popular series.
Personal life and career[edit]
Winspear was born on 30 April 1955, and raised in Cranbrook, in Kent.[1] She was educated at the University of London’s Institute of Education and then worked in academic publishing, higher education and in marketing communications. She emigrated to the United States in 1990. Winspear stated that her childhood awareness of her grandfather’s suffering in World War I led to an interest in that period.[2]
Maisie Dobbs series[edit]
Maisie Dobbs is a private investigator who untangles painful and shameful secrets stemming from war experiences. A gifted working class girl in class-conscious England, she receives an unusual education thanks to the patronage of her employer, who had taken her on as a housemaid.
She interrupts her education to work as a nurse in the Great War, falls in love and suffers her own losses. After the war, she finishes her university education, then works under the tutelage of her mentor. When he retires. she sets up as an investigator in her own office.
Dobbs places emphasis on achieving healing for her clients and insists they comply with her ethical approach.
She grows older throughout the series of novels, and her cases reflect the times, from the Great War to the Second World War.
Books[edit]
Maisie Dobbs series[edit]
1. Maisie Dobbs (2003) ISBN 9781569473306, OCLC 519884816
2. Birds of a Feather (2004)
3. Pardonable Lies (2005)
4. Messenger of Truth (2006)
5. An Incomplete Revenge (2008)
6. Among the Mad (2009)
7. The Mapping of Love and Death (2010)
8. A Lesson in Secrets (2011)
9. Elegy for Eddie (2012)
10. Leaving Everything Most Loved (2013)
11. A Dangerous Place (2015)
12. Journey to Munich (2016)
13. In This Grave Hour (2017)
14. To Die but Once (2018)[3]
15. The American Agent Harper Collins, 2019. ISBN 9780062436665, OCLC 1041763123[4][5][6][7]
16. The Consequences of Fear (2021) ISBN 978-0062868022
17. A Sunlit Weapon (2022)
Standalone[edit]
• The Care and Management of Lies New York : HarperCollins Publishers, 2014. ISBN 9780062336132, OCLC 894542985 (Ms. Winspear also narrates the Audible audio version of her childhood memoir)
• The White Lady New York : HarperCollins Publishers, 2023. ISBN 978006286798-8
Memoir[edit]
• This Time Next Year We’ll Be Laughing (2020) ISBN 978-1641292696
from NLS/BARD/LOC:
The white lady: a novel DB114582
Winspear, Jacqueline Reading time: 10 hours, 9 minutes.
Orlagh Cassidy
Historical Fiction
Spy Stories
Mystery and Detective Stories
“A reluctant ex-spy with demons of her own, Elinor finds herself facing down one of the most dangerous organized crime gangs in London, ultimately exposing corruption from Scotland Yard to the highest levels of government. The private, quiet “Miss White” as Elinor is known, lives in a village in rural Kent, England, and to her fellow villagers seems something of an enigma. Well she might, as Elinor occupies a “grace and favor” property, a rare privilege offered to faithful servants of the Crown for services to the nation. But the residents of Shacklehurst have no way of knowing how dangerous Elinor’s war work had been, or that their mysterious neighbor is haunted by her past. It will take Susie, the child of a young farmworker, Jim Mackie and his wife, Rose, to break through Miss White’s icy demeanor—but Jim has something in common with Elinor. He, too, is desperate to escape his past. When the powerful Mackie crime family demands a return of their prodigal son for an important job, Elinor assumes the task of protecting her neighbors, especially the bright-eyed Susie. Yet in her quest to uncover the truth behind the family’s pursuit of Jim, Elinor unwittingly sets out on a treacherous path—yet it is one that leads to her freedom.” — Provided by publisher. Unrated. Commercial audiobook.
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Comments Off on Kate’s 2¢: “Afterlives” by Abdulrazak Gurnah
Kate’s 2¢: “Afterlives” by Abdulrazak Gurnah
“Afterlives” by Abdulrazak Gurnah
saying…
I’m very glad Damian Lynch was reading this story. There were an awful lot of foreign words that I’d never have been able to read correctly.
