Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

by Gabrielle Zevin

Reviewed by Linda:I wasn't sure I would enjoy a novel about three genius college students who go on to create a phenomenal computer game that makes them celebrities. But I had enjoyed the author's previous novel, The St...

Between Two Moons

by Aisha Abdel Gawad

Reviewed by Janet:Amira and her twin sister Lina are about to graduate from high school and are looking forward to a summer of freedom before beginning the next phase of their lives. Yet their summer hopes are derailed with the unexpec...

Hang the Moon

by Jeannette Walls

Reviewed by Linda:The author of The Glass Castle has, in her newest novel, created an unforgettable character in Sallie Kincaid. Sallie, who was raised poor in early 20th-century Virginia, is stubbornly independent and resourceful. Livin...

Yellowface

by R. F. Kuang

Reviewed by Janet:June Hayward has always wanted to be a writer, yet success has eluded her. When Athena Liu, her college friend and a successful author, dies in a freak accident, June dares to publish Athena’s unfinished latest wo...

The Golden Spoon

by Jessa Maxwell

Reviewed by Linda:I had a delicious time listening to this cozy mystery about a baking competition. Six contestants compete for the coveted golden spoon on the tenth season of “Bake Week,” which is filmed at a stately m...

Good Night, Irene

by Luis Alberto Urrea

Reviewed by Janet:Inspired by his mother’s wartime experiences, the author immerses us in the little-known work of the Donut Dollies and their Clubmobiles, who served on the front lines during World War II, providing comfort...

Birnam Wood

by Eleanor Catton

Reviewed by Linda:In Eleanor Catton’s literary masterpiece / psychological thriller, Birnam Wood, named for Shakespeare’s mobile forest, is a guerilla group of New Zealanders who grow food on unused land, scavenging or...

The Collected Regrets of Clover

by Mikki Brammer

Reviewed by Janet:From a young age, Clover Brooks has been fascinated by death. This led to graduate work in thanatology and then to her work as a death doula, helping dying individuals prepare emotionally and psychologically for that fina...

I Have Some Questions for You

by Rebecca Makkai

Reviewed by Linda:Rebecca Makkai’s newest book is equal parts literary fiction and head-scratching whodunit. When film professor and podcaster, Bodie Kane is invited back to the New Hampshire boarding school she attended as a te...

Homecoming

by Kate Morton

Reviewed by Janet:Upon hearing of her grandmother’s fall and hospitalization in Sydney, Jess leaves London for the home she left behind 20 years ago. As she tries to understand why Nora was exploring the attic, Jess learns of a 60-...

The Whalebone Theatre

by Joanna Quinn

Reviewed by Linda:In this sweeping, somewhat old-fashioned novel, Cristabel is the oldest of three cousins being raised on a grand British estate between the wars. Utterly neglected by their socialite parents who fill the house with visitin...

Hula

by Jasmin ?Iolani Hakes

Reviewed by Janet:When Hi?i decides to follow in her mother’s footsteps and study hula, she is continuing the Naupaka family tradition of preserving Hawaiian culture and rights. However, although her mother had been select...

Scorched Grace

by Margot Douaihy

Reviewed by Linda:Northampton author Margot Douaihy came up with a strikingly original new idea for a mystery series: a sleuth named named Sister Holiday who left her days as a queer punk rocker to join the Sisters of the Sublime Blood in...

Pineapple Street

by Jenny Jackson

Reviewed by Janet:The Stocktons are old money - the family home on Pineapple Street in Brooklyn Heights is filled with antiques and generations of family treasures. Siblings Darley, Cord, and Georgiana grew up there, and Cord now lives the...

This Other Eden

by Paul Harding

Reviewed by Linda:Paul Harding, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction a decade ago, has written a heart-breaking novel based on a little-known true story about a community that formed on a New England island. In 1792, a formerly enslaved m...

Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club

by J. Ryan Stradal

Reviewed by Janet:Take a trip to the Midwest in this heartwarming – and heartbreaking – novel of family, dreams, and finding oneself. Mariel is trying to keep her family’s restaurant afloat in the face of tr...

Once We Were Home

by Jennifer Rosner

Reviewed by Linda:Jennifer Rosner, author of The Yellow Bird Sings, has followed up that acclaimed work of historical fiction with another novel about children whose lives were disrupted by the Holocaust. In this new work, she draws on h...

