Peter Carey’s THE CHEMISTRY OF TEARS is receiving many favorable reviews globally. Here are a selection of reviews from the U.S., England and Australia. This is definitely one book that should be on your radar. If you’ve had the opportunity to read The Chemistry of Tears we’d love to know your thoughts too. (Send us your reviews at library@randomhouse.com)

From the two-time winner of the Booker Prize: An automaton, a man and a woman who can never meet, a secret love story, and the fate of the warming world are all brought to incandescent life in this hauntingly moving novel.

London 2010. Catherine Gehrig, a museum conservator, learns of the death of her colleague and lover of thirteen years. As the mistress of a married man, she must keep her grief a secret. She is rescued by the only person who knew of this affair–her boss. It is he who arranges a project that demands she work in isolation. In deep mourning, she will bring back to “life” a nineteenth-century automaton. Usually controlled and rational, but now mad with sorrow, Catherine discovers a series of notebooks written by Henry Brandling, who, in 1854, commissioned the extraordinary, eerie mechanical creature. Henry’s is a personal account of his adventures in the wilds of Germany, a diary that brings Catherine unexpected comfort and wonder. But it is the automaton itself, in its beautiful, uncanny imitation of life, that will link Henry and Catherine, as they are confronted with the mysteries of life and death, the miracle and catastrophe of human invention, and the body’s astonishing chemistry of love and feeling.

~*~Peter Carey’s will be on a book tour this summer, check out his event calendar to see if he will be coming to a location near you.

Reviews from the States:

“A powerful novel on the frailty of the human body and the emotional life we imbue in machines . . . Catherine and Henry, linked both by the automaton and by grief, ponder questions of life and death, questions that, as posed by Carey, are more fascinating than any solution.”

            —Publishers Weekly (starred, pick of the week)

“An excellent novel . . . Its ambition is considerable . . . The appeal of science might lie in its promise to solve the world’s most difficult problems, but Carey’s achievement with The Chemistry of Tears is, by means of a story about science, to depict our most taxing problems in their full insolubility.”

            —Tom Perrin, The National

“Wonderful . . . This deeply moving, intellectually profound novel on the heartbreaking grief of ‘living machines’ tells the story of the essential human desire to return to the individual Edens that we inhabited before we knew about the unavoidable pain of our mechanical lives . . . Beautifully told.”

            —Minsoo Kang, Nature

“Carey is a bewitching storyteller preternaturally attuned to our endless struggles over love and eccentric obsessions . . . This [is a] fairy tale within a fairy tale rife with historical and literary allusions . . . Raises provocative questions about life, death, and memory and our power to create and destroy . . . Gripping.”

            —Donna Seaman, Booklist

Reviews from the UK:

“Few writers manage so consistently and delightfully as Peter Carey to conjure wondrous scenes populated with idiosyncratic yet credible characters. The Chemistry of Tears does not disappoint . . . Carey is one of the finest living writers in English. His best books satisfy both intellectually and emotionally; he is lyrical yet never forgets the imperative to entertain . . . A wholly enjoyable journey.”

            —The Economist

“It is a unique combination of raw human passion and complicated puzzling about human ingenuity . . . Carey creates Catherine’s lonely and obsessive misery so brilliantly . . . She is completely convincing . . . Carey’s world is always interesting and thought-provoking.”

            —A. S. Byatt, Financial Times

“Carey manages these time-shifts and other complications with the same easy-seeming mastery that he shows in all his novels. But here the fluency seems especially apt, because it is always devoted to the service of machines that themselves depend on being cunningly assembled and delightful. In other words, there is an immaculate fit of means with themes . . . Carey has tackled some of these ideas before (the most obvious precursor to the construction of machines in this book is the transportation of the church in Oscar and Lucinda). But here everything has been designed, tooled, oiled, and fitted together with greater economy and an equal panache. Does this mean the book ends too neatly? No. Even as it settles its main concerns, it floats new ideas, and emphasises latent themes.”

            —Andrew Motion, The Guardian

“Carey’s exceptional storytelling talents are all on prominent display here. Catherine’s and Henry’s voices are lustily generated and expertly distinguished from one another; contemporary London and 19^th-century Germany are conveyed in lightly distributed yet powerfully evocative physical detail; both narratives are invigorated throughout by a thrilling verbal energy, and an almost unfailing knack for alighting on the mot juste. These are precisely the qualities that have always characterised Carey’s novels, and which have twice made him an eminently deserving winner of the Booker Prize.”

