[issybird]

It's time for us select the book that the New Leaf Book Club will read in April 2019. The theme is The Way I Heard It: Retellings.

Everyone is welcome to join the nomination process even if they'd rather lurk during the voting and discussion; if that is still a little too much commitment, please feel free to suggest titles without making a formal nomination. Also, don't sweat the links. It's helpful to check availability and prices before nominating in order to eliminate anything that's out of the question, but ultimately our global members with different gadgets and preferences will have to check for themselves.

The nominations will run through 7 AM EST, March 7, 2019. Each nomination requires a second and a third to make it to the poll, which will remain open for three days. The discussion of the selection will start on April 15, 2019. Don't forget to show up for the discussion of the February selection, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, on March 15.

Any questions? See below, or just ask!

FAQs for the Nomination, Selection and Discussion process

General Guidelines for the New Leaf Book Club

Official choices with three nominations:

The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey [Bookpossum, gmw, CRussel]
Public domain in Life+50 and Australia | Kobo: $US1.99, $NZ0.99, ￡2.02.

Spoiler:

Josephine Tey's classic novel about Richard III, the hunchback king, whose remains were recently discovered. The Daughter of Time investigates his role in the death of his nephews, the princes in the Tower, and his own death on the battlefield.

Richard III reigned for only two years, and for centuries he was villified as the hunch-backed wicked uncle, murderer of the princes in the Tower. Josephine Tey's novel The Daughter of Time is an investigation into the real facts behind the last Plantagenet king's reign, and an attempt to right what many believe to be the terrible injustice done to him by the Tudor dynasty.

Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard, recuperating from a broken leg, becomes fascinated with a contemporary portrait of Richard III that bears no resemblance to the Wicked Uncle of history. Could such a sensitive, noble face actually belong to one of the world's most heinous villains - a venomous hunchback who may have killed his brother's children to make his crown secure? Or could Richard have been the victim, turned into a monster by the the Tudors?

Grant determines to find out once and for all, with the help of the British Museum and an American scholar, what kind of man Richard III really was and who killed the Princes in the Tower.

190 pp.

The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchett [stuartjmz, Dazrin, gmw]
Kobo $9.62CDN, $11.99AUD, £4.99 | Kindle: AU $11.99, £4.99GBP, CDN$8.99, $8.99US

Spoiler:

Every town on Discworld knows the stories about rats and pipers, and Maurice - a streetwise tomcat - leads a band of educated ratty friends (and a stupid kid) on a nice little earner. Piper plus rats equals lots and lots of money.

Until they run across someone playing a different tune.

Now he and his rats must learn a new concept: evil . . .

368 pp.

The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston [gmw, issybird, Victoria]
Amazon US $9.49 | Amazon UK £6.64 | Amazon CA $12.79 | Amazon AU $12.99 | Kobo US $10.59 | Kobo UK £7.19 | Kobo CA $12.79 | Kobo AU $12.99 | Kobo NZ $13.99

Spoiler:

Goodreads and Wikipedia

272 pp.

Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather[/B] [issybird, bfisher, CRussel]
Public domain in Life+70. MobileRead Library epub: Free | Faded Page all formats: Free | Feedbooks: Free | Kindle US: $9.99 | OverDrive, Audible

Spoiler:

There is something epic—and almost mythic—about this sparsely beautiful novel by Willa Cather, although the story it tells is that of a single human life, lived simply in the silence of the desert. In 1851 Father Jean Marie Latour comes as the Apostolic Vicar to New Mexico. What he finds is a vast territory of red hills and tortuous arroyos, American by law but Mexican and Indian in custom and belief. In the almost forty years that follow, Latour spreads his faith in the only way he knows—gently, although he must contend with an unforgiving landscape, derelict and sometimes openly rebellious priests, and his own loneliness. One of these events Cather gives us an indelible vision of life unfolding in a place where time itself seems suspended.

300 pp.

House of Names by Colm Tóibín [Bookpossum, Bookworm_Girl, bfisher]
Kobo: $US11.99, $C13.99, ￡9.99, $A9.99, $NZ10.99.

Spoiler:

From the thrilling imagination of bestselling, award-winning Colm Tóibín comes this ambitious, violent and modern retelling of one of our oldest and most enduring stories.

