Sue Recommends The Technologists by Matthew Pearl

Give TheTechnologists, an historical suspense novel written by Matthew Pearl, a try!  

 If you have any interest in Boston in the 1860s and the beginning rivalry between MIT and Harvard, this book is for you.  Pearl does an incredible job of bringing the first graduating class from MIT to life.  

He researched the MIT's first class's student journals and other histories of Boston and MIT to paint a picture of life in Boston in the 1860s.  The suspicion that Professor Rogers and his students provoked because they chose to take science past the theory and apply it to make a better world may seemed to be where Harvard and MIT differed and the friction began between the two schools.  

Add to this a mystery that of fictional unexplainable events that the students investigate through science and you have a novel with appeal to history, science, and suspense fans alike.

I listened to the Book on CD and found that it was difficult to shut it off and I kept reaching for the next disc to keep the story going.  All I can say is try it, you will certainly like it!

Also try Pearl's Dante Club that is set in the same time period in Boston.

SH

Sue Recommends Only Time Will Tell by Jeffrey Archer

If you haven't placed your request for Jeffrey Archer's new multi-generational family saga--the Clifton Chronicles, Only Time Will Tell, do it today. The series, which is semi-autobiographical, will include 5 books with one released each year. The first book begins the story of Harry Clifton's family with Harry as a young boy in Bristol, England with his widowed mother, Maisie, making great sacrifices to pull him out of poverty conditions and send him to Oxford. In this book ,which spans 2 decades from the end of The Great War to World War II, Archer takes the reader from England to the United States with lots of secrets waiting to be revealed, mysteries to be solved, and relationships between characters that Archer masterfully develops and brings to life so the reader is right there in the story. This is not to be missed.

If you have the opportunity to listen to the audio, Roger Allam works magic with the words as he did with Archer's Prisoner of Birth. You will not be able to get out of the car when you reach your destination if you are listening while driving.

Other multi-generational sagas you might enjoy are Howard Fast's The Immigrants and John Jakes' American Bicentennial Series.

The library has a new Booklist Brochure recommending other multi-generational sagas. Stop by the Reference Desk and pick one up.

SH

Classic L. Spdrague de Camp

Years in the making : the time-travel stories of L.Sprague De Camp
By L. Sprague de Camp.

Years in the Making collects L Sprague deCamp’s best time travel and alternate history stories. The collection includes three stories that are considered classics in the genre.

In Lest Darkness Fall, Martin Padway a young archeologist accidentally goes back to ancient Rome just before the barbarians were to finally extinguish civilization in the West.

The Wheels of If tells of a man who finds himself in an alternate world where Irish explorers discovered America.

Aristotle and the Gun is the memoir of a man who went back to ancient Greece to start a scientific revolution by teaching Aristotle about modern science.

De Camp’s stories rank up there with the other giants of his time Asimov, Heinlein and Clarke.

TB

World Without End

World Without End
by Follett, Ken

In 1989 Follett published what was to become one of his most popular novels, The Pillars of the Earth, a historical epic about the construction of an English cathedral, set in the twelfth century. Now, 18 years later and with several intervening best-sellers to his credit, Follett presents his eager fans with a sequel to Pillars. According to publicity material, he spent three years writing it, and it shows, because this an amazingly well-researched, intricately plotted, richly detailed novel that, while long in pages, never sprawls or flags. It is set in the same English cathedral town as Pillars, some two centuries later, and has as its primary characters the descendants of the major characters that appeared in the previous book. Follett's technique is to follow the lives of four individuals who have varying goals in life and, in the process, build a comprehensive tapestry of medieval English life an especially important background thread being the horrible natural disaster of that era, the black plague. - Booklist

A book which you will not be able to put down despite it's length. Follett's characters use conventional English language which does not take away from the feeling you are in the middle ages. Although a historical novel the focus is on common people so knowing history does not spoil the story.

TB

Sue Recommends Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

Perkins-Valdez' Wench is a great title to offer to readers who enjoyed The Help by Katherine Stockett. Like The Help, it focuses on the lives, treatment, and relationships of black women, although in another time period.

With Wench we are taken back to the days of slavery and focus on the life of Lizzie who is owned by a plantation owner; she is also his sexual companion and has two children with him. He takes her to Ohio where she and three other slave women develop a bond and learn that there are "free" blacks that live there. They share stories of their lives on the plantations in the South and explore the opportunity of freedom which forces them to make a decision--do they stay in their lives as someone else's property OR run and take a chance for a new life, and in some cases, leave their children behind? SH