            —Edmund Gordon, The Observer

“A story that’s as ingenious as any piece of clockwork . . . Carey evokes the Brothers Grimm atmosphere of the Black Forest with extraordinary skill. [There’s] a lot of fascinating information too . . . imparted painlessly and with enormous ingenuity. It’s enlivened by flashes of illuminating description and comedy . . . There is also an enticing sharpness in the language . . . Beautifully made, entertaining, and comic.”

            —Brian Lynch, Irish Independent

“The Chemistry of Tears [is] alive with the evocation of place and period that is always Carey’s forte . . . Damage done by mankind’s mechanical creativeness is highlighted in a novel by one of the present day’s most unconventionally creative writers. Oddball characters are propelled along by zigzagging narrative channels, connections made with whimsical aplomb. As always, too, everything is burnished with vitalisingly poetic images. The Chemistry of Tears isn’t only about life and inventiveness: it overflows with them.”

            —Peter Kemp, Sunday Times

Reviews from Australia:

“A beautifully elegiac hymn to lost love . . . Audacious yet restrained, tender yet sardonic, and filled with moments of emotional complexity.” 

—Patrick Allington, Australian Book Review 

“This is a comic novel [but] also a serious examination of love and loss and grief and obsession and how we manage to keep going even when all clocks have stopped.” 

—Stephen Romei, The Spectator

“The Chemistry of Tears is at once exuberant and chastening in its portrayal of loss . . . Shows the playful side of Peter Carey at full stretch.” 

—Peter Pierce, Canberra Times

“This is a brilliant book, full of secrets, mystery, grief and love . . . Impossible to put down . . . A beautiful, complex narrative.” 

—Lizzie Stafford, Sunday Mail (Brisbane)

“Peter Carey [is] a consummate storyteller, vastly and raucously entertaining.”

—Andrew Riemer, Sydney Morning Herald

 “Carey’s latest book is just as beautifully written and entertaining as its predecessors. Written in his signature style, moving and witty at the same time, his narrative takes hold right from the beginning and maintains its pace throughout . . . Profoundly moving but leavened with Carey’s characteristic whimsical humour together with his refined and polished narrative style, this is a most delightful read.”

—Mary Ann Elliott, The Chronicle

 PETER CAREY is the author of eleven previous novels and has twice received the Booker Prize. His other honors include the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Miles Franklin Literary Award. Born in Australia, he has lived in New York City for twenty years.

The next book from Scottish writing wonder Alexander McCall Smith is The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection: No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. To read today’s excerpt click here. It is the new installment in the perpetually delightful and bestselling No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series.

Precious Ramotswe is back and, as usual, her plate is full! She’s called in to tackle a mysterious disciplinary problem at her adopted daughter’s school…Her infinitely trustworthy assistant, Grace Makutsi, is having trouble adjusting to wedded bliss, a problem to test even the formidable talents of Mma Ramotswe…And the estimable Clovis Andersen, author of The Principles of Private Investigation–the No. 1 Ladies’ prized manual–has arrived, right there, in Botswana, on a case of his own. Bush tea anyone?

“McCall Smith has few peers in capturing the quiet moments of people’s lives, and his empathetic lead has one of the biggest hearts in modern literature.” –Publishers Weekly

Robert A. Caro’ s new Lyndon Johnson biography Passage of Power is receiving some great early praise. We are excited for this powerhouse presidential bio to come out this May and wanted to share with you the great reviews to date. I don’t know about you but I’m looking forward to getting some more LBJ history via Caro’s capitivating storytelling.

“Riveting . . .  Shakespearean . . .It’s a roller-coaster narrative as Johnson plummets from the powerful Senate majority leader post to vice-presidential irrelevance, hated and humiliated by the Kennedy brothers, then surges to presidential authority with the crack of Lee Harvey Oswald’s rifle and forces a revolutionary civil rights act through a recalcitrant Congress . . .Caro’s tormented, heroic Johnson makes an apt embodiment of an America struggling toward epochal change, one with a fascinating resonance in our era of gridlocked government.”

