Cats, Bats and Rats, Oh My!

Professor Carl Sederholm is coming to spend a spooky night at the library. 

Carl Sederholm

There will be Halloween fun at the library on Wednesday, Oct 12 at 7:00 p.m. Book Bash for Boys is going to have a scary good time as Carl leads their book discussion on Coraline by Neil Gaiman. The night will also include fun activities and treats for all.

Carl is a popular professor in the BYU Humanities Department. He co-authored   Poe, The House of Usher, and the American Gothic with Dennis Perry, researching and developing the affect of gothic horror novels on the humanities. 

Coraline is about a girl who has often wondered what's behind the locked door in the drawing room. It reveals only a brick wall when she finally opens it, but when she tries again later, a passageway mysteriously appears. Coraline is surprised to find a flat decorated exactly like her own, but strangely different. And when she finds her "other" parents in this alternate world, they are much more interesting despite their creepy black button eyes. When they make it clear, however, that they want to make her theirs forever, Coraline begins a nightmarish game to rescue her real parents and three children imprisoned in a mirror. With only a bored-through stone and an aloof cat to help, Coraline confronts this harrowing task of escaping these monstrous creatures. 

Neil Gaiman has delivered a wonderfully chilling novel, subtle yet intense on many levels. The line between pleasant and horrible is often blurred until what's what becomes suddenly clear, and like Coraline, we resist leaving this strange world until we're hooked. Unnerving drawings also cast a dark shadow over the book's eerie atmosphere, which is only heightened by simple, hair-raising text. Coraline is otherworldly storytelling at its best.

Neil Gaiman

 Neil Gaiman was born on November 10, 1960 in Portchester, Hampshire, England. Gaiman was able to read at the age of four. He said, "I was a reader. I loved reading. Reading things gave me pleasure. I was very good at most subjects in school, not because I had any particular aptitude in them, but because normally on the first day of school they'd hand out schoolbooks, and I'd read them--which would mean that I'd know what was coming up, because I'd read it." 

The first book he read was The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien  from his school library, although it only had the first two books in the trilogy. He consistently took them out and read them. He would later win the school English prize and the school reading prize, enabling him to finally acquire the third book in the trilogy. For his seventh birthday he received The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S.Lewis and later he read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll and they became favorites and led to his desire to write books himself.  He also enjoyed reading Batman comics.

Gaiman was educated at several Church of England schools. He is now a novelist, graphic novelist and screenwriter. He writes Fantasy, Horror, Science Fiction, and Dark Fantasy. He is the first author to win both the Newbery and the Carnegie medals for the same work which is The Graveyard Book.

Gaiman lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota in an "Addams Family house" and has lived there since 1992. He is married to Amanda Palmer and he has three children from a previous marriage.

 

Craig Russell, a 35-year veteran of comics and frequent collaborator with Gaiman, offers an adaptation of Gaiman’s 2002 novel Coraline (illustrated by Dave McKean), a tale of childhood nightmares. As in the original story, Coraline wanders around her new house and discovers a door leading into a mirror place, where she finds her button-eyed “other mother,” who is determined to secure Coraline’s love one way or another. This version is a virtuoso adaptation, streamlining passages that function best in prose and visually highlighting parts that benefit most from the graphic form. A master of fantastical landscapes, Russell sharpens the realism of his imagery, preserving the humanity of the characters and heightening horror, even as Gaiman’s concise storytelling ratchets up the eeriness. The adaptation loses none of Coraline’s original character; she’s clever, resourceful, intrepid, and highly determined when it comes to doing what must be done. Comics fans will delight in this version, and readers familiar with the previous book will greatly appreciate the opportunity to explore the story in a successful new way. You can find this entertaining graphic novel at the library.

Coraline has also been made into a movie that is especially fun to watch for Halloween. The DVD is available for check out at the library.

The Desire of My Eyes

John Ruskin once said, "The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion, --all in one."

