Polar Vortex Reads: ‘The Jersey Brothers A Missing Naval Officer in the Pacific and His Family’s Quest to Bring Him Home’ By: Sally Mott Freeman

The extraordinary, real-life adventure of three brothers at the center of the most dramatic turning points of World War II and their mad race to change history—and save one of their own.

They are three brothers, all Navy men, who end up coincidentally and extraordinarily at the epicenter of three of the war’s most crucial moments. Bill is picked by Roosevelt to run his first Map Room in Washington. Benny is the gunnery and anti-aircraft officer on the USS Enterprise, one of the only carriers to escape Pearl Harbor and by the end of 1942 the last one left in the Pacific to defend against the Japanese. Barton, the youngest and least distinguished of the three, is shuffled off to the Navy Supply Corps because his mother wants him out of harm’s way. But this protection plan backfires when Barton is sent to the Philippines and listed as missing-in-action after a Japanese attack. Now it is up to Bill and Benny to find and rescue him.

Based on ten years of research drawn from archives around the world, interviews with fellow shipmates and POWs, and primary sources including diaries, unpublished memoirs, and letters half-forgotten in basements, The Jersey Brothers is a remarkable story of agony and triumph—from the home front to Roosevelt’s White House, and Pearl Harbor to Midway and Bataan. It is the story, written with intimate, novelistic detail, of an ordinary young man who shows extraordinary courage as the Japanese do everything short of killing him. And it is, above all, a story of brotherly love: of three men finding their loyalty to each other tested under the tortures of war—and knowing that their success or failure to save their youngest brother will shape their family forever.

http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Jersey-Brothers/Sally-Mott-Freeman/9781501104145

 

Polar Vortex Reads: ‘Traveling with Ghosts A Memoir’ By: Shannon Leone Fowler

From grief to reckoning to reflection to solace, a marine biologist shares the solo journey she took—through war-ravaged Eastern Europe, Israel, and beyond—to find peace after her fiancé suffered a fatal attack by a box jellyfish in Thailand.

In the summer of 2002, Shannon Leone Fowler, a twenty-eight-year-old marine biologist, was backpacking with her fiancé and love of her life, Sean. Sean was a tall, blue-eyed, warm-hearted Australian, and he and Shannon planned to return to Australia after their excursion to Koh Pha Ngan, Thailand. Their plans, however, were devastatingly derailed when a box jellyfish—the most venomous animal in the world—wrapped around Sean’s leg, stinging and killing him in a matter of minutes as Shannon helplessly watched. Rejecting the Thai authorities attempt to label Sean’s death a “drunk drowning,” Shannon ferried his body home to his stunned family—a family to which she suddenly no longer belonged.

Shattered and untethered, Shannon’s life paused indefinitely so that she could travel around the world to find healing. Travel had forged her relationship with Sean, and she hoped it could also aid in processing his death. Though Sean wasn’t with Shannon, he was everywhere she went—among the places she visited were Oświęcim, Poland (the site of Auschwitz); war-torn Israel; shelled-out Bosnia; poverty-stricken Romania; and finally to Barcelona, where she first met Sean years before. Ultimately, Shannon had to confront the ocean after her life’s first great love took her second great love away.

Cheryl Strayed’s Wild meets Helen Macdonald’s H Is for Hawk in this beautiful, profoundly moving memorial to those we have lost on our journeys and the unexpected ways their presence echoes in all places—and voyages—big and small.

http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Traveling-with-Ghosts/Shannon-Leone-Fowler/9781501107795

 

Polar Vortex Reads: ‘One of the Boys A Novel’ By: Daniel Magariel

A riveting and emotionally harrowing debut about two young brothers and their physically and psychologically abusive father—One of the Boys is 176 perfect, stunning pages by a major new talent.

