Fiction

The Saint of Bright Doors

The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera I hated this book… and yet. Fantasy fiction bores me (Tolkien, yuck), so I was not thrilled with our November book club […]

Clare Pooley Novels

Clare Pooley Novels If you are looking for charming, feel-good stories, I recommend the novels of British author and former advertising executive Clare Pooley. I reviewed How to Age Disgracefully […]

Salvage the Bones

Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward            I could not finish this dramatically downbeat book about a poor rural family on the eve of Hurricane Katrina, but my book club’s thoughtful […]

Life After Life

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson Don’t you wonder what might have happened if you had married another, spoken sooner, or taken a different route home?   Ursula Todd, the protagonist […]

Crusoe’s Daughter

Crusoe’s Daughter by Jane Gardam This is my third Gardam book in as many months. Having enjoyed Old Filth and The Man in the Wooden Hat, I turned to Crusoe’s […]

The Man in the Wooden Hat

The Man in the Wooden Hat by Jane Gardam (Book 2) Don’t you occasionally wonder how your spouse experiences your mutual milestones as well as the minutia of your everyday […]

Old Filth

Old Filth by Jane Gardam (Book 1) Prior to his retirement to Dorset, Sir Edward Feathers was a successful Hong Kong judge. He was greatly admired in the legal community, […]

Beautiful Ruins

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter Satirical novels about the movie business are funny but rarely charming. Beautiful Ruins manages to be both.  In 1962, a beautiful actress arrives on the […]

The Weird Sisters

The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown “The weird sisters” of the title are not necessarily all that peculiar, but as daughters of a professor of Shakespeare who names them after […]

The Weight of Ink

The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish I love it when a novel inspires me to conduct extra research, and in The Weight of Ink there was plenty of material […]