The Blood Of Heaven

By Kent Wascom

 

Wascom’s masterful debut captures the pioneer spirit, lawlessness and religious fervor of the America’s southern frontier circa 1800 as Angel Woolsack and his adopted brothers fight their way to nation-building glory. Memorable characters coupled with an exhilarating narrative.

Good Kings, Bad Kings

By  Susan Nussbaum

 

Nussbaum’s debut, this year’s winner of the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction uses intriguing characters to present a scathing behind the scenes look at life inside an institution for disabled young people in Chicago. Well-meaning, well-written, well-plotted and more than a little disturbing. Read it

Honor

By  Elif Shafak

 

Utilizing multiple narrators best –selling Turkish writer Shafak grips the reader from page one in this tale of East/ West culture clashes. The lives of twin sisters born in 1940s Turkey diverge when one stays in their childhood village, becoming a revered midwife while the other moves to London with her bitter husband and three children.

Angel Baby

 

By Richard Lange

 

After escaping her violent, drug cartel-running husband with only the clothes she was wearing, a gun, and money from their safe, Luz risks her life again years later to return for the daughter she left behind.  With flawed characters and a twisted plot this classic noir mystery is unusual in that it is driven not by greed, but motherhood.  With comparisons to Elmore Leonard this is a crime novelist to watch.