Book of the Week #41

American Sweepstakes: How One Small State Bucked the Church, the Feds and the Mob to Usher in the Lottery Age  by Kevin Flynn (Lebanon, NH: ForeEdge, 2015)

By 1963 public lotteries—a time-honored if tarnished method of raising revenue for everything from the Roman roads to Washington’s Continental Army—had been outlawed in the United States for seventy years. The only legal gambling in America was found in Nevada, where mob involvement had at first been an open secret, and then revealed as no secret at all. In New Hampshire—a conservative, rural state with no sales tax and persistent problems with funding education—state legislator Larry Pickett had filed a bill to establish a lottery in every legislative session since 1953. To the surprise of many, it won passage a decade later and was signed into law by John King, the state’s first Democratic governor in forty years.
American Sweepstakes describes how King assembled an unlikely group of supporters—including a celebrated FBI agent and the staunchly conservative publisher of the state’s leading newspaper—to establish the first state lottery in the nation, paving the way for what is today a $78 billion enterprise. Despite the remonstrations of the Catholic Church, the threat of arrest by the federal government, the strident denunciations of nearly every newspaper editorialist in the country, and the very real fear that the lottery would be co-opted by the mob, eleven thoroughbred racehorses leapt from the gate on September 12, 1964, in the first New Hampshire Sweepstakes, ushering in the lottery age in America. - Jacket copy.

Kevin Flynn will be at Gibson's on Friday, October 9 starting at 7pm to talk about this new book. Kevin will also be the subject of our next NH Author Q&A coming up on 10/21/15.

Book of the Week #52

A Barn in New England: Making a Home on Three Acres by Joseph Monninger (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2001)

How does a 6,000 square foot barn become a home? In the hands of NH author Joseph Monninger and his family it took a lot of work and more than a little poetry. This book takes you along on the journey.

In honor of the season, here is an excerpt:

"Back at the barn, we carried the tree inside and hoisted it up into the southwest corner, the luckiest place to have a tree, we'd read. Pine scent filled the keeping room. The tree's top just brushed the rafters, which signified that it stood a bit more than fourteen feet. It grabbed the entire wall next to the bank of southern windows. Driving home, we would see the lights through the windows. Christmas lights reflected against the glass. The tree branches stretched as big around as a Volkswagen.
I made a fire in the hearth while Wendy tended the coal stove. Then we decorated for the rest of the night, marveling over each rediscovered set of lights, each fondly remembered ornament. Pie jumped around and nearly broke a thousand lights, but we managed to get him calmed down enough to work with us. In time the tree began to glisten. Bright red and blue balls, green pyramids, bubble tubes, clothespin reindeer dangled from the boughs. The tree remained as fragrant as a forest. To reach inside it, to hang a bulb, reminded us of where the tree had been earlier in the evening. We found a nest in one of the branches, old and dried now, but we carried it carefully to our specimen case and placed it beside others we had found over the year.
Pie ran around and flicked off the lamps before we lit the tree for the first time. When we counted to three, Wendy plugged in the string of lights and our tree became a Christmas tree. Lights ran back and forth through the branches, all the way up to the ceiling. No tinsel. Bulbs--some from my childhood--dangled from the boughs. I had never dreamed of having such a large tree inside a house--it was twice, maybe three times the size of the largest tree I'd ever had. It rose to Pie's window, peeked inside it. We stared at it for a long time, first examining it, then letting it seep into our senses. My forty-fifth Christmas tree, I thought. Pie's paper angel, made in first grade, sat atop the peak." (p. 253-4)

Book of the Week #51

My Bookstore: Writers Celebrate their Favorite Places to Browse, Read, and Shop edited by Ronald Rice and Booksellers Across America; introduction by Richard Russo; afterword by Emily St. John Mandel; illustrations by Leif Parsons.(NY: Black Dog and Leventhal Publishers, distributed by Workman Pub., 2012).