I like to read stories that feature foreign lands and cultures. I’m not sure what the point of this story was, other than to give the reader a dose of African history.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Abdulrazak Gurnah FRSL (born 20 December 1948) is a Tanzanian-born British novelist and academic. He was born in the Sultanate of Zanzibar and moved to the United Kingdom in the 1960s as a refugee during the Zanzibar Revolution.[1] His novels include Paradise (1994), which was shortlisted for both the Booker and the Whitbread Prize; By the Sea (2001), which was longlisted for the Booker and shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and Desertion (2005), shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize.
Gurnah was awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature “for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fates of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents”.[1][2][3] He is Emeritus Professor of English and Postcolonial Literatures at the University of Kent.[4]
Early life and education[edit]
Abdulrazak Gurnah was born on 20 December 1948[5] in the Sultanate of Zanzibar.[6] He left the island, which later became part of Tanzania, at the age of 18 following the overthrow of the ruling Arab elite in the Zanzibar Revolution,[3][1] arriving in England in 1968 as a refugee. He is of Arab heritage,[7] and his father and uncle were businessmen who had immigrated from Yemen.[8] Gurnah has been quoted saying, “I came to England when these words, such as asylum-seeker, were not quite the same – more people are struggling and running from terror states.”[1][9]
He initially studied at Christ Church College, Canterbury, whose degrees were at the time awarded by the University of London.[10] He then moved to the University of Kent, where he earned his PhD with a thesis titled Criteria in the Criticism of West African Fiction,[11]
From NLS/BARD/LOC:
Afterlives DB109882
Gurnah, Abdulrazak. Reading time: 10 hours, 16 minutes.
Read by Damian Lynch.
Family
Romance
War Stories
Friendship Fiction
Historical Fiction
Historical Romance Fiction
Political Fiction
Psychological Fiction
“When he was just a boy, Ilyas was stolen from his parents on the coast of east Africa by German colonial troops. After years away, fighting against his own people, he returns home to find his parents gone and his sister, Afiya, abandoned into de facto slavery. Hamza, too, returns home from the war, scarred in body and soul and with nothing but the clothes on his back—until he meets the beautiful, undaunted Afiya. As these young people live and work and fall in love, their fates knotted ever more tightly together, the shadow of a new war on another continent falls over them, threatening once again to carry them away.” — Provided by publisher. Unrated. Commercial audiobook. 2021 Nobel Prize for Literature.
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Comments Off on Kate’s 2¢: “After the Dam” by Amy Hassinger
Kate’s 2¢: “After the Dam” by Amy Hassinger
“After the Dam” by Amy Hassinger
saying…
Kathy Herbst sis a good job of reading “After the Dam’ for our listening pleasure.
I enjoyed this story, except for the ‘open ending’. Will there be a sequel?
The theme causes the reader/listener to ponder the bigger picture of land ownership and the reality that most of us are probably bi-racial; some combination of a blend of Caucasian, African, Native American.
from the Web:
Amy Hassinger is the author of three novels: Nina: Adolescence, The Priest’s Madonna, and After the Dam. Her writing has been translated into Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Russian, and Indonesian and has won awards from Creative Nonfiction , Publisher’s Weekly , American Best Book Awards, the Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY ..
From NLS/BARD/LOC:
After the dam DBC08254
Hassinger, Amy. Reading time: 14 hours, 37 minutes.
Read by Kathy Herbst. A production of Wisconsin Talking Book and Braille Library.
Psychological Fiction
When her grandmother, Grand, is dying, Rachel Clayborne flees with her baby from Illinois to the Clayborne family farm in Wisconsin. Tensions arise over the legacy of the land, while rachel reconnects with her past. 2016. Unrated.
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Comments Off on Kate’s 2¢: “The Cradle of Ice” by James Rollins
Kate’s 2¢: “The Cradle of Ice” by James Rollins
“The Cradle of Ice” by James Rollins
saying…
I don’t usually down-load fantasy fiction, but this story came on an NLS cartridge that contained seven books. Early into the story I got the feeling that this must be Book 2 in a series. Then, at the end of the story, I thought there might be a Book3.
