The Inner Sanctum

Shelf Awareness has reviewed Douglas Kennedy’s The Woman in the Fifth (Atria, Paperback: 9781451602111, eBook: 9781451602142) in their July 5th “Shelf Awareness for Readers.” See below for the full review!

Douglas Kennedy (The Moment; Leaving the World) offers up a gritty tale of lost lives, betrayal and murder set in Paris’s seedy underbelly. Readers looking for a cure for the common romance need look no further.

Fleeing a shattered marriage, an ill-fated affair and a brewing legal storm, disgraced film professor Harry Ricks takes refuge in Paris, but the City of Lights is no dream come true. Destitute, Harry barely manages to afford a tiny chambre de bonne alongside criminals and illegal immigrants. Financial need forces him to take a shady position as night watchman for illegal activities. Alone and embattled by suspicious neighbors, Harry spends his time dodging threats and trying to contact his angry daughter, until he meets Margit Kadar. Mature, intelligent and alluring, Margit stokes Harry’s dormant passion into an inferno, and the two strike up a torrid affair. However, a catastrophic series of events soon makes Harry question whether Margit’s mysterious demeanor hides a wounded heart or a sinister nature.

Kennedy’s blunt depiction of Paris’s immigré class provides a grainy backdrop to the layers of danger and manipulation Harry faces in his new dog-eat-dog reality. Kennedy creates an ever-expanding web of tension as Harry proves unable to escape calamity. Kennedy also explores the concept of communal guilt, as catastrophes are created by chains of events in which none of the participants are truly innocent. While the reader will by design vacillate between sympathy and contempt for Harry, the enigmatic Margit steals the show in this noir-style page-turner. –Jaclyn Fulwood, graduate assistant, University of Oklahoma Libraries

Discover: A gritty tale of passion turned deadly in Paris’s underbelly.

Because it is almost that time of year (Valentine’s Day!), who better than to share his thoughts on love than Douglas Kennedy—author of nine previous novels, including the international bestseller Leaving the World. Kennedy was recently the keynote speaker at the American Library Association Conference. Below is a choice excerpt from his 8 AM speech:

“I want to talk today about one of the biggest conundrums that we face during our lifetime – perhaps the largest difficulty we grapple with as sentient beings. It’s the thing we long for the most and, as such, also so frequently vexes and disappoints us.

Of course, what I am speaking about is: love.

Now I must begin by saying that discussing love at eight in the morning is hardly something I usually do. Rather, this is a subject best suited for a low-lit cocktail bar around ten at night, just after the third Manhattan or Gin Martini has been ordered, and the pianist is tinkling ‘My Baby Don’t Care About Me’ on the ivories, and a sort of sad ‘nostalgie’ has descended on the surroundings.


But here we are today discussing love at eight am – an hour when the only people in the world considering this subject are couples newly in love and sharing a post-coital breakfast together, or all those embittered, wounded, grieving souls sitting in a therapist’s office (been there, done that), venting on about why it all has gone so dreadfully wrong…

Now if I was to go around this room I am certain I would hear story after story about disappointment in love. The person who was so right for you but got away. The love you showered on someone who never reciprocated it. The love that soured and atrophied. The love that you dodged.


And if there is one thing I know about the human condition it is this: the biggest argument in life is the one that you have with yourself. As such a larger question arises: do we really believe that we merit happiness? When it comes our way, do we often find ways of sidestepping it?

My new novel, THE MOMENT , grapples with these large questions, but also with another profoundly difficult subject: the loss of true love.”

Whew! To read the full speech (and you should), click here.

Atria will publish THE MOMENT (9781439180792) on May 3, 2011. The novel centers around Thomas Nesbitt—a divorced, middle-aged American writer living a private life in rural Maine. He is confronted by his past when he receives a package postmarked Berlin and from “Dussman”—the name of the woman with whom he had an intense love affair twenty-six years ago in Berlin during the height of the Cold War.

If you’d like an advance reader’s copy of THE MOMENT, email Wendy.Sheanin@simonandschuster.com!

With Hanukah come early this year and Christmas just around the corner, everyone at the Simon & Schuster offices is gearing up for the holiday, gift-giving season.

To tie in with the Books Are Great Gifts program (click here to learn more), we’ll be stocking the office’s lobby display windows with the titles S&S employees are planning to give to their family members and friends.

Check back each week this month for more S&S employee holiday picks!

To: My sister, who deserves great escapist reading after three years in law school
From: Rachel
The Distant Hours, Kate Morton (Atria, 9781439152782)
House Rules, Jodi Picoult (Washington Square Press, 9781451611205)
The Opposite of Me, Sarah Pekkanen (Washington Square Press, 9781439121986)
Eighteen Acres, Nicolle Wallace (Atria, 9781439194829)
The Pursuit of Happiness, Douglas Kennedy (Atria, 9781439199121)

Books really are the gifts that keep on giving. Click here for a post from Flavorwire.com  for “10 DIY Projects for Your Old Books.” My favorite is the invisible shelves for books…made out of books.