—Publishers Weekly (Boxed, Starred)

“Brilliant . . .Riveting reading from beginning to end . . .The real tour de force in this stunning mix of political and psychological analysis comes in the account of the transition between administrations, from November 23, 1963 to January 8, 1964 . . .  An utterly fascinating character study, brimming with delicious insider stories . . . Political wonks, of course, will dive into this book with unbridled passion, but its focus on a larger-than-life, flawed but fascinating individual—the kind of character who drives epic fiction—should extend its reach much, much further.  Unquestionably, one of the truly big books of the year.”

—Booklist (Starred)

“The fourth volume of one of the most anticipated English-language biographies of the past 30 years . . . A compelling narrative . . . that will thrill those who care about American politics, the foundations of power, or both . . . Before beginning the Johnson biography, Caro published a life of Robert Moses, The Power Broker (1974), a book many scholars consider a watershed in contemporary biography. The Johnson project deserves equal praise.”

—Kirkus Reviews (Starred)

Today’s Lunch Lit has become a favorite within our department — Wife 22 by Melanie Gideon. Read the Wife 22 excerpt to discover why we enjoyed the twists and turns of this novel.   It’s simply perfect or fans of Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary and Allison Pearson’s I Don’t Know How She Does It. Wife 22 is an  irresistible novel of a woman losing herself…and finding herself again…in the middle of her life.
When Alice Buckle, who has been married to William for nearly twenty years, receives a survey in her e-mail from the Netherfield Center for the Study of Marital Happiness, she is in the doldrums. She loves her husband but they’ve grown distant, she is bored with her job, and her adolescent children need her less now. And she has reached the age at which her mother died. So as she idly begins answering the questions, she finds herself baring her soul in an anonymous survey she never even intended to respond to. As she struggles, as “Wife 22” in the survey, to provide honest answers to the questionnaire administered by Researcher 101, she realizes it has been years since anyone asked deep, serious questions of her, and really listened to her answers. Soon her entire life as she knows it is called into question.

If you love what you’ve read so far, request a Wife 22 eGalley at Edelweiss.

During ALA, Minter in January we highlighted titles that we are excited about for Spring 2012 – some of you may have attended our Book Buzz program where we talked about these titles (and ate pastries!)

Or you may have stopped by the Random House booth during the conference and picked up  an Advanced Review Copy-(If you missed our Book Buzz presentation, you can always listen to it in its’ pre-recorded version.)

So, now that Midwinter is over, we are wondering… what titles are you most excited about from Random House?

We are looking for librarians to write in their review of  a just released, or upcoming title that we talked about in the Book Buzz presentation.

If you weren’t able  to attend midwinter and would like to participate in this  opportunity  – email us library@randomhouse.comto request a galley of any of the titles listed in the Book Buzz presentation and we will do our best to accommodate your request.

Send your review to library@randomhouse.com we will contact you if we decide to feature your review on our blog.

This is a great way for us to know which titles you took the time to read- and a great way for us to find out what the librarians are reading next!

Today is the release of a very moving book we’ve all been very excited about BEHIND THE BEAUTIFUL FOREVERS: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity from Pulitzer Prize-winner Katherine Boo. It is a landmark work of narrative nonfiction about families striving toward a better life in one of the twenty-first century’s great global cities. Be sure to check out the amazing website for the book.   It includes photos, video, a discussion guide, and an author Q&A for curious readers who want to learn more.  

The book has gained a few honors from booksellers this month including:

***Amazon February Best Books of the Month Spotlight Pick

***Barnes & Noble Discover Pick

***Barnes & Noble Best Books of the  Month 

We were very thrilled when we received the following review that really captures the beauty of the book. It was sent in from Janet Lockhart, the Recreational Reading Librarian, from West Regional Library part of Wake County Public Libraries. You can read the Wake County Libraries Book-a-Day blog where Janet is a contributor here, it’s filled with some great book reviews.

Behind the Beautiful Forevers Review by Janet Lockhart:

At one time, the travelers on the road to the Suhar International Airport in Mumbai could look out their car windows and see a tall, shiny, aluminum fence. Ads for a company that sold floor tiles ran its length. “Beautiful Forever” read the corporate slogan.