"In My Bookstore: Writers Celebrate Their Favorite Places to Browse, Read, and Shop, you’ll read some of our greatest authors’ stories about the pleasure, guidance, and support that their favorite bookstores and booksellers have given them over the years. The relationship between a writer and his or her local store and staff can last for years or even decades. Often it’s the author’s local store that supported him during the early days of his career, that continues to introduce and hand-sell her work to new readers, and that serves as the anchor for the community in which he lives and works.

My Bookstore collects the essays, stories, odes, and words of gratitude and praise for stores across the country in 80 pieces written by our most beloved authors. It’s a joyful, celebration of our brick-and-mortar stores and a clarion call to readers everywhere at a time when the value and importance of these stores should be shouted from the rooftops." --publisher's blurb

There are about 30,000 bookstores in the U.S., so a list of 80 will by necessity leave out a lot of wonderful bookstores. However, this collection highlights some great ones, including New Hampshire's own Toadstool Bookshop, Peterborough and one of my personal favorites, D.C.'s Politics and Prose.

If you are looking for a gift for a book-lover who likes to travel, this volume might be just the thing.

Book of the Week #50

Salem VI: Rebecca's Rising by Jack Heath and John Thompson (Charleston, SC: Pressque Publishing, 2012)

Jack Heath, whom you may know from the radio show NH Today, has just published his first novel which was a collaboration with South Carolina author John Thompson. The novel draws on the historical record of the Salem witch trials, which Heath's family was involved in. It is the first book in what is expected to be a trilogy. There has been a good bit of local press on this book, which was published in September, including a piece on NewHampshire.com.

Having stepped off the fast track of primetime network television news, John Andrews has chosen a quieter life as editor of Salem News, a small paper in a quiet New England town.
Life is perfect until Andrews’ wife is killed in a tragic accident. After several years of trying to numb the pain with alcohol, Andrews is visited by the spirit of a long dead ancestor who opens a door to a shocking family history.
After he experiences a surreal glimpse into the past, Andrews must confront the question of whether he is losing his mind or whether for several hundred years his ancestors have been engaged in a secret battle with a coven that worships Satan. Fueled by the need to understand whether his wife’s death was really an accident or something far more sinister, Andrews, along with his beautiful assistant editor, risk everything to discover a truth so horrifying it threatens to destroy everything and everyone he knows and loves. --publisher's blurb

Book of the Week #49

Cover-up: One Man's Pursuit of the Truth Amid the Government's Failure to End a Ponzi Scheme by Mark Connolly (Key West, Florida: White Whale Press, 2011).

"When New Hampshire’s largest Ponzi scheme exploded on the scene in late 2009, Mark Connolly was looking forward to starting his own business. He received some alarming phone calls. The state’s bank commissioner had some disturbing news and wanted Connolly’s involvement in his agency’s looming problem. Those puzzling conversations were the first of many in which Connolly began realizing incompetent dealings had been taking place in New Hampshire government regarding a failed mortgage company in Meredith, New Hampshire. Cover-Up is a story that blows the whistle on the behind the scenes maneuverings to manage the state’s political damage and assign blame about the government’s regulatory failures concerning the failed mortgage company. Connolly refused to be part of a government cover-up. His story reveals an inexcusable lack of oversight in financial regulation not only in New Hampshire but in the nation at large. Connolly takes the reader through a remarkable journey, and he tells the story as it unfolded before his eyes.
During his various attempts to alert officials to regulatory shortcomings in the state, Connolly was met with resistance and even hostility. It became clear the securities bureau was being set up to take the fall for a scheme that had taken place outside its jurisdiction. Cover-Up offers a unique and startling behind-the-scenes account of deception as only an insider could describe. As the director of the New Hampshire Bureau of Securities Regulation, Connolly had a national reputation as an investor advocate. The small New Hampshire bureau had already taken on tough fraud cases and won. But the bureau had never taken on the government before. Connolly reveals why the state’s Ponzi scheme went on for too long—due to personal greed, government incompetence, political influence, and inadequate regulatory laws." --Publisher's blurb

This book is not at all objective (and doesn't claim to be) in the telling of this tale, but is an interesting and well presented look into the middle of a conflict involving several parts of New Hampshire state government and the people who work there. Mark Connolly spent eight years as director of the New Hampshire Bureau of Securities Regulation, and is a graduate of Dartmouth College. 

