The Concord Bookshop - Established 1940

Short-listed for The Man Booker Prize, this engrossing novel concerns two working-class families, the Sellers and Glovers, neighbors in Sheffield, England in the 1970's. The author follows both families and their interaction over three decades, focusing in particular on Tim Glover and how two seemingly inconsequential acts of cruelty impact each family.

Expansive and deeply moving, "The Northern Clemency" is storytelling at its best, filled with Dickensian minor characters and subplots, the action moving seamlessly back and forth between Sheffield and London and eventually Sydney, Australia.

~John

The year is 1848. It is a time of America's raucous coming of age. War with Mexico has just ended; gold has been discovered in California; revolutions sweep across Europe. Charles Darwin, Walt Whitman, Alexis De Tocqueville, and Matthew Brady are out and about.

Amid this excitement and commotion aristocratic Benjamin Knowles leaves the Old World to "find" himself in New York. There he befriends three restless Americans: Timothy Scaggs, a journalist and daguerreotypist; Duff Lucking, a fireman, and damaged veteran of the Mexican War; and Duff's freethinking and ravishing sister Polly, an aspiring actress. Together they set out on a transcontinental trip west, followed by a cold-blooded killer seeking revenge.

This is historical fiction at it's best, and also an affecting story of four people chasing their American dreams.

~John

Howard Kapostash hasn't spoken in thirty years due to a severe head injury he suffered in Vietnam. His high school sweetheart, Sylvia, with problems of her own, asks Howard to look after her nine-year-old son, Ryan. The presence of this resourceful boy in Howard's life transforms him. Forced out of his isolation, he finds unexpected joy in work, in baseball, and in meals with his quirky roommates. He reconnects.

Part Quasimodo, part Boo Radley (to Ryan's Jem), part Holden Caulfield, Howard is an everyman, and a protagonist that stays with you. This is a graceful, funny, moving first novel about the cost of war and the human need to connect. If you enjoy Harper Lee and Richard Russo, give Dave King a try.

~John

Set mostly in Paris and Manhattan in the 1980's, Mary Gaitskill's new novel is about a former fashion model, Alison (the narrator) and her friend, the eccentric Veronica. With gritty ("a pulled-back noisy face") and musical ("traffic knotted jewelry") prose Gaitskill creates a modern-day fairy tale: a story of friendship, family, illness, and love.

If you haven't read Mary Gaitskill before, this is a good place to start. One of the NYTBR's eleven best books of the year in 2005. Also, a National Book Award and National Book Critics' Circle Award Finalist. Dazzling and unforgettable!

~John