Concealed is an amazing memoir. So often I find that memoirs are really authors’ ego trips, and they never derive any life-changing conclusions from their stories. Concealed avoids that trap quite nicely. Of Persian Jewish descent, Esther grows up in Queens, New York...
The Best Part of Us is a powerful novel about family dynamics and the human need to be true to one’s inner self. Beth, the protagonist, is a tweenager—she feels left out in her family; she’s too old for kid stuff and too young for everything else. Her older brother...
Victorine is Drema Drudge’s debut novel, and a delight it is. She's captured the spirit of Belle Époque France from the time of the American Civil War in the 1860s through the Siege of Paris by the Prussians in 1870-1871 and artist Manet’s death in 1883. Victorine...
Scorpionfish, released July 7, 2020 by Tin House Books, is a lovely novel about the a woman finding herself. Mira, a Greek-American academic returns to Athens to clean out the apartment of her recently-dead parents. While there, her long-term boyfriend breaks up with...
Bayou City Burning is the first in a series of father/daughter detective stories, the Harry and Dizzy Lark Books, by D.B. Borton. It’s set in Houston with an authentic sense of place complete with the stench of Texas oil refineries, arrow-straight stretches of...
Until I Find You by Rea Frey was released on August 11 by St. Martin's Press. It is an emotional, poignant novel written in the points of view of Rebecca—a nearly-blind woman, a recent widow, and a new mother—and that of Crystal, a friend of Rebecca’s who lives...
Megan Collins’s debut novel, The Winter Sister, was filled with gorgeous prose and a story that was spellbinding, atmospheric, and deeply touching. On August fourth, Atria Books released Collins's sophomore novel, Behind The Red Door. It doesn’t disappoint. Collins’s...
Uncovered by Leah Lax is her memoir of leaving her Hasidic Jewish community and becoming herself. It might be read in conjunction with Concealed by Esther Amini, also a memoir of leaving a fundamental Jewish family and becoming an integrated person. Lax, a Texan with...
A Matter Of Chance, a domestic thriller, is Julie Maloney’s debut novel. Maddy Stewart, a single mom is on vacation at the Jersey shore with her eight-year-old daughter, Vinni. While on the beach with her daughter, she sees her elderly neighbors, and the husband...
Friends & Other Liars is Kaela Coble’s debut novel, and it’s an ambitious one, told in multiple points of view and past/present timelines. In it, five friends (Ruby, Ally, Danny, Murphy and Emmett) have known each other since grade school in Chatwick, a small...
Love, Art, and Other Obstacles, released May 18, 2020 by Wild Rose Press, is the third in the Book Nirvana romance series. I have read the second, Runaway Love Story and enjoyed it as well, so I'll definitely have to backtrack and read the first. The series is...
Little Voices is Vanessa Lillie’s debut novel. It’s a murder mystery, political thriller, and psychological suspense wrapped into one. Then throw in a blazingly intense family drama of a new mother suffering from postpartum psychosis. Devon, the protagonist, is a...
You Beneath Your Skin is Damyanti Biswas’s debut novel, and it’s a prime example of a murder mystery with plenty of twists and turns in a complex plot. Set in a smoggy New Delhi winter, the book brought to mind my travels through that part of the world—cities teeming...
Were We Awake was released November 20, 2019 by Fomite Press. I'd enjoyed L. M. Brown's first collection of short stories (Treading the Uneven Ground) so much I was compelled to read her second collection of stories. The cover of Were We Awake brings to mind the...
How Fires End is Marco Rafalà’s debut novel, and a stunning one it is, all about families and secrets and trauma. Told in reverse chronological order, How Fires End begins with the story of David, the son of a Sicilian immigrant in Middletown, CT. David’s mother died...
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