In Elizabeth Strout’s slim best-selling novel My Name Is Lucy Barton (2016), readers were introduced to Lucy and her mother as they tentatively and tenderly reconnected after years of estrangement. In Strout’s newest book, Anything Is Possible (2017) which is a companion book to My Name Is Lucy Barton, the reader takes a stroll through the…
Mohsin Hamid’s new novel is a poignant tale for these times. Exit West is a love story tinged with magical realism that offers a glimpse at the chaos and stress refugees endure trying to find a safe place to call home. Nadia and Saeed meet at an evening class in an unknown country that is…
First off, let me just warn you: there are no lovable curmudgeons in this book. If you’re looking for another Man Called Ove or My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry, you won’t find it here. However, you will find a moving, sensitive portrayal of a small town obsessed with hockey, and what…
First, a confession: Neil Gaiman could write an air conditioner repair manual and I would cheerfully read it. So the odds I would enjoy his latest release, NORSE MYTHOLOGY, were pretty good. Even so, I was surprised by how delightful this collection is. With a television adaptation of Gaiman’s AMERICAN GODS coming to Starz at the…
I’m always looking for new mystery authors to read, so after noticing positive reviews for this book in trade journals, I picked it up. It had everything I look for in a mystery: a unique setting (a chateau in Switzerland), a compelling sleuth, and a good puzzle. Agnes Luthi is a Swiss-American police inspector who…
There is just a handful of authors whose books I absolutely must read as soon as they come out, and Greg Iles sits at the top of this short list. Mississippi Blood, his newest book and the conclusion of the best-selling Natchez Burning trilogy, is a page-turning, nail-biter of a wild ride. (If you’ve somehow…
As the news cycle marches on with unrelenting intensity, I stumbled across a book which was described as “life affirming”, “laugh out loud funny”, and “enchanting” -- umm, yes please! I snatched up All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai and it did not disappoint. Tom Barren’s 2016 is a very different place than our…
Nickolas Butler has done it again. He’s written a pitch-perfect novel of several generations of men (and one woman) in northern Wisconsin. I didn't grow up in Wisconsin, or in a small town, but there is a universality to his characters and settings that makes his writing so accessible. I loved Butler’s first book, Shotgun Lovesongs,…
I enjoy reading memoirs because of the glimpse it allows into someone else’s life. When I heard that comedian Trevor Noah, host of Comedy Central’s late-night talk show The Daily Show, had written a book about his childhood in South Africa, I was intrigued. The title of the book, Born a Crime: Stories from a…
Is there any figure more iconic of America, in both the physical and philosophical sense, than Abraham Lincoln? Is there even a contest to be had? His presidency is the stuff of classic historical drama. A single man charged with keeping an adolescent nation intact as it violently tears itself apart over ideals it can't…
