Ron Hogan claims he "helped create the literary Internet by launching Beatrice.com in 1995." This New York-based blog covers mostly fiction and poetry, and features information about book festivals, local readings, and whatever else catches Hogan’s literary fancy. In January 2010, after writing about the business side of publishing as a senior editor for GalleyCat for several years, Hogan became the director of e-marketing strategy for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. He speaks frequently at book festivals and publishing conferences about how the industry can capitalize upon social networking tools and other transformative trends. (He’s also got great links and blogrolls for literary magazines, independent bookstores, and more.)

Click on “Programs/Presentations” above (how’s that for easy?) or hover over and choose a specific program, if you’re looking for notes from recent programs and workshops we’ve been part of.  Thanks!

http://shelfrenewal.com/programs/

Talk about a hot topic – Arizona’s new law is all you can hear on the news this week, and everyone’s got an opinion.  Here’s a list of some fictional views on the immigration issue.

The Tortilla Curtain by TC Boyle is the story of two undocumented Mexican immigrants (Candido and America) pursuing the American Dream, and a wealthy couple (Delaney and Kyle) they cross paths with.  When Candido is injured in a car accident by Delaney, we see how their lives intersect, and the novel finds Candido and America struggling to make ends meet.

In Susan Straight’s Highwire Moon, Serafina, a migrant worker in California, has been separated from her daughter for over a decade.  The starred LJ review stated, "Poignant and wise, it makes the political personal, and consequently, unforgettable."

Crossers: A Novel by Philip Caputo is set along the Arizona-Mexico border.  Gil, a widower, is caught in a dangerous place when he rescues a young Mexican man trying to cross the border.  Gil also discovers that his family history may be nothing to be proud of and is sharply tied to the issues of today.

Into the Beautiful North by Luis Alberto Urrea is the funny and touching.story of a teenage girl, Nayeli, who realizes that not only has her father disappeared, but that almost all of the men in her poor Mexican village are gone – having crossed the border in order to find work.  After seeing "The Magnificent Seven", Nayeli decides to round up 3 of her fellow villagers to cross over themselves in order to smuggle men back in to Mexico. 

National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Preston Falls could be a ’90s update to Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road. Doug and Jean Willis are a successful, but dissatisfied couple. They both dream of change, but only one will act on it. Doug takes a leave of absence from his his job in a public relations department (and from his wife and two kids) to clear his mind and repair their second home in upstate New York. Living on his own, Doug begins to unravel. His rare visits with his family become increasingly uncomfortable, leading him to bring a gun to surprise them on a camping trip. When Doug begins helping a neighbor shuttle cocaine between New York and Vermont he becomes paranoid, ultimately disappearing. Jean narrates the second half of the story, describing her own obsessive compulsive difficulties raising two frustrated kids and searching for the husband who left them.

May’s release of Eye of Red Tsar kicks off a season of high-profile Russians crime novels. Martin Cruz Smith continues his Arkaday Renko series with Three Stations in August, and William Ryan introduces Alexei Korolev, a detective working for the Moscow Criminal Investigation Division in 1930s Russia, in September’s The Holy Thief. (Check out LJ’s "Passport to Mystery" for more global crime fiction coming your way.)

Doubtless, you’ve already got some great Russian thrillers and mysteries on the shelf. So, when the demand gets hot, recommend these chilly thrillers.

The Winter Queen by Boris Akunin
An Investigator with the Moscow police force, Erast Fandori’s first case revolves around an aristocrat’s apparent suicide in Czarist Russia.

The White Russian by Tom Bradby
Back from a three year exile to Siberia, St. Petersburg police investigator Sandro Ruzsky tries to discover why two bodies were found on the ice outside the Winter Palace.

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
An impoverished student tries to justify the murder of an elderly money lender. (Come on, it’s a classic. It has crime in the title! I couldn’t leave it off the list.)

Bloodstones by Evelyn Anthony
A struggle for the rights to a new diamond mine puts a powerful jeweler in danger.

Death of a Dissident by Stuart Kaminsky
In the first installment of this 16-part mystery series, Police Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov must find the real killer of a world-famous dissident before an impatient KGB frames and innocent man.