John Ruskin

The book featured for discussion this month with R.E.A.D. book group will be The Desire of My Eyes: The Life and Work of John Ruskin by Wolfgang Kemp. It will be reviewed by Jane Robinson. The group will meet in the library on October 6th at 10:00 a.m. Everyone is invited to attend.

The Desire of My Eyes examines the life and work of the prolific, visionary writer, painter and critic. Kemp finds in Ruskin's life, which spanned the same years as Queen Victoria's and thus embodied the Victorian era itself, a faithful mirror of the history and psychological evolution of his age.

Examining the English critic alongside Byron, Carlyle, Karl Kraus and others of his time, and considering views of him given by Shaw and Proust, the author, a German art historian, contends that Ruskin (1819-1900) was a reflection of Victorian history and pathology. Kemp regards him as not only a major reformer, educator and ecologist, but also as a great realistic draftsman whose drawings reveal developing emotional instability. Increasingly, Ruskin's attention moved from art to society as he came to criticize capitalism, religion, technology, the destruction of nature--and himself. First sightseer, then see-er, finally seer and mythmaker, Ruskin in his old age became industry as well as institution: there were Ruskin ceramics and linens, even Ruskin cigars. This distinguished work, gracefully translated, is illustrated with portraits of the critic and drawings by him. 

Wolfgang Kemp

Wolfgang Kemp was born on May 1, 1946 in Frankfurt, Germany. He is a German art historian, author and professor of art history at the University of Hamburg. He is considered to be one of the most internationally renowned representatives of the art-historical research. He also has visiting professorships in schools which  include Harvard, UCLA, Fellow Institute for Advanced Study Berlin and Getty Research Center in Los Angeles.

A New Year of Bookenders

Bookenders book group will get together at the library on Wednesday, September 28th at 7 p.m. The featured book for the evening is Unbroken:A World War II Airman's Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand. The discussion will be led by Eloise Fugal. 

Everyone is invited to attend.

We will also be choosing the book selections for the coming year at this meeting. Plan now to attend and bring suggestions on great books for discussion.

Unbroken is the inspiring true story of a man who lived through a series of catastrophes almost too incredible to be believed. 

Louie Zamperini

In evocative, immediate descriptions, Hillenbrand unfurls the story of Louie Zamperini--a juvenile delinquent-turned-Olympic runner-turned-Army hero. During a routine search mission over the Pacific, Louie’s plane crashed into the ocean, and what happened to him over the next three years of his life is a story that will keep you glued to the pages, eagerly awaiting the next turn in the story and fearing it at the same time. You’ll cheer for the man who somehow maintained his selfhood and humanity despite the monumental degradations he suffered, and you’ll want to share this book with everyone you know.  

Laura Hillenbrand

Laura Hillenbrand was born on May 15, 1967 in Fairfax, Virginia. She spent much of her childhood riding bareback "screaming over the hills" of her father's Sharpsburg, Maryland farm. She studied at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio but was forced to leave before graduation when she contracted Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, which she has struggled with ever since. She now lives in Washington D.C., and rarely leaves her house because of the condition. On the irony of writing about physical paragons while being so incapacitated herself, she says, "I'm looking for a way out of here. I can't have it physically, so I'm going to have it intellectually. It was a beautiful thing to ride Seabiscuit in my imagination. And it's just fantastic to be there alongside Louie as he's breaking the NCAA mile record. People at these vigorous moments in their lives - it's my way of living vicariously."

Hillenbrand married Borden Flanagan, a professor of Government at American University and her college sweetheart, in 2008.

She is the author of the critically acclaimed Seabiscuit: An American Legend, which spent 42 weeks at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list, in hardcover and paperback. It was made into the Academy Award nominated film Seabiscuit. After this success it took her almost a decade of research and writing before Unbroken was published.

Hillenbrand is a co-founder of Operation Iraqi Children, a charitable program created in 2004 to send school supplies to Iraqi children. 

