Title: My Father's Tears_ And Other Stories Author: John Updike File Type: Mobi Subject:Fiction Description:From Publishers WeeklyStarred Review. Updike compresses the strata of a life in his delicately rendered, tremendously moving posthumous collection. In Free, the memory of a life-affirming affair buckles against a man's loyalty to his deceased wife: he recognizes that becoming a well-bred stick offers more consolation in old age than the sluggish arousal of his sensuality. In The Accelerating Expansion of the Universe, the retired protagonist, depressed by what he perceives as the universe's indifference to human affairs, is done in by the accumulated detritus of his life. Many characters are haunted by a sense of isolation, such as the protagonist of Personal Archaeology, who roams his Massachusetts estate, searching for traces of previous ownership while sifting through his own petty contribution, or the emotionally stranded absentee landlord of an Alton, Pa., family farm in The Road Home, who returns after 50 years and finds himself lost in his hometown. From Kinderszenen, which depicts the anxious time of smalltown late 1930s, to Varieties of Religious Experience, in which a grandfather watches the twin towers fall, time ushers in brutal changes. With masterly assurance, Updike transforms the familiar into the mysterious. (June) Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. From School Library JournalStarred Review. In the title story of this miraculous final collection, the aging narrator admits, I have never really left Pennsylvania, that is where the self I value is stored, no matter how infrequently I check on its condition. Most of these stories evoke Updike's Olinger and environs at least in passing, nicely complementing the 2003 retrospective collection The Early Stories, 1953–1975, with its tantalizing hints of autobiography. In Personal Archaeology, a restless retiree uncovers several distinct strata of rusty junk on his small piece of suburban land and realizes that his own lost golf balls will form yet another such layer. In The Full Glass, an elderly man takes pride in his efficient bedroom routines, such as filling a glass with water before opening the pill bottles. In Free, a recent widower starts to miss the wife from whom he had longed to escape. A few of the stories take place at high school reunions, where conversations resume midstream after 50 years. Like his ancient characters, Updike rambles on at times, but no one will complain. Recommended for all collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 2109.]—Edward B. St John, Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.

Title: You Lost Me There Author: Rosecrans Baldwin File Type: Mobi Subject:Contemporary Description: **A dazzling debut that is at once a lightly erudite novel of ideas and a darkly charming love story set on an island off the coast of Maine-the perfect sophisticated summer read. ** By turns funny, charming, and tragic, Rosecrans Baldwins debut novel takes us inside the heart and mind of Dr. Victor Aaron, a leading Alzheimers researcher at the Soborg Institute on Mount Desert Island in Maine. Victor spends his days alternating between long hours in the sterile lab and running through memories of his late wife, Sara. He has preserved their marriage as a sort of perfect, if tumultuous, duet between two opposite but precisely compatible souls. But one day, in the midst of organizing his already hyperorganized life, Victor discovers a series of index cards covered in Saras handwriting. They chronicle the major changes in direction of their marriage, written as part of a brief fling with couples counseling. Saras version of their great love story is markedly different from his own, which, for the eminent memory specialist, is a startling revelation. Victor is forced to reevaluate and relive each moment of their marriage, never knowing is the revisions will hurt or hearten. Meanwhile, as Victors faith in memory itself unravels, so too does his precisely balanced support network, a group of strong women-from his lab assistant to Aunt Betsy, doddering doyenne of the island-that had, so far, allowed him to avoid grieving. Rosecrans Baldwin shows himself here to be a young writer bursting with talent and imagination who deftly handles this aching love story with sensitivity and unexpected maturity. *You Lost Me There* is a treasure of a book filled with beautiful, intelligent prose, a book that wears its smarts lightly and probes its emotions deeply.