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Each week Entertainment Weekly reviews a small selection of popular new books. Titles available for the Kindle reviewed in the June 17th issue include:

Robopocalypse, by Daniel H. Wilson. Doubleday, 2011. Print length: 304 p. NOVEL. EW's slant: "It's worth reading before Spielberg's version hits screens in 2013." Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (52 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $13.57. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"In the not-too-distant future, robots have made our lives a lot easier: they help clean our kitchens, drive our cars, and fight our wars - until they are turned into efficient murderers by a sentient artificial intelligence buried miles below the surface of Alaska. Robopocalypse is a fast-paced sci-fi thriller that makes a strong case that mindless fun can also be wildly inventive. The war is told as an oral history, assembled from interviews, security camera footage, and first- and secondhand testimonies, similar to Max Brook's zombie epic World War Z. ...Robopocalypse may not be the most unique tale about the war between man and machine, but it's certainly one of the most fun." - Kevin Nguyen for Amazon.com Review.

Maine, by J. Courtney Sullivan. Knopf, 2011. Print length: 400 p. NOVEL. EW's slant: "...brisk storytelling, and the unfurling of its central mystery, still sweep readers along with gratifying sink-into-your-desk-chair ease." Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (22 reviews). Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $14.78. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"For the Kellehers, Maine is a place where children run in packs, showers are taken outdoors, and old Irish songs are sung around a piano at night. Their beachfront property, won on a barroom bet after the war, sits on three acres of sand and pine nestled between stretches of rocky coast, with one tree bearing the initials A.H. At the cottage, built by Kelleher hands, cocktail hour follows morning mass, nosy grandchildren snoop in drawers, and decades-old grudges simmer beneath the surface. As three generations of Kelleher women descend on the property one summer, each brings her own hopes and fears. Maggie is thirty-two and pregnant, waiting for the perfect moment to tell her imperfect boyfriend the news; Ann Marie, a Kelleher by marriage, is channeling her domestic frustration into a dollhouse obsession and an ill-advised crush; Kathleen, the black sheep, never wanted to set foot in the cottage again; and Alice, the matriarch at the center of it all, would trade every floorboard for a chance to undo the events of one night, long ago..." - author's web site.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, by Ransom Riggs. Quirk Books, 2011. Print length: 352 p. Optimized for larger screens. While this edition can be read on the standard Kindle, it features a number of photos and has been optimized for reading on devices with larger screens such as Kindle DX, Kindle for PC/Mac, and Kindle for iPad. NOVEL. EW's slant: "With its X-Men: First Class-meets-time-travel story line, David Lynchian imagery, and rich, eerie detail, it's no wonder Miss Peregrine's Home has been snapped up by Twentieth Century Fox." Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (29 reviews). Kindle edition $9.89; Hardcover $10.79. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. And a strange collection of very curious photographs. It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience. As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children who once lived here - one of whom was his own grandfather - were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a desolate island for good reason. And somehow - impossible though it seems - they may still be alive." - Amazon.

Sisterhood Everlasting, by Ann Brashares. Random House, 2011. Print length: 368 p. NOVEL. EW's slant: "...a deftly told narrative of finding one's adult self..." Amazon customer rating: none yet. Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $13.44. Text-to-Speech: Enabled. This is book five in Brashares' Sisterhood Series which began with The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.
"Tibby, Lena, Carmen, and Bridget have grown up, starting their lives on their own. And though the jeans they shared are long gone, the sisterhood is everlasting. Despite having jobs and men that they love, each knows that something is missing: the closeness that once sustained them. Carmen is a successful actress in New York, engaged to be married, but misses her friends. Lena finds solace in her art, teaching in Rhode Island, but still thinks of Kostos and the road she didn’t take. Bridget lives with her longtime boyfriend, Eric, in San Francisco, and though a part of her wants to settle down, a bigger part can’t seem to shed her old restlessness. Then Tibby reaches out to bridge the distance, sending the others plane tickets for a reunion that they all breathlessly await. And indeed, it will change their lives forever..." - from the hardcover edition.

