You'd think a novel set in a cloistered convent populated by nuns following vows of silence would a sleeper. Guess again. Anna Quinn’s Angeline blasts that notion out of the water. Teenaged Meg is the only survivor of an automobile accident that kills her entire...
Until Horse came along, I could never have imagined a book that would fascinate both my race-horse raising brother and me, his art-loving sister. I loved this novel. Author Geraldine Brooks deftly weaves multiple story lines and time frames into a single...
Author Rachel Dacus has authored a series of books tied together by time travelers who are committed to “fixing” errors in history and combating a group called the Optimalists who are equally committed to changing history to further their own agenda. Jane Austen, Time...
Purple Deceiver is the tenth in John Cunningham’s Buck Reilly Adventure Series. Despite being so far into the series, the novel is easily read as a standalone as the author provides enough back story to keep the reader from being lost. After being down on his luck for...
The Forgotten Bookshop in Paris is a nicely-written historical fiction following two timelines, the present and Paris during World War II. In the present, Juliette and her husband, Kevin, have taken a trip to Paris, an event she is more invested in than he is. While...
Anatomy: A Love Story is set in Edinburgh in 1817. Hazel Sinnett is a young woman of seventeen who wants to be a surgeon. Unfortunately, as a member of the upper class, she is destined to marry to provide a rich man an heir, to be pretty, and idle away her life in...
This beauty and horror of this book caught at my heartstrings. Told in first person by a northern Ojibway man, Saul Indian Horse, who has reached the absolute bottom. An alcoholic, his last binge nearly killed him and brought him to a residential treatment center. He...
Observer is a science-fiction novel based on ideas from scientist Robert Lanza (called one of the 100 Most Influential People by Time magazine) and cowritten by Nancy Kress (a Hugo and Nebula Award winning author) and demonstrates an in-depth grasp of science and a...
The Things We Do to Our Friends is a twisted story of toxic friendships, unlikeable characters, and an unreliable narrator filled with tons of teenaged angst. Clare has started studying art history at a university in Scotland. A rather unsophisticated young woman, she...
Valiant Ladies is an entertaining read, breezy but not totally frivolous. Loosely based on genuine historical characters, Eustaquia “Kiki” de Sonza and Ana Lezama de Urinza attempt to be proper seventeenth-century young ladies. But by their spirited temperaments...
Like Luanne Castle’s other volumes of poetry (Kin Types and Doll God), the poems of Rooted and Winged explore family, kinship, life, and death. A trail of images always ties the reader to the earth and nature. In this newest chapbook, Castle also explores flight and...
The Blue Bar is a gritty thriller set in Mumbai, complete with twisting plot lines that include a serial killer preying on vulnerable women, real estate fraud, a corrupt police administration, and a dash of Bollywood. Police investigator Arnav Singh Rajput is...
I was so impressed with the first in Barbara Nickless's Dr. Evan Wilding series At First Light that I immediately ordered the second in the series, Dark of Night. Author Nickless demonstrates great plotting, fascinating historical references, little-known trivial...
Boop and Eve's Road Trip takes a look at mental illness and its intergenerational effects. Boop (the grandmother) has a breakdown when her daughter, Justine, is born. Boop’s minimal mothering leads Justine to smother her daughter, Eve, to compensate. Couched in terms...
I can’t express how much I enjoyed At First Light. Author Nickless demonstrates great plotting, fascinating historical references, little-known trivial tidbits, intriguing characters, and a “ticking clock.” I have been binging on all things Viking lately, and At...
Heard It in a Love Song is a slow-burn romance between Layla, recently-divorced after ten years of marriage, and Josh, currently divorcing after a twenty-year marriage. Both are struggling to break free from their pasts. Layla had dreams of making it as a singer in a...
Like M.E. Hilliard’s debut novel, The Unkindness of Ravens, the newest in her Greer Hogan Mystery series, Shadow in the Glass, grabbed me immediately. The first person narration rapidly sucks the reader in the the thought processes of amateur sleuth, Greer Hogan. A...
Bombay Monsoon is a thriller set in post-Partition India in the mid 1970s. An ambitious young American journalist, Danny Jacobs, arrives in Bombay on a new assignment. He’s tossed into a maelstrom of events during which the prime minister, Indira Gandhi, fearing a...
As a contemporary of the protagonist of The Fourteenth of September, Private First Class Judy (Judy Blue Eyes) Talton, I felt transported to my last year of high school. We protested the war, protested the treatment of Mother Earth, celebrated the first Earth Day, and...
Eliza Ripple is a naive eighteen-year-old girl whose parents force her to wed a young man visiting her hometown of Kalamazoo, Michigan. He projects wealth and ambition, so they feel their daughter will be well-cared for. The couple moves to Monterey, California, as...
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