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Hotlists 2008
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Booklists
Lists of books, many of which received at least one starred review (indicating a work of unusual merit) from the following review sources: Booklist , Publisher's Weekly (PW), Kirkus and Library Journal (LJ). Additional titles of interest may be included on the lists. Titles are generally listed alphabetically by author.
Overbooked specializes in providing timely information about fiction (all genres) and readable nonfiction. Overbooked has been online since 1994. Overbooked is a work in progress . . .
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Booklists and Suggested Reading
Summer Camp Stars
Page Modified: August 19, 2008
Annotations are from Advance, the Ingram Book Magazine, unless noted.
Nonfiction
- Looking for Miracles: A Memoir About Loving
Author: Hotchner, A.E.
Publisher: HarperCollins $ 12.95 ISBN: 0060119659 Date: 1974
Updated 6.4.07 - Sleepaway: The Girls of Summer and the Camps They Love
Author: Kahn, Laurie Susan
Publisher: Workman $ 15.95 ISBN: 0761126910 Date: 2003
With the warm nostalgic feel of a scrapbook, Sleepaway transports grown-up campers back to the treasured days of summer and their first taste of independence
Updated 6.4.07 - Not a Happy Camper
Author: Schneider, Mindy
Publisher: Grove $ 24 ISBN: 9780802118486 Date: 2007
Remember those long sultry summer days at camp, the sun setting over the lake as you sang Kumbaya? Well, Mindy Schneider remembers her summer at Camp Kin-A-Hurra in 1974 just a wee bit differently. Not a Happy Camper chronicles a young girl’ s adventures at a camp where the sun never shines, the breakfast cereal dates back to the summer of 1922, and many of the counselors speak no English. For eight eye-opening and unforgettable weeks, Mindy and her eccentric band of friends — including Autumn Evening Schwartz, the daughter of hippies who communicates with the dead, and the sleep-dancing, bibliophile Betty Gilbert — keep busy feuding in color wars, failing at sports, and uncovering the camp’ s hidden past. As she focuses on landing the perfect boyfriend and longs for her first kiss, Mindy unexpectedly stumbles across something infinitely grander: herself. Hilarious, charming, and glowing with nostalgia, Mindy Schneider’ s memoir is a must-read for anyone who’ s ever been to summer camp, or wishes they had. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 6.4.07 - Cabin Pressure: One Man's Desperate Attempt to Recapture His Youth at Summer Camp
Author: Wolk, Josh
Publisher: Hyperion $ 22.95 ISBN: 9781401302603 Date: 2007
Kirkus PW
A hilarious and insightful look at the tenacious power of nostalgia, the glory of childhood, and the nervous excitement of taking a leap to the next unknown stage in life, Wolk has written a book for anyone who wishes to be young again but knows deep down it probably isn't a good idea.
Updated 5.21.07
Fiction
- Fear of Frying
Author: Churchill, Jill
Publisher: Morrow $ 22 ISBN: 0380973243 Date: 19977
When Jane and Shelly head off to the mountains of Wisconsin to check out a summer camp for kids, they are greeted on their first night with the discovery of a corpse that has been bludgeoned with a heavy-duty skillet. When the body disappears, then reappears very much alive, Jane decides to investigate.
Updated 6.4.07 -
Watch Your Mouth
Author: Handler, Daniel
Publisher: St Martins $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312209401 Date: 2000
Booklist
When Joseph goes to stay with his girlfriend Cynthia's family for the summer, he plans running the crafts shack at camp by day, and romping in Cyn's bed by night. As the summer grows hotter and stickier, life in the Glass house begins to shatter in all kinds of irresistibly gruesome ways that only the fiendishly funny imagination of the author of The Basic Eight could conjure up.
Updated 6/30/00 - Maggody and the Moonbeams
Author: Hess, Joan
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 23 ISBN: 0743202295 Date: 2001
Booklist
Arly Hanks--the wiliest chief of police in the Ozarks--is back on the case in Joan Hess's latest comedy-filled whodunit. And this time around, the intrepid sleuth just may have met her match: to her horror, she's been pressed into service as camp chaperone for the church youth group.
Updated 5/17/01 - Born Again
Author: Kerney, Kelly A.
Publisher: Harvest $ 14 ISBN: 0156031450 Date: 2006
Kirkus
What happens when a Bible Quiz champion takes on Darwin? Mel, a faith-filled Pentecostal, has the chance to escape Slow Rapids, Indiana, by attending academic summer camp. The only catch? She has to read forbidden tomes like The Origin of Species.
Suggested Reading: Debuts
Updated 5.24.06 - Avoidance
Author: Lowenthal, Michael
Publisher: Graywolf $ 16 (trade paper) ISBN: 1555973671 Date: 2002
Library Journal PW
Jeremy struggles to write his dissertation on the Amish and the laws of expulsion. How does someone, excluded entirely from the only community they have ever known, live the rest of their life? After extensive interviews with Beulah— a young woman banished— Jeremy is no closer to understanding her choice than he is to his own peculiar exile.
