false 4886091 8 Author Cassandra Fallows has achieved remarkable success by baring her life on the page. Her two widely popular memoirs continue to sell briskly, acclaimed for their brutal, unexpurgated candor about friends, family, lovers — and herself. But now, after a singularly unsuccessful stab at fiction, Cassandra believes she may have found the story that will enable her triumphant return to nonfiction. When Cassandra was a girl, growing up in a racially diverse middle-class neighborhood in Baltimore, her best friends were all black: elegant, privileged Donna; sharp, shrewd Tisha; wild and worldly Fatima. A fifth girl orbited their world — a shy, quiet, unobtrusive child named Calliope Jenkins — who, years later, would be accused of killing her infant son. Yet the boy's body was never found and Calliope's unrelenting silence on the subject forced a judge to jail her for contempt. For seven years, Calliope refused to speak and the court was finally forced to let her go. Cassandra believes this still unsolved real-life mystery, largely unknown outside Baltimore, could be her next bestseller. But her homecoming and latest journey into the past will not be welcomed by everyone, especially by her former friends, who are unimpressed with Cassandra's success — and are insistent on their own version of their shared history. And by delving too deeply into Calliope's dark secrets, Cassandra may inadvertently unearth a few of her own — forcing her to reexamine the memories she holds most precious, as the stark light of truth illuminates a mother's pain, a father's betrayal . . . and what really transpired on a terrible day that changed not only a family but an entire country. 4951481 book 1 3 2009 Life Sentences total:494|5:27|4:141|3:208|2:100|1:18| 494 1541 934 155 4 3 false false Mon Mar 30 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Mar 25 19:13:07 -0700 2009 Thu Apr 02 06:57:01 -0700 2009
As always with Lippman's novels, I found myself both eager to begin the journey and anxious that the ride would be over f...more...]]> 4 1 false false Wed Apr 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Apr 05 17:27:06 -0700 2009 Sun Apr 05 17:29:25 -0700 2009
Author Cassandra Fallows has a...more...]]> 3 1 false false Wed Apr 15 12:44:09 -0700 2009 Wed Apr 15 12:44:09 -0700 2009 As in much of her fiction, Life Sentences was inspired by a real-life story -- that of a Baltimore woman who spent seven years in jail for contempt of court for refusing to divulge information about her young son's disappearance. Most critics agreed that Life Sentences, which almost measures up to t...

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I haven't read a lot by this author, but it seems h...more...]]> 5 1 false false Mon Mar 23 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Mar 25 09:02:34 -0700 2009 Wed Mar 25 09:05:15 -0700 2009
th...more...]]> 4 1 false false Tue Nov 03 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Tue Nov 03 11:36:28 -0800 2009 Tue Nov 03 11:36:39 -0800 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Fri Aug 07 19:47:58 -0700 2009 Fri Aug 07 19:48:24 -0700 2009
After her third book is a bomb, she decides to write fiction. Her idea is pa...more...]]> 4 0 false false Mon Aug 03 19:19:41 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 03 19:32:04 -0700 2009 more...]]> 0 0 false false Wed Apr 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Jul 25 07:46:27 -0700 2009 Sat Jul 25 07:47:09 -0700 2009
Casandra Fallows has made a success of being an author. She has two memoirs to her name, in which she wrote with what she considered brutal honesty about herself, her family ...more...]]> 3 0 false false Fri May 15 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat May 16 07:57:36 -0700 2009 Sat May 16 08:33:43 -0700 2009 Life Sentences, and reader should enjoy the sedate pace in order to drink in the nuances and shadings ...more...]]> 3 0 false false Thu Apr 23 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Apr 23 12:40:40 -0700 2009 Thu Apr 23 12:40:56 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Thu Mar 26 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Mar 26 13:00:21 -0700 2009 Thu Mar 26 13:26:01 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Sun Apr 05 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Apr 05 21:19:21 -0700 2009 Sun Apr 05 21:29:04 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Mon Mar 23 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Mar 15 09:11:06 -0700 2009 Mon Mar 23 11:58:02 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Thu May 21 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun May 10 18:18:41 -0700 2009 Thu May 21 20:15:07 -0700 2009
Un...more...]]> 5 0 false false Tue Jun 16 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Jun 15 05:21:06 -0700 2009 Wed Jun 17 09:50:24 -0700 2009 more...]]> 2 1 false false Wed Apr 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Apr 27 14:11:54 -0700 2009 Mon Apr 27 14:40:27 -0700 2009 I picked up Life Sentences, because I was in the mood for a literary thriller. This book involves a memoir writer, Cassandra, who decides that she is going to tell the story of her childhood friends, one of whom went to jail for killing her infant son (though she never admitted the crime, and ...more...]]> 4 0 false false Tue May 12 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat May 02 21:52:20 -0700 2009 Tue May 12 20:18:33 -0700 2009
This is another author who has a series that I like who's now writing her second standalone. I'll confess that I really hated the first one, What the Dead Know A Novel, & actually couldn't get through it which is rare for me - so I approached this book with some...more...]]> 3 0 false true Wed Apr 29 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Apr 23 06:11:27 -0700 2009 Wed Apr 29 10:17:14 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Sun Jul 19 18:21:40 -0700 2009 Sun Jul 19 18:40:26 -0700 2009 more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=4886091