Book of the Week #48

Bob Fogg and New Hampshire's Golden Age of Aviation: Flying Over Winnipesaukee and Beyond by Jane Rice (Portsmouth, NH: Peter E. Randall Publisher, 2012)
 

"Here is the story of Robert S. Fogg, the Granite State's true pioneer of aviation, which includes many previously unpublished images of airplanes and aviators of the 1920s and 1930s. Bob Fogg brought aviation to Concord and the Weirs in the early '20s and he and his pilots introduced flying to a whole generation that grew up in that time period. For those interested in the history of the Lakes Region, it describes the seaplane base that was a prominent feature of the Weirs boardwalk from 1923 until the early 1950s, and the planes that hopped passengers from many lakeside resorts throughout New Hampshire. Classic Wacos, Travel Airs, Beech Staggerwings and Sikorsky amphibians that once plied the blue skies over Lake Winnipesaukee come to life again in the pages of this fascinating history." --publisher's blurb

Author Jane Rice is the granddaughter of NH aviator Thomas E. P. Rice and has worked at the Moultonborough Public Library for many years.

Book of the Week #47

Drive-through Window: Poems by Barbara Bald (Alton: NH, Barbara Bald, 2012)

Last April when I asked New Hampshire poets to recommend books of poetry by other NH poets, Scott T. Hutchison recommended this book  Because he had read an advance copy and the book wasn't available yet I didn't include it in the project.

"Bald's work is deeply connected--to nature, to the past, to the human condition. The poems reach for those connections, and in doing so, join hands with the reader. This is a collection of reverence, and Bald is, thankfully, nothing less than both skillful and honest."  --Scott T. Hutchison

To get a sense of Barbara Bald's work, check out this video of  a reading she did at Exeter Town Hall.

Book of the Week #46

Hashimoto Blues by Sarah Dupeyron (Westmoreland, NH: Sarah Dupeyron, 2011)

This is the first novel from New Hampshire author (and librarian) Sarah Dupeyron.

Ms. Dupeyron will be one of the authors reading at Local Author's Night at Toadstool Bookshop, Keene on November 14. As a newly published author she is doing quite a bit of promotion and the news page of her website has links to a bunch of reviews from book bloggers and some interviews she has done.

"Ellie Fox, quirky pilot, mechanical genius, and drug smuggler, never thinks ahead to the consequences of her actions. When her boyfriend, Max, asks her to “play a Game,” his term for one of his crazy criminal ideas, Ellie agrees and the two of them wind up on the hit list of a Japanese crime lord. On the run for their lives from their disaster in Montreal, the two lovers must find a way to outwit their formidable opponent. Will they live to regret playing such a dangerous Game?" (blurb from author's website)

I am still reading, so I don't know how it all comes together, but I really like the way the novel is set up: you know enough from the first chapter to know what kind of story you are heading into, then it backs off from the crisis at hand to introduce you to the people involved. I thought the set up of the romance between Max and Ellie was especially well told.

"No one ever intends to be a criminal when they grow up. If a five-year-old kid is asked what he wants to be, he'll probably say a fireman or a doctor. I wanted to be an engineer and build robots. I didn't know I wanted to be a criminal until I met Frank." (p. 3)

Book of the Week #45

Voices Without Votes: Women and Politics in Antebellum New England by Ronald J. Zboray and Mary Saracino Zboray (Durham, NH: University of New Hampshire Press, 2010)

The election held in November of 1920 was the first one is which American women were legally able to vote. However, for nearly 100 years prior to that women had been active in politics in the United States. This book, published as part of Revisiting New England: The New Regionalism, looks at the ways in which women in New England influences and participated in the political questions of their time. The authors, both professors at the University of Pittsburgh use the diaries and letters of New England women to illustrate how they influenced the political landscape of the country between the 1830s and the start of the Civil War. In some ways the world depicted here isn't that different from New England today.

