Fiction

The Lowland

The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri The latest novel from Jhumpa Lahiri, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake, concerns Subhash and Udayan, two brothers growing up […]

The Lincoln Highway

The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles Amor Towles’ newest novel, The Lincoln Highway, is an engaging combination of Boys’ Own magazine and Homeric epic, and decidedly different from either of […]

The Library Book

The Library Book by Susan Orlean No surprise–I loved The Library by Susan Orlean. But it is not a typical narrative non-fiction like Orlean’s earlier books. The book’s chapters are […]

The Jane Austen Society

The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner In 1945, the tiny village of Chawton is coping with the after effects of WWII. Its most famous resident, Jane Austen, who lived […]

The Improbability of Love

The Improbability of Love by Hannah Rothschild In The New York Times review of her novel The Improbability of Love, author Hannah Rothschild (yes, those Rothschilds) said, “I don’t know […]

The Imperfectionists

The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman The newspaper was a loser, even before the internet. The decision by an otherwise savvy Atlanta businessman to publish an international English-language newspaper in Rome […]

The Guncle

The Guncle by Steven Rowley Patrick O’Hara, a once-famous gay sitcom star, quite enjoys his niece and nephew’s brief visits to his stylish home in Palm Springs.  But when their […]

The Good Lord Bird

The Good Lord Bird by James McBride As you know, my book club is a serious group. But every year we try to select a light hearted book with no […]

The Fifth Season

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin The Fifth Season takes place on a planet called the Stillness. Not our earth exactly, but a place with recognizable features like oceans and […]

Friends of the Museum

Friends of the Museum by Heather McGowan Recently when buying a book at my local bookstore, the clerk said, as she cheerfully took my credit card, “It [ my purchase] […]

The Elegance of the Hedgehog

The Elegance of The Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery If you wondered why you studied Liberal Arts in college rather than something more practical like engineering or ceramics, the French novel […]

The Diary of a Bookseller

The Diary of a Bookseller and Confessions of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell In 2001, Shaun Bythell bought a second-hand bookshop in Wigtown, a tiny town located on a peninsula […]

The Curse of Pietro Houdini

The Curse of Pietro Houdini by Derek B. Miller In the early days of the Allied invasion of Italy in WWII, 14-year-old orphan Massimo takes refuge in the Benedictine abbey […]