The three of them—a twelve-year-old boy, his older brother, their father—have won the war: the father’s term for his bitter divorce and custody battle. They leave their Kansas home and drive through the night to Albuquerque, eager to begin again, united by the thrilling possibility of carving out a new life together. The boys go to school, join basketball teams, make friends. Meanwhile their father works from home, smoking cheap cigars to hide another smell. But soon the little missteps—the dead-eyed absentmindedness, the late night noises, the comings and goings of increasingly odd characters—become sinister, and the boys find themselves watching their father change, grow erratic, then violent.

Set in the sublimely stark landscape of suburban New Mexico and a cramped apartment shut tight to the world, One of the Boys conveys with stunning prose and chilling clarity a young boy’s struggle to hold onto the dangerous pieces of his shattered family. Harrowing and beautiful, Daniel Magariel’s masterful debut is a story of survival: two foxhole-weary brothers banding together to protect each other from the father they once trusted, but no longer recognize. With the emotional core of A Little Life and the compact power of We the Animals, One of the Boys is among the most moving and remarkable debut novels you’ll ever read.

http://www.simonandschuster.ca/books/One-of-the-Boys/Daniel-Magariel/9781501156168

 

Long Weekends Reads with Simon and Schuster: ‘The Regulars’ by Georgia Clark and ‘The House Between Tides’ by Sarah Maine

The Regulars by Georgia Clark

A fierce, feisty, and “wonderfully entertaining” (Scott Westerfeld, author of Uglies) debut with a magical twist about three ordinary, regular girls who suddenly have their fantasies come true…or do they?

Best friends Evie, Krista, and Willow are just trying to make it through their mid-twenties in New York. They’re regular girls, with average looks and typical quarter-life crises: making it up the corporate ladder, making sense of online dating, and making rent.

Until they come across Pretty, a magic tincture that makes them, well…gorgeous. Like, supermodel gorgeous. And it’s certainly not their fault if the sudden gift of beauty causes unexpected doors to open for them.

But there’s a dark side to Pretty, too, and as the gloss fades for these modern-day Cinderellas, there’s just one question left:

What would you sacrifice to be Pretty?

Wildly irreverent, blatantly sexy, and observed with pitch-perfect wit, The Regulars is fresh “compulsive reading from a bright new voice” (Brenda Bowen, author of Enchanted August) in fiction, perfect for fans of Jennifer Close and Kevin Kwan.

http://www.simonandschuster.ca/books/The-Regulars/Georgia-Clark/9781501119590

The House Between Tides by Sarah Maine

Kate Morton meets Daphne du Maurier in this atmospheric debut novel about a woman who discovers the century-old remains of a murder victim on her family’s Scottish estate, plunging her into an investigation of its mysterious former occupants.

Following the death of her last living relative, Hetty Deveraux leaves London and her strained relationship behind for Muirlan, her ancestral home in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides. She intends to renovate the ruinous house into a hotel, but the shocking discovery of human remains brings her ambitious restoration plans to an abrupt halt before they even begin. Few physical clues are left to identify the body, but one thing is certain: this person did not die a natural death.

Hungry for answers, Hetty discovers that Muirlan was once the refuge of her distant relative Theo Blake, the acclaimed painter and naturalist who brought his new bride, Beatrice, there in 1910. Yet ancient gossip and a handful of leads reveal that their marriage was far from perfect; Beatrice eventually vanished from the island, never to return, and Theo withdrew from society, his paintings becoming increasingly dark and disturbing.

What happened between them has remained a mystery, but as Hetty listens to the locals and studies the masterful paintings produced by Theo during his short-lived marriage, she uncovers secrets that still reverberate through the small island community—and will lead her to the identity of the long-hidden body.

http://www.simonandschuster.ca/books/The-House-Between-Tides/Sarah-Maine/9781501126918

Long Weekends Reads with Simon and Schuster: ‘The Girls In The Garden’ by Lisa Jewel & ‘All The Missing Girls’ by Megan Miranda

The Girls In The Garden by Lisa Jewel

Imagine that you live on a picturesque communal garden square, an oasis in urban London where your children run free, in and out of other people’s houses. You’ve known your neighbors for years and you trust them. Implicitly. You think your children are safe. But are they really?

