As I was swithcing out my yearly bookshelves (listed under pages on the ride hand column of this blog), I thought I’d give you a quick run down of books that I really enjoyed last year.  So, put them on your “reserve” list at your local library….and Happy reading!

Honorable Mentions:

Loving Frank by Nancy Horan

From the Jacket:

I have been standing on the side of life, watching it float by. I want to swim in the river. I want to feel the current.

So writes Mamah Borthwick Cheney in her diary as she struggles to justify her clandestine love affair with Frank Lloyd Wright. Four years earlier, in 1903, Mamah and her husband, Edwin, had commissioned the renowned architect to design a new home for them. During the construction of the house, a powerful attraction developed between Mamah and Frank, and in time the lovers, each married with children, embarked on a course that would shock Chicago society and forever change their lives.

In this ambitious debut novel, fact and fiction blend together brilliantly. While scholars have largely relegated Mamah to a footnote in the life of America’s greatest architect, author Nancy Horan gives full weight to their dramatic love story and illuminates Cheney’s profound influence on Wright.

Drawing on years of research, Horan weaves little-known facts into a compelling narrative, vividly portraying the conflicts and struggles of a woman forced to choose between the roles of mother, wife, lover, and intellectual. Horan’s Mamah is a woman seeking to find her own place, her own creative calling in the world. Mamah’s is an unforgettable journey marked by choices that reshape her notions of love and responsibility, leading inexorably ultimately lead to this novel’s stunning conclusion.

Elegantly written and remarkably rich in detail, Loving Frank is a fitting tribute to a courageous woman, a national icon, and their timeless love story.

Salem Falls by Jodi Picoult

From the Jacket:

When Jack St. Bride arrives by chance in the sleepy New England town of Salem Falls, he decides to reinvent himself. Tall, blond, and handsome, Jack was once a beloved teacher and soccer coach at a girls’ prep school — until a student’s crush sparked a powder keg of accusation and robbed him of his reputation. Now, working for minimum wage washing dishes for Addie Peabody at the Do-Or-Diner, Jack buries his past, content to become the mysterious stranger who has appeared out of the blue.

With ghosts of her own haunting her, Addie Peabody is as cautious around men as Jack St. Bride is around women. But as this unassuming stranger steps smoothly into the diner’s daily routine, she finds him fitting just as comfortably inside her heart — and slowly, a gentle, healing love takes hold between them.

Yet planting roots in Salem Falls may prove fateful for Jack. Amid the white-painted centuries-old churches, a quartet of bored, privileged teenage girls have formed a coven that is crossing the line between amusement and malicious intent. Quick to notice the attractive new employee at Addie’s diner, the girls turn Jack’s world upside down with a shattering allegation that causes history to repeat itself — and forces Jack to proclaim his innocence once again. Suddenly nothing in Salem Falls is as it seems: a safe haven turns dangerous, an innocent girl meets evil face-to-face, a dishwasher with a Ph.D. is revealed to be an ex-con. As Jack’s hidden past catches up with him, the seams of this tiny town begin to tear, and the emerging truth becomes a slippery concept written in shades of gray. Now Addie, desperate for answers, must look into her heart — and into Jack’s lies and shadowy secrets — for evidence that will condemn or redeem the man she has come to love.

Mrs. Kimble by Jennifer Haigh

From the Jacket:

In her masterful first novel “Mrs. Kimble,” Jennifer Haigh delivers the riveting story of three women who marry the same man.

Ken Kimble is revealed through the eyes of the women he seduces: his first wife, Birdie, who struggles to hold herself together following his desertion; his second wife, Joan, a lonely heiress shaken by personal tragedy, who sees in Kimble her last chance at happiness; and finally Dinah, a beautiful but damaged woman half his age. Woven throughout is the story of Kimble’s son, Charlie, whose life is forever affected by the father he barely remembers. Kimble is a chameleon, a man able to become, at least for a while, all things to all women — a hero to whom powerful needs and nameless longings may be attached. Only later do they glimpse the truth about this enigmatic, unknowable man.

The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes by Diane Chamberlain

From the Jacket:

An unsolved murder.

A missing child.

A lifetime of deception.

In 1977, pregnant Genevieve Russell disappeared. Twenty years later, her remains are discovered and Timothy Gleason is charged with murder. But there is no sign of the unborn child.