Camp Ironwood, set in the Vermont woods, is more than a summer distraction for restless adolescent boys— it is a place to belong. And not unlike the Amish community, it is a place where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. For Jeremy, first as a camper and later as the co-director, the usual camp activities become their own kind of ritual that binds the community. But when he is blindsided by the seductive charm of Max, a fourteen-year-old boy from Manhattan, all arms and legs and attitude, Jeremy must confront his desires, and worse yet, uncover the dark secrets of his beloved Camp Ironwood.
In this powerful and daring novel, Lowenthal elegantly draws unexpected parallels between the Amish and Camp Ironwood. By doing so, he ingeniously explores an age-old dilemma: individual desires versus the good of a community. - Publisher Marketing
Updated 10.08.02 - Shelter
Author: Phillips, Jayne Anne
Publisher: Houghton $ 21.95 ISBN: 0395488907 Date: 1994
PW
Jayne Anne Phillips, whose Machine Dreams was chosen one of the Best Books of the Year by the New York Times, returns with a remarkable novel set in a West Virginia girls' camp in 1963--where Lenny and Alma are forever transformed by violence, family secrets, and surprising turns of love. "A tremendously talented writer".--Publishers Weekly.
Updated 6.4.07 - The Tongues of Angels
Author: Price, Reynolds
Publisher: Scribner $ 17.95 ISBN: 0689120931 Date: 2007
Two themes seem central to all Reynolds Price's work--the twin powers of memory and of artistry. In this new novel, a middle-aged painter recalls the events and people of the year he turned twenty-one--in particular a gifted young boy, "whose death I may have caused". His reminiscences of that long-ago time reveal the crucial forces that shaped him as an artist and as a man.
Updated 6.4.07 - The J.A. P. Chronicles
Author: Rose, Isabel
Publisher: Doubleday $ 23.95 ISBN: 0385512864 Date: 2005
"What happens to Mean Girls, and the girls they are mean to, when they grow up? Isabel Rose takes a group of young girls to summer camp and then on to neurotic adulthood, to answer these questions in a fast, fun and furious read." --Rona Jaffe, author of The Best of Everything
Updated 6.4.07 - Responsible Men
Author: Schwarzchild, Edward
Publisher: Algonquin $ 23.95 ISBN: 156512409x Date: 2005
Kirkus
Is there really such a thing as a responsible man? Max Wolinsky, a swindling salesman, asks this question when old associates want in on his latest scam. Further complicating the situation are family dysfunctions and Max's attempts to reconnect with his father, uncle, and teen-aged son.
Updated 1.11.05 - Jesus Saves
Author: Steinke, Darcey
Publisher: Atlantic $ 23 ISBN: 0871136937 Date: 2007
NYTBR Notable
At the center of a suburban gothic community are two girls: Sandy Patrick, who has been abducted from summer camp and now smiles from missing-child posters all over town; and Ginger, a troubled minister's daughter, whose fixation on Sandy borders on obsession. Ultimately, the two young women are brought together by a violent and dispossessed man, who leads them into a night of diabolical terror and the final confrontation between the sacred and the profane.
Updated 6.4.07 - Bless the Beasts and Children
Author: Swarthout, Gendon Fred
Publisher: Doubleday $ 7.95 ISBN: 0385033621 Date:1971
The classic novel of youthful rebellion. With an insightful and heartfelt introduction by the author's son, which gives readers a unique view of this American classic, Bless the Beasts and Children is sure to continue its phenomenal journey as one of the most beloved novels of our time.
Updated 6.4.07 - Night of the Moonbow
Author: Tryon, Thomas
Publisher: Knopf $ 18.95 ISBN: 039456006x Date: 1989
When Leo Joaquim's cabinmates at a Bible camp learn he is not an athlete, their disappointment gradually escalates to extreme proportions, culminating in a horrifying conspiracy against him. A gripping novel of terror similar to Tryon's first book, The Other.
Updated 6.4.07 - City Boy: The Adventures of Herbie Bookbinder
Author: Wouk, Herman
Publisher: Doubleday $ 12.95 ISBN: 0385040725 Date:1969
City Boy spins a hilarious and often touching tale of an urban kid's adventures and misadventures on the street, in school, in the countryside, always in pursuit of Lucille, a heartless redhead personifying all the girls who torment and fascinate pubescent lads of eleven.
Updated 6.4.07
Hotlists
African American Fiction | Christian Fiction
2008 Excel Files: (download - print, sort, etc.)
Crime Fiction | Fiction | African American Fiction | Christian Fiction | Nonfiction Notables
Stars
Fiction: Jan-June | July-Dec Crime Fiction: Jan-June | July-Dec
Speculative Fiction Romance Historical Nonfiction | YA
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