When you start to read, you agree to suspend your preconceived ideas and let the author take you on a trip. What a trip this was! I actually enjoyed this story.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
James Paul Czajkowski (born August 20, 1961), better known by his pen name of James Rollins,[1] is an American veterinarian and writer of action-adventure/thriller, mystery, and techno-thriller novels who gave up his veterinary practice in Sacramento, California to be a full-time author. Rollins’ experiences and expertise as an amateur spelunker and a certified scuba diver have provided content for some of his novels, which are often set in underground or underwater locations. Under the pen name James Clemens, he has also published fantasy novels, such as Wit’ch Fire, Wit’ch Storm, Wit’ch War, Wit’ch Gate, Wit’ch Star, Shadowfall (2005), and Hinterland (2006).
Biographical sketch[edit]
Rollins was born in Chicago.[1] His father worked for Libby’s canning plant, his mother was a housewife and mother of seven, and he lived what he likened to a Brady Bunch lifestyle.[2]
He attended Parkway South Junior High School[2] and then graduated from Parkway West High School in Ballwin, Missouri, in 1979. His undergraduate work focused on evolutionary biology. He graduated from the University of Missouri in Columbia in 1985 with a doctorate in veterinary medicine (D. V. M). Soon afterward, he moved to Sacramento, California, where he established his veterinary practice, licensed July 24, 1985.[1]
In an August 16, 2012 interview, he told SLM’s Jeannette Cooperman:
For 20 years my paycheck was coming from my veterinary degree and my writing was my hobby, and I thought it would be really cool to flip that around. Veterinary medicine is much harder. It’s a 14-, 16-, 18-hour-a-day job. I owned my own practice, had 24 employees. I couldn’t get away, that was the biggest thing. In the 10 years I ran my own practice, I had three weeks of vacation total. I started writing during my lunch hour at the clinic—dogs barking, cats meowing—so now I can write anywhere.
Now, he’s flipped that equation: “Once a week I spend about eight hours spaying and neutering trapped feral cats for the Sacramento Council of Cats. All I do with my veterinary degree now is remove genitalia.”[2]
Influences[edit]
Rollins found the authors of the Doc Savage series inspirational as a youth and acquired an extensive collection of the popular 1930s and 1940s pulp magazine stories.[3] Rollins was fascinated by stories of the exploits of Howard Carter and his discovery of the tomb of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh, King Tutankhamun (King Tut); this true-life tale later inspired Rollins’ novel Excavation, in which the main character, archaeologist Henry Conklin, and his nephew Sam discover a lost Inca city in the mountains of the Andean jungle that contains a treasure—and a curse. He also enjoyed L. Frank Baum’s Oz series, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan novels, and C. S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia. Additionally, he was inspired by Jules Verne and H. G. Wells,[4] whose works he used as a springboard for creating similar contemporary novels filled with what he refers to as “the three M’s of fiction: magic, mayhem, and monsters”.[citation
On February 10, 2015, Rollins wrote in an AMA (“Ask Me Anything”[22]) on Reddit.com: “Third book is done; fourth is midway. Once the fifth is done, the entire series is slated for publication, each book coming out 6 months apart, starting with a re-release of the first two.”[23]
MoonFall Saga[edit]
The Starless Crown (2022)[edit]
The Cradle of Ice (2023)[edit]
From NLS/BARD/LOC:
The cradle of ice DB114604
Rollins, James Reading time: 26 hours, 27 minutes.
Nicola Barber
Suspense Fiction
Fantasy Fiction
“To stop the coming apocalypse, a fellowship was formed. A soldier, a thief, a lost prince, and a young girl bonded by fate and looming disaster. Each step along this path has changed the party, forging deep alliances and greater enmities. All the while, hostile forces have hunted them, fearing what they might unleash. Armies wage war around them. For each step has come with a cost—in blood, in loss, in heartbreak. Now, they must split, traveling into a vast region of ice and to a sprawling capital of the world they’ve only known in stories. Time is running out and only the truth will save us all.” — Provided by publisher. Unrated. Commercial audiobook.
