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Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End Book Cover

Between Summer’s Longing and Winter’s End: The Story of a Crime
Leif GW Persson
Knopf Doubleday
September 2010

Here’s the blurb form the publisher:

A young man falls to his death from a window in a student dorm in Stockholm, his loose shoe striking and killing the little dog being taken for his evening walk by an old man. It seems to be a mundane suicide—at least that’s what the police choose to think. But the young man is American, not Swedish, and there are a couple of odd things about his room when they search it. . . .

From these tiny beginnings, Leif GW Persson slowly begins to unravel a puzzle that gets larger and larger as it becomes more and more complex, until it sweeps us into a web of international espionage, backroom politics, greed, sheer incompetence, and the shoddy work of Sweden’s intelligence force that leads to the murder of the prime minister.

The first novel in a dark and dazzling trilogy that has become the defining fictional account of the unsolved 1986 assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme—an event that triggered the biggest criminal investigation in recorded history—Between Summer’s Longing and Winter’s End is a riveting insider’s combination of black satire, thriller, psychological drama, and police procedural by a writer universally acknowledged as Sweden’s leading criminologist.

I’m not terribly big on crime fiction but this author is being compared to Mankell and Larsson. Don’t you love the cover? It’s the first book in a trilogy too. Trilogies seem to be pretty popular these days. I love them because the anticipation over each release is great in and of itself, but when you pick up a book that’s part of a trilogy, it’s like seeing an old friend that you haven’t seen in awhile. I feel as if I must have this one.

Strangers at the Feast Book Cover

Strangers at the Feast by Jennifer Vanderbes
Simon & Schuster
August 2010

Here’s the blurb from the publisher:

On Thanksgiving Day 2007, as the country teeters on the brink of a recession, three generations of the Olson family gather. Eleanor and Gavin worry about their daughter, a single academic, and her newly adopted Indian child, and about their son, who has been caught in the imploding real-estate bubble. While the Olsons navigate the tensions and secrets that mark their relationships, seventeen-year-old Kijo Jackson and his best friend Spider set out from the nearby housing projects on a mysterious job. A series of tragic events bring these two worlds ever closer, exposing the dangerously thin line between suburban privilege and urban poverty, and culminating in a crime that will change everyone’s life.

I am so excited about this book! There is nothing greater than being excited over a book and then getting the said book in the mail. It’s the best feeling ever! I have to tell you though, when I received this one, I thought for one heart-stopping second that the cover was actually torn, FOR REAL. You see how the cover is torn? Well that tear looks so real that I ran my hand over it numerous times to confirm that it wasn’t.

Anyway, I love the idea of following a family on a specific day. What makes it more intriguing is that the day happens to be Thanksgiving. I don’t know about you but I’ve experienced my fair share of family drama on Thanksgiving. I mean, who hasn’t?

I am also in full FALL mode. My kids are in school and summer is pretty much over for me. I’m ready for Pumpkin Soy Lattes and warm, cushy sweaters. I can’t wait to sink my teeth into this book.

What about you? Besides the long-awaited Mockingjay, what are you excited about?

Chatting with friends about books and life…