Latest Reviews
World-famous author Melanie Joan Hall asks for Sunny Randall's help in tracking down Book Babe, the screen name of an enormously popular book reviewer, who has trolled her with a deeply insulting one-star review. This usually wouldn’t matter except that Book Babe has thousands of followers, and her unwarranted blast has Melanie's publisher threatening to pull all her books. But Sunny's investigation reveals that the reviewer and Melanie have a rich history --- in fact, she may even have good reason to hate the torn-up author. And when Book Babe suddenly turns up dead, casting Melanie as a possible suspect, Sunny finds herself in a complicated web that, if she can't untangle fast enough, just might put a target on her back.
Amelia Booker, a journalist and expert in American literature, receives a photograph leading to the possible whereabouts of E. L. Swann, an author who vanished 40 years ago after the success of her first and only novel. In Santa Rosarita, Mexico, Amelia and her seven-year-old son, Jaden, meet the elderly and guarded Ella Steinbach. Prickly and defensive at first, Ella reluctantly concedes the truth about her identity. If not for Ella’s deep affection for the bright and introverted Jaden, she would have found the intrusion unforgivable. Instead, she grants an interview on the condition that Amelia tell no one where E. L. Swann has been found. As days turn into weeks, and Ella reveals more than expected about her past, she and Amelia form a difficult but surprising bond.
One was the soldier-statesman who would become America’s 34th president. The other was the British icon who refused to surrender in democracy’s darkest hour. Together they launched invasions, toppled tyrants, and shaped the world as the nations they served drifted apart. From world war to the Cold War, from Pearl Harbor to the hydrogen bomb, Winston Churchill and Dwight Eisenhower faced down Hitler, Stalin and Khrushchev and stood together in the uneasy dawn of the nuclear age. Through triumph and loss, they forged a remarkable friendship that weathered the decline of an empire and the rise of a superpower.
In the summer of 1857, an unusual-looking stranger arrived at Charles Dickens' home. Dickens had met Hans Christian Andersen at a dinner party a decade before and, in a moment of desperation, had invited him to visit. The eccentric Danish author of classic fairy tales outstayed his welcome and alienated the Dickens household, which included nine children. Even the oblivious, obsessively self-conscious Andersen sensed the increasing tension between Dickens and his unhappy wife, Catherine, but was slow to understand --- or to believe --- that Dickens had fallen in love with a young actress appearing in his new play. For Andersen, those five weeks were a series of social mistakes and embarrassments but ultimately a lesson in how life's most humbling experiences can be transformed into art.
Riverwood, Minnesota is a scenic town threaded with trout streams carving their way through limestone bluffs. But beneath its picturesque facade, danger runs rampant. Clay Hawkins isn’t a stranger to the secrets of his hometown. After 20 years away, Clay has recently returned home from abroad with his 12-year-old son, and his relationship with his father, the recently replaced sheriff, is as strained as ever. But when Clay’s beloved uncle disappears, the three generations of Hawkinses must overturn every stone in Riverwood and confront deep familial wounds to find the one person who brings them together. As danger looms, Clay worries that it might be too late to save his uncle --- and that the rest of the family might be next.
Celia is so tired of being alone. All she wants is to have a family --- to belong to someone. That's why she's going to Kindred Cove for the annual Salt Festival held by the secluded community that lives there. They promise that healing is possible. They promise that transformation is inevitable. There is no grief at Kindred Cove, because there is no suffering. Nothing is ever lost. Celia knows that, at that mysterious island surrounded by that impossible, ever-growing reef, she will find herself. She’s ready to be healed. She’s ready to be transformed. She's ready to believe.
With Lucy about to leave home for university, she and her mother, Simone, depart the UK for a vacation to Texas to spend some quality time together. But when Simone awakens on their first morning in the desert, Lucy is gone. In her place is a cell phone, and a voice on the other line issues a shocking ransom demand. Don’t tell the police. Come to this location. And be prepared to do a deal. Though Simone’s husband urges her to bring in the authorities for help, she knows she can’t take any chances. So that night, she drives to the isolated meet-up. What she finds there changes everything. The mysterious kidnapper doesn’t want money. They want Simone to do something. The unthinkable. A catastrophic chain of events is set in motion, with chilling consequences that extend beyond Simone and her family.
It’s 1983, and Becks can’t wait to get the hell out of Cincinnati. She’s 19, blasting her Walkman, and hiding from the fact that her beloved uncle, the only person who understood her, is dead. But she has work to do: he left her a half-finished game to complete --- one last collaboration to find her way out of loneliness. Little does she know, what Becks is making will echo far into the future and shape the lives of a scientist, a sentient automaton, and a flinty sea captain in ways she cannot imagine. All are bound together by their search for connection --- and by a futuristic traveler on a mysterious mission through space.
Jayne Anne Phillips grew up in the small town of Buckhannon, West Virginia. The distinctly American landscape of Appalachia has been the great setting for her fiction, even as she and her boundless imagination have traveled to other times and places. In these pieces, Phillips brings us into her childhood and family, most movingly her mother. She recreates the place she calls home, its foundational truths and the densely woven ties between the women of the town. She traces her journeys across the country and her discovery of writing and reading as tools for both survival and revelation, offering insights into the fellow writers and touchstones that moved and influenced her. From the local beauty salon to the legendary Hatfield–McCoy feud, Phillips ponders her relationship with inspiration, spirituality, culture, and the troubled annals of the last American centuries.
Sara Nović’s early years were steeped in music, Bible study, and a strong desire to fit in. But when she failed her school’s mandated hearing test, her worldview was thrown into chaos. Desperate not to be marked as different, she told no one, staying in the hearing world for as long as she could by brute force. Eventually unable to ignore the fact that she was deaf, Nović sought out other deaf people and was welcomed into a tight-knit community rooted in the beauty and joy of American Sign Language. Now the mother of two young sons --- one, biological and hearing; the other, adopted and deaf --- Nović reflects on her life both before and after parenthood. Interwoven with Nović's personal story is a remarkable portrait of America through reflections on some of its most complex histories.
