Fairy tales with a facelift

Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is a maze of a story. It starts as a competition between an author who's a serial killer (the women in his stories never make it out alive) and a woman who challenges him to change his ways through a variety of competing tales. This woman is not his wife, but his wife also becomes ensnared in the stories as each character tries to challenge their ideas of love and relationships and individual humanity.

Rubber ducks and chameleon squid: A look at our oceans

Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea by Donovan Hohn
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

During a winter storm in the Pacific Ocean thousands of toy ducks fell off a ship transporting them to the United States from a factory in Asia. What happened next? It turns out the answer to that question is a little bit complicated.

Did you hear the one about the politician?

Deadly Campaign by Alan Orloff
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Just can't get enough politics in the news these days? If so, you're in luck, because this mystery begins at a speech by an up-and-coming congressman. While the crowd is applauding the candidate masked thugs break into the room and begin roughing people up. Fortunately no one gets seriously hurt, but plenty of folks are rattled, and the budding politician's uncle asks his friend Channing Hayes to find out why they were attacked.

Best Books of 2011

Here are links to the Best Books of 2011 from various sources (in no particular order). Search the library catalog for titles here.


Atlanta Journal Constitution Best Books of the South


Publishers Weekly


NPR





Library Journal