Posts

There's a new mystery series in town! Scorched Grace (2023), by Margot Douaihy, is the first of the Sister Holiday Mysteries; it also happens to be the first novel published by Gillian Flynn Books.

With her most recent novel, The Book of Goose (2022), author Yiyun Li gives us a coming of age story that explores the fraught friendship of two girls growing up in an impoverished village in rural France during the aftermath of World War II.

If you enjoy sweeping historical novels then you may want to dig into A Long Petal of the Sea (2020), one of the most recent books by the prolific Chilean-American author Isabel Allende. And if you especially appreciate books that shed light on dramatic past events less likely to be on our reading radar than, say, World War II, A Long Petal of the Sea just might be calling your name.

Ann Patchett probably needs no introduction. I have always loved how she fills her books with such relatable characters and a delightful sense of place and Tom Lake (2023) is no exception. This novel is told in the voice of Lara, a wife and mother to three daughters, all living back at home on their Michigan cherry farm to wait out the pandemic.

Everyone in this historical fiction novel seems to have a secret. The expats living in Malaysia in the early 1900s live a life reminiscent of The Great Gatsby; parties, illicit love affairs, murder and an added touch of revolution. When the author, W.

A Burning (2020), Megha Majumdar's debut novel, follows three characters in the wake of a firebomb attack at a railroad station in a Kolkata slum.

It’s impossible to do justice to The Water Dancer (2019) in a book review. The story is powerful and haunting, the characters are expertly and thoughtfully portrayed throughout, and the time period and settings are drawn such that I felt that I was viewing the horrors of slavery on a Virginia plantation and experiencing the terrifying dangers of the flight to freedom.

She did it again: with her latest novel, Tom Lake (2023), Ann Patchett has created a story that is accessible, believable, meaningful, and moving, a down-to-earth tale about a family of five, trying to keep their cherry farm in northern Michigan afloat during the global pandemic, the horrors of which are kept at a relatively safe remove.

In her latest book, The Half Moon (2023), Mary Beth Keane tells the story of a married couple in crisis, thanks to circumstances beyond their control. Economic turmoil, infertility, and the shifting values of a younger generation of consumers—these things and more have fractured the lives, loyalties, and love of Malcolm and Jess Gephardt.

Ruth Ozeki's latest novel, The Book of Form and Emptiness (2021), is a big book in terms of length. It's a big book, too, in terms of the ideas and issues with which it deals, including Zen Buddhism, mental illness and the systems that surround its treatment, the nature of reality, and the pressures of the marketplace and capitalism.

I've now read the book and also listened to the audio book of I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai. I scarcely had a break between my reading of, and listening to, this novel. When it became available, I seized the day, as it had been on hold for some time and, I knew, would probably go back on hold again.