A Week of Entertainment: Books Reviewed in Entertainment Weekly 31 Jul 09

Each week Entertainment Weekly reviews a small selection of popular new books. Titles available for the Kindle reviewed in the July 31st issue include:


The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson. Random House. THRILLER. EW's slant: "...gripping, stay-up-all-night read...also a bit sloppy..." Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (72 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99.
"Mikael Blomkvist, crusading journalist and publisher of the magazine Millennium, has decided to run a story that will expose an extensive sex trafficking operation between Eastern Europe and Sweden, implicating well-known and highly placed members of Swedish society, business, and government. But he has no idea just how explosive the story will be until, on the eve of publication, the two investigating reporters are murdered. And even more shocking for Blomkvist: the fingerprints found on the murder weapon belong to Lisbeth Salander - the troubled, wise-beyond-her-years genius hacker who came to his aid in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo..." - Amazon.

Perfect Lifeby Jessica Shattuck. Norton. NOVEL. EW's slant: "...smart, sad rumination on the pursuit of happiness...with her elegant prose, Shattuck manages to make her characters' stories feel both engrossing and utterly real." Amazon customer rating: none yet. Kindle edition $9.99.
"Two years ago, Neil Banks walked into a bathroom in the Pacific Fertility Center to provide his former college girlfriend, Jenny Callahan, with the biological material needed to conceive a child. Becoming a father was not part of the deal: adrift in his postmodern Los Angeles lifestyle, he signed away all paternity rights. But on the day of the baby's christening, Neil turns up at the church. His unexpected - and unauthorized - return to Jenny's privileged East Coast world sends a shockwave through the families of Jenny and her two college roommates - and sets off this deeply funny and keenly observed novel about fertility, love, and American excess..." - Amazon.

Glover's Mistakeby Nick Laird. Viking. NOVEL. EW's slant: "...Iago with an IP address...the dark side of desire." Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (13 reviews). Kindle edition $14.27.
"...Set in the London art scene awash with new money and intellectual pretension, in the sleek galleries and posh restaurants of a Britannia resurgent with cultural and economic power, Nick Laird's insightful and drolly satirical novel vividly portrays three people whose world gradually fractures along the ineluctable fault lines of desire, truth, deceit, and jealousy. With wit, compassion, and acuity, Laird explores the very nature of contemporary romance - The Death of Love in Modern Culture, - as David puts it in one of his dyspeptic blog posts-among damaged souls whose hearts and heads never quite line up long enough for them to achieve true happiness." - Amazon.
$9.99 or less alternative: Compulsionby Keith Ablow.

How to Make Love to Adrian Colesberryby Adrian Colesberry. Publisher. HUMOR. EW's slant: "...while Colesberry's lovemaking may be many-hued, his joke writing is fairly monochromatic." Amazon customer rating: none yet. Kindle edition $9.99.
"...In an act of generosity, Adrian Colesberry has written an exquisitely detailed guidebook to ensure that every reader knows precisely how to please him - in bed and beyond.... Recounting dozens of annoying peccadilloes and helpful pro tips gleaned from his experiences with former lovers, Colesberry covers all corners to ensure that no stage of the court-and-conquer process is overlooked... A pitch-perfect parody that spares no detail, How to Make Love to Adrian Colesberry is a hilarious and filthy new entrant into the fratire genre." - Amazon.

The Night Counterby Alia Yunis. Shaye Areheart Books. FIRST NOVEL. EW's slant: "...impressive if uneven first novel...rich in character and spirit." Amazon customer rating: 5 stars (4 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99.
"Yunis takes readers on a magic carpet ride examining the lives of Fatima Abdullah and her huge dysfunctional family. Imitating Scheherazade, Fatima - in a clever twist - spins her own tales to the legendary storyteller. And she has plenty of material: Fatima is dying, and more interested in her prized possessions - including a house in Lebanon - than in reuniting her splintered offspring and her estranged husband, Ibraham, whose enduring love is proved in a neat twist at the end of the novel. Fatima's family is all over the country, all with issues, including daughter Laila battling breast cancer in Detroit, openly gay actor grandson Amir in Los Angeles and pregnant great-granddaughter Aisha in Minneapolis... Add in a bumbling neophyte FBI agent seeing al-Qaeda smoke where there is no fire and the result is a sometimes serious, sometimes funny, but always touching tale of a Middle Eastern family putting down deep roots on U.S. soil." - Publishers Weekly.