The Book of Memory by Pettina Gappah288 p. (Fiction; Zimbabwe)
Pub. date: Feb. 1, 2016
Memory is an albino woman languishing in Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison in Harare, Zimbabwe, where she has been convicted of murder. As part of her appeal, her lawyer insists that she write down what happened as she remembers it. As her story unfolds, Memory reveals that she has been tried and convicted for the murder of Lloyd Hendricks, her adopted father. But who was Lloyd Hendricks? Why does Memory feel no remorse for his death? And did everything happen exactly as she remembers?
In The Book of Memory, Petina Gappah has created a uniquely slippery narrator: forthright, acerbically funny, and with a complicated relationship to the truth. Moving between the townships of the poor and the suburbs of the rich, and between the past and the present, Gappah weaves a compelling tale of love, obsession, the relentlessness of fate, and the treachery of memory.
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Sing to Me: My Story of Making Music, Finding Magic, and Searching for Who's Next by LA Reid400 p. (Non-fiction; biography)
Pub. date: Feb. 2, 2016
Over the last twenty-five years, legendary music producer and record man LA Reid—the man behind artists such as Toni Braxton, Kanye West, Rihanna, TLC, Outkast, Mariah Carey, Pink, Justin Bieber, and Usher—has changed the music business forever. In addition to discovering some of the biggest pop stars on the planet, he has shaped some of the most memorable and unforgettable hits of the last two generations, creating an impressive legacy of talent discovery and hit records.
Now, for the first time, he tells his story, taking fans on an intimate tour of his life, as he chronicles the fascinating journey from his small-town R&B roots in Cincinnati, Ohio, and his work as a drummer to his fame as a Grammy Award-winning music producer and his gig as a judge on the hit reality show, The X Factor. In Sing to Me, Reid goes behind the scenes of the music industry, charting his rise to fame and sharing stories of the countless artists he’s met, nurtured, and molded into stars. With fascinating insight into the early days of artists as diverse as TLC, Usher, Pink, Kanye West, and Justin Bieber, his story offers a detailed look at what life was like for stars at the start of their meteoric rise and how he always seemed to know who would be the next big thing.
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An Undisturbed Peace by Mary Glickman378 p. (Fiction; Native American)
Pub. date: Feb. 2, 2016
Abrahan Bento Sassaporta Naggar has traveled to America from the filthy streets of East London in search of a better life. But Abe’s visions of a privileged apprenticeship in the Sassaporta Brothers’ empire are soon replaced with the grim reality of indentured servitude in Greensborough, North Carolina.
Some fifty miles west, Dark Water of the Mountains leads a life of irreverent solitude. The daughter of a powerful Cherokee chief, it has been nearly twenty years since she renounced her family’s plans for her to marry a wealthy white man.
Far away in Georgia, a black slave named Jacob has resigned himself to a life of loss and injustice in a Cherokee city of refuge for criminals.
A trio of outsiders linked by love and friendship, Abe, Dark Water, and Jacob face the horrors of President Jackson’s Indian Removal Act as the tribes of the South make the grueling journey across the Mississippi River and into Oklahoma.
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Still So Excited!: My Life as a Pointer Sister by Ruth Pointer256 p. (Non-fiction; biography)
Pub. date: Feb. 2, 2016
Still So Excited!: My Life as a Pointer Sister is an engaging, funny, heartbreaking, and poignant look at Ruth Pointer’s roller-coaster life in and out of the Pointer Sisters. When overnight success came to the Pointer Sisters in 1973, they all thought it was the answer to their long-held prayers. While it may have served as an introduction to the good life, it also was an introduction to the high life of limos, champagne, white glove treatment, and mountains of cocaine that were the norm in the high-flying '70s and '80s. Pointer’s devastating addictions took her to the brink of death in 1984. Pointer has bounced back to live a drug- and alcohol-free life for the past 30 years and she shares how in her first autobiography, detailing the Pointer Sisters’ humble beginning, musical apprenticeship, stratospheric success, miraculous comeback, and the melodic sound that captured the hearts of millions of music fans.
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The Shadow of the Crescent Moon by Fatima Bhutto240 p. (Fiction; Pakistan)
Pub. date: Feb. 2, 2016
Three brothers meet for breakfast. Soon after, the eldest, Aman Erum, recently returned from America, hails a taxi to the local mosque. He is racked with guilt, having betrayed and abandoned the woman he has loved since childhood. Now, he hopes to right his ways. Aman Erum’s brother, Sikandar, a doctor, drives to the hospital where he works, but stops first to collect his troubled wife, who has not joined the family that morning. No one knows where Mina goes these days. Heartbroken over the loss of her young son, she has taken to attending other children’s funerals. Sikandar is exhausted by Mina’s instability, and by his own grief. But when, later in the morning, the two are taken hostage by members of the Taliban, Mina will prove to be stronger than anyone could have imagined.
The youngest of the three leaves for town on a motorbike. An idealist, Hayat holds strong to his deathbed promise to their father—to free Mir Ali from oppressors. Seated behind him is a beautiful, fragile girl whose life and thoughts are overwhelmed by the war that has enveloped the place of her birth.
Three hours later their day will end in devastating circumstances.
In this beautifully observed novel, individuals are pushed to make terrible choices. And, as the events of this single morning unfold, one woman is at the center of it all.
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The Black Calhouns: From Civil War to Civil Rights with One African American Family by Gail Lumet Buckley336 p. (Non-fiction; biography/autobiography)
Pub. date: Feb. 2, 2016
In The Black Calhouns, Gail Lumet Buckley—daughter of actress Lena Horne—delves deep into her family history, detailing the experiences of an extraordinary African-American family from Civil War to Civil Rights.
Beginning with her great-great grandfather Moses Calhoun, a house slave who used the rare advantage of his education to become a successful businessman in post-war Atlanta, Buckley follows her family’s two branches: one that stayed in the South, and the other that settled in Brooklyn. Through the lens of her relatives’ momentous lives, Buckley examines major events throughout American history. From Atlanta during Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow, to New York City during the Harlem Renaissance, and then from World War II to the Civil Rights Movement, this ambitious, brilliant family witnessed and participated in the most crucial events of the 19th and 20th centuries. Combining personal and national history, The Black Calhouns is a unique and vibrant portrait of six generations during dynamic times of struggle and triumph.
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