Ask Bob

Peter Gethers' popular memoirs about his beloved cat, Norton, put his name on the literary map. In Ask Bob: A Novel, Gethers tackles fiction, telling the story of Dr. Robert Heller, a prominent New York City veterinarian who also authors a newspaper column called, "Ask Dr. Bob," which addresses the concerns and woes of pet owners. Dr. Bob is no-nonsense in the delivery and approach of his column--and with his patients and their owners--but he's not as direct in his personal life. He comes from a dysfunctional family that has made his role as son, brother, uncle and lover a muddled, thorny challenge. When Bob meets and falls in love with a woman whose family has more issues than his, he takes solace in their romance and the security of his job, concluding that he understands animals better than people. But when tragedy strikes, Bob is forced to step beyond his comfort zone and tend to the people he loves and cares for the most.

Gethers has written a smart, lively novel infused with romance and heartfelt, real-life complications of family and domesticity. The book centers upon the women in Dr. Bob's life who influence him the most during an eighteen-year period from when Bob is 24 years old until he turns 42. The interspersed addition of several of Dr. Bob's newspaper columns and his charming, insightful notes about certain clients and important people in his life add levity and humor to some heavier aspects and themes.

Ask Bob: A Novel by Peter Gethers

Henry Holt and Co., $24.00, Hardcover,  9780805093315, 320 pp

Publication Date: August 6, 2013

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Note: This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (8/9/13), click HERE

The Black Widow Club

Hilary Davidson (The Damage Done) has launched a short story collection that takes readers into dark recesses of the human experience. These nine, compact stories of mystery and suspense are infused with unexpected irony and a chilling sense of the macabre.

"People never know what they're capable of until they're in a terrible situation. That's when your true character comes out," says one of the protagonists in the headline story, "The Black Widow Club," which unravels revelations of wives, mothers, daughters and the men they love and those who love them back? Or do they?

Each story in the collection packs a wallop, oftentimes in the first line, sometimes by the last.  In each instance, characters are put to the test, facing challenges and "terrible situations."

Peru is the setting for "Stepmonster," where a former model, the jilted ex-wife of a plastic surgeon—whom she now refers to as "Dr. Frankenboobs"—goes to a resort for some r&r.  But when she gets to her destination, she finds that the woman who poached her husband and children, is vacationing at the very same hotel. Coincidence?

"Undying Love" is plotted in reverse. It is an off-beat story narrated by a deceased protagonist who slowly learns the mysterious circumstances of what brought him to the other side via Bart, a spirit guide who tends to hum the theme from the movie Ghostbusters amid their journey because he "died in 1984 and that song stuck in (his) head."

Other stories deal with the haunted nature of the past; the perils of modern romance and marriage; role playing; revenge; obsessions; skewed family values; children conning parents—and vice-versa.   

Strong narrative voices and tight story lines underscore each tale, which reflects the decadent, often sinister nature of the modern world.

The Black Widow Club: Nine Tales of Obsession and Murder by Hilary Davidson

Beast Books, $2.99 , e-book, ASIN: B00E3GZW6E

Publication Date: July 21, 2013

To order this book via AMAZON link HERE

Misery Loves Company

Every Tuesday, Juliet "Jules" Belleno of Wissberry, Maine reviews a book on her blog. But when Jules is disappointed in the latest novel written by her favorite author, Patrick Reagan, and she posts an unfavorable review, her life changes in unexpected ways. Jules is a reclusive, 34 year-old widow who rarely leaves her house since her husband, Jason, died in the line of police duty. On the day of what would've been her wedding anniversary, Jules sets out to the grocery store to buy ingredients to recreate their favorite meal. Along the way, she meets Patrick Reagan, who ultimately kidnaps her, ushering her into a nightmare where she's taken to task and forced to explain her review and herself to a deeply troubled man who has suffered heart-wrenching personal losses of his own.

With Jules missing, her worried, alcoholic father, a retired military Lt. Colonel, enlists the help of Jason's former police partner. As the two search for Jules, startling revelations begin to emerge about Jason's death. Was it really an accident?  Or might Jason's death be connected to Jules' kidnapping?