On a midsummer night, as a festive neighborhood party is taking place, preteen Pip discovers her thirteen-year-old sister Grace lying unconscious and bloody in a hidden corner of a lush rose garden. What really happened to her? And who is responsible?

http://www.simonandschuster.ca/books/The-Girls-in-the-Garden/Lisa-Jewell/9781476792217

All The Missing Girls by Megan Miranda

Like the spellbinding psychological suspense in The Girl on the Train and Luckiest Girl Alive, Megan Miranda’s novel is a nail-biting, breathtaking story about the disappearances of two young women—a decade apart—told in reverse.

It’s been ten years since Nicolette Farrell left her rural hometown after her best friend, Corinne, disappeared from Cooley Ridge without a trace. Back again to tie up loose ends and care for her ailing father, Nic is soon plunged into a shocking drama that reawakens Corinne’s case and breaks open old wounds long since stitched.

The decade-old investigation focused on Nic, her brother Daniel, boyfriend Tyler, and Corinne’s boyfriend Jackson. Since then, only Nic has left Cooley Ridge. Daniel and his wife, Laura, are expecting a baby; Jackson works at the town bar; and Tyler is dating Annaleise Carter, Nic’s younger neighbor and the group’s alibi the night Corinne disappeared. Then, within days of Nic’s return, Annaleise goes missing.

Told backwards—Day 15 to Day 1—from the time Annaleise goes missing, Nic works to unravel the truth about her younger neighbor’s disappearance, revealing shocking truths about her friends, her family, and what really happened to Corinne that night ten years ago.

Like nothing you’ve ever read before, All the Missing Girls delivers in all the right ways. With twists and turns that lead down dark alleys and dead ends, you may think you’re walking a familiar path, but then Megan Miranda turns it all upside down and inside out and leaves us wondering just how far we would be willing to go to protect those we love.

http://www.simonandschuster.ca/books/All-the-Missing-Girls/Megan-Miranda/9781501107962

Hot Summer Reads: Barkskins A Novel By: Annie Proulx

From Annie Proulx—the Pulitzer Prize-­ and National Book Award-­winning author of The Shipping News and “Brokeback Mountain,” comes her masterwork: an epic, dazzling, violent, magnificently dramatic novel about the taking down of the world’s forests.In the late seventeenth century two penniless young Frenchmen, René Sel and Charles Duquet, arrive in New France. Bound to a feudal lord, a “seigneur,” for three years in exchange for land, they become wood-cutters—barkskins. René suffers extraordinary hardship, oppressed by the forest he is charged with clearing. He is forced to marry a Mi’kmaw woman and their descendants live trapped between two inimical cultures. But Duquet, crafty and ruthless, runs away from the seigneur, becomes a fur trader, then sets up a timber business. Proulx tells the stories of the descendants of Sel and Duquet over three hundred years—their travels across North America, to Europe, China, and New Zealand, under stunningly brutal conditions—the revenge of rivals, accidents, pestilence, Indian attacks, and cultural annihilation. Over and over again, they seize what they can of a presumed infinite resource, leaving the modern-day characters face to face with possible ecological collapse. Proulx’s inimitable genius is her creation of characters who are so vivid—in their greed, lust, vengefulness, or their simple compassion and hope—that we follow them with fierce attention. Annie Proulx is one of the most formidable and compelling American writers, and Barkskins is her greatest novel, a magnificent marriage of history and imagination.

http://books.simonandschuster.com/Barkskins/Annie-Proulx/9780743288781

 

Hot Summer Reads: Still Mine By: Amy Stuart

The Girl on the Train meets The Silent Wife in this taut psychological thriller.WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU VANISH FROM YOUR LIFE AND LEAVE NO STORY BEHIND? SOMEONE WILL MAKE ONE UP FOR YOU. Clare is on the run. From her past, from her husband, and from her own secrets. When she turns up alone in the remote mining town of Blackmore asking about Shayna Fowles, the local girl who disappeared, everyone wants to know who Clare really is and what she’s hiding. As it turns out, she’s hiding a lot, including what ties her to Shayna in the first place. But everyone in this place is hiding something—from Jared, Shayna’s secretive ex-husband, to Charlie, the charming small-town drug pusher, to Derek, Shayna’s overly involved family doctor, to Louise and Wilfred, her distraught parents. Did Shayna flee? Was she killed? Is it possible she’s still alive? As Clare uncovers the mysteries around Shayna’s disappearance, she must confront her own demons, moving us deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of lies and making us question what it is she’s really running from. Twisting and electrifying, this is a get-under-your-skin thriller that will make you question what it means to lose yourself and find yourself in the most unlikely places.