 

Wednesday Wars to kick off a new season and a fun new book group for boys ages 8-12

 

We are excited to announce a new program for boys at the Pleasant Grove City Library. It is called Book Bash for Boys. It will coincide with our Great Reads for Girls. These book groups are for boys and girls who are ages 8-16 along with their parent or other caring adult. We encourage the kids and their parent to read the featured book each month and then join us for lively discussion, activities, and refreshments. We are looking forward to all of our plans and ideas for these fun book groups. We have been doing the Great Reads for Girls for three years and have often been asked to do something for boys so we are changing things up a bit this year. We will have two special months where the boys and girls come together and then we will alternate on the other months.

The schedule goes like this:

September - Combined Book Bash for Boys and Great Reads for Girls (The Wednesday Wars by Gary Schmidt)

October - Book Bash for Boys (Coraline by Neil Gaiman with special guest Carl Sederholm)

November - Great Reads for Girls (A Crooked Kind of Perfect by Linda Urban)

January - Book Bash for Boys (Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko)

February - Great Reads for Girls (Flipped by Wendelin Van Draanen)

March - Book Bash for Boys (Shredderman: Secret Identity by Wendelin Van Draanen)

April - Great Reads for Girls (A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett)

May - Combined Book Bash for Boys and Great Reads for Girls (Among the Hidden by Margaret Peterson Haddix)

The book groups will be held on the second Wednesday night of each month at 7 p.m.

Our first book discussion and activity for this year will be held on September 14, 2011 at 7 p.m. in the basement at the library. The featured book will be Wednesday Wars by Gary Schmidt.

In Wednesday Wars Holling Hoodhood is really in for it.He’s just started seventh grade with Mrs. Baker, a teacher he knows is out to get him. Why else would she make him read Shakespeare . . . outside of class? The year is 1967, and everyone has bigger things than homework to worry about. There’s Vietnam for one thing, and then there’s the family business. As far as Holling’s father is concerned, nothing is more important than the family business. In fact, all of the Hoodhoods must be on their best behavior at all times. The success of Hoodhood and Associates depends on it. But how can Holling stay out of trouble when he has Mrs. Baker to contend with?



Gary D Schmidt


Gary Schmidt is a professor of English at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He received both a Newbery Honor and a Printz Honor for Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy and a Newbery Honor for The Wednesday Wars. He lives with his family on a 150-year-old farm in Alto, Michigan, where he splits wood, plants gardens, writes, and feeds the wild cats that drop by.

Don't Sing at the Table

On Thursday, September 1st the R.E.A.D. Book Group at the library began a new year of book reviews and presentations. Tammra Salisbury reviewed Don't Sing at the Table: Life Lessons From My Grandmothers by Adriana Trigiani.

  

In this book Adriana Trigiani shares the lessons she learned throughout her life from the traditions, spiritual fortitude, values, strengths and talents of her grandmothers. She recalls experiences, humor and wisdom that have shaped her life. Her love for her grandmothers is obvious in her warm and descriptive writing which is a delight for readers of all ages.

 

Tammra also read from Cooking with My Sisters: One Hundred Years of Family Recipes, from Bari to Big Stone Gap by Adriana Trigiani

For the Trigianis, cooking has always been a family affair–and the kitchen was the bustling center of their home, where folks gathered around the table for good food, good conversation, and the occasional eruption. Like the recipes that have been handed down for generations from mother to daughter and grandmother to granddaughter, the family’s celebrations are also anchored to the life and laughter around the table. We learn how Grandmom Yolanda Trigiani sometimes wrote her recipes in code, or worked from memory, guarding her recipes carefully. And we meet Grandma Lucia Bonicelli, who never raised her voice and believed that when people fight at the dinner table, the food turns to poison in the body.

