Bernard Knight, DEAD IN THE DOG

1950s murder mystery set in Malaya. Interesting historical details, but tends to be repetitive (same phrases about diseases and so on); ends on a flurry of deaths and two suicide notes.

Alan Paton, TOO LATE THE PHALAROPE

I first read this in high school, and quite a bit of it went over my head. But it is one of my favorite novels. Written in 1953, and set in South Africa, it is narrated by Sophie, the spinster aunt of Pieter van Vlaanderen, a man who looks quite perfect: he's a lieutenant, he's 6'3" and handsome, he's a rugby star. But then he breaks the Immorality Law and sleeps with a black woman. This book is nearly perfect as a  character study--they're all round, all flawed, all wanting things they can't have. Makes my A list.

Patrick DeWitt, THE SISTERS BROTHERS

O.K., if anyone told me I was going to really like a book about two wild west outlaws in 1851, one of whom who kills people who merely look at him wrong, I'd say ... mmmm, maybe not. But I liked this book very much; the narrator's voice is as clear as a bell, and it's really about loyalty, brotherhood, greed, loss, and redemption. The SAD part is I got halfway through rereading it before I realized I have read this before! My friend Evan gave it to me a while back and when I read the part about the prostitute and the gold, I realized ... oh ... duh. Not sure why it's not on my blog. (I never blog about books I don't like, but I like this one.) My blog is my memory when it comes to books. Now, not only my true memory but my blog has holes in it. Alas.
Eli (the narrator) and Charlie Sisters are on yet another job for the Commodore. Eli tends toward having a conscience and is looking for a quieter life; but his older brother Charlie has always been the leader. When they are put on the trail of a man who has a chemical formula for finding gold ...
First lines: "I was sitting outside the Commodore's mansion, waiting for my brother Charlie to come out with  news of the job. It was threatening to snow and I was cold and for want of something to do I studied Charlies' new horse, Nimble. My new horse was called Tub. We did not not believe in naming horses but they were given to us as partial payment for the last job with the names intact, so that was that. Our unnamed previous horses had been immolated, so it was not as though we did not need these new ones ..."

Dave Eggers, A HEARTBREAKING WORK OF STAGGERING GENIUS

Oh, this was a good one. I'd had it on my shelf for a while and finally pulled it out. The title hints at the very funny (sometimes bordering on manic) kind of self-reflexive humor throughout the book. On the one hand it's about a 22-year-old who loses both his parents to cancer within 5 weeks; he's left with an older brother (who works at a think tank), an older sister (law school), and a younger brother (Toph, age 9). The protagonist has to adopt the role of the father to his younger brother. So that's part of the story; the other part is about overturning, playing with the expectations of trite novels about death (a la Princess Bride!). I loved it, even if at times it cut rather close to the bone because my father died this past May. For those who liked DEAR AMERICAN AIRLINES, this might be a good next pick. Has anybody out there read Eggers' most recent?

Anna Quindlen, LOTS OF CANDLES, PLENTY OF CAKE

I loved this memoir/series of essays, from a woman who has, by her 50s, so clearly made peace with the chaos of being a woman, wife, mother, writer through decades when women's roles were changing and ideas of what constituted adequate parenting underwent major revision. Her voice is wise and compassionate, reassuring and quite often very funny. (I will keep this book on my shelf ... she's someone I think I want along for the ride.) First lines: "It's odd when I think of the arc of my life, from child to young woman to aging adult. First I was who I was. Then I didn't know who I was. Then I invented someone and became her. Then I began to like what I'd invented. And finally I was what I was again."

Tana French, BROKEN HARBOR

Another dense, twisty, harrowing story from my favorite mystery writer. A triple murder in a half-built housing development in the middle of nowhere.

Jesmyn Ward, SALVAGE THE BONES

A novel about a family surviving Katrina--although the storm doesn't appear until Chapter 11, and there's a part of me that feels that surviving their daily life is hard enough. Full of gritty, often gruesome detail (I had to skip over a couple of paragraphs at the part in which Skeetah, one of the boys, pits his dog China against another dog in a fight), this is a book about loss and salvaging what remains. The protagonist, a girl named Esch, is pregnant; the father is her brother Randall's best friend Manny who lives with another woman in a trailer; he won't look at her, but he still wants to screw her in the bathroom at Randall's basketball game. When a fight breaks out between Skeetah and Manny at the game, Randall loses his chance to go to basketball camp. When Katrina is on its way, Esch's father is trying to board up their house and loses part of his hand. When the floodwaters rise around the house, and they have to jump from the attic to a tree to get to safety, Skeetah loses his beloved dog. They lost their mother years ago, when she gave birth to Junior. This book won the National Book Award in 2011, and the writer is a professor of creative writing at U of Southern Alabama. Although the metaphors at times threaten to overpower Esch's strong, clear voice, it's a powerful novel--stirs feelings of pain and frustration and profound sadness.