Dark Harvest by Norman Partridge (2007)

It’s Halloween night and every teen boy in town has been locked up for five days.  Tonight they are released, ready to do battle with a legend come to life: The October Boy—born in a cornfield and made of candy, vines and a pumpkin head.  The boy who succeeds in killing him gets to leave town and the competition is fierce, but who are they truly fighting?  

Partridge creates a suspenseful, chilling novel and beautifully evokes the feeling of autumn and Halloween, while telling a truly original story with well-drawn characters.

The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo (2013)

You MUST read this book.

I hear about books from a lot of sources.  Blogs, friends, reviews, whatever.  And then there's the books that I just run across in the library catalog while looking for something else.  Which is to say, I have NO idea how I found this book.  But I'm so glad I did!

Set in colonial Mayala, among the Chinese who reside there, the story is about Li Lin, a young woman of marriageable age who lives with her opium-addicted father and her beloved Amah.  Despite the loss of her mother at a young age, all is pretty much satisfactory until she receives a marriage proposal from Lim Tian Ching, the son of an influential neighbor.  A promising engagement with one small detail: Lim Tian Ching is dead and the proposal is for Li Lin to be his ghost bride.

Lim Tian Ching begins to haunt Li Lin in her dreams, and she is quickly drawn into a dark world of murder, hungry ghosts and restless spirits.  She also falls in love with Tian Bai, the new (live) heir to the family.  Li Lin ventures into the Chinese afterlife, travelling to the Plains of the Dead on an errand for the mysterious Er Lang, a man who may not be what he seems.

Choo creates a marvelously rich and detailed world of the dead:  paper funeral offerings and hell money, afterworld bureaucracy and the shifting corporeal nature of ghosts.  This novel is utterly original and impossible to slot in a particular genre.  It's historical fiction with elements of fantasy, wonderfully suspenseful and spooky with more than a touch of romance.  It's also just beautifully, vividly and cinematically written.  Much of the book's world is based on Chinese folklore, and Choo's notes section outlines the original stories as well as her own creations.  CRIPES, this is a good book.

Dead End Gene Pool: A Memoir by Wendy Burden

I picked this up in a used bookstore based on the intriguing cover and it paid off in every way possible.  This is a memoir about the descendants of a very, very wealthy family (Vanderbilt), and how things went terribly wrong.

Wendy Burden writes unsparingly and hilariously about her very wealthy and very dysfunctional family.  From visiting her grandparents' estate on an island to only occasionally seeing her flighty, hippie mother, this is a fascinating look at the 1% and how things can go terribly wrong no matter how much money you have.  

But above all, it is utterly hilarious.  I didn't write much about it when I read it, but DANG, it's good.  You should read it.  I mean, look at that awesome cover!

The Outsmarting of Criminals by Steven Rigolosi (2014)

This mystery novel, subtitled: A Mystery Introducing Miss Felicity Prim, is absolutely adorable.

Miss Prim lives in NYC, but gets mugged and decides to move to Connecticut and take up her dream job: Criminal Outsmarter. This book has so much love for mysteries and books, and great, rich characters, including the fabulous Miss Prim herself, who is practically perfect in every way (but has NO idea that she drives like a bat out of hell) and is not averse to a slight crush on an attractive policeman. So darling. And she's one of those characters who gets everyone to do what she wants--kindly and with excellent etiquette--but it gets DONE.

A few things I particularly loved:  The signs at her local bookstore:

 "New York Times Best-Sellers That Nobody Reads, The Latest Dreck from Writers Who Phone It In, Ponderous Literary Prose with No Plot and Snotty Characters, Urban Musings by Self-Involved Authors who Don't Take Showers, Ongoing Sagas/Series That Lost Their Edge 4-5 Books Ago," and my all time favorite: "Books by Ivy League Graduates That Got Glowing Reviews in Prestigious, Low-Circulation Magazines Edited by Other Ivy League Graduates." (p. 123) Hilarious and SO true.

 Also: 

"Why, Miss Prim could even see a highly talented novelist writing about her exploits. The book jacket would feature a slim, attractive woman in her rose garden. under the title, the words "A Mystery Introducing Miss Felicity Prim" would appear, thus positioning her tale as the first in a wildly successful, long-running series. But no--Miss Prim was getting carried away. All of that was fiction, and this was the real world." (p 151-2)

Glitter and Glue: A Memoir by Kelly Corrigan (2014)

Kelly Corrigan begins this memoir, her second, with a discussion of her mother's cancer diagnosis. This triggers the memory of a trip she took in her youth to Australia, and the job that she took there to stay in the country.

