I know it’s hard to believe based on the current weather conditions, but spring is right around the corner. With it comes some fresh new faces and the reappearance of old favorites. I seem to say this each month, but March is a big month for books, especially considering so many outstanding books are publishing on the same date! It is for this reason that this post is broken into two, one for the books published early in the month (all on the same day) and the second post will cover books published later in the month.
Like previous book previews, I have included the publisher’s summary, devoid of any commentary of my own. While these are titles I’m particularly looking forward to, I want to leave it up to each reader to decide whether or not to read a given title. You may click on the book cover to read more or to preorder. Without further ado…
Above by Isla Morely (March 4): In the bestselling vein of Room and The Lovely Bones, a stunning and harrowing novel about a Kansas teenager who is abducted and locked away in an abandoned missile silo by a survivalist who believes he is saving her from the impending destruction of the world. Blythe focuses on finding a way to escape until she discovers that she also has to deal with crushing loneliness, the terrifying madness of her captor, and the persistent temptation to give up. Nothing, however, prepares her for the burden of having to raising a child in confinement. Out of fear, she pushes aside the truth about a world her son may never see for a myth that just might give meaning to his life underground. But when fate intervenes, Blythe and her son manage to re-emerge, only to find themselves in a world even more terrifying than the one they left behind.
The Moon Sisters by Therese Walsh (March 4):
A beautiful coming-of-age novel about two sisters on a journey to forgive their troubled mother, with a sheen of almost magical realism that overlays a story about the love of a family, and especially between sisters. Therese Walsh’s poignant and mesmerizing novel is a moving tale of family, love, and the power of stories. After their mother’s probable suicide, sisters Olivia and Jazz are figuring out how to move on with their lives. Jazz, logical and forward-thinking, decides to get a new job, but spirited, strong-willed Olivia, who can see sounds, taste words, and smell sights, is determined to travel to the remote setting of their mother’s unfinished novel to say her final goodbyes and lay their mother’s spirit to rest. Though they see things very differently, Jazz is forced by her sense of duty to help Olivia reach her goal. Bitter and frustrated by the attention heaped on her sunny sister whose world is so unique, Jazz is even more upset when they run into trouble along the way and Olivia latches to a worldly train-hopper. Though Hobbs warns Olivia that he’s a thief who shouldn’t be trusted, he agrees to help with their journey. As they near their destination, the tension builds between the two sisters, each hiding something from the other, and they are finally forced to face everything between them and decide what is really important.
Black Moon by Kenneth Calhoun (March 4):
Somehow-slowly, unnoticeably-the world has stopped sleeping. Words are slurred, eyes are red-rimmed, and people are starting to lose their grip. Matt Biggs, however, is one of the few who can still sleep. His marriage, already tested by his wife’s inability to have a child, is now at a crossroads: Carolyn has succumbed to the sleeplessness, gone mad, and run away. Desperate to find his wife, save his marriage, and preserve his sanity, he ventures out into the bizarre new world in which he lives. He finds mass confusion and desperation. But he perseveres. Weaving Biggs’s story with that of a somnologist and a sleeping-pill dealer who are seeking to make their love work, as well as a young girl who is forced to leave the comfort of her parents’ house, Kenneth Calhoun has written a literary love story that is devastatingly vivid, hypnotically strange, and profoundly moving.
A Circle of Wives by Alice LaPlante (March 4):
When Dr. John Taylor is found dead in a hotel room in his hometown, the local police find enough incriminating evidence to suspect foul play. Detective Samantha Adams, whose Palo Alto beat usually covers small-town crimes, is innocently thrown into a high-profile murder case that is more intricately intertwined than she could ever imagine. A renowned plastic surgeon, a respected family man, and an active community spokesman, Dr. Taylor was loved and admired. But, hidden from the public eye, he led a secret life-in fact, multiple lives. A closeted polygamist, Dr. Taylor was married to three very different women in three separate cities. And when these three unsuspecting women show up at his funeral, suspicions run high. Adams soon finds herself tracking down a murderer through a web of lies and marital discord. With a rare combination of gripping storytelling, vivid prose, and remarkable insight into character, Alice LaPlante brings to life a story of passion and obsession that will haunt readers long after they turn the final page. A charged and provocative psychological thriller, A Circle of Wives dissects the dynamics of love and marriage, trust and jealousy, posing the terrifying question: How well do you really know your spouse?
Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyemi (March 6): In the winter of 1953, Boy Novak arrives by chance in a small town in Massachusetts, looking, she believes, for beauty—the opposite of the life she’s left behind in New York. She marries a local widower and becomes stepmother to his winsome daughter, Snow Whitman. A wicked stepmother is a creature Boy never imagined she’d become, but elements of the familiar tale of aesthetic obsession begin to play themselves out when the birth of Boy’s daughter, Bird, who is dark-skinned, exposes the Whitmans as light-skinned African Americans passing for white. Among them, Boy, Snow, and Bird confront the tyranny of the mirror to ask how much power surfaces really hold. Dazzlingly inventive and powerfully moving, Boy, Snow, Bird is an astonishing and enchanting novel. With breathtaking feats of imagination, Helen Oyeyemi confirms her place as one of the most original and dynamic literary voices of our time.
The Seeker by R. B. Chesterton (March 6):
A young graduate student travels to Walden Pond expecting to find inspiration in the quiet solitude but finds something eerie and malevolent living deliberately in Thoreau’s woods. When graduate student Aine Cahill uncovers a journal proving that her aunt Bonnie was an intimate companion of Henry David Thoreau’s during his supposedly solitary sojourn at Walden Pond, she knows that she has found the perfect subject for her dissertation. She decides to travel to Walden Pond herself to hunker down and work on her writing, but it quickly becomes clear that all is not as it seems in Thoreau’s woodland retreat. The further Aine delves into Bonnie’s diary the more she finds herself wondering about her family’s sinister legacy and even her own sanity-is there really a young girl lurking in the woods? As tragedy strikes a nearby town and suspicion falls on Aine, she scrambles to find the truth behind Thoreau’s paradise.
There you have it! Stay tuned for a post later this week with the second half of the most anticipated books of March 2014!
