Neil Gaiman celebrated the ten year anniversary of his comic book series The Sandman with the publication of an illustrated novella set in Japan. He combined ancient Japanese mythology with his creation The Dreaming so effectively many readers believed the story was a retelling of a Japanese folk tale. Artist P. Craig Russell (the illustrator of the much-loved Sandman #50) had always wanted to do a full graphic adaptation of the story, and here he finally gets his chance. The result is a beautiful visualization, with coloring that approximates the color palette of Japanese woodblock prints. For Sandman fans it’s like a new addition to the series: as if Russell was given the script to illustrate in the first place.

Reviewed by Mark S., University City Regional

Read the Author Interview with Neil Gaiman

See more titles featured in NOVELLO Festival of Reading

See more titles featured in Graphic Novels

Add your comments about this book

Colson Whitehead’s debut novel seems to be about an obscure topic: elevator inspectors. His protagonist, Lila Mae Watson, is the first black female elevator inspector in 1950’s New York. She uses her intuition to repair the elevators. There is a rival school of elevator inspectors called Empiricists who physically inspect the elevators for safety. Watson’s confidence is shaken when an elevator crashes shortly after an inspection. The elevators’ guild is also having an election which pits the Intuitionists against the Empiricists. James Fulton, the founder of Intuitionism left behind a black box with instructions to create the perfect elevator. Watson is searching for this box. Whitehead uses the elevator inspector allegory to interweave race, spirituality, and humor into an inventive work.

Reviewed by Megan M., Main Library

Read the Author Interview with Colson Whitehead

See more titles featured in Black History Month

See more titles featured in NOVELLO Festival of Reading

Add your comments about this book

Rusty Sabich, Kindle County’s Deputy Prosecutor, has a secret. Sabich, who is married, had an affair with his colleague, Carolyn Polhemus and now she has been murdered. His boss, Chief Prosecutor Raymond Horgan, is facing a tough re-election and he wants a quick resolution to the case. He puts Sabich in charge of the murder investigation. After Horgan loses, Sabich is indicted and put on trial for Polhemus’s murder. In his debut novel, Turow, a practicing attorney, provides an insider’s view into the legal process. He also shares his characters’ thoughts and personal histories. Through his detailed storytelling, Turow shows that in law as in life, issues are not black or white, but muted shades of gray.

Reviewed by Megan M., Main Library

Read the Author Interview with Scott Turow

See more titles featured in NOVELLO Festival of Reading

Add your comments about this book

Meet V.I. `Vic` Warchawski, a tough-as-nails Chicago P.I. When her cousin, ex-hockey star Boom Boom Warchawski, drowns on a busy delivery dock, V.I. becomes suspicious of how he died. While investigating the cause of his death, she is drawn into the dark underbelly of the Great Lakes shipping industry. The story unfolds slowly and lulls you into a false sense of security, until the first attempt on Vic`s life. After that it is a wild ride to the end with our heroine tirelessly putting the pieces of the case together, even in her dreams. Recommended for all hard-boiled detective fans.

Reviewed by Christie B., Independence Regional

See more titles featured in NOVELLO Festival of Reading

See more titles featured in Serial Sleuths

Add your comments about this book

Events have evolved into this: private detective V.I. Warshawski is working for an under-aged client in the investigation of two murder cases. That is definitely the case as distressed, 14-young-old Jill Thayer asks Warshawski to step in to attempt to solve the mystery of the two recent and sudden deaths of her brother and father. Both have been shot and killed and V.I. is determined to see matters to the end as she gets a bum steer from an earlier client and later threats—including a beating—from a shady operator. And this all started with a standard missing person case. Sara Paretsky creates a memorable character in the smart-aleck Warshawski, whose street-smarts and dogged nature make her a good fit as a detective.

Reviewed by Lawrence T., South County Regional

Add your comments about this book

The Hatfields and the McCoys are like friends, compared to the Schapens, Grelliers and Freemantles of Kansas. This story takes place both today and in the 1800's. It’s an angry tale of three families stuck in the middle of the prairie, too close together for too long. There's small town intimacy and jealousy which explodes when a city cousin comes to stay in one of the old homesteads stirring up ideas and feelings better left buried. Add some star crossed lovers, Iraq, Wiccan bonfires and the stress of running a farm with strident religion, a miracle and teen angst to get some of this story’s themes. Sara Paretsky does a marvelous job with this book. Her women are real and layered with both good and evil.

Reviewed by Thea J., South County Regional

See more titles featured in NOVELLO Festival of Reading

Add your comments about this book

A blue mood ring. That was twenty-five year old Cleveland native Mary Ann Singleton’s sign that she should make San Francisco her home when she visited in 1976. Mary Ann moves into 28 Barbary Lane, a boarding house on Russian Hill, run by Anna Madrigal. Anna acts as a mother to her tenants: Mary Ann, Mona, Michael, and Brian. Tales of the City, the first novel in a series, chronicles their lives. It originally appeared as a series of columns in the San Francisco Chronicle. Maupin hilariously captures the pop culture and politics of 1970s’ San Francisco. Whether it is cruising for dates at the local Safeway or entering a jockey shorts dance contest for rent money, Maupin uses humor to explore the complexities of the human heart.

Reviewed by Megan M., Main Library

Read the Author Interview with Armistead Maupin

See more titles featured in Humor - Don't Leave Home Without It!

Add your comments about this book

Signal To Noise was an early collaboration by Gaiman and McKean, originally created for magazine publication in 1989. This second edition includes additional material, but the basic story is unchanged. A film director is dying of cancer. In his mind he is working on his final film: the tale of a European village preparing for the last hour of A.D. 999, convinced the new millennium would bring Armageddon. We see the film as he imagines it, nearing his own end all the while. McKean's art is a wild, colorful feast of drawing, photography, and collage, beautifully presented in this oversized volume. A serious story well told, which still looks completely contemporary.

Reviewed by Mark S., University City Regional

Read the Author Interview with Neil Gaiman

This impressive Novello Literary Award–winning debut skillfully combines a contemporary courtroom thriller with a subtle look back at the competing passions and pressures of the Vietnam War era. Maggie Delaney's world has been shattered by her husband Richard's murder after he intervened to protect a drugstore clerk from a gunman, teenage Vietnamese immigrant Anh Dung Nguyen. The local DA is convinced that his case against Nguyen is a “slam dunk,” but that assessment proves off-base when Everett Quincy, a high-profile attorney from New York, takes the case. Quincy suggests that Delaney's death is connected with his experiences in Vietnam, which may have led him to undue violence against Nguyen. This twist reawakens Maggie's antiwar past, as well as her long-ago personal relationship with Quincy. The flashbacks to the war are convincing, and...Herin delves deep into questions of guilt and forgiveness while demonstrating a gift for the nuances of personal interactions.

Reviewed by Anonymous

See more titles featured in Novello Festival Press

Add your comments about this book

Mary Seneca Steele deserves a place in your heart. And she deserves a place in literature, for she is as remarkable …as Jane Eyre or Ellen Olenska or Isabel Archer. You might think Mary Sen’s story is a road trip. She runs away from 1920s Charleston and an abusive husband, taking their two children. She is running to Caney Forks in the Blue Ridge Mountains, to her father’s kin. You might think Mary Sen’s story is a love story. There’s handsome, enigmatic, ruthless Ben Aaron Steele, who plays the fiddle, like her father. You might think Mary Sen’s story is a story about home. She helps us ask and answer: “What is home? How do we find it? How do we honor it?”

Reviewed by Claudia B.

See more titles featured in Novello Festival Press

Add your comments about this book