She became a nanny for a widower with two children, who had recently lost their mother to cancer. As she struggles with becoming a caregiver, she hears her mother's voice in her head. A very subtle, poignant and sweet memoir that focuses on her realization of the impact that her mother (the "glue" of the title) had on her as she grew to adulthood.

Side note: I read it as an e-book from the library and placed 'notes' on a couple of pages I rather liked. However, as the book expired and disappeared from my 'bookshelves' so did the notes, darn it.

This is a lovely book about Corrigan's relationship with her mother, and when she began to stop taking her mother for granted. Here are a couple of quotes I just loved:

"The fact is, lately it seems like the only person who can lift the anvils that sit heaviest on me is my mother. It didn't happen all at once. Maybe it was inevitable, something that develops as daily life delivers its sucker punches, streaks of clarity, and slow-dawning wisdoms." (p. 8)

"The only mothers who never embarrass, harass, dismiss, discount, deceive, distort, neglect, baffle, appall, inhibit, incite, insult, or age poorly are dead mothers, perfectly contained in photographs, pressed into two dimensions like a golden autumn leaf." (p. 56)

Killer Librarian by Mary Lou Kirwin (2012)

A pretty adorable mystery novel despite the cheesy tagline on the cover: "When she checks in, someone always checks out."

Karen Nash is a librarian at a small-town Minnesota library who has dreamed of travelling to London her whole life. She planned a trip with her boyfriend and is all set to go when he breaks up with her. She decides to go anyway (spying him at the airport with a new, younger woman) and stays in a charming bed and breakfast. All goes well apart from a few murders here and there.

Great characters, charming setting, and a fascinating profession (librarian!) make this a lovely cozy mystery that hits all my favorite points: libraries, bookstores, London, pubs. Fun!

Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Murder Mystery by Robert Kolker (2013)

Perfectly marvelous true crime book about the unsolved murder of at least five women whose bodies were dumped on Long Island. Kolker does a beautiful job of giving us the full story on these women and their troubled lives that led to their becoming sex workers.

This book explores the semi-underground world of sex workers, the danger that they are so often in, and the heartrending stories of the family members who worked to keep their girls in the minds of the police officers who were investigating the crime (not always with much enthusiasm.)

Chilling and absorbing.

I See You Made an Effort by Annabelle Gurwitch (2014)

Subtitled: Compliments, Indignities and Survival Stories from the Edge of 50, this is a hilarious and poignant collection of essays about aging.

Gurwitch is not just funny, but a great comic craftsperson.  She doesn't go for the easy joke--she stays true to her story. I loved the mental affair she had with her Apple Genius, all the way down to the best position to have the most flattering sex (rock climbing wall for best gravity defiance, wrap dress for flattering and easy access). 

Struggling with cancer, being part of the sandwich generation, living in Los Angeles, and many more topics of interest to those of us who are feeling the effects of age are all covered in this collection.  If you like her sense of humor (and you should), check out this, check out her excellent Fired! Tales of the Canned, Canceled, Downsized, and Dismissed (2006).

Anything Goes by Ethan Mordden (2013)

Subtitled "A History of American Musical Theatre", this is a comprehensive and dense history of musical theater. It starts in 1728 and goes all the way up to fairly recent musicals. Mordden spends the majority of his time on the alleged (and Mordden scoffs at the term) "Golden Age" of musicals.

As someone who loves opera and operetta, it's fascinating to read the progression of musical theater over the years, from an offshoot of opera to its own entity.  I love Mordden's pointing out of the tropes of musical theater (the merry villagers intro, first and second couples), and the R&H Rules.

I also love that, above all, he is interested in what truly makes a musical integrated. Here's a quote that explains what, for me, makes a great musical (besides a great score, lyrics, etc.):

"This is what the American musical had been working up to for some one hundred years, and all its artistry dwells in the historian's key buzz term "integrated"; the union of story and score. Once a mere collection of songs and now a pride of fully developed numbers supported by incidental music, intros and development sections, and musical scenes mixed of speech and song, the score not only tells but probes the story, above all unveiling its characters."

YES.

Five, Six, Seven, Nate! by Tim Federle (2014)

In Tim Federle’s sequel to Better Nate Than Ever, theater geek Nate Foster begins rehearsals for E.T. the Musical…on Broadway! Nate struggles with finding his place in this new world (as Alien #7) with his usual quirky charm. 

The inside story of getting a show up and running is vividly depicted and includes tons of the same humor that made Federle’s first book such a treat.  Such as:

About Roscoe, the old stage manager: "(The other day, I overheard him saying he misses the old days, when the only children who appeared in musicals 'were in the background or dead by the second scene.')"  

And:

"'I need my sopranos down front and my altos just to the side of them.' Everything is 'my my my' on Broadway. There's a lot of territory disputes, like a junior high school cafeteria but with more glitter."