State of Wonder, by Ann Patchett. Harper Collins, 2011. Print Length: 368 p. NOVEL. Amazon customer rating: 4 1/2 stars (44 reviews). EW's slant: "The book's dreamlike claustrophobia weaves a spell even when far-fetched plot twists tip toward absurdity...a trip well worth taking." Kindle edition $12.99; Hardcover $14.50. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"Marina Singh gave up a career as a doctor after botching an emergency delivery as an intern, opting instead for the more orderly world of research for a pharmaceutical company. When office colleague Anders Eckman, sent to the Amazon to check on the work of a field team, is reported dead, Marina is asked by her company's CEO to complete Anders' task and to locate his body. What Marina finds in the sweltering, insect-infested jungles of the Amazon shakes her to her core. For the team is headed by esteemed scientist Annick Swenson, the woman who oversaw Marina's residency and who is now intent on keeping the team's progress on a miracle drug completely under wraps. Marina's jungle odyssey includes exotic encounters with cannibals and snakes, a knotty ethical dilemma about the basic tenets of scientific research, and joyous interactions with the exuberant people of the Lakashi tribe, who live on the compound." - Joanne Wilkinson for Booklist.

Briefly Mentioned

The Frozen Rabbi, by Steve Stern. Algonquin Books, 2010. Print length: 384 p. NOVEL. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (19 reviews). Kindle edition $9.48; Paperback $11.06. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.

"Stern’s uproarious and trouncing romp through the anguish and ironies of the Jewish diaspora matches mysticism with mayhem, beatitude with organized crime, creativity with crassness. The madcap, at times, surreal action revolves around Rabbi Eliezer ben Zephyr, whose out-of-body journeys to the realm of the divine result in his being frozen in a block of ice in the Jewish Pale in 1889, a frigid relic that becomes one family’s problematic inheritance. In scenes of vivid drama and burlesque comedy on the same epic scale as Stern’s The Angel of Forgetfulness (2005), the rabbi-on-ice is transported through a pogrom and across the Atlantic under the guardianship of a raven-haired woman protectively disguised as a man, who finds sanctuary with the sweet-natured, hunchbacked inventor Shmerl Karp in the roiling Lower East Side. Finally, in 1999, the 'great thaw' brings the reanimated rabbi and misfit teen Bernie Karp together in a suburb of Memphis, Tennessee..." - Donna Seaman for Booklist.

The Taken: A Hazel Micallef Mystery, by Inger Ash Wolfe. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010. Print length: 432 p. THRILLER. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (29 reviews). Kindle edition $10.04; Paperback $11.16. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Hazel Micallef is none too pleased to be recuperating from back surgery in the home of her ex-husband. But her mother Emily is too frail to care for her 62-year-old daughter, and Andrew Micallef's new wife Glynnis seems determined to be nerve-wrackingly kind to her invalid predecessor. So Hazel barely minds being called back to the Port Dundas OPS when DC James Wingate, who never really wanted to be in charge of the provincial Ontario outpost, gets a report of a body pulled from Lake Gannon by tourists. The 'body' turns out to be a mannequin, but a number stamped on the headless dummy's torso leads to a video feed of what looks like someone held captive in a basement. Meanwhile, The Port Dundas Record begins to publish chapters of a work by local writer Colin Eldwin, whose plot eerily tracks the Lake Gannon discovery..." - Amazon.

The Last Detective, by Peter Lovesey. Soho Crime, 2003. Print length: 336 p. MYSTERY. Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (12 reviews). Kindle edition $8.59; Paperback $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Irascible, corpulent, cynical Chief Superintendent Peter Diamond of the Avon and Somerset murder squad attributes Britain's decline as a world power to the abolition of capital punishment in 1964. Spurning computer gadgetry, he sticks to common sense, index cards and gumshoeing: Knocking on doors. That's how we get results. The almost clueless case of the naked woman's body found floating in Chew Valley Lake poses a supreme challenge for the detective, who is anxious to clear his name of recent charges of brutality. The belated identification of the victim as actress Geraldine Snoo, written out of a BBC soap opera two years before, leads to one surprise after another..." - Publishers Weekly.
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Note to readers: The book prices quoted here are the Amazon.com prices in effect at the time of the blog posting. Please follow the links to the individual book to check the current price.


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