De-Extinction: A Quick Immersion by Carles Lalueza-Fox is a short book but packed with fascinating facts and tidbits. There are few better placed to discuss de-extinction than Lalueza-Fox as he is one of the pioneers of the field of ancient DNA and has seen the field...
As a woman and a physician who’s undergone a fertility work-up, I was very interested in reading Her Daughter’s Mother by Daniela Petrova. Little did I know I was getting myself into a psychological thriller. Entranced, I stayed up until four a.m. to finish the book...
Released by June 4, 2019 by Harper, Ayesha at Last is a Muslim own-voices retelling of Pride and Prejudice, and begins with a clever restatement of Austen’s famous opening line: "Because while it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single Muslim man must be in...
Jennifer Klepper's debut Unbroken Threads is a lovely, thoughtful book about the intersection between two women’s lives. The protagonist is a former securities lawyer who’s been a stay-at-home-mother, Jessica. She’s trying to re-enter the work force by doing pro bono...
Author Rachel Howard writes of a couple’s struggle to adopt a foster child. It comes as no surprise that the child the narrator and her husband Sebastian choose to foster is a troubled child, Marisa. Having worked with such damaged children, I fully understand the...
Having recently finished Mike Chen’s Here and Now and Then, I undertook another sci-fi novel—and was blown away by Light from Other Stars. Wow!!!—exquisite prose in an ambitious novel told in two timelines, the present (with the protagonist, Nedda Pappas, on a space...
Julie Clark's The Ones We Choose was released by Gallery Books on May 8, 2019. As a family practice doctor and the mother of an adopted son, I loved this book. The scientific aspects of DNA and genetics appealed to me as did the fact that the protagonist, Paige,...
Sometimes, the hardest thing to change is yourself. Eva Hagberg Fisher has written a gut-wrenching memoir about being being unloved and unloveable. This isn't a typical love story—though Eva falls in love with Winston Fisher, her husband—but is a story about the love...
Juno Rushdan’s debut novel, Every Last Breath, is intense. Suspense, action, and explicit sex scenes are roughly equally dispersed through the book. What is missing are the quiet sequels after the action to allow the reader to recuperate. Protagonist Maddox moves in...
To celebrate Earth Day, I am sneaking in a book review on Monday rather than Thursday. The release of Julia Goldstein's Material Value: More Sustainable, Less Wasteful Manufacturing of Everything from Cell Phones to Cleaning Products is being timed with Earth Day, so...
Pickle's Progress is the debut novel of Marcia Butler, retired world-famous oboist. The title drew me in as I could only think of one other novel with “Pickle” in the title, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle. The latter is an 18th century satire in which a young,...
The Lost History of Dreams is an accomplished debut novel which reminded me of classics such as Wuthering Heights and the more contemporary Possession by A.S. Byatt. Set in Victorian England, the book, rich with Gothic creepiness, layers several love stories into a...
In her debut novel, Isabella Hammad uses richly-textured prose to invoke the turbulence of the Middle East right after World War I. I recently read Kurt Seyt and Shura by Nermin Bezmen and The Carpet Weaver of Usak by Kathryn Gauci, both of which deal roughly with the...
Set shortly after the Soviet Union imploded, this international intrigue takes FBI agent Jay Porter into Poland. There he’s quickly involved in a case where three men have been found dead on a riverbank. All have a minor genetic deformity: a stub of a sixth finger....
Because I'd read Sara Ackerman’s debut novel, Island of Sweet Pies and Soldiers, I continued with her second novel. Told in the dual, third-person perspectives of Eva Cassidy and Lieutenant Clark Spencer interspersed with real memos, headlines, and military...
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