Before They Are Hanged, the second book in Joe Abercrombie’s First Law Trilogy, takes off right where The Blade Itself left off. Glokta, the crippled torturer with a sense of humor as sharp as his tools, has been promoted within the Inquisition. His new post in the besieged city of Dagoska brings him dangerously close to his old friends, the Gurkish—the enemies to the South who introduced Glokta to the torturing biz years before.
Alice Blackwell can’t stop thinking about the man camped outside the White House. He won’t leave, he pledges, until he can convince Charlie Blackwell, to end the war in Iraq. For the first time in many years, Alice begins to agree with the man: her husband, the President of the United States, is wrong.
You have to read this book.
“It has been sixty-four years since the president and the Consortium identified love as a disease, and forty-three since the scientist perfected a cure.” So begins Lauren Oliver’s electrifying book, Delirium, the first in a trilogy of the same name.
Rachel DuPree is tired. Her five living children are hungry and thirsty, and the baby due any day will add another weight to Rachel’s already overburdened shoulders. The DuPrees have scraped through the long summer drought with dreams of cool drinking water and full bellies, and Rachel is sick with a feeling of failure; she has failed to provide for her family, and she has failed to tame the wild lands that she and her husband, Isaac, claimed fourteen years ago.
Donna Johnson had an unusual childhood. Her mother brought Donna and her younger brother, Gary, into the inner circle of David Terrell, a very popular big tent revivalist in the 1960s and 70s. Donna spent her childhood under the wing of the charismatic and megalomaniacal minister; the only home she knew was under the “largest tent in the world.”
In addition to her position as senior manuscript editor at the University of Chicago Press, Carol Fisher Saller is editor of the Chicago Manual of Style Online‘s Q&A.
During her tenure, she has received tens of thousands of grammar and style questions pertaining Chicago’s complex rules for publishing. Somehow, she reads every single one, no matter how esoteric or absurd, and she posts answers to the most common and/or difficult questions in the online Q&A.
Carol Ann Page is struggling after a painful divorce, and things only get worse when she accidentally slices off her thumb. When she is hospitalized, she is privy to a phenomenon no one can explain: Everyone’s pain is illuminated. From sore spines and aching joints, from sliced thumbs and ruptured spleens, pain becomes a very visible–and strangely beautiful–thing.
This is by far the best book I’ve read all year. The book is original, thrilling, captivating, and heartwrenching. At the same time, it is unexpectedly fresh and optimistic, filled with life and hope and wonder.
The Hobbit is one of the best books I’ve read all year. Because of its intensely imaginative plot and Tolkien’s masterful literary execution, The Hobbit is one of those few books that are equally attractive to kids and adults alike. But you probably already knew that!
The strength of Walls’s narrative lies in her ability to completely absorb herself in telling the story, without allowing herself time or space to inject judgment or analysis. More than just an incredible story, “The Glass Castle” showcases Jeannette Walls’s clear talent with a pen and her undeniable prowess as a storyteller.
Melody Schreiber 