Waking from the Dream
The Struggle for Civil Rights in the Shadow of Martin Luther King, Jr.
by David L. Chappell (Random House)
University of Oklahoma history professor Chappell shows how, far from ending with the murder of Dr. King, the Civil Rights Movement merely entered another phase. He looks at the various leaders, divisions and accomplishments. “It is an inspiring story, and a humbling one,” Chappell tells Required Reading. “But perhaps it can also give hope, because the work his legatees did after his death bridges the gap between us and him, and makes the contrast between his mighty, saintlike image seem a little less daunting.”
Andrew’s Brain
by E.L. Doctorow (Random House)
In this darkly funny new novel from Doctorow (“The Book of Daniel,” “Homer & Langley”), widower Andrew explores deniability and culpability, first turning up on his ex-wife’s door with his infant, determined to get rid of the baby. Andrew’s personal history, we learn, also includes some unsavory bits in the World Trade Center and the White House. Or at least that’s the way Andrew remembers it in this provocative work.
Carthage
by Joyce Carol Oates (Ecco)
Lucky Luciano makes an unexpected cameo in Oates’ new novel, set in the fictional upstate New York town of Carthage. There, when a local girl goes missing in the Adirondacks, the community joins in a search that leads to a decorated and troubled Iraq veteran. And Luciano? The Appalachian red oak made into pews for the church at Dannemora prison, where Oates’ war hero/suspect serves time, was a gift of the mobster.
That Old Black Magic
by Mary Jane Clark (William Morrow)
One part flour, one part sugar, one part voodoo and one part murder. Just some of the ingredients in the latest in Clark’s Piper Donovan Wedding Cake Mystery series. This time, the action is set in New Orleans, where Piper has gone to brush up on her cake-decorating techniques — invited by Boulangerie Bertand’s namesake baker. Things start off great when the wannabe actress gets a part as Channing Tatum’s girlfriend (although she’s killed off early on). But when the neighboring butcher Muffuletta Mike turns up actually dead, Piper is back to her investigative ways. Great fun for Big Easy fans.
The Ballad of Barnabas Pierkiel
by Magdalena Zyzak (Henty Holt)
A novel about an Eastern European village straight in the Nazi’s path in the opening days of WWII gets an unlikely spin in Polish author Zyzak’s first novel: It’s a comedy — part Marx Brothers, part Warner Bros. cartoon. As the region prepares for war, it’s business as usual in the fictional nation of Scalvusia as the swineherd Barnabas Pierkiel dreams of a beautiful young gypsy girl betrothed to a prosperous town merchant. He lacks the sophistication to act on his wishes. It’s a parable for a helpless community — the reader knows that unimaginable destruction is coming in this ironic look at a way of life long destroyed.