Tijuana Straits

About the Author:

Kem Nunn is an American fiction novelist, surfer, magazine and television writer from California. His novels have been described as "surf-noir" for their dark themes, political overtones and surf settings. He is the author of five novels, including his seminal surf novel Tapping the Source.

He has collaborated with HBO Producer David Milch on the show Deadwood and with Milch co-produced the HBO series John from Cincinnati, a surfing series set in Imperial Beach, California which premiered on June 10, 2007.

Review

"Sam Fahey, an ex-con and ex-surfer now running a worm farm, is tracking a pack of feral dogs in the Tijuana River Valley when he encounters a badly beaten Mexican woman stumbling across the dunes near Tijuana Straits, a legendary surf spot. But surfing is only a backdrop in Nunn's intense, beautifully written literary thriller; the novel's real subject is the lawless U.S.-Mexico border, and its real story revolves around three damaged lives: the Mexican refugee, an activist named Magdalena Rivera fighting for economic and environmental justice in industrial Tijuana; Armando Santoya, whose life spirals into a drug-fueled rage when his baby is poisoned by the toxic chemicals his wife works with; and Fahey himself, a fully realized antihero struggling to atone for his own troubled life. In a series of long flashbacks, Nunn relates their backstories — along with the painful history of a rugged chunk of the Southern California coast — setting the stage for a powerful, visceral denouement. The novel is an elegy of lost innocence, an exploration of the corrupting power of greed and progress on the land and the people, but its triumph is the complete integration of character and plot. This is a sad but deeply satisfying and intensely moving story. With this fifth novel, Nunn has written a terrific book that more than affirms the promise of his early work.

When Fahey, once a great surfer, now a reclusive ex-con, meets Magdalena, she is running from a pack of wild dogs along the ragged wasteland where California and Mexico meet the Pacific Ocean — a spot once known to the men who rode its giant waves as the Tijuana Straits. Magdalena has barely survived an attack that forced her to flee Tijuana, and Fahey takes her in. That he is willing to do so runs contrary to his every instinct, for Fahey is done with the world, seeking little more than solitude from this all-but-forgotten corner of the Golden State. Nor is Fahey a stranger to the lawless ways of the border. He worries that in sheltering this woman he may not only be inviting further entanglements but may be placing them both at risk. In this, he is not wrong.

An environmental activist, Magdalena has become engaged in the struggle for the health and rights of the thousands of peasants streaming from Mexico's enervated heartland to work in the maquilladoras — the foreign-owned factories that line her country's border, polluting its air and fouling its rivers. It is a risky contest. Danger can come from many directions, from government officials paid to preserve the status quo to thugs hired to intimidate reformers.
As Magdalena and Fahey become closer, Magdalena tries to discover who is out to get her, attempting to reconstruct the events that delivered her, battered and confused, into Fahey's strange yet oddly seductive world. She examines every lead, never guessing the truth. For into this no-man's-land between two countries comes a trio of killers led by Armando Santoya, a man beset by personal tragedy, an aberration born of the very conditions Magdalena has dedicated her life to fight against, yet who in the throes of his own drug-fueled confusions has marked her for death. And so will Fahey be put to the test, in a final duel on the beaches of his Tijuana Straits.

Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen

About the Author:

Susan Gregg Gilmore has written for the Chattanooga Times Free Press, the Los Angeles Times, and the Christian Science Monitor.

Review:

The town of Ringgold, Georgia, has a population of 1,923, one traffic light, one Dairy Queen, and one Catherine Grace Cline. Quickwitted and more than a little stubborn, Catherine Grace is dying to escape her small-town life.
When her dream to go to Atlanta becomes a reality, she immediately makes the move, leaving behind the boy she loves. But all too soon, tragedy brings Catherine Grace back home. As a series of extraordinary events alter her perspective, Catherine Grace begins to wonder if her place in the world may actually be, against all odds, right where she began.

Sometimes you have to return to the place where you began, to arrive at the place where you belong.

