SPOTLIGHT ON… Jodi Picoult, part 3

Storyteller

Sage Singer is a young woman who has been damaged by her past. Her solitary night work as a baker allows her to hide from the world and focus her creative energies on the beautiful bread she bakes. Yet she finds herself striking up an unlikely friendship. Josef Weber is a quiet, grandfatherly man, well respected in the community; everyone’s favourite retired teacher and Little League coach. One day he asks Sage for a favour: to kill him. Shocked, Sage refuses. Then Josef tells her that he deserves to die – and why. What do you do when evil lives next door? Can someone who’s committed horrendous acts ever truly redeem themselves? Is forgiveness yours to offer if you aren’t the person who was wronged? And most of all – if Sage even considers his request – would it be murder, or justice?

House Rules

Jacob Hunt is a teenage boy with Asperger’s Syndrome. He’s hopeless at reading social cues or expressing himself to others, and like many children with AS, Jacob has an obsessive focus on one subject – in his case, forensic analysis. He’s always showing up at crime scenes, thanks to the police scanner he keeps in his room, and telling the cops what they need to do – and he’s usually right. But then one day his tutor is found dead, and the police come to question him. Reluctance to make eye contact, stimulatory tics and twitches, inappropriate gestures – all these can look a lot like guilt – and suddenly, Jacob finds himself accused of murder. House Rules looks at what it means to be different in our society, and at the extremes of love and loyalty members of a family have to call upon to help each other overcome impossible circumstances.

Nineteen Minutes

Intricately textured and rich with psychological and social insight, Jodi Picoult’s novels grab readers by the throat from page one and never let go. As emotionally charged as any she has written. Set in a small town in the wake of a horrific school shooting, Nineteen Minutes features the return of two beloved Picoult characters – Jordan McAfee, the lawyer from The Pact and Salem Falls, who once again finds himself representing a boy who desperately needs someone on his side; and Patrick Ducharme, the intrepid detective introduced in Perfect Match, whose best witness is the daughter of the superior court judge assigned to the case. As the story unfolds, layer after layer is peeled back to reveal some hard-hitting questions about the nature of justice, the balance of power and what it means to be different. Nineteen Minutes is a riveting, thought-provoking tale with a jaw-dropping finale.

The Tenth Circle

Comic book artist Daniel Stone never for a moment suspected that the same boy whom his fourteen-year-old daughter, Trixie, loved might inflict upon her the worst possible harm. Could the young man, who once made Trixie’s face fill with light when he came to the door, have drugged and then raped her? She says that he did, and that is all it takes to make Daniel, a man with a past he has hidden even from his family, venture to hell and back in order to protect his daughter. With a story that transports readers from small-town New England to the wilds of the Alaskan bush, and interspersed with parallel vision through the striking pen-and-ink pages of Daniel’s graphic novel, Jodi Picoult probes the unbreakable bond between parent and child – and the dangerous repercussions of trying to play the hero.

My Sister’s Keeper

Anna is not sick, but she might as well be. By age thirteen, she has undergone countless surgeries, transfusions and shots so that her older sister, Kate, can somehow fight the leukemia that has plagued her since childhood. Anna was conceived as a bone marrow match for Kate a life and a role that she has never questioned until now. Like most teenagers, Anna is beginning to question who she truly is. But unlike most teenagers, she has always been defined in terms of her sister – and so Anna makes a decision that for most would be unthinkable a decision that will tear her family apart and have perhaps fatal consequences for the sister she loves. Told from multiple points of view, My Sister’s Keeper examines what it means to be a good parent, a good sister, a good person. Is it morally correct to do whatever it takes to save a child’s life… even if that means infringing upon the rights of another? Should you follow your own heart, or let others lead you? What happens when emotion catches up to scientific advances?

