On The Blue Comet: by Rosemary Wells

Oscar Ogilvie is living with his dad in a house at the end of Lucifer Street, in Cairo, Illinois, when world events change his life forever. The great stock market crash has rippled across the country, and the bank takes over their home- along with all their cherished model trains. Oscar's dad is forced to head west in search of work, and Oscar must move in with his no-nonsense Aunt Carmen. Only a mysterious drifter who stops by each day for food after school helps alleviate Oscar's loveliness- until Oscar witnesses a crime so stunning that it catapults him into a miraculous, time-hopping train journey.
Filled with suspense and peppered with witty encounters with Hollywood stars and other bigwigs of history, this captivating novel by Rosemary Wells resonate with imagination, humor, and the magic of a timeless adventure story.

Hypothermia: A Thriller

Reykjavik's police detective Erlendur works alone because he prizes solitude above all else. He also has ghosts from his past which haunt him daily particularly the probable death of his brother who went missing when he was a child. Then there is his failed marriage and his tentative relationships with his two children.
This case begins with the apparent suicide of a woman ravaged by guilt and depression over the recent death of her mother and the long ago death of her father when she was a child. Erlendur investigates the case to try to determine why she would want to kill herself. At the same time, he begins an investigation into the disappearance of two young people thirty years ago. Erlendur feels survivor's guilt, because it was his brother who was never rescued when both of them were lost in a blizzard. No trace of his brother's body was ever found. Therefore when an Icelander goes missing, he feels compelled to delve into the case.
This crime novel has no car chases, guns blazing or quick action. Instead it focuses on the psychology of the people involved, their fears and pain and the guilt they wrestle with daily. It is a very satisfying read and when you are finished, you will wish you could pick up the next book and keep reading.

The Almost Unbearable Sadness of Being...Jewish

Julie Orringer has followed up her notable short story collection with a heartrending but beautifully written novel that spans several years and lives in Europe during the years leading up to and encompassing WWII. I picked up The Invisible Bridge with hesitation, unsure of whether I wanted to face another book full of sorrow and the plight of Jewish families in the war. And yet, I knew very little about the Jews of Hungary, and so was curious, and the reviews were captivating, and the photograph on the front cover finally drew me in. The Invisible Bridge requires a considerable investment of time--at 600 pages, it is not a quick read. It also requires an emotional investment, because I quickly became attached to Andras Levi and his brother Tibor and their friends and family. I found myself smiling as I read, laughing out loud, gasping in disbelief and shock, and yes, the inevitable, crying in deep sadness. This is not an easy book to read. It shows the incredible cruelty that human beings are capable of. But it also shows the other side, the love and loyalty that people can demonstrate under the most horrible circumstances imaginable. When I finished this book, I truly loved the Levi family and wept for their losses and celebrated their survivals. I wish they were real so that I could clasp their hands to my heart. The thing is, they are real. Orringer has made them so. And numerous families just like the Levis are the great-great grandparents of our friends and neighbors today. Orringer has told a wonderful story. Read it.

Alchemy and Meggy Swann by Karen Cushman

It is 1563 in Elizabethan London and Meggy Swann has just ridden a day's journey from the small village where she was raised to be dropped off in London at the dark, narrow, "Sign of the Sun" house. She has been sent to live with the Alchemist father that she has never met. He left before she was born to work on his dream of turning common metals into gold. Now he is in need of a healthy lab assistant and has remembered that he has a child. But when he sees Meggy he tells her he expected an able-bodied boy to help him and not a crippled girl. But she is stuck in London and must try to find a way to survive. Meggy, ever prickly, and sharp-tongued, has flashing dark eyes and an inquisitive mind. True, she must use two walking sticks to get around but she will find a way to make herself useful to the father who doesn't want her. Her only friend is her pet, Louise, a goose with broken wings.
The former lab assistant, Roger Oldham, has been ordered by her father to show Meggy where she is to sleep and to get her food to eat. He tells her of his plans to join a troupe of players and begin a new life. Roger also tells Meggy how to find him if she should need anything and how to find the market place where she can get food for herself. But Meggy can barely walk with her sticks, how will she ever be able to get around London by herself?
Meggy learns to make herself useful to her father and he finds it helpful to have her assistance in his lab. She is slow but she does learn to get around London to run the errands that he requires. Roger becomes a steadfast friend and the player troupe become an extended family to Meggy who finds friends and foes alike in the neighborhood as she goes out each day.
But there are strange men coming at all hours of the night to her father's laboratory. Meggy overhears of a plot to poison the Baron and she fears that her father may be caught as an accomplice. There is more afoot than turning common metals into gold. Meggy is turning into a stronger, braver and wiser young woman but will she be able to protect her ungrateful father, her friends and herself? To find out, read Alchemy and Meggy Swann by Karen Cushman.

Honestly, I can't imagine a better tale.


A detective story that's at once mythically large and painfully intimate.

Just the simple facts are hard to believe: that in 1951, a poor black woman named Henrietta Lacks dies of cervical cancer, but pieces of the tumor that killed her---taken without her knowledge or consent---live on, first in one lab, then in hundreds, then thousands, then in giant factories churning out polio vaccines, then aboard rocket ships launched into space. The cells from this one tumor would spawn a multi-billion dollar industry and become a foundation of modern science--leading to breakthroughs in gene mapping, cloning and fertility and helping to discover how viruses work and how cancer develops (among a million other things.) all of which is to say: the science end of this story is enough to blow one's mind right out of one's face.

But what's truly remarkable about Rebecca Skloot's book is that we also get the rest of the story, the part that could have easily remained hidden had she not spent ten years unearthing it.: Who was Henrietta Lacks? How did she live? How did she die? Did her family know that she'd become, in some sense, immortal, and how did that affect them?

The book ultimately channels it's journey of discovery through Henrietta's youngest daughter, Deborah, who never knew her mother, and who dreamt of one day being a scientist.

Rebecca Skloot tells the story with great sensitivity, urgency and, in the end, damn fine writing. I highly recommend this book. ---Jad Abumrad