Kathy Ashton is Editor Emeritus (too old and too tired to work that hard any more) of The Inkslinger (the store newsletter). Her nonfiction has also been published in Network and Sunstone magazines, and she was delighted to have one of her Booksense blurbs published in their New Yorker ad. She is a former Pediatric Nurse Practitioner, and is currently working on her first novel, which she hopes will be finished some time in this millennium. She holds a degree in English from Westminster College.
ISBN-13: 9780805080681 Availability: On Our Shelves Now Published: Henry Holt and Co., 10/01/2009
Most
of us are familiar with tales of Henry VIII and his multiple wives
(women sequentially, and what he considered to be legally, acquired).
In Wolf Hall,
Mantel offers a new view: one from inside Thomas Cromwell's head as he
ponders ways to increase the size of Henry's exchequer and to aid the
king's efforts to get Anne Boleyn into his bed through the sanctity of
marriage (Henry, remember, needed a son in order to assure his
succession). But Cromwell's worries don't stop there; Mantel exposes
his thoughts as he frets over his family, his friends, even his
enemies. His genius extends to his own wealth as well as the king's as
he amasses fame and fortune and, of course, enemies in this brilliant
novel that encapsulates the Tudor era in the lushest of evocative
prose. Winner the 2009 Booker prize for fiction!
ISBN-13: 9780399156021 Availability: Not In Stock - Available to Order Published: Putnam Adult, 10/01/2009
The Quakers of New Bedford and Martha's Vineyard were the Rockefellers of the 17th century, amassing enormous fortunes through the wholesale destruction of whales for their blubber, which was rendered into 'oyl' right on the ships. They had nearly exterminated the species by the middle of the 1900s, just as the first large oil fields were discovered. Nichols' saga follows the rise and fall of several whaling dynasties, describing the acquisition of fleets and their expeditions into the far reaches of the globe as they tracked and slaughtered whales from Antarctica's frigid waters to their final and fateful peregrinations into the Arctic. A fascinating read, though not for the faint of heart.
ISBN-13: 9780446540728 Availability: On Our Shelves Now Published: Grand Central Publishing, 09/01/2009
Spooner is one of those kids whose mother speculates on the chances of her children reaching adulthood--either because of risky and dangerous behavior, or because she's tempted to murder them. But Spooner is luckier than most: his stepfather, Calmer Ottesson, a former military officer, loves and supports him through thick and thin. Dexter's black, often sadistic, but always spot-on humor and his sense of the absurd are extremely effective in this terrific novel.
ISBN-13: 9780060779009 Availability: On Our Shelves Now Published: Harper Perennial, 05/01/2006
(Recommended in hardcover)
I haven't had so much fun since, at age, 13, I read in quick succession Les Miserables, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Scaramouche, and A Tale of Two Cities. We all know the legend behind the mask of Zorro, but, for the romantic among us, this tale of the man behind that legend is pure romantic swashbuckling bliss. Oh, there is meat enough for the adult palate-political intrigue, plenty of rich and impeccably realistic detail to bring to life the workings of history, myriad incidents of the injustice that eventually led to revolution both in the Europe and the Americas
ISBN-13: 9781932961157 Availability: On Our Shelves Now Published: Unbridled Books, 05/01/2006
(Recommended in hardcover)
In the late 1800s, Danish orphan, Famke, no better than she should be, becomes a model for her artist lover. After he abandons her, she embarks on a journey to find him which takes her across the ocean and across a continent. In so doing, she lives with, and becomes the third wife of a Mormon in Prophet City, Utah, travels through the mining camps of Colorado, the bordellos of New Mexico, experiences early experiments in the treatment of tuberculosis in California, and becomes a guinea pig for the invention of electrical sexual stimulation. Hilarious, bawdy, and deliciously fun reading.