Best-selling author Adriana Trigiani is beloved by millions of readers around the world for her hilarious and heartwarming novels. Adriana was raised in a small coal-mining town in southwest Virginia in a big Italian family. She chose her hometown for the setting and title of her debut novel, the critically acclaimed bestseller Big Stone Gap. 

Adriana’s 13 books have been translated and sold in over 35 countries around the world. Critics from the Washington Post to the New York Times to People have described Adriana’s novels as “tiramisu for the soul”, “sophisticated and wise”, and “dazzling.” They agree, “her characters are so lively they bounce off the page”, and that “… her novels are full bodied and elegantly written.”

After graduating from Saint Mary’s College in South Bend, Indiana, Adriana moved to New York City to become a playwright. She founded the all-female comedy troupe “The Outcasts,” which performed on the cabaret circuit for seven years. She made her off-Broadway debut at the Manhattan Theater Club and was produced in regional theaters of note around the country.

Among her many television credits, Adriana was a writer/producer on The Cosby Show, A Different World, and executive producer/head writer for City Kids for Jim Henson Productions. Her Lifetime television special, Growing up Funny, garnered an Emmy nomination for Lily Tomlin. In 1996, she wrote and directed the documentary film Queens of the Big Time. It won the Audience Award at the Hamptons Film Festival and toured the international film festival circuit from Hong Kong to London. Adriana then wrote a screenplay called Big Stone Gap, which became the novel that began the series. Adriana spent a year and a half waking up at three in the morning to write the novel before going into work on a television show.

Adriana is married to Tim Stephenson, the Emmy award-winning lighting designer of the Late Show with David Letterman. They live in Greenwich Village with their daughter, Lucia.

R.E.A.D. Book Group will meet again on Thursday, October 6, 2011 at 10:00 a.m. Jane Robinson will review The Desire of My Eyes: The Life and Work of John Ruskin by Wolfgang Kemp. 

Everyone is invited to attend.

The Street of a Thousand Blossoms

Bookenders Book Group will be discussing The Street of a Thousand Blossoms by Gail Tsukiyama on Wednesday, May 25 at 7:00 p.m.

We will be meeting downstairs in the library. 

Everyone is invited to attend.

 

 Tsukiyama is a mesmerizing storyteller who focuses on family, tradition, and the solace of nature and art. Of both Chinese and Japanese descent, she has explored the history and culture of both lands, here imagining life in Japan during its most catastrophic time as experienced by the orphaned brothers Hiroshi and Kenji. Raised by their loving grandparents in Yanaka, a residential area of Tokyo, they are opposites. Big, strong, and confident, Hiroshi believes he is destined to be a sumo wrestler. Slight, quiet, and artistic, Kenji discovers his love for mask making and Noh theater by accident. They each secure mentors, but just as the good brothers embark on their demanding apprenticeships, war breaks out. Tsukiyama's spare prose reflects the clean-lined, distilled-to-the-essence aesthetic of Japanese art as she writes appreciatively and informatively about the arts of sumo and Noh, and piercingly about the horrific deprivations and tyranny of war, the firebombing of Tokyo, the American occupation, and the rapid evolution of modern Japan. As her endearing characters attempt to adjust to the new while preserving the old, Tsukiyama evokes a classic vision of a blasted world returning to life. Tsukiyama's historically detailed and plot-driven story of resilience, discipline, loyalty, and right action is popular fiction at its most intelligent, appealing, and rewarding.

Gail Tsukiyama was born in San Francisco, California to a Chinese mother from Hong Kong and a Japanese father from Hawaii. She attended San Francisco State University where she received both her Bachelor of Arts Degree and a Master of Arts Degree in English with the emphasis in Creative Writing.  Most of her college work was focused on poetry, and she was the recipient of the Academy of American Poets Award. She was one of nine fiction authors to appear during the first Library of Congress National Book Festival. A resident of the San Francisco Bay Area, she has been apart-time lecturer in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University, as well as a freelance book reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle.   Her works include The Samurai's Garden, Women of the Silk, Night of Many Dreams , The Language of Threads, The Street of a Thousand Blossoms, and Dreaming Water. 