"Some degree of political socialization, regardless of gender, was virtually inescapable in antebellum New England, for it was an environment saturated with open and unambiguous expressions of partisanship. The near-universal extension of of the male franchise regionwide (with the notable exception of Rhode Island, as we discuss in chapter 7) during the early nineteenth century ushered in a participant type of civic culture." (from the Introduction, p. 6)

The right to vote was not easily won, be sure to exercise yours this election day, November 6, 2012.

Book of the Week Hiatus

The Book of the Week feature will be on a six-week hiatus during 2012. No books will be posted for week #39 - week #44.

I will resume posting with week #45 (the week beginning November 5.) If you are looking for something to read in the interim, check out Big Read NH, or the nearly 300 books-of-the-week that have been featured since 2007.

Book of the Week #38

10 1/2 Things No Commencement Speaker Has Ever Said by Charles Wheelan (NY: W.W. Norton, 2012)

Charles Wheelan is an economist, probably best known for his book Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science, and graduated from Dartmouth in 1988. In 2011 he was invited to speak at Class Day at Dartmouth and this book is the speech he gave there. It is funny, it is true, it is full of much more useful advice than my commencement speakers offered.

• "At crucial points in life you may want to remind yourself, if I can resist ringing the bell now, I will get more marshmallows later." (p. 50)
• On marriage: "I am telling you that you are getting a professional teammate for life. So pick wisely." (p. 42)
• "Your parents don't want what is best for you. They want what is good for you, which is not always the same thing." (p. 90)
• "I try to ask myself, is the journey still worthwhile if the mountain turns out to be enshrouded in fog at the top?" (p. 106)
• "Don't try to be great. Just be solid." (p. 116)

Book of the Week #37

Live Free or Die: A Conservative Former Governor Speaks Out on Our Vanishing Freedoms by Meldrim Thomson, Jr. (Orford, NH: Equity Publishing Corporation, 1979)

Since today is primary day in New Hampshire I thought that as we go to the polls to make our choice for a gubernatorial candidate a look back at one of our state's past governors was in order. In reviewing the options, Thomson stands out as one of the most colorful (and conservative!).

Meldrim Thomson served three terms as New Hampshire's governor in the 1970s and upon leaving office published this volume (Equity Publishing was his family's business).

"This book is one man's expression of an abiding faith in freedom as the happiest condition of man. It consists of a melding of articles and speeches given by the author before, during, and immediately after his six years of service as the 91st Governor of New Hampshire.
While it is a testament to one man's strong conservative principles and his belief in the need to preserve the ancient landmarks of America's heritage, it portrays many of the confrontations he had and stands he took in defending and advancing the cause of freedom. ...
The subject matter touches such diverse items as family life in New Hampshire; the loss of state sovereignty; our tragic energy debacle; human rights; gun control; God and the Constitution; the outstanding economy of New Hampshire based on its low taxes; and the vanishing greatness of a once strong and powerful nation." --Preface

Book of the Week #36

Maxfield Parrish: The Masterworks (3rd ed.) by Alma Gilbert (Berkeley/Toronto: Ten Speed Press, 2001).

