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"The Garden of Last Days"

"The Garden of Last Days" by Andre Dubus III

Mitchell's Book Corner

54 Main Street, 228-1080

From the acclaimed author of "House of Sand and Fog" comes another story from the darker side of humanity. Dubus sets his story on the West Coast of Florida, in the week preceding the World Trade Center bombing. Don't quit reading because you're sick of 9/11 books, however. Dubus bases his story on a news report he read that several of the terrorists spent their last few days in a strip club in Florida. "Garden of Last Days" centers on one of the terrorist pilots, a single mother who strips in order to pay the bills but saves her money to give her child a better life, an aging woman who takes the stripper and her daughter under her wing and a confused patron whose decision making ability is worse than just impaired. Dubus breathes life into his characters and draws them with the precise detail we have come to expect from him. While "Garden of Last Days" flirts with impending disaster, Dubus takes a cue from reality that all episodes have a positive and a negative, and sometimes it just depends on which side of the spread sheet you find yourself.

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Lucretia Voigt,

"Northline" by Willy Vlautin

Nantucket Bookworks

25 Broad Street, 228-4000

Mitchell's Book Corner

One roots for Allison, the troubled main character in this, Willy Vlautin's second novel, to overcome the selfdefeating patterns of which she is all too aware. She walks away from a Nazi/skinhead party in the desert and leaves Las Vegas, her hometown, where little but trouble has marked her life - focused lately on a dangerous boyfriend - to try to begin mending her life in Reno. It's a huge move for this timorous soul. In his charmingly straightforward, often lyrical, prose, Vlautin follows her shaky progress without sentimentality as she meets mostly well-meaning people, each with illustrative stories of their own. It's a novel which grows on you; told in the third person, it occasionally slips into the minds of characters other than Allison. But it's Allison's struggle with her own fears, memories, a history of bad choices, and her desire to move on that earns our support and sympathy. The book is visceral, moving, and full of honesty.

- Dick Burns,

"Pigs Love Potatoes" written by Anika Denise, illustrated by Christopher Denise

Nantucket Atheneum 1 India Street, 228-1110

Nantucket Bookworks

Husband-wife team Anika and Christopher Denise have created a counting book using the story of a family of pigs preparing for a potato supper. Christopher Denise, renowned illustrator of the "The Great Redwall Feast," "A Redwall Winter's Tale" and "The Redwall Cookbook," offers expertly drawn illustrations with a sense of family fun to accompany Anika's simple, but clever, rhyming text in her first picture book. A treat for toddlers practicing their counting, and for those fond of piggies in any picture book setting.

- Maggie Head,