The Whistling Season

R.E.A.D. Book Group will be meeting on Thursday, May 5th at 10:00 a.m. in the library. Joyce Fife will be reviewing The Whistling Season by Ivan Doig.

Everyone is welcome.

The Whistling Season is set in the past in rural eastern Montana—and addresses that time and place in distinct, uncluttered prose that carries the full enthusiasm of affection and even love—for the landscape, the characters, and the events of the story—without being sentimental or elegiac. The novel is narrated by an aging Montana state superintendent of schools, Paul Milliron, who is charged with deciding the fate of the state's last scattered rural schools, and who, in the hours preceding his meeting to determine those schools' fate, recalls the autumn of 1909, when he was 13 and attending his own one-room school in Marias Coulee.

Recently widowed, Paul's father, overwhelmed by the child-rearing duties presented by his three sons, in addition to his challenging farming duties, hires a housekeeper, sight unseen, from a newspaper ad. The housekeeper, Rose, proclaims that she "can't cook but doesn't bite." She turns out to be a beguiling character, and she brings with her a surprise guest—her brother, the scholarly Morris, who, though one of the most bookish characters in recent times, also carries brass knuckles and—not to give away too much plot—somehow knows how to use them.

The schoolteacher in Marias Coulee runs away to get married, leaving Morris to step up and take over her job. The verve and inspiration that he, an utter novice to the West, to children and to teaching children, brings to the task is told brilliantly and passionately, and is the core of the book's narrative, with its themes of all the different ways of knowing and learning, at any age.

Doig's strengths in this novel are character and language—the latter manifesting itself at a level of old-fashioned high-octane grandeur not seen previously in Doig's novels, and few others': the sheer joy of word choices, phrases, sentences, situations, and character bubbling up and out, as fecund and nurturing as the dryland farmscape the story inhabits is sere and arid. The Whistling Season is a book to pass on to your favorite readers: a story of lives of active choice, lived actively.



Ivan Doig



Ivan Doig (born on June 27, 1939) is an American novelist. He was born in White Sulphur Springs, Montana to a family of homesteaders and ranch hands. After the death of his mother Berneta, on his sixth birthday, he was raised by his father Charles Doig and his grandmother Elizabeth Ringer. After several stints on ranches, they moved to Dupuyer, Pondera County, Montana in the north to herd sheep close to the Rocky Mountain Front. After his graduation from Valier high school, Doig attended Northwestern University, where he received a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in journalism. He later earned a Ph.D. in American history at the University of Washington, writing his dissertation about John J. McGilvra (1827-1903). He now lives with his wife Carol Doig, a university professor of English, in Seattle, Washington. Before Ivan Doig became a novelist, he wrote for newspapers and magazines as a free-lancer and worked for the United States Forest Service. Much of his fiction is set in the Montana country of his youth. His major theme is family life in the past, mixing personal memory and regional history. As the western landscape and people play an important role in his fiction, he has been hailed as the new dean of western literature, a worthy successor to Wallace Stegner.

Ivan Doig is the author of eleven books. Eight are novels, including English Creek and Dancing at the Rascal Fair, and three are nonfiction, including the highly acclaimed memoir This House of Sky, which was a finalist for the National Book Award.

Seven Miracles That Saved America

R.E.A.D. book group will be meeting Thursday, April 7th at 10:00 a.m. in the library. Howard Carpenter will be reviewing Seven Miracles That Saved America by Chris and Ted Stewart.

Everyone is welcome.

The authors, Chris and Ted Stewart, answer this question in the book: 

"When the odds were stacked against us--and there were many times when this experiment that we call America could have and should have failed--did God intervene to save us?"