Behind that wall promising eternally beautiful floors lay what airport management didn’t want customers to see: Annawadi, a slum first settled in 1991 by workers brought in from southern India to repair an airport runway. Seventeen years later, when Katherine Boo did the research that led to this book, three thousand people still lived and worked there.

Boo introduces us to several Annawadi residents and gives us intimate glimpses into their lives. There is Abdul, the young entrepreneur striving to improve the fortune of his family through recycling garbage. We meet Asha, a rising star in the political life of the settlement. We watch Abdul’s neighbor, Fatima, make a fateful choice that changes lives forever.

This is a gorgeously written book, but not an easy story to read. Abdul, Asha and Fatima are people with few resources struggling to succeed in a corrupt system that does not seem very fair, especially to the poor. Boo shows how precarious their lives are, and how quickly hardworking people can find their lives turned upside down by circumstance.

Boo, a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist and current staffer at The New Yorker, has spent two decades writing about poverty. She hopes this book will “show American readers that the distance between themselves and, say, a teenaged boy in Mumbai who finds an entrepreneurial niche in other people’s garbage, is not nearly as great as they might think.”

She succeeded with this American reader. I quickly grew to care about the people Boo portrays so vividly, especially Abdul. The three years Boo spent in Annawadi researching this story were evident. She made me see the dwellings and the faces of the people she met, and experience their daily struggles.

I would recommend this book to readers who like nonfiction that reads like fiction, people interested in India, readers with an interest in economic issues, nonfiction book clubs, and last, but not least, to devotees of beautiful writing.

*** We thank Janet for her amazing words and if you’ve read one of our galleys recently please send it our way at library@randomhouse.com. Your review might be featured on our blog too!!! *** 

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg a book that explores groundbreaking new research that shows that by grabbing hold of the three-step “loop” all habits form in our brains–cue, routine, reward–we can change them, giving us the power to take control over our lives.

This title is going to gain some great media coverage coming up.

Here’s a list:

New York Magazine cover story – 2/19

NBC Today – 2/28

NPR/Fresh Air – 3/5

Psychology Today – 2 page Q & A – March/April Issue

Glamour – Interview with the author – April Issue

Marie Claire – Coverage of the book – March issue

Harvard Business Review – Round Up of Self Management books – April Issue

So keep your eyes peeled to see the latest interviews from Charles Duhigg and for now you can check out an Q&A we posted recently here.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank is a sensational literary event—Nathan Englander, the author of the national best seller For the Relief of Unbearable Urges returns with a commanding new collection of short stories that establishes him beyond all doubt as the heir to Roth, Malamud, and Babel. A tour de force.

The title story, inspired by Carver’s masterpiece, is a comic classic, a provocative portrait of two marriages in which the Holocaust is played out as a devastating parlor game. “Camp Sundown” is an outlandishly dark story of vigilante justice undertaken by a troop of geriatric campers in a bucolic summer enclave. “Free Fruit for Young Widows” is a small, sharp study in evil lovingly told by a father to a son. “Sister Hills” chronicles the history of the Israeli settlements from the eve of the Yom Kippur War through the present, a political fable constructed around the tale of two mothers who strike a terrible bargain to save a child…A great leap forward from one of our most audacious and important writers.

Download the What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank poster here!

The book will be released February 7 and is already receiving a lot of praise.

Starred PW review!

Starred Booklist review!  

Starred Kirkus review!

Additional Praise for Nathan Englander’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank:

“A resounding testament to the power of the short story from a master of the form. Englander’s latest hooks you with the same irresistible intimacy, immediacy and deliciousness of stumbling in on a heated altercation that is absolutely none of your business; it’s what great fiction is all about.”
—Téa Obreht
 
“It takes an exceptional combination of moral humility and moral assurance to integrate fine-grained comedy and large-scale tragedy as daringly as Nathan Englander does.”
—Jonathan Franzen
 

“What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank vividly displays the humor, complexity, and edge that we’ve come to expect from Nathan Englander’s fiction–always animated by a deep, vibrant core of historical resonance.”
—Jennifer Egan
 
 
“Nathan Englander’s elegant, inquisitive, and hilarious fictions are a working definition of what the modern short story can do.”
—Jonathan Lethem
 
“The depth of Englander’s feeling is the thing that separates him from just about everyone. You can hear his heart thumping feverishly on every page.”
—Dave Eggers
 
“Nathan Englander is one of those rare writers who, like Faulkner, manages to make his seemingly obsessive, insular concerns all the more universal for their specificity. It’s this neat trick, I think, that makes the stories in his new collection so utterly haunting.”
—Richard Russo

Catherine the Great is one of the most fascinating rulers in history—a monarch whose thirty-four-year reign brought Russia into the modern industrial world, whose affairs were the scandal of her court, and who truly embodied the ideals of the Enlightenment.