The Lost Wife

by Susanna Moore

Reviewed by Janet:If you've ever tried to imagine frontier life, this short novel will immerse you in the Minnesota Territory of the 1860s. Having fled an abusive husband in Rhode Island, Sarah seeks to reunite with an old friend ...

Small World

by Laura Zigman

Reviewed by Linda:Laura Zigman has written a novel, loosely based on her own life, of two sisters reconnecting as adults and coming to terms with their turbulent childhood. Back then, there was a third sister who was severely disabled and d...

Confessions of a Bookseller

by Shaun Bythell

Reviewed by Linda:I so enjoyed this diary of a year in the life of a Scottish bookseller in the secondhand trade. Honestly, not a great deal happens, except for lots of skewering of his often eccentric customers and deadpan descriptions of...

Independence

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Reviewed by Linda:This highly regarded fiction writer, whose work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker, has in her latest novel composed a powerful, gripping story of three sisters each struggling to find th...

Maame

by Jessica George

Reviewed by Janet:After her mother returns to London from an extended stay in Ghana, Maddie is finally able to move from the family home into a shared flat, leaving the care of her father in other hands. As Maddie belatedly experiences th...

The Ruin of All Witches: Life and Death in the New World

by Malcolm Gaskill

Reviewed by Linda:I strongly recommend this history book that reads like a novel. British historian Malcolm Gaskill is the leading expert on seventeenth-century witchcraft hysteria. Here he tells the true story of what happened when this...

Someone Else's Shoes

by Jojo Moyes

Reviewed by Janet:When Sam grabs the wrong bag at the gym and ends up with Nisha’s red Louboutin shoes, the lives of both women are changed. Those red shoes give Sam a dose of confidence as she deals with her depressed unemployed hu...

The House in the Pines

by Ana Reyes

Reviewed by Linda:Congratulations to Ana Reyes, who spent much of her childhood in Amherst, on the incredible success of her first book. A New York Times bestseller, the book takes place down the road in Pittsfield (where Reyes enjoyed visits ...

Two Nights in Lisbon

by Chris Pavone

Reviewed by Janet:Ariel Pryce wakes up in a Lisbon hotel and discovers that her husband John is gone. In desperation, she first goes to the police and then to the American Embassy. Throughout the questioning, it becomes clear that that both...

Diamond Eye

by Kate Quinn

Reviewed by Linda:Readers who enjoy historical fiction should discover Kate Quinn. Each of her four novels looks at little-known women who played a critical role in the Allied victory in World War II. Her latest, Diamond Eye, tells the incred...

Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion

by Bushra Rehman

Reviewed by Janet:Razia Mirza is growing up in Corona, Queens, an immigrant neighborhood in transition in the 1980s. Once in their teens, she and her friends rebel in small ways - listening to music, wearing skirts, and other actions not a...

Revenge of the Librarians: Cartoons

by Tom Gauld

Reviewed by Linda:Show me a library lover (or writer or publisher or reader) who can resist this book! I was hooked from the opening cartoon in which librarians accomplished their goal of world dominance: “with superior organizationa...

The Cloisters

by Katy Hays

Reviewed by Janet:If you haven’t already visited this museum near New York City, this thriller may just get you there! When Ann Stilwell arrives at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to start her summer internship, she discovers the posi...

Black Cake

by Charmaine Wilkerson

Reviewed by Linda:Black cake, a dense, rum-soaked dessert, is a Caribbean tradition at festive events. It is also a powerful symbol to the Bennett family who now live far removed from the parents’ roots on the island. On th...

Dinosaurs

by Lydia Millet

Reviewed by Janet:When he decides to make a new start in his life, Gil begins by walking from Manhattan to his new home in Arizona. (His belongings go in a moving van.) He thinks of his new home as a castle, with big rooms and high ceilings...

The Latecomer

by Jean Hanff Korelitz

Reviewed by Linda:This very smart novel got under my skin, as I nervously read the what members of the long-suffering Oppenheimer family would do next to cause one another pain. What a relief the ending was, thanks to the youngest si...

Our Missing Hearts

by Celeste Ng

Reviewed by Janet:After the past few years, it’s not hard to accept this dystopian version of the United States, where a period of crisis has led to the adoption of the Preserving American Culture & Traditions Act (PACT), a stat...

Solito: A Memoir

by Javier Zamora

Reviewed by Linda:I want to give a copy of this unforgettable, heart-warming book to everyone I know, and am glad it has been on the bestseller list. Javier Zamora, a poet and beautiful writer, was born in El Salvador a little over thirty ...