Misery Loves Company is categorized as "spiritual suspense." The flawed, lonely characters grapple with ideas of faith amid loss, evil and corruption. However, as in Gutteridge's other novels (Listen, Possession), the narrative is never preachy. The fast-paced twists and turns of the plot present an insightful, chilling look at how privacy is often compromised in the internet age and how choices in life can ripple beyond the scope of personal existence.

Misery Loves Company by Rene Gutteridge

Tyndale House Publishers, $12.00, Trade Paper, 9781414349336 , 346 pp

Publication Date: August 1, 2013

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Note: This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (8/6/13), click HERE

"How to Become a Bodyguard for Celine Dion's Larynx"

Proud to announce the release of 

a new, 

satirical short story:

Ever wonder how contemporary singing divas protect their voice boxes? Well, wonder no more! In the satirical short story, How to Become a Bodyguard for Celine Dion's Larynx by Kathleen Gerard, an over-achieving nine-year-old unknowingly embarks on an unlikely career path en route to working for Celine Dion, the popular singing sensation. You'll laugh and you'll cry as the narrator of the story, a gifted child with a MENSA I.Q., navigates through a journey of a lifetime. This short story is a clever, comedic read for adults and teenagers, who just might learn a thing or two about how the heartbreak of youth can become a gateway into living an unimaginable future!

Read an excerpt at the Untreed Reads bookstore

Link HERE for more information

How to Become a Bodyguard for Celine Dion's Larynx by Kathleen Gerard

Untreed Reads Publishing, $.99, e-book short story

Publication Date: August 9, 2013

To order this book via UNTREED READS PUBLISHING link HERE

To purchase the story via Amazon (for Kindle), link HERE

To purchase more of Kathleen's short fiction link HERE

Time Flies

Claire Cooke (Must Love Dogs) has built a brand writing light-hearted women's fiction where kernels of the absurd and comedic from everyday life blend to form compulsively readable novels. In Time Flies, she delivers again, this time by telling the story of Melanie, a vulnerable, middle-aged, recently divorced, metal sculptor with a highway driving phobia who is goaded by an old friend to attend their high school reunion in Massachusetts.

Melanie, who had uprooted herself and her then, two young sons to accommodate her husband's job years before, has no desire to leave suburban Atlanta and revisit the past. She is content to stay home and literally cut up her king-size marital bed with a chainsaw in order to harvest the springs inside for a new artistic creation. "I'm not famous, I didn't turn into a knockout, my husband left me," she tells her relentless friend. But when an old high school flame, Finn Miller, emails to ask if Melanie will be attending the reunion, their flirtatious correspondence, and the fact that Melanie doesn't exactly remember him, is enough to pique her interest and change her mind.

Hilarious potholes pave the way to memory lane as Melanie journeys to Massachusetts, where she faces her fears while reconnecting with old friends who are dealing with their own life challenges. The piece de resistance, however, is the reunion itself where the past and present riotously collide and give birth to an ending that is as heartfelt as it is hopeful.

Time Flies by Claire Cooke

Touchstone (Simon & Schuster), $24.99, hardcover, 9781451673678 , 320 pp

Publication Date: June 11, 2013

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Note: This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (6/14/13), click HERE

First Pages in Fiction: Instructions for a Heatwave

The first paragraph of a short story and/or the first page of a novel can be a microcosm that sets the foundation for what's to follow in terms of tone, character and story intent.

Here are the first few paragraphs from the novel, Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O'Farrell:

Highbury, London 

The heat, the heat. It wakes Gretta just after dawn, propelling her from the bed and down the stairs. It inhabits the house like a guest who has outstayed his welcome: it lies along corridors, it circles around curtains, it lolls heavily on sofas and chairs. The air in the kitchen is like a solid entity filling the space, pushing Gretta down into the floor, against the side of the table.

Only she would choose to bake bread in such weather.

Consider her now, yanking open the oven and grimacing in its scorching blasts as she pulls out the bread tin. She is in her nightdress, hair still wound into curlers. She takes two steps backwards and tips the steaming loaf into the sink, the weight of it reminding her, as it always does, of a baby, a newborn, the packed, damp warmth of it.