CeeCee Wilkes knows how Genevieve Russell died, because she was there. And she also knows what happened to the missing infant, because two decades ago she made the devastating choice to raise the baby as her own. Now Timothy Gleason is facing the death penalty, and she has another choice to make. Tell the truth, and destroy her family. Or let an innocent man die in order to protect a lifetime of lies…

Heart Sick by Chelsea Cain

From the Jacket:

He thinks he sees a flash of emotion in her eyes. Sympathy? Then it’s gone. ‘Whatever you think this is going to be like,’ she whispers, ‘it’s going to be worse.’ When beautiful serial killer Gretchen Lowell captured her last victim, the man in charge of hunting her down, she quickly established who was really in control of the investigation. So why, after ten days of horrifying physical and mental torture, did she release Detective Archie Sheridan from the brink of death and hand herself in? Two years on, Archie remains driven by a terrifying obsession that was born during his time alone with Gretchen. One thing is clear Archie does not believe he was ever truly freed. Now Archie returns to lead the search for a new killer, whose recent attacks on teenage girls have left the city of Portland reeling. Shadowed by vulnerable young reporter Susan Ward, Archie knows that only one person can help him climb into the mind of this psychopath. But can Archie finally manage to confront the demons of his past without being consumed by them?

My 1st Place Reads of 2008 (tie)

Change of Heart by Jodi Picoult

From the Jacket:

A spellbinding tale of a mother’s tragic loss and one man’s last chance at gaining salvation.

Can we save ourselves, or do we rely on others to do it? Is what we believe always the truth?

One moment June Nealon was happily looking forward to years full of laughter and adventure with her family, and the next, she was staring into a future that was as empty as her heart. Now her life is a waiting game. Waiting for time to heal her wounds, waiting for justice. In short, waiting for a miracle to happen.

For Shay Bourne, life holds no more surprises. The world has given him nothing, and he has nothing to offer the world. In a heartbeat, though, something happens that changes everything for him. Now, he has one last chance for salvation, and it lies with June’s eleven-year-old daughter, Claire. But between Shay and Claire stretches an ocean of bitter regrets, past crimes, and the rage of a mother who has lost her child.

Would you give up your vengeance against someone you hate if it meant saving someone you love? Would you want your dreams to come true if it meant granting your enemy’s dying wish?

The Tapestries by Kien Nguyen

From the Jacket:

A stunning novel set in turn-of-the-century Vietnam by the author of the beloved memoir The Unwanted.

Vietnam 1916, the Perfume River at dawn: A red-lacquered boat glides along the riverbank, guided by the rhythmic paddling of an ancient oarsman. As the sampan nears the shore, a wedding party prepares the landing site for the arrival of the intended bride. Inside the sampan’s cabin, the bride waits nervously to meet the groom and his family–or she has never laid eyes on her betrothed. When she sees her husband for the first time, she is shocked to find a young boy no more than seven years old–she has been tricked into providing the family with a daughter-in-law’s free labor.

More mother than wife, Ven takes care of her young husband, Dan, until the day he is forced to leave his childhood behind forever when, while hidden by the thick branches of a mango tree, he witnesses his father’s brutal beheading by the village’s power-hungry mayor. Dan and his family are forced to flee their ancestral home to escape the mayor’s terrible rage, and it is only when Dan grows up and realizes he is in love with the one person he can never have–the mayor’s own granddaughter, Tai May–that he is forced to create his own destiny.

The Tapestries is inspired by the true story of the author’s grandfather, a tapestry weaver in the last imperial court of Vietnam. After Nguyen published his memoir, The Unwanted, his brother returned to Vietnam to retrieve the tapestries still in their family’s possession. When the tapestry that most mesmerized Kien as a young boy was found in ruin, he was inspired to re-imagine his grandfather’s life into a living, breathing tapestry of his own–this vivid, page-turning novel, a debt of honor to the memory of his grandfather. Filled with luscious details of turn-of-the-century Vietnam, this is a story of spellbinding drama, intrigue, and an unforgettable love affair.

The book’s endpapers are taken from a tapestry woven by the author’s grandfather, who served as a professional embroiderer in the court of the last king of Vietnam in the early 1900s.