Shrines of Gaiety

by Kate Atkinson

Reviewed by Janet:When Nellie Coker is released from prison, her family is in the throng waiting outside. Also at hand is Detective Chief Inspector Frobisher, on loan from Scotland Yard to ferret out corruption at Bow Street Police Station...

We All Want Impossible Things

by Catherine Newman

Reviewed by Linda:Local author Catherine Newman has, in her first adult novel, performed a magic trick, describing in heartbreaking scenes the death in hospice of the narrator Ash’s best friend, Edi, a wife and mother of a you...

Has Anyone Seen My Toes?

by Christopher Buckley

Reviewed by Janet:If you are ready for a comedic romp through the pandemic, this is the book for you! An aging and overweight screenwriter is doing his best to survive the pandemic in South Carolina with his second wife, Peaches. The...

The Midcoast

by Adam White

Reviewed by Linda:Here’s a fun thriller about a lobsterman who works off the beautiful coast of Maine. A drug-smuggling lobsterman whose daughter goes to Amherst College. (I was quite surprised when Amherst became a big part of the ...

Mika in Real Life

by Emiko Jean

Reviewed by Janet:Mika finds herself unemployed – again – and money is getting tight. This isn’t the life she had planned, but one night during her first year of college changed everything. Everything changes aga...

Disorientation

by Elaine Hsieh Chou

Reviewed by Linda:I always enjoy a good spoof of academia. In this campus novel, Ingrid Yang, an 8th-year PhD candidate of Taiwanese American heritage, discovers that neither her powerful thesis advisor nor the Chinese-American poet wh...

The House Across the Lake

by Riley Sager

Reviewed by Janet:Casey Fletcher has been banished to the family cottage on Greene Lake by her mother after showing up drunk at work – on a Broadway stage. The cottage may not be the best place for her to ride out the media storm, ...

Postscript Murders

by Elly Griffiths

Reviewed by Linda:British crime writers are being mysteriously killed off in this fun whodunit. The amateur detectives—including a rumpled ex-monk, a suspiciously well-dressed eldercare giver, and an octogenarian BBC retiree in ...

Other Birds

by Sarah Addison Allen

Reviewed by Janet:In her newest, Allen brings her readers to the Dellawisp apartments on Mallow Island with the arrival of Zoey, who inherits her mother's studio apartment when she turns 18. The other 4 residents each have t...

This Time Tomorrow

by Emma Straub

Reviewed by Linda:If you could go briefly back to your past and make some changes, would you? Alice Stern, whose beloved father is a famous sci-fi writer of time travel books, discovers that it is not so easy to do so after she stays out too...

The Wedding Dress Sewing Circle

by Jennifer Ryan

Reviewed by Janet:Devastated professionally and emotionally when her fashion house is destroyed in the Blitz, Cressida Westcott is forced to return to her childhood home, Aldhurst Manor. Her niece, Violet, is conscripted into the ATS, whic...

Pig Years

by Ellyn Gaydos

Reviewed by Linda:A stunning account of the backbreaking, sweaty, freezing, muddy, discouraging, despairing, ecstatic, bountiful, inspirational work that is farming. Working as a farmhand on small farms in upstate New York and Vermont, Gayd...

Love Marriage

by Monica Ali

Reviewed by Janet:Yasmin has always believed that her parents have a "love marriage", and not an arranged one. She is confident that her marriage to Joe, a fellow doctor-in-training, will be one as well, despite the wide social and ...

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

by Bessel van de Kolk

Reviewed by Linda:I watched this title stay on the bestseller list for almost a decade, but never quite understood what it was about. Finally, I got around to reading it and found it fascinating. Anyone who enjoys a scientific/medical...

Switchboard Soldiers

by Jennifer Chiaverini

Reviewed by Janet:Have you ever heard of the U.S. Army Signal Corps from World War I? This novel sheds some light on the heroic women who contributed to the Allied victory by waging war from their switchboards, connecting calls relay...

The Violin Conspiracy

by Brendan Slocumb

Reviewed by Linda:Anyone who doesn't believe that racism reaches into the "upper echelons of the arts" should read this eye-opening novel about an African American violinist who is a classical music protege. (The autho...

Bloomsbury Girls

by Natalie Jenner

Reviewed by Janet:For those readers who would enjoy more time with some of the characters from The Jane Austen Society, the author’s second book is just for you! After graduating from Cambridge, Evie Stone finds a job cataloging...

