Under The Lamplight

Explore the ties that bind us in great May reads about love, loss, murder and music.

By Caroline Leavitt
Published: May 09, 2008
Photography by Reading in Bed by Bruce Yardley

Madapple
by Christina Meldrum
Knopf, $16.99
Are divine miracles possible? In this eerie psychological thriller, Meldrum probes the thin line between reality and the spiritual world. Aslaug is a young woman raised in isolation and immersed in ancient lore by her control freak mother. When her mother dies, Aslaug begins to uncover the shocking mysteries of her family, even as she is charged with murder. As the secrets unravel her life, the novel becomes a touch heavy-handed, but all is redeemed by the shattering, hypnotic finale.

Invisible Chains: Shawn Hornbeck and the Kidnapping Case That Shook the Nation
by Kristina Sauerwein
The Lyons Press, $18.95
In 2002, 11-year-old Shawn Hornbeck was snatched off the street, and four years later became one of the rare and lucky victims to be found and rescued. Astonishingly, Shawn had been hidden in plain sight, going to school, posting internet messages, even having a girlfriend. Why, the media screamed, didn’t he try to escape? Former reporter Sauerwein explores how fear rewires the brain, causing Stockholm syndrome, where in order to survive, a captive bonds with his captor. The chilling true crime story and the author’s astute psychological analysis of Hornbeck’s ordeal make this one not to miss.

Welcome to Shirley: A Memoir From an Atomic Town
By Kelly McMasters
Public Affairs, $24.95
Journalist McMasters’ achingly fine memoir is both a valentine to her hometown and a look at the rotting core of the American dream. Although economically depressed, Shirley, Long Island, was full of friends and bike paths, a paradise for a kid right up until neighbors began dying of cancer, courtesy of the top secret Brookhaven National Laboratory, which leaked toxins into the water supply. Deeply personal and disturbing, Welcome to Shirley is both elegy to a beloved home and an indictment of environmental abuse.

Unaccustomed Earth
by Jhumpa Lahari
Knopf, $25.00
Pulitzer Prize winner Jhumpha Lahiri crafts eight jewel-perfect stories about Bengalis in America caught between the rituals of their traditional parents and the pull of modern mores. While all the stories are exceptional, the one that really dazzles is Hema and Kaushik. In these three linked narratives, two fated lovers find their destiny slowly and irrevocably thwarted by tragedy. Elegant and eloquent, Lahiri’s stories positively shimmer.

Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon—and the Journey of a Generation
by Sheila Weller
Atria Books, $27.95
Time trip back to the glory days of three incredible music icons: earth mother Carole King, ethereal Joni Mitchell and uptown siren Carly Simon in this addictive funfest. Page after page unfurls with delicious gossipy nuggets: King married an ex-con, Mitchell was haunted by the baby she gave up, and Simon fretted that hubby James Taylor dismissed her music. Told with a delicious feminist slant, Weller reveals how each of these women struggled against the era’s male chauvinism with determined aplomb. Tons of fun and absolutely irresistible.

Compulsive reader Caroline Leavitt is the author of 8 novels, most recently Girls in Trouble, she can be reached at her website, http://www.carolineleavitt.com.

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