She has made soda bread three times a week for her entire married life. She is not about to let a little thing like a heatwave get in the way of that. Of course, living in London, it is impossible to get buttermilk; she has to make do with a mixture of half milk and half yogurt. A woman at Mass told her it worked and it does, up to a point, but it is never quite the same.


This is a story about a family thrown into crisis when the patriarch, Robert Riordan, a retired bank employee--husband of Gretta and father to three adult children--disappears on a hot summer morning in 1976. Gretta reaches out to her children in an effort to find Robert, but as the story unravels, it soon becomes clear that her children are more lost than her husband (on a psychological and emotional level), as each child is facing challenges in his/her personal life and in relationship to each other. The nature of secrets, estrangement and shame rise to the forefront of the narrative. 

O'Farrell sets up those first four paragraphs to reflect an ominous restlessness amid actions of normal, daily life. This would appear a day like many others ("She has made soda bread three times a week for her entire married life"), but something about this particular day is and will be different. For starters, Gretta is baking, operating the oven, amid a heatwave and the reference to the need to substitute buttermilk in the recipe ("A woman at Mass told her it worked and it does, up to a point, but it is never quite the same") might be a metaphor indicative that perhaps, amid the crucible of events that unfold over the course of the novel, the ingredients that make up this Irish-Catholic family might never be the same, either.  

The kitchen often symbolizes the center of family life and if you look at the language O'Farrell employs, the tactile sense of the bread reminds Gretta of a baby ("...a newborn, the packed damp warmth of it"), which seems reflective of the implications of Gretta's children in this story.

In a few short sentences, O'Farrell evokes a sense of the oppressive, stifling heat that mirrors the brooding, pressured confinement of the story and how, as stated later in the book, "Strange weather brings out strange behavior." It's also interesting to note that O'Farrell relies on an Irish comfort food to anchor and ultimately juxtapose the coziness of family life against the idea that the "heat" in these lives is about to get turned up.

See how much you can learn about a book from the first page?


Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O'Farrell
Alfred A. Knopf, $25.95 Hardcover, 9780385349406 304 pages
Publication Date: June 18, 2013
To order this book via INDIEBOUND, link HERE

Novel Escapes by Car

Although gas prices may be soaring and long lines may be forming at the pumps during summer, the contemporary road-trip-by-car novel continues to be a popular, major story thread that epitomizes journeys through life. Here are a few books to consider if you're thinking about taking a literary road trip:

For the literary-minded driver who gets lost in thought, How to Read the Air by Dinaw Mengestu recounts travels from Peoria to Nashville, as a flawed man, facing a painful divorce, retraces a road trip his parents made on their honeymoon in an effort to understand his past and rediscover himself.

The long road to forgiveness is the route taken in A Gift for My Sister by Ann Pearlman, which reunites two estranged half-sisters who are forced to travel from California to their old home town in Michigan. Miles of highway and the stifling confines of a car prove a ripe breeding ground for resentment and sibling rivalry.

For those who get behind the wheel and often forget where they're going, try Bill Warrington's Last Chance by James King. In this novel, Bill, an absentminded 79-year-old kidnaps his 14-year-old granddaughter; together, the pair set off from the Midwest in an old Chevy Impala, heading toward California and hoping to force a dysfunctional family reunion.

And for the adventurous who love to hop in the car and just take off, The Lion Is In by Delia Ephron offers a wild, whimsical, often bumpy car ride out of Baltimore when three women, each bearing burdens and secrets, are forced to go on the lam. A retired circus lion they encounter in North Carolina ultimately changes their lives.

No matter the destination, buckle up and enjoy the ride offered by each of these literary getaways.