Remarkably Bright Creatures

by Shelby Van Pelt

Reviewed by Linda:I loved this quirky debut novel (the first book I've ever read to be narrated, in part, by an octopus). Tova, a widow whose only child died under mysterious circumstances, finds some purpose to life when she be...

Book of Night

by Holly Black

Reviewed by Janet:Local author Holly Black brings out her first novel for adults, setting it in a darkly magical Pioneer Valley. Charlie works as a bartender, is trying to get her sister's tuition bill at UMass paid, and has a boyfr...

True Biz

by Sara Novic

Reviewed by Linda:I thought I had some understanding of the lives of deaf Americans, but this novel showed me how ignorant I was. It is a fascinating account of teenagers at a school for the deaf, and the struggles that they face to keep aliv...

Iona Iverson’s Rules for Commuting

by Clare Pooley

Reviewed by Janet:Iona Iverson has been commuting on the 8:05 train from Hampton Court to Waterloo for years. She and her dog Lulu reign from one of the tables in carriage 3, where she has made up names and stories for the familiar faces sh...

The Book of Form and Emptiness

by Ruth Ozeki

Reviewed by Linda:If you are one of the many readers who loved A Tale for the Time Being, then you are in luck. Ruth Ozeki has written another powerful novel that draws readers in with its sympathetic characters, surprising events, and creati...

The Cartographers

by Peng Shepherd

Reviewed by Janet:Nell hasn’t seen her father since the day he had her fired from her dream job at the New York Public Library. But he’s been found dead at his desk in the map library, and in a secret compartment of the...

The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven: A Novel

by Nathaniel Ian Miller

Reviewed by Linda:Go online or get out an atlas and look up the enormous island of Spitsbergen located hundreds of miles north of Scandinavia. Here winter darkness lasts for months, "ice bears" (polar bears) roam the land,...

Lucky Turtle

by Bill Roorbach

Reviewed by Janet:After making a youthful mistake, Cindra is sent to wilderness camp in Montana instead of prison. As she tries to fit in at Camp Challenge, she gradually makes friends with Lucky, a mysteriously silent employee at the camp...

Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History

by Lea Ypi

Reviewed by Linda:Lea Ypi, a professor at the London School of Economics, has written a fascinating memoir of growing up in Albania while it was a Soviet-style socialist state. Taught by her trusted teacher that Albania was a paradise and capita...

Take My Hand

by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

Reviewed by Janet:Civil Townsend begins her nursing career at the Montgomery Family Planning Clinic, instead of joining her father’s medical practice. Her first week finds Civil visiting a rural family living in squalor, i...

The Maid

by Nita Prose

Reviewed by Linda:Molly is a maid at a posh hotel in a big city. Unlike many of her coworkers, she has no difficulty following all of the many rules for the hotel employees; she feels a deep security at having strict rules in place for her co...

Lessons in Chemistry

by Bonnie Garmus

Reviewed by Janet:It’s the early 1960s, and Elizabeth Zott is struggling to be taken seriously as a chemist. All the other chemists are men (of course) and they keep expecting her to bring them coffee instead of working on her re...

Crossroads

by Jonathan Franzen

Reviewed by Linda:If you enjoy learning about the inner workings of families, then you will savor this latest novel by renowned writer Jonathan Franzen. Here he introduces us to Russ Hildebrandt, pastor at a liberal suburban church, and...

Mercy Street

by Jennifer Haigh

Reviewed by Janet:Claudia works as a counselor at a women's health clinic on Mercy Street in Boston, helping women in crisis. Timmy is her weed dealer. Winky (also known as Anthony) is another of Timmy's customers, as we...

Intimacies

by Katie Kitamura

Reviewed by Linda:A woman of many languages moves to The Hague to work as an interpreter at the World Court in this novel that was named one of the New York Times top ten books of 2021. Soon, she is interpreting for a former president acc...

Olga Dies Dreaming

by Xochitl Gonzalez

Reviewed by Janet:Olga is a successful wedding planner for the wealthy of Manhattan, and very proud of her Puerto Rican roots and her neighborhood in Brooklyn. Her brother Prieto, a Congressman for that neighborhood, loves his family an...

Small Things Like These

by Claire Keegan

Reviewed by Linda:This is an exquisite little gem of a novel. Or more accurately, a novella. The renowned Irish short story writer Claire Keegan brings us to a small Irish town in the mid-1980s. A workingman, the father of five daughters, ...

