A casual stroll through one of my local Dollar Trees led me to these two $1 books I want to share. I’ve been giving myself slaps on the wrist on and off about buying books while I have a stack at home. Only because… well… there’s no good enough excuse why when I don’t really feature book buying bans. Nonetheless, the crux of the story is I walked into the Dollar Tree with no intentions of buying books, and came out with coconut water and two desperately needed titles. (Along with a few crossword puzzle books for the Grandma.)
So what are they and who wrote them? Let’s see…
Narcopolis is written by an India author named Jeet Thayil (never heard of him, but I’ll tell you why I decided to pick this one up). As for its synopsis, I’ll copy and paste it via Goodreads because it's late and I'm winding down.
Shuklaji Street, in Old Bombay. In Rashid's opium room the air is thick and potent. A beautiful young woman leans to hold a long-stemmed pipe over a flame, her hair falling across her dark eyes. Around her, men sprawl and mutter in the gloom, each one drifting with his own tide. Here, people say that you introduce only your worst enemy to opium.
Outside, stray dogs lope in packs. Street vendors hustle. Hookers call for custom through the bars of their cages as their pimps slouch in doorways in the half-light. There is an underworld whisper of a new terror: the Pathar Maar, the stone killer, whose victims are the nameless, invisible poor. There are too many of them to count in this broken city.
Narcopolis is a rich, chaotic, hallucinatory dream of a novel that captures the Bombay of the 1970s in all its compelling squalor. With a cast of pimps, pushers, poets, gangsters and eunuchs, it is a journey into a sprawling underworld written in electric and utterly original prose.
I picked Narcopolis up because I have a severe shortage of India writers in my library. After reading India Calling back in February, and having yet purchased my copy of Suketu Mehta’s Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, I figured Narcopolis would be a bridge between the two. Or something to that extent.
The second book, The Love Talker, was written by Elizabeth Peters. I hesitated for just a moment with this one, because I knew Peters was big on writing multiple series; I didn't know where this one fit. So I stood there and read through her books listed in the opening pages. I had to be certain this book wasn’t apart of her Amelia Peabody, Vicky Bliss, or Jacqueline Kirby series. I have to read my series in order, and would hate to buy a book somewhere in the middle of a series I haven't even started (to be clear, I haven't read any Vicky Bliss books). Luckily, The Love Talker is a complete stand-alone. Which made the buying process even better.
Here's its synopsis according to Goodreads:
Laurie has finally returned to Idlewood, the beloved family home deep in the Maryland woods where she found comfort and peace as a lonely young girl. But things are very different now. There is no peace in Idlewood. The haunting sound of a distant piping breaks the stillness of a snowy winter's evening. Seemingly random events have begun to take on a sinister shape. And dotty old Great Aunt Lizzie is convinced that there are fairies about -- and she has photographs to prove it. For Laurie, one fact is becoming disturbingly clear: there is definitely something out there in the woods -- something fiendishly, cunningly, malevolently human -- and the lives of her aging loved ones, as well as Laurie's own, are suddenly at serious risk.
Needless to say, I'm pretty thrilled. I just have to sit my ass down and actually READ. Other than that, 'preciate it Dollar Tree for having books for $1.
Have you found any interesting surprises Dollar Tree/General or Family Dollar stores? Share them if you will.
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