Luminous landscapes. Stunning scenery. Courageous colors. All this and more describes the amazing body of work by one of America's most popular artists, Maxfield Parrish. Now in its third edition with updated pricing, ownership, and trends, The Masterworks stands as the authoritative collection of Parrish's best works. Compiled by longtime Parrish expert and curator Alma Gilbert, The Masterworks brings together the most popular, most important, and most fanciful of Parrish's paintings. Here you'll find the glorious Dinkey Bird , the extensive Florentine Fête murals, the amazing Interlude , and the sublime Daybreak . Also included are some of Parrish's lesser-known works, through which we see the development of the artist's style and technique. Through historical analysis, contemporary news clippings, and letters from the artist himself, we get to know Parrish the man, discovering the genius behind the artwork. Updated with all the current Parrish information, this new edition of The Masterworks continues the grand tradition of celebrating Parrish's work, and bringing his oeuvre to the public. (publisher's blurb)

This book-of the-week post is part of a series related to the Cornish Art Colony. The Center for the Book compiled a bibliography on the Cornish Colony in support of the exhibit currently at the NH State Library.

Books of the Week #34 and #35

Daniel Chester French was a leading American sculptor of the late 19th century. He was born in Exeter, NH and is best known for his 1922 sculpture "Lincoln."
The two major sources about his life were written by his wife and his daughter.

Memories of a A Sculptor's Wife by Mrs. Daniel Chester French (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, The Riverside Press Cambridge, 1928).

Mary French, a cousin of Daniel Chester French and later his wife, begins her reminiscences with her childhood in Washington, DC at the time of President Lincoln's assassination and writes about her various friends in Washington, including Frances Hodgson Burnett. She also writes briefly about the time she and her husband spent in New Hampshire. The World's Fair she refers to was the Chicago World's Fair (1892).

"Two of those summers, the one before the World's Fair and the one after, we spent in Cornish, New Hampshire, which we loved, but which was too far from New York for us to adopt as our home. Cornish was, in my day, and of course still is, a community rather than a village, a scattering group of houses among the New Hampshire hills. There was not even what we might call a settlement; occasionally two or three houses near together, but most of them like small country estates, wide apart. For the mail and for whatever small business affairs there were, we drove down long hills, and along flat river-banks, and through an old ramshackle covered bridge, into the town of Windsor." (Memories of a Sculptor's Wife, p. 181)

The Life of Daniel Chester French: Journey into Fame by Margaret French Cresson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1947).

This is a more straitforward biography of French, but as it is written by his daughter cannot be supposed to be particularily objective. It has a charming story-telling tone to it and covers French's life in a traditional biographic format from his snowsculpting adventures as a child through his death in 1931. A list of French's works, a bibliography, and several photographs are included.

This book-of the-week post is part of a series related to the Cornish Art Colony. The Center for the Book compiled a bibliography on the Cornish Colony in support of the exhibit currently at the library.

Book of the Week #33

Uncommon Clay: The Life and Works of Augustus Saint Gaudens by Burke Wilkinson, photographs by David Finn (San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985)

The late Washington, DC novelist and biographer Burke Wilkinson conducted numerous interviews and spent five years researching "from California to Ireland to the foothills of the Pyrenees, and into many archives" (p. xvi) to craft this life of the sculptor Augustus Saint Gaudens. Saint Gaudens (according to a note in this volume, a letter written by Saint Gaudens and held by the NY Public Library explains that the sculptor preferred his name un-hyphenated) was the first of the famous artists who "colonized" Cornish, New Hampshire when he and his wife purchased the land and house they called Aspet in the early 1880s.

In his preface Wilkinson explains a bit about the process of biography and how his work relates to Saint Gauden's autobiography.

