If Jody Picoult wrote a 373-page Amber Alert, it might read a lot like The Weight of Silence by debut novelist Heather Gudenkauf. This trade paperback best seller begins with seven-year-old Calli Clark emerging from the woods and uttering her first word in four years. Will she be able to lead the authorities to the other little girl missing from her bedroom since early that morning? And what happened to pre-school Calli that would silence her for years? What happened to her in the woods that has finally shaken her speech loose? The day’s events are told in short chapters through the eyes of Calli, her drunken and abusive father, her doting older brother, her unhappy mother, her mother’s old flame the deputy sheriff, Calli’s best friend and fellow missing child Petra, and Petra’s distraught father. Watch the trailer.

With Peter Jackson’s much-anticipated adaptation of Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones this winter, expect demand for this and other titles that explore the way family tragedies illuminate the best and worst of those left behind.

Bright Forever by Lee Martin
The nine-year-old daughter of the powerful Mackey family rode her bike to the library one day and never came back. Thirty years later a neighbor reflects on Katie’s disappearance and the small town secrets shrouding the event, shaking their small Indiana town.

Year of Fog by Michelle Richmond
In the time it takes to snap a picture, photographer Abby Mason loses sight of her boyfriend Jake’s six-year-old daughter. The girl is not just out of frame, she is gone. As the hours turn into days and then months, Abby and Jake struggle to accept that they may never know what happened.

Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
Susie Salmon ethereally observes her family’s anger and grief after her murder. At peace herself, she hurts for the pain she sees in her family’s faces and the many false steps in the investigation that will bring her killer to justice.

And Give You Peace by Jessica Treadway
A dozen years after her father killed her younger sister and then himself, Anastasia Dolan believes that she find something in her their perfect family’s past that will reveal why her father would shoot his favorite child in her sleep.

How to Be Lost by by Amanda Eyre Ward
When Caroline sees a picture of a young woman she believes to be the sister who disappeared when she was five years old, she heads west to find her–kicking up memories of Ellie’s disappearce 20 years ago and how the family fell apart in her absence. 

Our Web Crush for this Friday is the blog of one Nathan Bransford: Literary Agent Extrordinare (as far as we’re concerned).  For anyone interested in how a book gets published, this guy tells all.  An extensive FAQ section on the writing process and publishing world, as well as regular industry postings.

Just last week, a patron asked me how she could even get started on her idea for a children’s books.  Naturally I sent her to the usual suspects on the shelf (Writers Market, etc), but then I pointed her in the direction of Nathan’s FAQ section because he gives real answers to real questions.

http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2008/08/faqs.html

The Naked Heart by Jacqueline Briskin.  1989.

One of the things I enjoy about historical womens’ fiction is that it tends to age well, and The Naked Heart by Jacqueline Briskin is no exception.  Contemporary fiction loses something over time, soon reeking of trends and fashion, but a book set in another era gets to stay firmly in the past.  In The Naked Heart, former bestselling author Briskin crafts a story of war, revenge, friendship, and love.  Gilberte and Anne are best friends torn apart by the Nazis in World War Two.  Aristocratic Gilberte is uncovered as a collaborator while Anne gets to run off into the sunset with Gilberte’s cousin.  Years later they meet again, and Gilberte is hell-bent on revenge.  Secrets from the past will get you every time…

This is an excellent soap-opera saga, told in a breathtaking storytelling style, and anyone looking for classic dramatic women’s fiction will have plenty to sink their teeth into – while getting a history lesson at the same time.

I may be reaching pretty far back with this one (written 20 years ago, author no longer writing) , but a quick WorldCat scan shows there are almost 2000 copies floating around in libraries out there, so pull it off the shelf and give it a whirl on your endcap if you’ve got one.  (Plus, it’s a lurid hot pink, which is sure to catch the eye.)   

Birds of America by Lorrie Moore. 1998.

Lorrie Moore’s new novel A Gate at the Stairs is getting wonderful, well-deserved praise. But for my money, her masterpiece is Birds of America. It may be one of the most perfectly composed short story collections of the 20th century. Spare, smart, funny–these 12 stories are three-dimensional, exposing the core of our most important relationships with a look, a sigh, or a single quip that will make your heart ache with empathy. The women who steer these stories are constantly surprised at their need to explain themselves, that there is no unified consensus on what should be obvious to a monkey. In "People Like That Are the Only People Here" a mother learns that the weeks she and her husband have spent in the pediatric oncology ward have passed very differently for the two of them. This revelation is as shocking and painful as her son’s diagnosis, "Baby and Chemo, she thinks: they should never even appear in the same sentence together, let alone the same life.” Pure poetry.

*Note to our Loyal Readers:  This was originally posted on our site last month, but we thought since Glee’s been bumped for 2 weeks thanks to the World Series, readers might be hankering for their fix of funny, so you could send them to these titles.  Enjoy!

As a singer myself (not to mention a lover of snarky humor), I was not surprised at the immediate popularity of FOX’s new show, Glee.  Although, the guidance counselor has rapidly gone from cute and quirky to disturbing and sad, and both of the pregnancy storylines are completely absurd… but I digress.

The Sopranos by Alan Warner
Not everyone’s cup of tea (a bit on the rough side and very Scottish), this novel follows the all-girls choir from Our Lady of Perpetual Succor through a weekend of pub crawling, snogging, and shoplifting.

Dear Loyal Readers,
Well, it didn’t take long, we found ourselves a sugar daddy.  So it’s time to move out of the Barbie Dream House… will you please come visit us at www.libraryjournal.com/shelfrenewal?