In each of the seven examples that they cite "the people who were living these things all had doubts about how they would turn out," says Ted. "But what's remarkable is that every one of them, to some degree or another, acknowledged the help of Divine Providence."

The brothers bring diverse backgrounds to the task. 

Chris was a record-setting Air Force pilot (he holds the record for the fastest nonstop flight around the world) before he retired to become president and CEO of The Shipley Group, a nationally recognized consulting and training company, as well as a best-selling author. His techno-military thrillers have been released in multiple languages in seven countries, and he's published a number of novels for Shadow Mountain. 

Ted was appointed as a U.S. District judge in 1999 by President Bill Clinton. Before that, he served as chief of staff to Gov. Mike Leavitt, as a member and chairman of the Public Service Commission and as chief of staff to Rep. Jim Hansen, R-Utah. He has also taught university courses in law, the Constitution, the Supreme Court and public policy.

They talk about the book in this video:

Still Alice

Join us for a lively, insightful discussion of the book Still Alice by Lisa Genova on Wednesday, March 30th in the basement of the Pleasant Grove Library.

Eloise Fugal will lead the discussion and there will be refreshments.

Alice Howland, happily married with three grown children and a house on the Cape, is a celebrated Harvard professor at the height of her career when she notices a forgetfulness creeping into her life. As confusion starts to cloud her thinking and her memory begins to fail her, she receives a devastating diagnosis: early onset Alzheimer's disease. Fiercely independent, Alice struggles to maintain her lifestyle and live in the moment, even as her sense of self is being stripped away. In turns heartbreaking, inspiring and terrifying, Still Alice captures in remarkable detail what's it's like to literally lose your mind.

This award-winning book is a favorite of book clubs all over the country.

Lisa Genova

Lisa Genova graduated valedictorian from Bates College with a degree in Biopsychology and has a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Harvard University. She has done research on the molecular etiology of depression, Parkinson's Disease, drug addiction, and memory loss following stroke. Her second novel, LEFT NEGLECTED, also a New York Times bestseller, is about a woman with a traumatic brain injury. She is currently writing her third novel, LOVE ANTHONY, about a boy with autism. Lisa lives with her husband and three children on Cape Cod.

What inspired Lisa to write the book:

Her grandmother suffered from Alzheimer's. She started doing research on it, but could never answer the question, "What does it feel like to have this?" because her grandmother was already too far gone.

Lisa's research:

Lisa did a ton of research. Her "Ph.D. in neuroscience from Harvard was like a golden, all-access pass" with neurologists, genetic counselors, researchers and about a dozen people who were suffering from Alzheimer's. They e-mailed almost daily while she was writing the book and made sure her writing rang true.

Lisa's previous writing experience:

The only writing Lisa had done previously was scientific research papers, with the exception of a Short Story class her freshman year in college. However, she was training as a Meisner actress at the same time she was writing the book and felt that the skills she learned in acting class translated well in the writing process.

The writing/publishing experience:

Lisa wrote Still Alice at Starbucks while her daughter was in school. She was too distracted by things at home--phone calls, laundry, food in the fridge. She wasn't successful initially with finding an agent or a publisher so she self-published, selling the book out of the trunk of her car. It paid off. Simon & Schuster took it on and it became a best-seller and has been translated into over 20 languages.

Lisa Genova talks about Still Alice:

Crowned in Terabithia

We welcomed the girls and their moms to Terabithia last Wednesday for Great Reads for Girls.

The book we discussed, Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson, deals with friendship, imagination, bullying, family, differences, fear, and death.

There was a lot to discuss.

The girls and their moms had some great comments.