In Winter Palace by Eva Stachniak you can enter the passionate, intimate, and treacherous world of Russia’s greatest monarch, Catherine the Great. For readers of Alison Weir and Margaret George, Eva Stachniak weaves a spellbinding tale of turmoil within a royal house, and the woman who would rise to rule all of Russia.

Two young women, caught in a landscape of shifting allegiances, navigate the treacherous waters of palace intrigue. Barbara, the narrator, is a servant who will become one of Russia’s most cunning royal spies. Sophie is a naive German duchess who will become Catherine the Great. For readers of superb historical fiction, Eva Stachniak captures in glorious detail the opulence of royalty and the perilous loyalties of the Russian court.

Read the excerpt here.

Enjoy and share the book trailer.

And check out some great reviews for Winter Palace:

Library Journal:

“This first novel in a planned twp-part saga, begins at the Russian court of Empress Elizabeth. Searching for a bride for her nephew, grandson of Peter the Great and designated heir to the throne, Elizabeth invites the Prussian Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbs to St. Petersburg. She also enlists Varvara, the novel’s narrator and a bookbinder’s daughter married to an esteemed member of the palace guard, to befriend and spy on the princess. Trading in secrets while trying to protect her new friend and advance her own position, Varvara follows the loves, disappointments, and successes of Princess Sophie, rebaptized as Catherine, through the last two decades of Elizabeth’s rule and the dramatic coup that leads to Catherine’s reign as empress. VERDICT Stachniak (Dancing with Kings) sets the scene extravagantly with details of sumptuous meals, elaborate wardrobes, and cunning palace politics. Longtime readers of English and French historical novels will delight in this relatively unsung dynasty and the familiar hallmarks of courtly intrigue.”

Booklist:

“Polish-Canadian author Stachniak’s brilliant, bold historical novel of eighteenth-century Russia is a masterful account of one woman’s progress toward absolute monarchical rule. For Catherine the Great, the path to her eventual coup d’état involves 20 years of subtle strategizing, intelligence gathering, and patience. Born Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst, this “pale, appealing sliver of a girl” arrives in St. Petersburg in 1743 as a potential bride for Peter, Empress Elizabeth’s weak-willed nephew and heir. Through the clear narration of clever, multilingual Varvara, the Polish bookbinder’s daughter who becomes her servant, friend, and spy, readers follow Catherine from her early years of barrenness and disfavor through her even more demoralizing years of motherhood. While Elizabeth tolerates and even encourages Catherine’s sexual liaisons, she separates her from her children. During the massive rebuilding of the Winter Palace and war with Prussia, which impoverish Elizabeth’s subjects, a steelier, more confident Catherine emerges. Varvara, too, gradually awakens to her own inner strength. Stachniak captures dramatic moments with flair, and the Russian imperial court—with its fox-fur blankets, gilded furniture, and carafes of cherry vodka—appears in glorious splendor. This superb biographical epic proves the Tudors don’t have a monopoly on marital scandal, royal intrigue, or feminine triumph.”

And the good news is Eva is at work on her next novel about Catherine the Great, which Bantam will publish in 2013.

In 2011 Evanovich brought you not one, but two Stephanie Plum novels – Smokin’ Seventeen and Explosive Eighteen. It looks like the Evanovich fever will continue into the New Year with the film adaptation of One for the Money – the book that started the gripping mystery series. 

Katherine Heigl will bring Stephanie Plum to life in One for the Money. In this recent USA Today interview with both superstars, Janet explains the moment when she knew Katherine was right for the role.   

If you have not seen the One for the Money trailer, we suggest you watch now, if you’re a Plum fan it’s very enjoyable. Film hits theaters on January 27.