The look is a little less luxe,  but we promise you all the same content you first fell in love with.  (and, momma always said looks don’t matter, it’s what’s inside that counts.)

We’re not leaving you entirely, either…check back here at www.shelfrenewal.com for updates on what Karen and Rebecca are doing in libraryland.  For example, we’d be thrilled if you invited us to come and play at your library for a training or a staff day.  We can provide information as well as entertainment – see what ILA had to say about us!

http://illinoislibrariesmatter.wordpress.com/2009/10/08/readers-writers-books-and-blogs/

So head on over to www.libraryjournal.com/shelfrenewal for our regularly scheduled blog postings.  Don’t forget to update your feedreader as well if you’re a regular – and thanks!!

Karen and Rebecca

Lying Awake by Mark Salzman. 2000.

It’s no coincidence that Salzman’s novel about a Carmelite nun is, itself, contemplative. Sister John of the Cross has brought thousands closer to God with her inspirational writings. Her experiences of the Divine are so vivid that her ecstatic poetry has even been commissioned by the Vatican. Her visions come at a price, however. After becoming incapacitated by a series of migraines, Sister John is diagnosed with a form of epilepsy. Her doctor recommends a surgery that would end her seizures and, perhaps, her visions. Without it, Sister John would likely continue having her visions, but she would also become increasingly debilitated, adding more responsibility to the other members of her community for the sake of her own sacred pleasure. This slim novel speaks beautifully about faith and fellowship and the soul searching required to choose between them.

Rhoda Janzen’s perfectly titled Mennonite in a Little Black Dress is everywhere–Indiebound’s November 2009 Indie Next List, Entertainment Weekly, Time Magazine, and Marie Claire. Readers looking for quilting patterns, buggy repair tips, or the Schadenfreude found in autobiographies of women raised in restrictive subcultures will be disappointed. Readers who like collections of essays by smart, funny women who still wonder why they had to bring their own milk on family vacations will be delighted. After a botched hysterectomy, car crash, and learning that her husband has found someone else (on Gay.com), Janzen takes a sabbatical and returns to her parents’ California Mennonite community to heal.

Living with her parents again allows Janzen to see her upbringing from an amused distance. Her memories of being an outsider are universal to anyone who has made it through adolescence. Granted, she was a triple threat when it came to not fitting in: no dancing, no jeans, and lunches of pungent Ukranian-Mennonoite leftovers like Cotletten-and-ketchup sandwiches, "It gives homemade bread a moist pink pliancy, not unlike damp Kleenex." and thermoses of lukewarm Borscht. As she catalogs the experiences that defined her childhood, Janzen also looks for clues as to why it took a man named Bob to break up her marriage to her controlling, bipolar husband. Leading to a hopeful and hilarious dip into the dating pool.

For anyone else who wasn’t ready for this book to be over, recommend:

I Was Told There Would Be Cake by Sloane Crosley
Publicist Crosley sees her precocious childhood as the natural precursor to her baffling experiences as a young woman trying to balance career (horrible boss), home (guests who may or have not done something unspeakable in your bathroom), and friendship (why wouldn’t you be a bridesmaid for someone you haven’t seen in years and aren’t sure you even really like?).

Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher
Who is Carrie Fisher? Debbie Reynold’s daughter? Princess Leia? Paul Simon’s ex wife? Fisher’s search for answers is muddied by bouts of mental illness and substance abuse. Rather than blaming the excesses of fame for her problems, Fisher amusingly peppers stories of having Elizabeth Taylor as a stepmother or being in her mom’s Broadway show with "As one does…" and just as often "What was I thinking?"

Why I’m Like This by Cynthia Kaplan
Summer camp, interviews, auditions, being told by a well-meaning family member to drink a pitcher of water before back surgery… these are the everyday experiences that Kaplan describes with affection, incredulity, and occasional horror.

Pretty in Plaid by Jen Lancaster
Lancaster’s the first to admit that in her small Indiana town she was "drama club" popular, not "cheerleader" popular. But she worked those Jordache jeans. And the Camp Beverly Hills polo that she wore at her mall job. And her sorority sweatshirt and scrunchie. And, ok, the boxy interview suit she bought with her mom was kind of awful. But after she started making money at her big-city job her outfits got way better. (Until she lost her job, adopted rescue dogs, threw up on her neighbors, and almost had to move back home.)

I’m Down by Mishna Wolff
Many children got caught up in their parents’ involvement in the 1970s Black Pride movement. It’s just that most them were, well, black. Although obviously a white girl, Wolff’s father thought that she and her sister should celebrate and emulate the African American culture in their Seattle neighborhood. Hilarity ensues.

Pat Conroy and I have this in common, we were both surprised to learn that John Grisham’s new book was a collection of short stories. Here is where we differ. I have yet to write an Amazon.com “exclusive”  that mentions John Grisham alongside writers John Irving, Richard Russo, Anne Rivers Siddons, Chekhov, de Maupassant, Flannery O’Connor, William Faulkner and Eudora Welty.

I’m not saying Grisham isn’t a good storyteller. I’m not saying that at his best he’s not a great storyteller. And I’m not saying that I got a free copy of Grisham’s book before it was available to the public as, apparently, Conroy routinely does. I’m just saying that once there was a little boy who said he kept seeing wolves, but there actually were no wolves, so everybody stopped believing him. And then, this one time, there was a wolf. That’s all.