Since it's Halloween this week but I'm too chicken to read horror books, I figured I would cheat and review a not-so-scary book that has "ghosts" in the title! Tuesday Mooney is a "prospect researcher" for a large hospital in Boston -- that's fundraising-speak for someone who pulls together information on wealthy potential donors. At…
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…
In Miracle Creek, a small town in Virginia, the immigrant Yoo family has started a new business: Miracle Submarine, a center for hyperbaric oxygen therapy, or HBOT. Touted as a treatment for a variety of medical conditions, their HBOT chamber (basically a big pressurized oxygen tank) has drawn clients with cerebral palsy, autism, and infertility.…
Truth time: I was really, really nervous about picking up Kate Quinn’s newest novel, The Huntress. Her 2017 release, The Alice Network, is was an utter delight -- and when I love one title from an author, I worry that the next one will be a disappointment, or that the first novel was a fluke.…
“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,…
This was a summer of mostly meh books – I read a lot, but can’t remember most of the titles, or the plots, or the characters. They weren’t bad, exactly. Just…meh. Indistinguishable. More of the same, when what I wanted was something that stood out, something that gave me a fresh perspective or an unusual…
Tea Obreht burst on the literary stage in 2011 with her magnificent novel, The Tiger’s Wife. She was hailed by The New Yorker as one of the twenty best American fiction writers under forty and included in the National Book Foundation’s list of 5 Under 35. Fans, including me, eagerly waited for her next book.…
In our world, faith is not something we talk about much. Family Sunday mornings are more often built around soccer games or brunches than heading to church. Yet questions of faith and belief still resonate. At some point most of us struggle with the big questions: Does God exist? And if so, why do bad…
Dr. Ibram X. Kendi's first book Stamped From The Beginning won the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2016. It was, as the subtitle suggests, a "definitive history of racist ideas in America." Kendi's debut was an eye-opener for me when I read it, but the historical tome left me thirsty for guidance. What should…
“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…
