Staff Picks

In her re-telling of the classic New Grub Street, Elise Blackwell gives this literary satire new life by setting it in the sometimes absurd, always competitive publishing industry of modern Manhattan. With one acclaimed novel out, Eddie Renfros finds himself sinking deeper into depression and alcoholism as he tries to battle the sophomore slump. Meanwhile, his beautiful and talented wife Amanda is sick of putting her own literary career aside to support the husband she once thought to be brilliant. And then there's their friend Jackson Miller: ruthlessly ambitious and cruelly clever, he is willing to forgo "artistic integrity" as long as he can sell books. This book is witty, insightful, and spot-on; I cannot recommend it highly enough!

"Be warned. This book has no literary merit whatsoever." Thus begins Jonathan Barnes' fantastic debut novel, The Somnambulist. Once a brilliant conjurer and gentleman detective, Edward Moon's career is on the wane and reputation is on a downward spiral -- indeed, his only company seems to be his sidekick, a mute, milk-chugging giant that simply goes by "The Somnambulist." When the baffled police seek Moon's help solving a particularly mysterious murder, he finds himself thrown into a crazy world of (among other things) circus freaks, assassins, and cults, and the impossible conclusion has to be read to be believed. Equal parts historical fiction, mystery, and sci-fi/fantasy, this book is impossible to put down!

When bibliophile and minor biographer Margaret Lea is contacted by reclusive writer Vida Winter to take down the story of her life, she is perplexed -- why her? And why, after years of deliberately lying to interviewers about her past, is Winter insistent on telling the "truth?" Can she be believed, especially when her tale is stranger than fiction? The more Margaret learns of the author's life, the more unanswered questions about her own surface, urgently demanding resolution. Mysterious, gothic, twisted-this is the perfect book for fans of Jane Eyre.

Two women are murdered in Tokyo-one a prostitute and the other an office lady who turned tricks on the side. Trying to shed light on the crimes, our narrator, a nameless woman who was sister to the former and schoolmate to the latter, tells her own accounts of the women as she knew them. Her relationships with them were so fraught, however, that nothing she says can be taken at face value. A disturbing trip into a fragile psyche, the book also delves into the sources of feminine power in traditional social hierarchies. Unreliable, dark, and twisted, Grotesque was easily the most compelling and fascinating book I read in 2007.

Stephanie Bond’s Body Movers is a surprisingly compelling “sexy mystery.” When Carlotta Wren’s parents skip town for a white-collar crime, her once bright future is ruined as she is forced to abandon her life of privilege to support herself and her younger brother. Nearly a decade later, her job at Neiman Marcus still leaves her scrambling to pay the bills, and her brother, despite a knack for numbers, shows little motivation for anything other than amassing gambling debts. When a frequent customer (and wife of Carlotta’s ex –fiancé, who broke off the engagement after the Wren scandal) is murdered, Carlotta’s once drab life is brightened by a cast of colorful new characters, including violent loan sharks, her brother’s sexy female parole officer, a hunky cop itching to re-open her parents’ case, the former fiancé who still carries a torch for her, the handsome body-mover for whom her brother works, and, oh, yeah, a killer! With Atlanta as its background, this book was not only enjoyable and educational to me as a newcomer to the South, but will undoubtedly be fun and familiar for natives as well.