"Piecing together the life story of a man like Augustus Saint Gaudens, famous sculptor in his own time, half-forgotten today --is like gathering flotsam from the drowned hull of a ship. The hull--the life itself--lies some fathoms down. Ever now and then a fragment comes twisting to the surface--a deed, a memory, an insight. It has been my task as biographer to collect the fragments, coordinate them with what is known, and come up with some kind of coherent reconstruction.
In the case of Saint Gaudens, one might have thought that his autobiography, written a year before his death, would serve as a kind of ship's log, salvaged before the ship was lost. it would be reasonable to expect that the main events of his life, both public and private, would have been set down there in some sequential way. But self-told lives can conceal as well as clarify. The Reminiscences of Augustus Saint Gaudens belongs in the category of those that conceal. Despite the many entertaining details in its pages, the celebrated American sculptor does not emerge very clearly. The reason is simple. During the spring and summer of 1906, when he was composing the memoirs, his wife, Augusta; his son Homer; and his niece-in-law, Rose Nichols, were all on hand and deeply involved. They made it their task to see that the final product was completely sanitized and quite bloodless.
The captive author, ill from the cancer that would kill him the following year, managed to sound a note of warning and apology which breaks through the protective family cordon: 'I could a tale unfold that would make what appears like candlelight in sunshine; but various considerations, conventional and otherwise, bar the way vexatiously.'" (p. xi)

This book-of the-week post is part of a series related to the Cornish Art Colony.

Book of the Week #32

A Place of Beauty: The Artists and Gardens of the Cornish Colony by Alma M. Gilbert & Judith B. Tankard (Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 2000).

"At the beginning of the twentieth century, the artists' colony in Cornish, New Hampshire, was considered one of the most beautifully landscaped villages in America. The lush, rolling hills and fairy-tale scenery drew some of the nation's most gifted artists, including sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, illustrator Maxfield Parrish, and architect Charles Platt. These artists, inspired by the colony's pastoral beauty, quickly became renowned as much for the idyllic gardens they created as for their works of art. The artists regarded their gardens as bowers of leisure and tranquility, and each was infused with the unique personality and nurturing, painterly eye of its creator.

In A Place of Beauty, art historian Alma M. Gilbert and garden historian Judith B. Tankard pay homage to this celebrated locale, with profiles both of the artists who lived there and the imaginative gardens they designed. In part one, Gilbert sets the stage with a brief history of the colony, replete with archival photography of the resident artists and their families and with full-color reproductions  of the artwork the Cornish landscape inspired. In part two, Tankard offers engaging, scholarly portraits of twelve "places of beauty," individual gardens created by the colony's most notable artists. This enchanting volume offers an intimate, historical portrait of the colony, its breathtaking natural beauty, and the artistic achievements that flourished there -- achievements whose rewards we continue to reap." (publisher's description)

This is a beautiful book and provides an excellent introduction to the Cornish Art Colony. Co-author Alma Gilbert is a resident of Plainfield, NH and is considered one of the foremost authorities on the work of Maxfield Parrish. A recent gift to the NH State Library from Alma Gilbert-Smith & Peter Smith of paintings and sculputre from the Cornish Art Colony will be featured in an exhibit at the State Library beginning on August 15, 2012. The exhibit will run through mid-September and over the next few weeks I will be featuring books-of-the-week related to the Cornish Colony artists.

Book of the Week #31

Brewed Awakening: Behind the Beers and Brewers Leading the World's Craft Brewing Revolution by Joshua M. Bernstein (NY: Sterling Epicure, 2011).

Author Joshua Bernstein has a great job--he travels around the world talking to brewers, tasting their beers, and learning about the new and delicious directions in which they are leading craft beer. Among the revolutionary brewers included in this book are New Hampshire's own Bill Herlicka, founder of White Birch Brewing and Tod Mott, lately of The Portsmouth Brewery.

"Fine wine has always had its expert guides to taste and terroir. Why not beer? Funky, young, and smart, this is the ultimate beer geek's companion, covering everything from the homebrew renaissance to nanobreweries to many of America's preeminent beer events and festivals.

There's a revolution brewing among craft beer makers: They're reviving long-forgotten recipes, dosing brews with wild yeasts to create new flavors, and using organic grains and hops to forge a delicious new frontier of beer. And no one's better equipped to tell us what's happening than Joshua M. Bernstein, former Gourmet.com writer and one of the world's foremost beer experts.  He covers all of today's top trends, including high-alcohol, bourbon barrel-aged, cask-conditioned, and even gluten-free beers.