NOTE: This article is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this column as published via Shelf Awareness for Readers (6/25/13), link HERE

The Widow Waltz

It's not often that a main character in a novel of general literary fiction dies in the first chapter, but that's exactly how Sally Koslow constructs The Widow Waltz. The story opens via the point of view of Ben Silver, a charming, middle-aged, seemingly successful Manhattan lawyer who goes for a run in Central Park only to suffer a massive heart attack. His sudden death comes as a complete shock to those who love him - most especially, his devoted wife, Georgia Waltz. What's even more troubling and upsetting is the news that he has left his well-to-do family practically insolvent. Financial ruin and debt now fall to his widow and their two adult daughters who had been living, thanks to Ben, an upscale, privileged existence. Ben's death might make him physically absent from the lives of his loved ones, but his presence becomes more palpable as the trio slowly begins to uncover reasons why the family's fortune might've evaporated. Was Ben the man they thought he was? Was he harboring secrets? As Georgia and the girls reinvent their lives by selling off assets and scrambling to find work to support themselves, unforeseen circumstances, people and impulses--some romantic--alter their plans in unpredictable ways.

Koslow (The Late, Lamented Molly Marx) is a skillful, meticulous writer attuned to the absurdities of life, death and the multi-generational bonds of family. Pitch-perfect details and alternating narrative voices allow her to fully explore the emotional intricacies of these richly woven characters in crisis.

The Widow Waltz by Sally Koslow

Viking Adult, $27.95 Hardcover, 9780670025640, 352 pp

Publication Date: June 13, 2013

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Note:  This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (6/25/13), click HERE

Looking for Me

Theodora Grace Overman, aka "Teddi," always loved restoring old furniture. As a teenager, this farm girl with a big dream rebelled against her mother's push for secretarial school and ran away from her rural Kentucky home, setting off to Charleston, South Carolina where she eventually opens a shop dedicated to the refurbishing of antiques.

"...Old furniture speaks to me," says Teddi. "The older it is, the more it has to say." Such is the case with Teddi's life. In 1993, when the workaholic finds herself successful but still single at the age of 36, she begins to reflect on the lost years while trying to understand the people she left behind: a mother who never understood her daughter's aspirations; a father who returned from war a completely changed man; and an enigmatic younger brother, Josh, whose love of nature and rescuing animals may have led to his mysterious disappearance and a final letter he left behind that read, "Don't come looking for me." 

When Teddi's mother takes ill, Teddi returns to her rural Kentucky home where strange occurrences begin to emerge that indicate Josh might still be alive. Hoffman flashes back to events from Teddi's childhood in the 1960s and 70s, delving into the haunted mysteries of the past in order to shape the contours of these interconnected, yet sadly detached lives. As in Hoffman's debut novel, Saving CeeCee Honeycutt, Southern wit, charm and down-home characters add levity to this story of loss and broken hearts that are ultimately restored with love, hope and remembering. 

Looking for Me by Beth Hoffman

Pamela Dorman Books, $27.95 Hardcover, 9780670025831, 368 pp

Publication Date: May 28, 2013

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Note:  This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (6/4/13), click HERE

The Ghost Horse

In The Ghost Horse: A True Story of Love, Death and Redemption, Joe Layden (The Last Great Fight) has crafted an inspiring love story infused with fate and coincidence, second chances and hope.

Tim Snyder was a gruff, nomadic horseman who fled hardscrabble beginnings to train "cheap horses." While working in a second-tier horse barn in upstate New York, a runaway colt in his care knocked over his quiet, unassuming coworker, Lisa Calley, with whom he became instantly smitten--and vice-versa. Lisa, ten years younger than Tim, had already survived a broken marriage, cancer and a traumatic brain injury from a previous horse riding incident. Their shared passion for horses united them as they built a married life together; her emotional sensitivity ultimately softened his unsentimental rough edges.

When Lisa's cancer returned, she promised Tim, "I'll see you again. I'm coming back as a horse." Her death left a gaping hole in her husband until, years later, he scraped together enough money to purchase a filly whose winning pedigree was offset by a sightless left eye and congenital abnormalities in her left foot and shoulders. No one but Tim believed she would ever make it to the starting gate. But "Lisa's Booby Trap," as Tim named her, took the racing world by storm, and their bond helped Tim rebound from grief and loneliness. He came to believe the filly's personality reflected the sweet, resilient disposition of his late wife.

Layden has teamed up with a variety of superstars to co-write many books, from Kobe Bryant of the NBA to heavy metal superstar, Dave Mustaine. In The Ghost Horse, Layden's writing shines on its own - insight and compassion weaving the narrative threads of this dual love story that transcends the boundaries of life and death. 