Download The cradle of ice DB114604
Kate’s 2¢: “The Blind” by A. F. Brady
“The Blind” by A. F. Brady
saying…
The phrase that came to my mind was: physician, heal thy self. Jon Huffman did a great job of reading this story. I enjoyed listening to it.
A few take-aways:
–Desperation makes you hold on to funny things.
–We need to have a forum to discuss issues.
–We are the only resource for many of our patients here.
–In front of others, we put on the show that we need to pretend to our selves that each of us is fine.
–A trauma released is better than a trauma retained.
–I see the lines between my patients and myself mixing.
–We need to keep up a professional appearance both on and off the unit.
–I could wallow as the victim, removing any responsibility from my shoulders.
–Self forgiveness is freedom
–You tell us what to do, but you never tell us how.
–I killed a person, so I’m atoning by saving a person.
From the WEB:
A.F. BRADY
“With the intensity and rawness of Girl, Interrupted and Luckiest Girl Alive comes this razor-sharp debut, which reveals how one woman can go so far off the deep end, she might never make it back up.
Sam James has spent years carefully crafting her reputation as the best psychologist at Typhlos, Manhattan’s most challenging psychiatric institution. She boasts the highest success rates with the most disturbed patients, believing if she can’t save herself, she’ll save someone else. It’s this savior complex that serves her well in helping patients battle their inner demons, though it leads Sam down some dark paths and opens her eyes to her own mental turmoil.
When Richard, a mysterious patient no other therapist wants to treat, is admitted to Typhlos, Sam is determined to unlock his secrets and his psyche. What she can’t figure out is why does Richard appear to be so completely normal in a hospital filled with madness? And what, really, is he doing at the institution? As Sam gets pulled into Richard’s twisted past, she can’t help but analyze her own life, and what she discovers terrifies her. And so the mind games begin. But who is the savior and who is the saved?”
“An intriguing debut from a New York-based psychotherapist writing about a world she knows extremely well.”
-The Daily Mail
“Beyond brilliant.” – Free-Lance Star
135-7598124-6206765 _encoding=…
Published by Park Row Books,
an imprint of HarperCollins/Harlequin.
“Brady’s fast-paced, riveting psychological chiller will wow suspense and thriller lovers alike. Brilliant character study and superior writing make this an outstanding debut.”
– Library Journal (Starred review)
“A woman in pieces must put herself back together before she loses everything she’s worked for and everyone she cares about.
Brady’s entertaining debut is told in the wry voice of Sam, who uses black humor to hide an undercurrent of pain. Sam is an irresistible diversion even if she can’t seem to get out of her own way and be herself. A satisfying, darkly funny tale of redemption.” – Kirkus Reviews
“A suspenseful look at our weaknesses and ability to forgive” -Booklist
“This psychological thriller grabs the reader and doesn’t let go until the truth about Richard’s past is finally revealed.”
– Publishers Weekly
from NLS/BARD/LOC:
The blind DB89547
Brady, A. F. Reading time: 12 hours, 53 minutes.
Read by Jon Huffman.
Suspense Fiction
Psychological Fiction
Sam James, who works as a much-admired psychologist at a Manhattan psychiatric institution, hides the fact that she drinks heavily and is in an abusive relationship. But now a work-required psychiatric evaluation and a mysterious patient threaten her work identity. Strong language, some violence, and some explicit descriptions of sex. 2017.
