Near the end of Olive, Again, the eponymous character concludes: “I do not have a clue who I have been. Truthfully, I do not understand a thing.” But the reader of Elizabeth Strout’s two books about Olive Kitteridge understands a lot about Olive and, if they’re like me, have come to love this tough old…
“The implacability and violence of nature always awed him. That it could be entirely heedless and yet so beautiful. That awed him. But also its intricate intelligence. Its balancings. Its quiet compensations. It was like some unnamed justice permeated everything. He would not go further than that. Still, the workings of nature made the voracious,…
“That is how science and medicine are practiced best, though—we are best when we admit our ignorance up front, and then attempt to fill the darkness of not-knowing with the light of information and knowledge.” ---from Wanderers by Chuck Wendig One morning in rural Pennsylvania, Shana’s younger sister Nessa gets up out her bed in…
Martha had a full and busy life volunteering at the seaside village’s library and helping her friends and family out by doing the chores they had no time to do--- laundry, mending their clothes and watching sister’s kids and much more. She never said no to a request for a favor even though her house…
Elly Griffiths, who is probably best known as the author of the popular Ruth Galloway mystery series, has written an eerie stand-alone Gothic murder mystery, The Stranger Diaries, set in a haunted British boarding school. I had high hopes for this book and was not disappointed! Claire Cassidy teaches English and creative writing at Talgarth…
When Joe Thorne receives a mysterious email from an anonymous sender saying only ‘it’s happening again’, he knows he must return to his hometown of Arnhill, an old English mining town that has seen better days. He returns reluctantly, gets a teaching job at his old high school and soon finds out that no one…
"Greenstone was full of people who could make you sad just by strolling into view." Virgil Wander, Leif Enger’s eponymous new novel, is set in the hard-luck town of Greenstone, Minnesota along the stormy northern shores of Lake Superior. Although the town and its people have seen better days, together they muddle through by supporting…
“The truth depends on who it is that’s telling the story.” Kate Morton, “The Clockmakers Daughter” Reading Kate Morton’s intricately plotted new novel The Clockmakers Daughter, is like pulling apart a Russian nesting doll until the last tiny doll is found in the center. At the center of this book is Birchwood Manor and…
As a Nigerian-American girl and voracious reader growing up in Homewood Flossmoor and Hinsdale, Illinois, Tomi Adeyemi rarely encountered powerful characters who looked like her. Nevertheless, this 24 year-old recent Harvard graduate has burst onto the scene this year with a NY Times best-selling book set in the mythical West African kingdom of Orisha which…
“Nevertheless, they persist. I guess that means I f^&*ng have to, too.” Sixteen-year-old Brynn’s life is a mess. Her beloved older brother Nick died of an overdose and her mother and step-father are so clueless that they punish Brynn for her academic decline and ignore her ongong grief. When Brynn is given an…
