The Charles Manson killings were a defining moment of the late ‘60’s. I remember learning about them later, as a teenager, with a kind of horrified fascination. Author Emma Cline was also fascinated by Manson, and became fixated on the man and the commune he created. It was this obsession that led to her writing…
This summer’s blockbuster beach read, I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh felt to me like Gone Girl if Nicholas Sparks had written it. In a shocking act whose repercussions reverberate through the entire novel, Jenna Gray drives up on a curb and hits and kills a young boy as his mother watches in horror.…
I loved Thad Carhart's previous nonfiction book, The Piano Shop on the Left Bank, so I picked this up out of curiosity. I'm so glad I did! Finding Fontainebleau: An American Boy in France is part memoir, part culture, part history, and all delight. Carhart's father, an air force pilot in WWII, was stationed in…
“And at that moment the alligators burst into the room.” The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman As a spy for the mysterious Invisible Library, Irene has assumed many identities and when we first meet her, she’s working as a housekeeper in a boy’s boarding school. Her job is to find and then ‘harvest’ (because Librarians…
The best and the brightest writers of our day are taking turns at writing novels inspired by the works of William Shakespeare. I was happy that the third book in the Hogarth Shakespeare project, launched by Crown Publishing, was created by one of my favorite authors, Anne Tyler. With Vinegar Girl, Tyler has re-imagined one…
I loved the blurb from Chris Cleave on this book: "Singular, spectacular, and touchingly tentacular." I don't think I could sum it up any better than that. If you're a dog lover, this moving novel will leave you weeping, or at least a little choked up. If you aren't a dog person, though, don't avoid…
I really want my entire blog post about Highly Illogical Behavior to be: Read. This. Book. Full stop. Do nothing else until you’ve read this book. Because, truly that is about as high of an endorsement as I can give a book. Even though it is only the end of May I have a strong…
The unassuming, unnamed hero of this book is known simply as the “vinyl detective:” he finds records for a living. When he finds an especially rare title, he flips it for a tidy profit, which allows him to pay the rent and feed his two cats. His world gets upended one day when a beautiful…
If you like time travel, science fiction, mystery and fantasy----I’ve got just the book for you! Aracadia by Iain Pears is the ultimate mash-up of these genres, plus the author has created an app in which readers can select the ending that they’d prefer rather than the one the author chose. This genre-blending page-turner tells…
Jane Austen fans, rejoice! Here’s a modern adaptation of Pride and Prejudice that really works. It’s one in a series of Austen classics that have been re-written by best-selling authors: so far Val McDermid has written a 21st-century version of Northanger Abbey and Alexander McCall Smith took on Emma. But this book is the best…