http://books.simonandschuster.ca/Still-Mine/Amy-Stuart/9781476790428

 

Hot Summer Reads: How Can I Help? A Week in My Life as a Psychiatrist By: David Goldbloom and Pier Bryden

A humane behind-the-scenes account of a week in the life of a psychiatrist at one of Canada’s leading mental health hospitals. How Can I Help? takes us to the frontlines of modern psychiatric care. How Can I Help? portrays a week in the life of Dr. David Goldbloom as he treats patients, communicates with families, and trains staff at CAMH, the largest psychiatric facility in Canada. This highly readable and touching behind-the-scenes account of his daily encounters with a wide range of psychiatric concerns—from his own patients and their families to Emergency Department arrivals—puts a human face on an often misunderstood area of medical expertise. From schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder to post-traumatic stress syndrome and autism, How Can I Help? investigates a range of mental issues. What is it like to work as a psychiatrist now? What are the rewards and challenges? What is the impact of the suffering—and the recovery—of people with mental illness on families and the clinicians who treat them? What does the future hold for psychiatric care? How Can I Help? demystifies a profession that has undergone profound change over the past twenty-five years, a profession that is often misunderstood by the public and the media, and even by doctors themselves. It offers a compassionate, realistic picture of a branch of medicine that is entering a new phase, as increasingly we are able to decode the mysteries of the brain and offer new hope for sufferers of mental illness.

http://books.simonandschuster.ca/How-Can-I-Help/David-Goldbloom/9781476706788

Hot Summer Reads: The Passenger By: Lisa Lutz

“Lutz develops riveting suspense by slowly revealing the events that first sent Tanya/Amelia on the run, while pouring threats on her gritty heroine’s increasingly tenuous bids at survival. Binge-worthy fare, especially for those drawn to strong female protagonists” (Booklist, starred review). From the author of the New York Times bestselling Spellman Files series, Lisa Lutz’s latest blistering thriller is about a woman who creates and sheds new identities as she crisscrosses the country to escape her past: you’ll want to buckle up for the ride!In case you were wondering, I didn’t do it. I didn’t have anything to do with Frank’s death. I don’t have an alibi, so you’ll have to take my word for it… Forty-eight hours after leaving her husband’s body at the base of the stairs, Tanya Dubois cashes in her credit cards, dyes her hair brown, demands a new name from a shadowy voice over the phone, and flees town. It’s not the first time. She meets Blue, a female bartender who recognizes the hunted look in a fugitive’s eyes and offers her a place to stay. With dwindling choices, Tanya-now-Amelia accepts. An uneasy―and dangerous―alliance is born. It’s almost impossible to live off the grid today, but Amelia-now-Debra and Blue have the courage, the ingenuity, and the desperation, to try. Hopscotching from city to city, Debra especially is chased by a very dark secret…can she outrun her past? With heart-stopping escapes and devious deceptions, The Passenger is an amazing psychological thriller about defining yourself while you pursue your path to survival. One thing is certain: the ride will leave you breathless.

http://books.simonandschuster.ca/The-Passenger/Lisa-Lutz/9781451686630

 

Stocking Stuffer: ‘Dear Mr. You’ By Mary -Louise Parker

A wonderfully unconventional literary debut from the award-winning actress Mary-Louise Parker. An extraordinary literary work, Dear Mr. You renders the singular arc of a woman’s life through letters Mary-Louise Parker composes to the men, real and hypothetical, who have informed the person she is today. Beginning with the grandfather she never knew the letters range from a missive to the beloved priest from her childhood to remembrances of former lovers to an homage to a firefighter she encountered to a heartfelt communication with the uncle of the infant daughter she adopted. Readers will be amazed by the depth and style of these letters, which reveal the complexity and power to be found in relationships both loving and fraught.

