Upon first inspection, “iStatus Nation” is quirky and charming, with the upper half of Joselito de los Reyes’ face rendered as a cartoon with speech bubbles floating over his head.
Some books are so game-changing, they define, or even redefine, a genre. Numerous authors have previously written about bad marriages that lead to disastrous results, but none come close
Because of his profoundly beautiful 1987 novel, “The Alchemist,” Brazilian author Paulo Coelho became a worldwide sensation, considered a wildly successful best-selling novelist as well as something of a life-changing guru who has sold more than 100 million books in over 100 countries.
Sometimes, a book comes out that’s so different and so unique that it becomes hard to describe in a way that doesn’t sound silly. This is the case with what appears to be the most unusual bestseller this year, “The Bees” by Laline Paull (Ecco, New York, 2014, 338 pages).
When it comes to making books that become good movies, nobody does it better than Dennis Lehane. Known for his haunting and gripping tales of crime in hardscrabble Boston, Lehane is the author of the novels “Gone, Baby, Gone” (1998), “Shutter Island” (2003) and the majestically sad “Mystic River” (2001), all of which have received the acclaimed major motion picture treatment.
“Monsters are in the eye of the beholder.” This is the powerful phrase that keeps rising up throughout Candy Gourlay’s new novel, “Shine” (Anvil Publishing, Inc., Mandaluyong City, 2014, 232 pages), and it resonates with meaning for the fortunate reader who comes across it.
Carrie La Seur’s finely crafted debut chronicles a woman’s complicated relationship with her hometown of Billings, Montana, her relatives who stayed behind and her ancestral history. La Seur’s graceful prose in “The Home Place” complements her incisive character studies of a family that has managed to keep most of its problems behind closed doors.
By now, everyone knows about how American novelist Veronica Roth’s young adult “Divergent” trilogy conquered the bestseller list and how the 2014 feature film adaptation of the first book conquered the box office with three more films on their way.
At first glance, Cormoran Strike sounds like a Frankenstein’s Monster of character qualities: imaginatively named, dedicated private investigator, missing half of one leg due to military service in Afghanistan, unwanted son of a rock star, armed with an uncanny memory, physically intimidating but internally sensitive. In the hands of a lesser writer, Strike would be a cardboard cutout. Luckily, J.K. Rowling can really write.
As far as high-concept foundations for a novel are concerned, the idea at the heart of Isabel Allende’s “Ripper: A Novel” (translated from the Spanish by Ollie Brock and Frank Wynne, HarperCollins, New York, 2014, 478 pages) is quite intriguing.
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