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July 15, 2015
   Carol's Latest Picks

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Lisette's List 
by Susan Vreeland
In 1937, 20-year-old Lisette Roux, an aspiring art gallery apprentice, gives up her dreams in Paris to move with her husband, Andre, to a remote village in the south of France to care for Andre's aging grandfather Pascal.  Pascal has in his possession several paintings, and tells Lisette of his friendship during the 1880s with two great artists:  Cezanne and Pissarro.  Following Pascal's death, and then soon after the German army invades Paris and turns the art world into "an ash heap", Andre returns to the capital to help the French cause, leaving Lisette safely behind after hiding Pascal's precious paintings to keep them out of Nazi hands.  When Lisette is notified that Andre has been killed on the French front and his best friend has been taken prisoner, she begins a list of vows to herself,  a lesson she had learned from Pascal. Through joy and tragedy, Lisette learns to forgive the past and to love again.  The author's amazingly vivid descriptions paint their images across the pages for her readers as masterfully as the artists in her story brushed the canvases of their masterpieces. This is a wonderful literary journey I didn't want to end.  (Random House, $16.00).  This is a Debbie pick as well.  A wonderful read.  
 
The Book of Life: All Souls Trilogy, Book 3
 by Deborah Harkness
In this delightful end to Harkness's All Souls Trilogy, witch/historian Diana Bishop and her vampire/scientist husband Matthew Clairmont return to the present following their journey to Elizabethan England in Shadow of Night.  They now find themselves faced with new challenges: still searching for the missing pages of Ashmole 782 (the manuscript known as the Book of Life);  internal politics surrounding Matthew's family; the soon-to-be birth of Diana's and Matthew's twins; and most disturbing of all for the couple is the stalking and threats coming from Matthew's murderous son Benjamin.  Can everyone be saved?  Fans of the author's trilogy will find this filled with action in every chapter.  The storytelling is extraordinary and at its best.  (Penguin Books, $17.00).  

The Little Paris Bookshop

by Nina George

50-year-old Jean Perdu sells books like medicine, matching a book to each buyer to meet his or her "needs".  His bookshop is a barge, the Literary Apothecary, moored on the embankment of the Seine.  His good friend, young Maxmillian Jordan, is a frequent visitor who is now experiencing writer's block following the publication of his debut bestselling novel.  How can Jean know what a customer's problem is or what the side effect might be?  He listens to their problems, then gives his "prescription" by selling them a certain book to read which will be a remedy for their ailment.  He explains to Max, "A book is both medic and medicine at once".  However, Perdu can't transperceive himself.  He fails to find the right piece of literature to heal his heartbreak:  his lover, Manon, disappearing after leaving a letter he has never been able to open after twenty years---until now.  Why did Manon leave?  What does her letter say?  And what is Jean's plan when he finally opens the letter and reads its contents?  What will he find as he leaves Paris, burning his bridges behind him, and sailing his "soul pharmacy" south?  Can he find his healing and what might it be?  The author has a beautiful way with words that will wrap around the reader with delightful warmth in her pages of this love letter to books and make you a believer in the power of stories to shape people's lives.  A novel not to miss!  One of my best reads to suggest for the summer.  (Crown Publishers, $25.00)   

The Last Four Days of Paddy Buckley 
by Jeremy Massey
     Massey brings his readers an intriguing spin on an Irish crime novel with the tale of an ordinary man who becomes involved in a conflict with a crime boss that turns deadly.  42-year-old Paddy Buckley is an undertaker at Gallagher's, the best funeral home in Dublin, but when he commits a hit-and-run, accidentally killing the brother of Vincent Cullen, the most dangerous gangster in Ireland, a chain of events begin to change Paddy's life.  Cullen contacts Gallagher's and requests his brother's funeral be arranged by them.  Paddy is sent to Cullen's home to make those arrangements, continuing the strangest week he'd ever had and putting into motion the "last days" of his life.  Is Paddy a dead man or can events change the course following him?  Can his "mortuary pals" help him escape from Cullen who is seeking retribution for his brother's death?  Darkly humorous, this may not be for every reader as occasionally it depicts backroom scenes that only an undertaker might experience, such a person as the author who is a third-generation member of the profession himself.  So who would know better about what goes on behind the scenes?  But, along with the quirky and darkly comedic story, the reader will enjoy moments of love, compassion, and for Paddy Buckley, an end to anticipate:  his last day or not?  (Riverhead Books, $25.95).

 
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