This Week's Acquisitions

(One of my colleagues gave me a few books this week, an act which prompted Dad the Emeritus Historian of Graeco-Roman Egypt to mention something about coals and Newcastle.)

• Deborah Alcock, Crushed Yet Conquering: A Story of Constance and Bohemia (RTS, n.d.).  Evangelical historical novel about John Hus.
• The Cave in the Hills; Or, Caecilius Viriathus.  A Story of the Early British Church (John Henry and James Parker, 1859).  "Early church" tale involving Britons, romance, and conversion. 
• [Rose MacCrindell], The School-Girl in France (H. Hooker, 1843).  US reprint of a British anti-Catholic novel about the dangers of convent education for Protestants, written by a (very) minor novelist otherwise best (only) known for The Governess. 
• James Robertson, Joseph Knight (HarperCollins, 2004).  Historical novel about the aftermath of a famous court case in eighteenth-century Scotland. 
• Jane Harris, The Observations (Faber & Faber, 2006).  In 1860s Scotland, a teenaged prostitute runs away from Glasgow and becomes a domestic servant, only to find herself caught up in her mistress' obsession...
• Paul Auster, Oracle Night (Henry Holt, 2003).  A novelist is caught up in strange happenings as he attempts to work on his newest project.
• Paul Auster, Brooklyn Follies (Faber & Faber, 2005).  Man heads to Brooklyn to die, finds life instead.
• Laura Esquivel, Like Water for Chocolate : A Novel in Monthly Installments with Recipes, Romances, and Home Remedies (Anchor, 1994).  Food, magic, love, and early twentieth-century Mexico.
• Nadine Gordimer, July's People (Penguin, 1982).  A white South African couple find themselves shocked by a black uprising.
• Nadine Gordimer, Burger's Daughter (Penguin, 1980).  A South African girl and the aftereffects of her parents' political example. 
• Edwidge Danticat, Breath, Eyes, Memory (Vintage, 1988).  A young Haitian girl joins her mother in New York City.
• Geoff Ryman, Air; Or Have Not Have (St. Martin's 2004).  A new innovation in communications technology proves to have potentially fatal complications...