(Warning: spoilers)

Though the end of the book is tragic, this quote puts it into perspective:

He thought about it all day, how before Leslie came, he had been a nothing – a stupid, weird little kid who drew funny pictures and chased around a cow field trying to act big- trying to hide a whole mob of foolish little fears running riot inside his gut. It was Leslie who had taken him from the cow pasture into Terabithia and turned him into a king. He had thought that was it. Wasn’t king the best you could be? Now it occurred to him that perhaps Terabithia was like a castle where you came to be knighted. After you stayed for a while and grew strong you had to move on. For hadn’t Leslie, even in Terabithia, tried to push back the walls of his mind and make him see beyond to the shining world – huge and terrible and beautiful and very fragile? . . .

Now it was time for him to move out. She wasn’t there, so he must go for both of them. It was up to him to pay back to the world in beauty and caring what Leslie had loaned him in vision and strength.

Activity: The girls and their moms used their imaginations by creating one-third of each picture without seeing what the others had drawn.

Craft: They created their own Terabithia crowns.

Bridge to Terabithia

Great Reads for Girls, our mother-daughter book group, will be discussing Bridge to Terabithia tomorrow evening, Wednesday, March 9th at 7 p.m.

We'd love to have you join us!

There will be an on-time drawing, an activity, and refreshments, along with the discussion of the book.

Bridge to Terabithia is a touching novel about a boy and a girl who create a magical kingdom in the forest.

It won the Newbery Award in 1978.

And it was made into a movie twice.

The PBS adaptation in 1985

The 2007 Disney movie

Katherine Paterson

Katherine Paterson's first language was Chinese because her parents were missionaries in China and she spent the first years of her childhood there. After graduating with a Master's Degree in Christian Studies she became a missionary in Japan.

She has received many awards for her work and is now serving as the Library of Congress's National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, a two-year position created to raise national awareness of the importance of lifelong literacy and education.

Eve Green

On Wednesday, February 23 at 7 p.m. the Bookenders book group will meet at the library to discuss Eve Green by Susan Fletcher. Everyone is invited to attend.

Pregnant with her first child, Eve Green recalls her mother's death when she was eight years old and her struggle to make sense of her parents' mysterious romantic past. Eve is sent to live with her grandparents in rural Wales, where she finds comfort in friendships with Daniel, a quiet farmhand, and Billy, a disabled, reclusive friend of her mother's. When a ravishing local girl disappears, one of Eve's friends comes under suspicion. Eve will do everything she can to protect him, but at the risk of complicity in a matter she barely understands. This is a timeless and beautifully told story about family secrets and unresolved liaisons.

This debut novel is written with exquisite sensitivity, the chapters brimming with images of the Welsh countryside.

Fletcher perfectly captures Welsh country life with lyrical passages as moving as the story itself. Eve's tart, childish perceptions and the comfort of the natural world that feeds her soul create a wonderful portrait of a bereaved child searching for roots. Her incisive observations, a toussle of red curls and freckles, capacity for love, even her mistakes, make Eve a memorable character.

Like an artist painting so Susan Fletcher paints with words. The book is written with a great deal of feeling. The pages are rich with the description of the small details of everyday country life with its gossip, animosity and mysteries.

The description of the breathtaking beauty of the Welsh countryside in this book illustrates the author's love of it. She said, "I was keen to set the book in rural Wales. It is this wild, lonesome landscape that first led me to want to write."

Susan Fletcher was born in Birmingham, England in 1979. She grew up in Solihull, in the English West Midlands, and attended St. Martin's school from the age of 7 until she was 16, and then joined the 6th form at Solihull School. She studied for a B.A.degree in English at the University of York and then went touring for a year to Australia and New Zealand. When back in England she studied Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia where she received her M.A. and lived in Stratford-upon-Avon. She now lives in Warwickshire, England.

Her first novel, Eve Green (2004), tells the story of eight-year-old Evie, who is sent to a new life in rural Wales, where she discovers a family secret. Eve Green won the 2004 Whitbread First Novel Award and the 2005 Betty Trask Prize.

Her second novel, Oystercatchers, was published in 2007, and her third, Corrag, in 2010. Corrag was shortlisted for the 2010 John Llewellyn-Rhys Memorial Prize.