It's the early 1970s. The town of Ringgold, Georgia, has a population of 1,923, one traffic light, one Dairy Queen, and one Catherine Grace Cline. The daughter of Ringgold's third-generation Baptist preacher, Catherine Grace is quick-witted, more than a little stubborn, and dying to escape her small-town life.
Every Saturday afternoon, she sits at the Dairy Queen, eating Dilly Bars and plotting her getaway to the big city of Atlanta. And when, with the help of a family friend, the dream becomes a reality, Catherine Grace immediately packs her bags, leaving her family and the boy she loves to claim the life she's always imagined. But before things have even begun to get off the ground in Atlanta, tragedy brings her back home. As a series of extraordinary events alters her perspective — and sweeping changes come to Ringgold itself-Catherine Grace begins to wonder if her place in the world may actually be, against all odds, right where she began.

"Every female will find herself identifying with Catherine Grace's search for her place in the world." Chattanooga Times Free Press

"Susan Gregg Gilmore's debut novel, Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen, is storytelling at its best, entertaining and lively and full of surprises. Catherine Grace Cline, the endearing witty heroine, gives her domestic journey titles of Biblical proportion as she finds more than salvation along the way." Jill McCorkle, author of Carolina Moon

Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing

About the Author:
Mignon Fogarty is the creator of Grammar Girl and founder of the Quick and Dirty Tips Network. A technical writer and entrepreneur, she has served as an editor and producer at a number of health and science Web sites. She has a B.A. in English from the University of Washington in Seattle and an M.S. in biology from Stanford University. She lives in Reno, Nevada.

"Grammar Girl's daily e-mail tips and podcasts are invaluable. And now, congratulations on a year on paper, Grammar Girl! This book should be on every writer's shelf, and in this age of e-mail and blogs, that's almost everyone."

Review:

Mignon Fogarty, a.k.a. Grammar Girl, is determined to wipe out bad grammarbut shes also determined to make the process as painless as possible. One year ago, she created a weekly podcast to tackle some of the most common mistakes people make while communicating. The podcasts have now been downloaded more than seven million times, and Mignon has dispensed grammar tips on Oprah and appeared on the pages of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today.
Written with the wit, warmth, and accessibility that the podcasts are known for, Grammar Girls Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing covers the grammar rules and word-choice guidelines that can confound even the best writers. From “between vs. among” and “although vs. while” to comma splices and misplaced modifiers, Mignon offers memory tricks and clear explanations that will help readers recall and apply those troublesome grammar rules. Chock-full of tips on style, business writing, and effective e-mailing, Grammar Girls print debut deserves a spot on every communicators desk.

If Nobody speaks of Remarkable Things

About the Author

Jon McGregor is twenty-six, and this is his first novel. It was published in Britain in 2002 to critical acclaim, and was inspired in part by the phenomenal media attention that surrounded the death of Princess Diana. Around the same time, a young man was shot in McGregor’s own neighborhood; the novel, he writes, is about “how the everyday miracles of life and death go unwitnessed in favor of celebrity and sensation, and the difficulty of experiencing community in an increasingly transient society.” McGregor lives in Nottingham, England.

Review:

If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things is a haunting story of the events that transpire over a single day at the end of summer on a small urban street in England. Risky in conception and "daringly un-ironic" for our times, this is a prose poem of a novel — intense and highly evocative — with a whodunit at its center, which keeps the reader in suspense until the final page.
In delicate, intricately observed close-up, we are invited into the private lives of the street's residents to witness their hopes, fears, and unspoken despairs: the man with scarred hands who tried in vain to save his wife from a burning house, a group of young club-goers just home from an all-night rave, the nervous young man at number 18 who collects weird junk and is haunted by the specter of unrequited love.
The peace and tranquility of the unexceptional day are shattered at day's end when the street becomes the scene of a terrible accident. This tragedy and an utterly surprising twist provide the momentum for the book. But it is the author's exquisite rendition of the ordinary, the everyday, that gives this novel its original freshness, its sense of beauty, wonder, and hope.