Annabel Monaghan’s latest release is a smart and sweet success that reads like the best kind of love story, equal parts charming and heartwarming. It’s a Love Story delivers the fizzy delight of a beach read, but blooms into something more: an unexpected anthem to self-discovery and acceptance. When we meet Jane Jackson, she's trying…
"I am John Collan \ today in the yere 1483 I will defeat the goat. \ In the name of honnour and glory to god highest & for reson that it knocked me in the mud again today \ & has TRODDEN churlishly over my back \ has despoiled \ ! \ an insult that…
According to legend, the mythical island of Avalon is where the sword Excalibur was forged and where King Arthur was taken after his final battle. It’s a place synonymous with magic, healing, and grandeur. The Avallon Hotel, a luxury resort in West Virginia and the setting of Maggie Stiefvater’s The Listeners, has a similar (albeit…
“Everything Burns.” Keith Carruthers Hold on to your hats. This one is a wild ride. In S.A. Cosby’s newest, The King of Ashes, we meet Roman Carruthers, a successful wealth management professional. One evening he receives a call from his sister, Neveah, telling Roman to come home. Their father, Keith, has been in a terrible…
For many of us, letter writing has been replaced by emailing and texting. But not for the protagonist in Virginia Evans’ new epistolary novel (a book written through letters), The Correspondent. Sybil Van Antwerp, a mother and grandmother, a friend and reader of books, retired from a distinguished career in law, communicates with people from…
'"No," the king says, dashing her hopes. "None at all. They claim it cannot be done. That matter cannot be transformed, that something cannot be brought forth from nothing." Phosyne chews her chapped lip to keep herself from arguing. Or, worse yet, agreeing.' Caitlin Starling, The Starving Saints, pg. 5 The Starving Saints begins with…
Ask any prospective parent: names are a big deal. Sure, a rose by any other name might smell as sweet, but if Rose has to go through middle school? You’d best choose carefully. So the premise of Florence Knapp’s novel The Names is instantly, instinctively intriguing. In 1987, Cora Atkins takes her newborn son to…
If you lost a loved one and found yourself unable to manage your profound sadness and sense of loss, would you choose to sleep it away? Could you sleep your grief away? Nikki Erlick poses these are the questions in her newest, speculative work, The Poppy Fields. Our tale begins in the Kansas City airport.…
'The scent of fresh-baked bread and roasted meat drifts toward her, and hunger blooms, sudden and bright, but when she moves toward the table, Andrés catches her wrist. "Leave it," he says again, and María knows, by the tone of his voice, that his hunger has a different shape.' V.E. Schwab, Bury Our Bones in…
Solvej Balle's On The Calculation of Volume, Book I is a hard sell, to put it mildly. First, the title sounds like a geometry textbook. Second, it’s a projected seven-book series. Third, it’s translated from its original Danish. You would be forgiven for thinking that I was recommending you a sleep aid. In truth, this…