Review:

‘Dear Mr. You’ By Mary -Louise Parker came to me this year when I have been wading through father stuff. It’s funny how that happens – just when you least expect it.

My dad was ill earlier this year and after years of avoiding I had to face some hard facts – he was aging. I had to put aside the grief of what could have been in my youth and as an adult woman add another ball in the air when I already felt like I was drowning.  This all came to be with next to nothing of a relationship with him.

It’s not been easy – it’s been awful. I have felt like I have aged.  But the bottom line is, as someone said to me just a few hours ago, ‘You’re a good daughter.’  Am I?  I don’t know if I’m ‘good’ or if I’m just doing what a daughter should be doing for her father in ill health and is well into his senior years.’

These days it feels quieter and less arduous. Time has passed and healing was accelerated.  I have so many thoughts.  So many things I want to say to him.  But I am scared shitless.

Dear Lifeline,

I remember your voice that night. You were so sane and male, and I needed a man’s voice.  You said two things, you said “you need to lay off yourself, just for a day, can you do that?” I said maybe, I’ll try and you said, yes try.  Then you said to do you a favor and write down some things that are good and send them to you.  You said you did that every morning before you got out of bed, you’d lie there, “clearing the cobwebs out” and ridding yourself of grudges.  Ending wars you were ready to fight, mostly against yourself.  I said how come some people do this to themselves and you said hey, I get halfway through every day and I want to blow my fuckin brains out.  I want to drive off a bridge.  I can taste the bitterness when it seeps across my tongue, making me feel dry and unlucky.  I’m telling you, you said, I just want to break something, but then I ask myself

What can I do? How can I be of service to someone or this moment, what can I do to help?

‘Dear Mr. You’ By Mary -Louise Parker is an eye opener of a book. It washed over me as I was beginning to make peace with my own turmoil.  As I read Parker’s book – memories flooded back demonstrating to me that it wasn’t all bad.  There were warm days, laughter, good learning, time to practice my voice and genuine snapshots of love.  Instead of me wallowing in the muck, I need to lie out on the grass and soak up the sun some times.

Dear Future Man Who Loves My Daughter,

First of all, show up a bit late. It may be better if she’s seen a little of the opposite of you, and relaxes in your arms only once she realizes you don’t have a gruesome face hiding under the one you first showed her.

Do not have another face hiding. Yeah.  I really would not.

Swoop in late, but not so late that she doesn’t trust it when you say you want to make her drunk on happiness.

Make her drunk on happy.

Make her unhappy. Put yourself first.  Do that awhile.  Do it long enough so that she suffers?  When she is done with that suffering, which will only make her more compassionate, watch as she rises up like the sea’s last wave and crushes you with her silence.  Notice how that silence moves in on you as she speaks, telling you that she’s had enough and you have to change.  You will see her mouth moving and recognize the words falling out and forming sentences that mean “Quit moment or I will quite you,” but the quiet that continues to threaten with staying forever if you don’t comply?  That is so much louder than her words.  She will not be crying or begging.  She will realize she is powerful and perfect alone and that she doesn’t need you.  Her commitment to those words will terrify you.  You will change for her because you realize no one is more worthy of changing for.

‘Dear Mr. You’ By Mary -Louise Parker’s tiny letters will keep you satiated and will remind you of those men in your life that made you and broke you. It’s not a book just about lovers – but rather a book that encompasses fleeting relationships, yet to be birthed ones, non-existent ones,  dalliances that could have been and breaths full of intention.

‘Dear Mr. You’ By Mary -Louise Parker is the perfect stocking stuffer for that special person in your life. Let’s look at 2016 as the year we embrace the men in our life.

http://books.simonandschuster.ca/Dear-Mr-You/Mary-Louise-Parker/9781501107832