Circe
Circe by Madeline Miller The witch Circe, a resident of the island of Aiaia and a rather minor persona in the pantheon of Greek gods and goddesses, is best known […]
Bringing Home The Birkin
Bringing Home the Birkin by Michael Tonello BHTB is a chick-lit novel, although at first glance it violates a few standards of the genre. It is not written by a […]
Bridge of Sighs
Bridge Of Sighs by Richard Russo Last month I had dinner at The Palm with a dozen or so women. Toward the end of the meal I asked (apropos of […]
Binocular Vision
Binocular Vision by Edith Pearlman I love a late life success story, so I was thrilled when my book club chose a collection of short stories, Binocular Vision, by Edith […]
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain When a reviewer declares that Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, “is as close to the Great American Novel as anyone is likely […]
All the Lonely People by Mike Gayle
Hubert Bird is a busy retiree in London—lots of friends, bingo, and outings to the garden center. Or at least that’s what he tells his daughter in their weekly phone […]
An Artist of the Floating World
If you enjoyed The Remains of the Day, I recommend Kazuo Ishiguro’s earlier novel, An Artist of the Floating World (©1986) which also features an unreliable narrator and explores many […]
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
“Dear Non-American Black, when you make the choice to come to America, you become black. Stop arguing. Stop saying I’m Jamaican or I’m Ghanaian. America doesn’t care.” The heroine of […]
An Incomplete Revenge by Jacqueline Winspear
If you enjoy historical mysteries, you’ll appreciate the Maisie Dobbs series by Jacqueline Winspear. Set in England between the wars, Maisie is a former domestic servant, whose current career as psychologist […]
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
By Marina Lweycka Nominated for the Man Booker Prize, this remarkable first novel concerns the daughters of Nikolai Mayevskyj, an elderly Ukrainian immigrant living in England. Nadezhda and her older […]
Accused by Lisa Scottoline
Philadelphia lawyer Mary DiNunzio has a soft spot for the underdog much to the dismay of her colleagues in the all-female firm of Rosato & Associates. When Mary is hired […]
A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler
The Whitshanks, Abby and Red and their four grown children, are a close knit Baltimore family driving (mostly) merrily along the road of middle class happiness. However, when a domestic […]
A Man Called Ove by Fredrick Backman
Ove is a curmudgeonly Saab driving widower whose reclusive life is upturned when a young couple and their two and a half children move in next door. After an unceremonious […]
A Gentleman in Moscow
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles, the author of Rules of Civility, is a stylishly crafted novel of mystery, romance, humor, and history. In 1922, a Bolshevik tribunal sentences Russian aristocrat […]
A Gate At The Stairs
By Lorrie Moore College freshman Tassie Keltjin is thrilled to have escaped her parent’s potato farm for university life. She loves everything about college, the professor who wears a jeans and a […]