The Ghost Horse: A True Story of Love, Death and Redemption by Joe Layden

St. Martin's Press, $24.99 Hardcover, 9780312643324, 256 pp

Publication Date: May 7, 2013

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Note:  This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (5/21/13), click HERE

Eight Girls Taking Pictures

In Eight Girls Taking Pictures, Whitney Otto has woven a well-crafted tapestry of vibrant, moving, historically based short stories about women ahead of their time and how the complexities of their lives enabled them to make distinct and wholly original contributions to the world of photography.

The stories span from 1910 through the 1990s and are set in locales from the United States to Europe and South America. Each story features a richly textured character and explores how specific facets of a woman's life can influence her vision, craft and ambition.

The Author's Note indicates that these stories were inspired by Otto's (How to Make an American Quilt) affinity for the work of six real women photographers from around the world:  Imogen Cunningham, Madame Yevonde, Tina Modotti, Lee Miller, Grete Stern, and Ruth Orkin.  Two additional stories are purely a product of the author's imagination, though one can make inferences to other noted female photographers.  What Otto has done--with great skill and care--is craft a collage of stories using a factual basis of reality as a launch pad to creatively explore, via fiction, the undocumented parts of each woman's life and career.

Photography is all about perception, seeing the world through a unique vantage point. These stories evolve in a similar fashion, as they seek to reveal and understand how these women pursued their passion for photography through adversity, motherhood and the challenges of love and romantic relationships.  The stories all share photography as a common thread and the medium is explored via aspects of photochemistry, black-and-white versus color, photojournalism/war, botanical, nudes, still life, advertising/fashion, travel and photographing everyday domesticity. But a deeper thread that emerges is the male influence on each of these women's lives, in particular the often complicated relationships between fathers and daughters. Many of the fathers of these photographers were progressive for their time, and it was that paternal bond and influence (however positive or negative) that encouraged these women to seriously pursue photography as a means of self-expression and ultimately, a fine art form.   

 

You don't need to be a photographer or to be familiar with some of the most prominent female image-makers of the 20th Century to appreciate and admire Eight Girls Taking Pictures. But once you finish reading this well-rendered collection, you'll more than likely be inspired to learn more. 

Eight Girls Taking Pictures by Whitney Otto

Scribner,  $25.00, Hardcover, 9781451682694, 352 pp

Publication Date: November 6,  2012

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Furry, Four-Legged Narrators in Fiction

In multiple genres, dogs and cats have emerged as credible, likable narrators:

In Love Saves the Day, a novel by Gwen Cooper, a smart, tabby named Prudence tells the story of her owner, Sarah, who has gone missing. Prudence is forced to relocate to the home of Sarah's lawyer daughter and her unemployed husband. Will the feline-averse couple in marital crisis ever accept the love of this abandoned kitty?

Two cats living in modern-day Beijing narrate Pallavi Aiyar's imaginative novel Chinese Whiskers. Soyabean is a male kitten living in a multi-generational middle-class household, while Tofu, a female kitten, roams the streets, roughing it. How the two cats come to live together is only part of the story, a suspenseful morality tale about the values of "Old China" versus "New China."

Chet, a dog who flunked out of K-9 School, offers a clever point of view as the sidekick to down-on-his-luck private investigator Bernie Little. The two "babysit" a Hollywood heartthrob, a bad boy with secrets, who is filming a blockbuster movie in a sleepy little town in A Fistful of Collars, the fifth installment in Spencer Quinn's humorous Chet and Bernie mystery series.

Children and young adults can experience the perspective of Enzo, a lovable, observant lab-terrier mix in Racing in the Rain: My Life as a Dog, the adaptation of Garth Stein's adult novel The Art of Racing in the Rain. This tender-

hearted story teaches valuable lessons about friendship and the choices we make for our lives. Its message speaks to readers of any age.

So whether you're a cat or dog person, enjoy reading general fiction, mysteries or YA/crossover lit, take your pick. Animals, in the hands of the right authors, have become great storytellers. 

Note: This article is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this piece as published on Shelf Awareness for Readers (3/15/13), link HERE