2015
2015 Book Selections
Tuesday, February 17 Only the Dead by Vidar Sundstøl
"A Norwegian tourist has been found murdered on the shore of Lake Superior—right where an Ojibwe man may have been killed more than one hundred years earlier. Four months later, the official investigation is supposedly over but still not resolved, and U.S. Forest Service officer Lance Hansen, drawn into the mystery by his grisly discovery of the body, is uncovering clues disturbingly close to home.
His former father-in-law, Willy Dupree, may hold the key to the century-old murder of Swamper Caribou. And his own brother, Andy, might know more than he’s telling—more than he should know—about the recent homicide. The relationship between the brothers takes a dangerous turn as their annual deer hunt becomes a deadly game. " --- Amazon
The second in the Minnesota Trilogy, this slim volume is so exquisitely written, lyrically descriptive and mystically mysterious it could stand on its own, but to understand all the nuances it’s best read as part of the trilogy." – Kirkus Reviews, starred review
Tuesday, April 28 The Far Traveler by Nancy Marie Brown
"Five hundred years before Columbus, a Viking woman named Gudrid sailed off the edge of the known world. She landed in the New World and lived there for three years, giving birth to a baby before sailing home. Or so the Icelandic sagas say. Even after archaeologists found a Viking longhouse in Newfoundland, no one believed that the details of Gudrid’s story were true. Then, in 2001, a team of scientists discovered what may have been this pioneering woman’s last house, buried under a hay field in Iceland, just where the sagas suggested it could be. Joining scientists experimenting with cutting-edge technology and the latest archaeological techniques, and tracing Gudrid’s steps on land and in the sagas, Nancy Marie Brown reconstructs a life that spanned—and expanded—the bounds of the then-known world. She also sheds new light on the society that gave rise to a woman even more extraordinary than legend has painted her and illuminates the reasons for its collapse" --- Amazon
In The Far Traveler, Nancy Marie Brown tries to solve the mystery of a beautiful woman named Gudrid who appears in two Icelandic sagas and crossed the North Atlantic, from Iceland and Greenland to Newfoundland and Norway, eight times. Who was this intrepid woman, and why did she roam off the edge of the known world? – New York Times
The Sea Road by Margaret Elphinstone
A haunting, compelling historical novel, The Sea Road is a daring re-telling of the 11th-century Viking exploration of the North Atlantic from the viewpoint of one extraordinary woman. Gudrid lives at the remote edge of the known world, in a starkly beautiful landscape where the sea is the only connection to the shores beyond. It is a world where the old Norse gods are still invoked, even as Christianity gains favour, where the spirits of the dead roam the vast northern ice-fields, tormenting the living, and Viking explorers plunder foreign shores.
Taking the accidental discovery of North America as its focal point, Gudrid's narrative describes a multi-layered voyage into the unknown, all recounted with astonishing immediacy and rich atmospheric detail.
A haunting and compelling historical novel, The Sea Road is an ambitious re-telling of the Viking exploration of the North Atlantic from the viewpoint of one extraordinary woman. – Review by Simon Hall, The Herald
Tuesday, June 16 The Greenlanders by Jane Smiley
This enthralling epic tale, written in the tradition of the old Norse sagas, takes us to fourteenth-century Greenland—a farflung place of glittering fjords, blasting winds, sun-warmed meadows, and high, dark mountains. This is the story of one family: proud landowner Asgeir Gunnarsson; his daughter Margret, whose willful independence leads her into passionate adultery and exile; and his son Gunnar, whose quest for knowledge is at the compelling center of this unforgettable book. Jane Smiley immerses us in this world of farmers, priests, and lawspeakers, of hunts and feasts and long-standing feuds, and by an act of literary magic, makes a remote time, place, and people not only real but dear to us. -- Amazon
Set in medieval Greenland, this novel recounts the history of a community plagued with rivalries and feuds, famines and battles with Eskimos. – Alibris
"bleak, stirring picture of the slow slouch towards the death of a civilization." -- Kirkus Reviews
"I do not know of a better American novel within the last twenty years" than The Greenlanders."" Jonathan Franzen
Tuesday, August 18 Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt
Named one of the New York Times Book Review’s 100 Notable Books of the Year ** Publishers Weekly’s Best Fiction Books of 2014 ** NPR Best Books of 2014 ** Kirkus Reviews Best Literary Fiction Books of 2014 ** Washington Post Top 50 Fiction Books of 2014 ** Boston Globe’s Best Fiction of 2014 ** The Telegraph’s Best Fiction to Read 2014 ** St. Louis Post Dispatch’s Best Books of 2014 ** The Independent Fiction Books of the Year 2014 ** One of Buzzfeed’s Best Books Written by Women in 2014 ** San Francisco Chronicle’s Best of 2014 ** A Nancy Pearl Pick ** PopMatters.com’s Best of 2014 Fiction -- Amazon
A brilliant, provocative novel about an artist, Harriet Burden, who after years of being ignored by the art world, conducts an experiment: she conceals her female identity behind three male fronts.” – The Sunday Times Review, UK
Tuesday, October 20
Burned by Thomas Enger
Uncovering class divisions, racial conflicts, and tangled emotions, this gritty, shocking novel of suspense heralds the arrival of a major new talent. Henning Juul is a veteran investigative crime reporter in Oslo, Norway. A horrific fire killed his six-year-old son, cut scars across his face, and ended his marriage, and on his first day back at the job after the terrible tragedy a body is discovered in one of the city’s public parks. A beautiful female college student has been stoned to death and buried up to her neck, her body left bloody and exposed. The brutality of the crime shakes the whole country, but despite his own recent trauma and the fact that his ex-wife’s new boyfriend is also on the case - Henning is given the assignment. When the victim’s boyfriend, a Pakistani native, is arrested, Henning feels certain the man is innocent. Amazon
This is the debut novel of one of the most interesting new Norwegian crime writers.
December The Solitaire Mystery by Jostein Gaarder
Twelve-year-old Hans Thomas lives alone with his father, a man who likes to give his son lessons about life and has a penchant for philosophy. Hans Thomas' mother left when he was four (to 'find' herself) and the story begins when father and son set off on a trip to Greece, where she now lives, to try to persuade her to come home. En route, in Switzerland, Hans Thomas is given a magnifying glass by a dwarf at a petrol station, and the next day he finds a tiny book in his bread roll which can only be read with a magnifying glass. How did the book come to be there? Why does the dwarf keep showing up? It is all very perplexing and Hans Thomas has enough to cope with, with the daunting prospect of seeing his mother. Now his journey has turned into an encounter with the unfathomable...or does it all have a logical explanation?
Jostein Gaarder took the theme of Alice in Wonderland to create an entirely new and modern story based around the cards - you'll never look at a playing-card in the same way again. Buy this for your entire family, even for your children or grandchildren. -- Amazon
