COURTING MR. LINCOLN The double entendre of Louis Bayard’s title, Courting Mr. Lincoln, immediately alerts the reader to the duality of the novel’s subject matter.
FATES AND FURIES In Fates and Furies, Lauren Groff proposes a unique way of looking at a relationship. The first half of Fates and Furies, titled
MAGPIE MURDERS The Magpie Murders is Deliciously British! Anthony Horowitz’s mystery is set in a circumscribed Somerset village populated by a quarrelsome set of eccentric
BEAUTIFUL BAD Beautiful Bad, the oxymoronic title of Annie Ward’s savagely violent novel, sums up the action precisely. Beautiful people doing bad things, beautiful prose
PAX What? Another kids’ book? Well, yes, and no. Two things compel me to pick Sara Pennypacker’s Pax for my next review. First of all,
A BABY’S BONES The plot of Rebecca Alexander’s novel, A Baby’s Bones, may sound familiar. An archaeological excavation on the Isle of Wight has uncovered
BEL CANTO Ann Patchett’s highly-regarded 2001 novel, Bel Canto, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, won the Orange Prize, and won
MISS GARNET’S ANGEL and THE CITY OF FALLEN ANGELS Since the coronavirus has curtailed travel this year, books must take us to new and different
WILL YOU BE MY FRIEND Back in 1994, Irish writer Sam McBratney, and British illustrator Anita Jeram, published the picture book, Guess How Much I
WHAT SHE LEFT BEHIND Ellen Marie Wiseman cites the Willard Suitcase Exhibit and a nonfiction book by Darby Penney and Peter Stastny, The Lives They
TAHOE HIT, AN OWEN MCKENNA MYSTERY Ever since the Covid-19 pandemic, time seems to move at a pace determined to mess with our internal calendars.
SAINT X Alexis Schaitkin’s debut novel, Saint X, opens with the languid ennui of a mid-winter Caribbean vacation. An omniscient narrator sets scenes filled with
HOW MUCH OF THESE HILLS IS GOLD C Pam Zhang juxtaposes nightmare with dream in her novel, How Much of These Hills Is Gold. Her
AN ARTLESS DEMISE I initially encountered Anna Lee Huber’s mysteries in 2012 when her first novel featuring Lady Kiera Darcy, The Anatomist’s Wife, was published.
THE HOUSEKEEPER AND THE PROFESSOR A simple precis of Yoko Ogawa’s The Housekeeper and the Professor cannot do justice to the mystique of this very
THE MEMORY OF OLD JACK With the Stay-at-Home admonishment still in place for those of us well-beyond our 60th year, I’ve begun reaching for books
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