Perfect Match

What would push you to commit a crime? Assistant District Attorney Nina Frost prosecutes child molesters, and in the course of her everyday work she endures the frustration of seeing too many criminals slip through the system and walk free. So when she receives the awful news that her son Nathaniel has been sexually abused and is so traumatised that he is now mute she takes justice into her own hands as she enters the courtroom with a gun. She may have killed the man who hurt her son, but has she destroyed her family in the process? And whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty? In Perfect Match, Jodi Picoult again weaves a heart-wrenching story which explores the lengths to which a mother will go to protect her child. Part thriller, part courtroom drama and part family portrait, this disturbing novel paints an indelible portrait of a family torn apart, and the drama of its riveting courtroom conclusion maintains the suspense until the final verdict is handed down.

The Pact

For eighteen years the Hartes and the Golds have lived next door to each other, sharing everything from Chinese food to chicken pox to carpool duty – they’ve grown so close it seems they have always been a part of each other’s lives. Parents and children alike have been best friends, so it’s no surprise that in high school Chris and Emily’s friendship blossoms into something more. They’ve been soul mates since they were born. So when midnight calls from the hospital come in, no one is ready for the appalling truth: Emily is dead at seventeen from a gunshot wound to the head. There’s a single unspent bullet in the gun that Chris took from his father’s cabinet – a bullet that Chris tells police he intended for himself. But a local detective has doubts about the suicide pact that Chris has described. The profound questions faced by the characters in this heartrending novel are those we can all relate to: How well do we ever really know our children or our friends? What if..? As its chapters unfold, alternating between an idyllic past and an unthinkable present, The Pact paints an indelible portrait of families in anguish, culminating in an astonishingly suspenseful courtroom drama as Chris finds himself on trial for murder.

Mercy

Police chief of a small Massachusetts town, Cameron McDonald makes the toughest arrest of his life when his own cousin Jamie comes to him and confesses outright that he has killed his terminally ill wife out of mercy. A heated murder trial plunges the town into upheaval and drives a wedge into a contented marriage: Cameron, aiding the prosecution in their case against Jamie, finds himself suddenly at odds with his devoted wife, Allie. She is seduced by the idea of a man so in love with his wife that he’d grant all her wishes, even her wish to end her life. And when an inexplicable attraction leads to a shocking betrayal, Allie faces the hardest questions of the heart: when does love cross the line of moral obligation? And what does it mean to truly love another? Woven tight with passion and a fast-paced plot, Mercy explores some of today’s most highly charged emotional and ethical issues as it draws toward its stunning conclusion.

Picture Perfect

A woman wakes to find herself lying on top of a grave, her face pressed close to the headstone. She is hurt and bleeding, and her memory has been wiped clean – not only does she not know what she is doing there, but she does not even know who she is. She is taken under the wing of William Flying Horse, LAPD and, after days of waiting, is taken by complete surprise when she is finally identified and collected by Alex Rivers, Hollywood movie star, and also her husband. Her name is Cassie Barrett, and she is a renowned archaeologist, who met Alex on a movie set in Africa. Cassie is dazzled and bewildered by the life in which she suddenly finds herself – the fairytale Bel-Air mansion, all manner of fame and fortune, a successful career, the attentions of a handsome and doting husband. But everything is not quite right, and there is something dark and disturbing behind this glamorous life. It is only as her memory gradually returns that her picture perfect life comes crumbling down, and she is faced with a choice between fear and compassion.

Handle With Care

Willow O’Keefe is born with osteogenesis imperfecta, or brittle bone disease, which means she will suffer hundreds of broken bones as she grows, and a lifetime of pain. As the family struggles to cover medical expenses, her mother Charlotte decides to file a wrongful birth lawsuit against her obstetrician for the compensation which might ensure a lifetime of care for Willow. But it means that Charlotte has to say in a court of law that she would have terminated the pregnancy if she’d known about the disability in advance. And the obstetrician she’s suing isn’t just her physician – she’s her best friend. Handle with Care is an absorbing narrative which also questions the basis of medical ethics and of personal morality. What rights do parents or doctors have to terminate a life? How disabled is too disabled? As a parent, how far would you go to save someone you love?

Find the full Jodi Picoult collection here