Nonfiction
Between a Rock and a Hot Place: Why Fifty Is Not the New Thirty, by Tracey Jackson.
Breezy chick-lit memoir/self-help manual for the menopausal woman by screenwriter Jackson (“Confessions of a Shopaholic”), who works hard to be funny and sometimes succeeds.
If there’s a take-home message, it’s that at 50, don’t fool yourself into believing that you are still youthful and that the best is yet to come. However, there is still time to live life fully as a mature woman. Kirkus Reviews
Bringing Up Oscar: The Story of the Men and Women Who Founded the Academy, by Debra Ann Pawlak.
Pawlak, a contributor to Arcadia Publishing’s “Making of America” series, traces the lives of the 36 key figures in the cinema community who launched the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1927, the same year talkies arrived with “The Jazz Singer.” Publishers Weekly
Hidden Alaska: Bristol Bay and Beyond, by Michael Melford.
From the publisher’s blurb: A stunning visual story of a place of wonder and mystique for every American, this book features what is legendary and beloved about Alaska, a land of magnificent wilderness and beauty, virtually untouched by human ambition. It also focuses on the key point of interest in the state today: endangered Bristol Bay, which faces potential mining of the world’s greatest deposits of copper and gold.
Fiction
The Last Brother, by Nathacha Appanah (Geoffrey Strachan, translator).
A short, deceptively rich novel, translated from French, that illuminates an obscure footnote in World War II history. The narrator of the prize-winning fourth novel by Appanah is a 70-year-old man from her native Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean, obsessed with an incident that changed his life when he was 9 years old. Kirkus Reviews
Paperback
The Girl Who Chased the Moon, by Sarah Addison Allen.
After the death of her mother, Dulcie, Emily moves in with her grandfather in Mullaby, N.C., and learns of her mother’s part in a family tragedy. Fortunately, not everyone holds Dulcie’s past against Emily. One woman welcomes Emily and offers a shoulder to lean on but has troubles of her own. Library Journal
Audio
The Three Weissmanns of Westport, by Cathleen Schine.
Schine’s Austenesque novel of manners translates delightfully to audio, thanks to the witty, character- centric writing and Hillary Huber’s empathetic narration. Huber’s nuanced performance makes the listener feel for elderly, abandoned Betty and her two daughters, and the creative character voices (ranging from frail Betty and Yiddish-accented Cousin Lou to Valley Girl Amber, snippy Felicity and adorable 3-year-old Henry) bring the colorful cast to vivid life. Publishers Weekly