Last of the Breed by Louis L’Amour
After his test plane goes down in the Bering Sea, U.S. Air Force Major Joseph "Joe Mack" Makatozi is captured and imprisoned by the Russians. After escaping, he makes  his way across the unforgiving Siberian landscape.

Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith
Leo Stepanovich Demidov tries to catch a serial killer preying on children. His investigation is hampered by a government that won’t admit to crimes taking place in Stalinist Russia.

http://www.citizenreader.com/

Citizen Reader is the blog formerly known as Nonfiction Readers Anonymous and home of Sarah Statz Cords, author of several nonfiction readers advisory guides.  Intelligent and well written, covering a variety of books, this is the best blog on the web to follow if you’re interested in readable nonfiction, or if you need to know it for your patrons.

Set in Chicago, Westerfield’s Chain is the story of a private eye who gets deeper and deeper into a mystery involving a mom & pop drugstore, medicare fraud, and oh yeah, several murders.  Very well written and great Chicago detail.  LJ’s review stated, "Readers who like Chicago-based series such as Sara Paretsky’s might want to check this out."   Interestingly enough, 8 years later, Clark’s second novel, Nobody’s Angel, is due out in paperback by Hard Case Crime next month – after he initially self-published it and sold 5,000 copies while working as a Chicago cab driver.  

We all have opinions about Melanie Griffith. Put those aside (unless, you know, they’re really nice ones) and pick up the book Crazy in Alabama by Mark Childress. Twelve-year-old Peejoe Bullis’s life with his grandmother is turned upside down when his Aunt Lucille swings by their Alabama home with her dead husband’s head in a Tupperware crisper. Lucille drops off her kids to head to Hollywood unfettered and Peejoe and his brother  are sent to live with an uncle in Industry, AL. In addition to all the turmoil taking place in Peejoe’s personal life, 1965 is the summer "when everybody went crazy in Alabama." The speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. and George Wallace shake up that whole state, as Peejoe tries to find a sane place in his family and in the world. 

I love award season. To me the Oscars are just a warm-up for spring’s delicious Pulitzer Prizes. Every fall I stalk the Novel site until it tells me when the literature award will be announced. I push press releases about the beloved Caldecott medal out of the way to see what ALA has chosen as its most notable adult books every winter. And I  love crowning myself collection development diva when my library owns everything on a list.

Fortunately, I didn’t put any money down on this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. I’ll admit it, I had previously purchased the book for it’s great reviews, but never gave Paul Harding’s Tinkers a second thought. The book didn’t exactly come out of nowhere, in Nora Rawlinson points out in her EarlyWord post last week. But it was still the biggest literary surprise I can remember in a long time.

So here’s my plan of RA attack. The first wave of requesters will want it because it won the award. It could be about mermaids or flying monkeys, they want it because it’s prize-worthy and popular. To them I recommend, in gossipy tones, other lesser known recent prize winners–stressing the award and the exclusivity of recognizing the title. I’ll recommend Colum McCann’s elegant National Book Award winner Let the Great World Spin, Joseph O’Neill’s PEN/Faulkner winner, the winding novel Netherland, and Andrea Levy’s 2004 Whitbread Book of the Year Small Island (because it’s really good and it was just on PBS.)

It will be another week or two until I hear from people who have actually read it. To them I might recommend The Professor’s House by Willa Cather or Gilead by Marilyn Robinson. Both critically acclaimed novels feature older men thinking back on their lives and trying to make peace with the legacy they’ve inherited and the one they’ll pass on. Both books also contemplate the beauty of the natural world. And, of course, I’ll ask my patron to report back and let me know how well my recommendations hit the mark.

SF Signal is the work of regular contributors JP Frantz and John DeNardo and about 18 "irregular" contributors. This science fiction blog has an impressive combination of reviews, table of contents for new issues of SF magazines and anthologies, news, interviews, movie trailers, and a weekly feature called "SF tidbits" with links to other articles, interviews, and fun stuff. A great destination for SF fans or those who want to start exploring what’s out there in the SF universe.