I HAVE BEEN ACQUAINTED WITH THE SMELL OF DEATH.
Judged, despised, cursed by gods she has long since lost faith in, the murderess Clytemnestra tells of the deception of Agamemnon, how he sacrificed her eldest daughter - her beloved Iphigenia - to the Trojan campaign; how Clytemnestra used what power she had, seducing the prisoner Aegisthus, turning the government against its lord; plotting the many long years until her beacon fires announce the king's return ...

Electra, daughter of a murdered father, loyal subject of the rightful king, studies Clytemnestra and her lover with cold anger and slow-burning cunning. She watches as they walk the gardens and corridors of the palace. She waits for the traitors to become complacent, to believe they are finally safe; she waits for her exiled brother, Orestes, for the boy to become a warrior, for fate to follow him home. She watches and she waits, until her spies announce her brother's return ...

290 pp.

All The President’s Men by Carl Bernstein & Bob Woodward [Victoria, Catlady, Bookpossum]
Kobo: £6.99 UK, $12.99 Cdn; $4.99 Aud; $4.99 NZD | Kindle: $13.99 US; $4.99 Aud; £4.99 UK

Spoiler:

All the President's Men is a 1974 non-fiction book by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, two of the journalists who investigated the first Watergate break-in and ensuing scandal for The Washington Post. The book chronicles the investigative reporting of Woodward and Bernstein from Woodward's initial report on the Watergate break-in through the resignations of H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, and the revelation of the Nixon tapes by Alexander Butterfield in 1973. It relates the events behind the major stories the duo wrote for the Post, naming some sources who had previously refused to be identified for their initial articles, notably Hugh Sloan. It also gives detailed accounts of Woodward's secret meetings with his source Deep Throat, whose identity was kept hidden for over 30 years.[1] Gene Roberts, the former executive editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer and former managing editor of The New York Times, has called the work of Woodward and Bernstein "maybe the single greatest reporting effort of all time."

368 pp.

The Wild Girl by Kate Forsyth [Catlady, Bookworm_Girl, bfisher]
Amazon US, $7.99 | Kobo US, $7.99 | Kobo CA $8.99 | Kobo AU $10.99 | Kobo NZ $10.99 | Kobo UK £5.63 | OverDrive, Hoopla

Spoiler:

One of six sisters, Dortchen Wild lives in the small German kingdom of Hesse-Cassel in the early 19th century. She finds herself irresistibly drawn to the boy next door, the handsome but very poor fairy-tale scholar Wilhelm Grimm.

It is a time of tyranny and terror. Napoleon Bonaparte wants to conquer all of Europe, and Hesse-Cassel is one of the first kingdoms to fall. Forced to live under oppressive French rule, Wilhelm and his brothers quietly rebel by preserving old, half-forgotten tales that had once been told by firesides of houses grand and small all over the land.

As Dortchen tells Wilhelm some of the most powerful and compelling stories in what will one day become his and Jacob's famous fairy-tale collection, their love blossoms. But Dortchen's father will not give his consent for them to marry, and war, death, and poverty also conspire to keep the lovers apart. Yet Dortchen is determined to find a way.

Evocative and richly detailed, Kate Forsyth's The Wild Girl masterfully captures one young woman's enduring faith in love and the power of storytelling.

496 pp.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie [Victoria, CRussel, Dazrin]
Kobo: $11.99 AUD; £5.49 UK; $7.99 US | Kindle: $7.99 US; £5.49UK; $10.99 AUD

Spoiler:

Christie’s method of telling was considered controversial, but saying any more would be a spoiler. In 2013, the British Crime Writers' Association voted it the best crime novel ever, and it’s usually placed near the top in similar polls. However, in fairness, other reviewers have considered the praise quite overblown.

Poirot retires to a village near the home of a friend he met in London, Roger Ackroyd, who agrees to keep him anonymous, as he pursues his retirement project of perfecting vegetable marrows. He is not long at this pursuit when his friend is murdered. Ackroyd's niece calls Poirot in to ensure that the guilt does not fall on Ackroyd's stepson; Poirot promises to find the truth, which she accepts.

256 pp.