This Week's Acquisitions

Grace Kennedy, Dunallan; Or, Know What You Judge (William Oliphant, 1872). Didactic novel by the author best known for the anti-Catholic Father Clement. There's a Victorian biographical sketch of Kennedy at the Center for Disability and Public History and another at Electric Scotland; a more recent account, plus an e-text of one of her other novels, is available from the Hockliffe Project.
Haruki Marukami, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (Knopf, 2006). Short story collection.
Ford Madox Ford, Parade's End (Penguin, 2001). Ford's meditation on England in the wake of WWI.
John McGahern, The Dark (Penguin, 2002). Struggles of a boy growing up in rural Ireland.
Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss (Grove, 2006). Indian families try to make sense of themselves and their country, both at home and in New York.
Marisha Pessl, Special Topics in Calamity Physics (Viking, 2006). Precocious child + many books + murder.
T. C. Boyle, Talk Talk (Viking, 2006). A thriller involving a deaf protagonist and trumped-up charges.
J. W. Colenso, The Pentateuch and Book of Joshua Critically Examined, part I only (Longman, 1862). One of the Victorian period's most controversial works of Biblical criticism. There's a quick overview of the subject at the Victorian Web.
Andrew Porter, Religion versus Empire?: British Protestant Missionaries and Overseas Expansion, 1700-1914 (Manchester, 2004). Discusses the connections and tensions between missionary work and imperialism.