Designed to look just like Joshua's notebook and featuring labels and photos, this extreme guide is a one-stop shop for cutting-edge beer technology, taste, and information."  --publisher's blurb

Book of the Week #30

Pliney Fiske: A Civil War Mystery by Mark Travis (Grantham, NH: Martha Jane Books, 2012)

This is New Hampshire native Mark Travis's first novel, but you may be familiar with his writing in local papers and as co-author of My Brave Boys. White Birch Books will host a reading with the author tomorrow, Tuesday, July 34, 2012 beginning at 7pm.

"Pliney Fiske is what filmmaker Ken Burns calls “a wonderful novel” that works at several levels. It is a page-turning mystery that pits an unlikely title character, a federal pension agent, against a celebrated group of battle-scarred Civil War veterans who are intent on preserving a wartime secret. It is a vivid evocation of daily life and concerns in Concord, New Hampshire, in 1867, two years after the war’s end, a place and a time at once distant and familiar. It is also, in the words of novelist Ernest Hebert, “an inquiry into the complexities of the American character,” exploring such issues as race, women’s rights, temperance, belonging, and forgiveness. ... Praise for Pliney Fiske has been generous. Hebert called it “a gripping historical novel.” Historian Dayton Duncan cited its “yeasty issues” and “vivid cast of memorable players.” Reviewer William Craig called it a “delightful debut novel” that “shows us a 150-year-old society divided, like our own, between various kinds of haves and have-nots, believers and sinners, patriots and scoundrels.” " --White Birch Books

Book of the Week #29

Jana Bibi's Excellent Fortunes: A Novel by Betsy Woodman (NY: Henry Holt & Co., 2012)

"Janet Laird’s life changes when she inherits her grandfather’s house in an Indian hill station. Ignoring her son’s pleas to come grow old in Scotland, she moves with her chatty parrot, Mr. Ganguly, and her loyal housekeeper, Mary, to Hamara Nagar, where the local merchants are philosophers, the police chief is a tyrant, and a bagpipe-playing Gurkha keeps the wild monkeys at bay.
Settling in, Jana (as she prefers to be called) meets her colorful local neighbors– Feroze Ali Khan of Royal Tailors, who struggles with his business and family, V.K. Ramachandran, whose Treasure Emporium is bursting at the seams with objects of unknown provenance, and Rambir, editor of the local newspaper, who burns the midnight oil at his printing press.
When word gets out that the town is in danger of being drowned by a government dam, Jana is enlisted to help put it on the map. Hoping to attract tourists with promises of good things to come, she stacks her deck of cards, readies her fine-feathered assistant—and Jana Bibi’s Excellent Fortunes is born!" --publisher's blurb

This is the debut novel by NH resident Betsy Woodman. She will be doing readings in the next few weeks at Waterstreet Books (7/24/12) and Gibsons (8/2/12).

Book of the Week #28

Wish by Joseph Monninger (NY: Delacorte Press, 2010)

"Bee's brother, Tommy, knows everything there is to know about sharks. He also knows that his life will be cut short by cystic fibrosis. And so does Bee. That's why she wants to make his wish-foundation-sponsored trip to swim with a great white shark an unforgettable memory. But wishes don't always come true. At least, not as expected. Only when Bee takes Tommy to meet a famous shark attack survivor and hard-core surfer does Tommy have the chance to live one day to the fullest. And in the sun-kissed ocean off a California beach, Bee discovers that she has a few secret wishes of her own. . . . " --Publisher's blurb

On a hot summer day a book about swimming and surfing in the Pacific seemed like a good choice. The story is set mostly in California, but the main characters are New Hampshire kids. I really liked the descriptions of surfing which were very exciting and made me feel like I was right there. This book, by NH author Joseph Monninger,  was selected by the NH Center for the Book to be featured as one of "52 Great Reads" at the 2012 National Book Festival.