Downloaded: January 8, 2024
Download The blind
Kate’s 2¢: “Blame” by Jeff Abbott
saying…
Greg Tremblay, Lauren Fortgang, Vanessa Johannson, and Bailey Carr did a good job of reading this story. How terrifying it must be to not know what everyone else seems to know about you and what happen, but they won’t give you the straight story.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jeff Abbott (born 1963) is a U.S. suspense novelist. He has degrees in History and English from Rice University. He lives in Austin, Texas. Before writing full-time, he was a creative director at an advertising agency. His early novels were traditional detective fiction, but in recent years he has turned to writing thriller fiction. A theme of his work is the idea of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary danger and fighting to return to their normal lives. His novels are published in several countries and have also been bestsellers in the United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland, Germany, France and Portugal.[1] He is also Creative Director at Springbox, a Prophet company.
from NLS/BARD/LOC:
Blame DB88326
Abbott, Jeff. Reading time: 12 hours, 33 minutes.
Read by Greg Tremblay; Lauren Fortgang; Vanessa Johannson; Bailey Carr.
Suspense Fiction
Mystery and Detective Stories
Psychological Fiction
Jane Norton crashed her car two years ago, leaving her with amnesia and killing her friend David. When they found a note purportedly by Jane that wished for death for both of them, the town blamed her. Now an anonymous note writer claims to know what actually happened. Unrated. Commercial audiobook. 2017.
Downloaded: January 8, 2024
Download Blame
Kate’s 2¢: “Stay Awake” by Megan Goldin
saying…
This is a good one! It must be terrifying to not know what everyone else seems to know, and if you fall asleep, your won’t remember what you knew before you fell asleep.
Imogen Church; January LaVoy read in such a way as to keep your attention, however, the narrative arc does that very well. I really enjoyed this story.
The perp is introduced in the beginning, but, as with good mysteries, you won’t know who it is until the end.
from the web:
Megan Goldin is an Australian author who is best known for her dynamite novel, The Escape Room. Prior to releasing her first novel, Megan Goldin worked for ABC and Reuters in Asia and the Middle East as a foreign correspondent. She covered war zones and covered topics like terrorism, war, and the quest for peace.
She is now based in Melbourne, Australia where she raises three sons and is a foster mum to Labrador puppies learning to be guide dogs.
From: Imogen Church – Biography – IMDb
She is best known for her voice work, for which she has multiple awards, and has narrated roughly 300 audio-books as well as starring in audio drama like Dr Who and Blake’s 7, plus she is the voice of The Harry Potter Quiz on Alexa UK and The Wizarding World Quiz in.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
January LaVoy (born in Trumbull, Connecticut) is an American actress and audiobook narrator. As an actress, she is most recognized as Noelle Ortiz on the ABC daytime drama One Life to Live. LaVoy made her Broadway debut in the Broadway premiere of the play Enron at the Broadhurst Theatre on April 27, 2010.[1]
As an audiobook narrator, she received five Audie Awards and been a finalist for nineteen. In 2013, she won Publishers Weekly’s Listen Up Award for Audiobook Narrator of the Year.[2] In 2019, AudioFile named her a Golden Voice narrator.[3]
From NLS/BARD/LOC:
Stay awake: a novel DB109491
Goldin, Megan Reading time: 11 hours, 2 minutes.
Imogen Church; January LaVoy
Suspense Fiction
Psychological Fiction
“Liv Reese wakes up in the back of a taxi with no idea where she is or how she got there. When she’s dropped off at the door of her brownstone, a stranger answers—a stranger who claims to live in her apartment. She reaches for her phone to call for help, only to discover it’s missing. In its place is a bloodstained knife. Her hands are covered in scribbled messages, like graffiti on her skin: STAY AWAKE. Two years ago, Liv was thriving as a successful writer for a trendy magazine. Now, she’s lost and disoriented in a New York City that looks nothing like what she remembers. Catching a glimpse of the local news, she’s horrified to see reports of a crime scene where the victim’s blood has been used to scrawl a message across a window, similar to the message that’s inked on her hands. What did she do last night? And why does she remember nothing from the past two years? Liv finds herself on the run for a crime she doesn’t remember committing. But there’s someone who does know exactly what she did, and they’ll do anything to make her forget—permanently. A complex thriller that unfolds at a breakneck speed, Stay Awake will keep you up all night.” — Provided by publisher. Unrated. Commercial audiobook.