general fiction 

2010: #6 – Little Children (Tom Perrotta)

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TOM PERROTTA’s thirtyish parents of young children are a varied and surprising bunch. There’s Todd, the handsome stay-at-home dad, dubbed “The Prom King” by the moms at the playground, and his wife, Kathy, a documentary filmmaker envious of the connection Todd has forged with their toddler son. And there’s Sarah, a lapsed feminist surprised to find she’s become a typical wife in a traditional marriage, and her husband, Richard, who is becoming more and more involved with an internet fantasy life than with his own wife and child.

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non-fiction 

2010: #5 – Bird by Bird (Anne Lamott)

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“Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write. It was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, ‘Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.'”

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romance 

2010: #4 – Night Fire (Catherine Coulter)

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Dear Reader:

Night Fire, the first of the Night Trilogy, was first published in early 1989. I haven’t rewritten it, just cleaned it up a bit and Avon books has given it a wonderful new cover.

Arielle Leslie is a sixteen-year-old girl forced to wed Paisley Cochrane, a sadistic old man who abuses her. When he dies, she believes herself free. But she’s not.

Burke Drummond, Earl of Ravensworth — a young man she’d worshipped three years before — is home from the wars, and he wants her. When he catches her, he’s in for an appalling surprise.

I hope Burke and Arielle are two people who will touch you as deeply as they touched me. They face problems and obstacles never spoken of in Regency times.

If you haven’t yet read Night Fire, do give it a try.

— Catherine Coulter

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