The Sentence

by Louise Erdrich

Reviewed by Janet:After spending time in prison, which she survived by reading all the books she could get her hands on, Tookie finds work at an independent bookstore in Minneapolis. She loves finding the perfect book for their regulars -...

The Human Zoo

by Sabina Murray

Reviewed by Linda:Local Author Sabina Murray’s latest work features her usual sharp prose. In this novel, a Filipina American journalist returns to Manila both to avoid thinking about her impending divorce and to research a biogr...

The Paradox Hotel

by Rob Hart

Reviewed by Janet:It is 2072, and January Cole is the head of security at the Paradox Hotel, a role she assumed after a number of years working for the TEA (Time Enforcement Agency). Between the blizzard-like conditions outside, rich tourists u...

Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains

by Kerri Arsenault

Reviewed by Linda:Kerri Arsenault grew up in a mill town on the Androscoggin River in Maine. Unlike many in her beloved community, she left the state when she grew up. Now she returns to see with fresh eyes the devastating destruction of...

The Magnolia Palace

by Fiona Davis

Reviewed by Janet:Art enthusiasts will enjoy this historical novel set in the art world of New York City in the early 1900s. Lillian’s bright early career as an artist’s model has begun to fade when a murder scandal force...

Our Malady: Lessons in Liberty from a Hospital Diary

by Timothy Snyder

Reviewed by Linda:Finally, a book that explains how Americans got to the predicament we are in now, a nation without any of the tools we need to confront a life-threatening pandemic: adequate health care for all, a medical system that pri...

The School for Good Mothers

by Jessamine Chan

Reviewed by Janet:A look at motherhood that is both terrifying and profound. Having lost custody of her daughter, Frida must attend the school for good mothers for one year, in order to learn the required parenting skills the state deems ...

Hard Landings: Looking into the Future for a Child with Autism

by Cammie McGovern

Reviewed by Linda:Novelist Cammie McGovern of Amherst has written a nonfiction book that is both a beautiful memoir of life with her son Ethan, who has autism and intellectual disability and is charming and loving, and a fascinating look...

Our Country Friends

by Gary Shteyngart

A special spring two-fer from Janet & Linda!

Reviewed by Janet:A pandemic novel presented with humor, irony, and heart, Our Country Friends will take you back to the early spring of 2020. Sasha Senderovsky and his wife, Masha, invite ...

Fox and I: An Uncommon Friendship

by Catherine Raven

Reviewed by Linda:An astonishing true tale of a naturalist's friendship with a wild fox. Catherine Raven craves the solitude and close connection to nature that she finds in her cabin in a desolate part of eastern Montana. When ...

The Postmistress of Paris

by Meg Waite Clayton

Reviewed by Janet:A fictional story inspired by true events, this novel takes us to France at the very beginning of World War II. Nanée is a wealthy American who has been living in Paris for some time. As the Nazi tanks roll...

How Beautiful We Were

by Imbolo Mbue

Reviewed by Linda:The author of the critically acclaimed novel Behold the Dreamers has a second book out that proves the first one was no fluke. How Beautiful We Were takes readers to a fictional African village called Kosawa, and lets us co...

Femlandia

by Christina Dalcher

Reviewed by Janet:From the author of Vox and Master Class comes another dystopian look at how the social structure has marginalized women for years. After a nationwide economic collapse, Miranda and her daughter are forced to seek shel...

The Other Black Girl

by Zakiya Dalila Harris

Reviewed by Linda:Perfect for book groups, this fascinating novel takes on issues surrounding diversity in the workplace, and does so in a very savvy and surprising manner. Twenty-six year old Nella Rogers has for several years been...

The Personal Librarian

by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray

Reviewed by Janet:As this fictionalized story of her life opens, Belle da Costa Greene applies for the position of personal librarian to financier J.P. Morgan. Using her training and sharp mind, she proceed...

The Love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois

by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

Reviewed by Linda:This novel by a distinguished poet is receiving well-deserved attention for its historic sweep through American slavery and the difficult decades since, giving voice to many who have been forgotten. Y...

Apples Never Fall

by Liane Moriarty

Reviewed by Janet:On Valentine’s Day, Joy Delaney disappeared. Other than a cryptic text sent to her 4 children, there was no note, no message. Of course, the police suspected her husband of 50 years, Stan. But Amy, Logan, Troy,...

Leave the World Behind

by Rumaan Alam

Reviewed by Linda:Start reading and you will be sucked into this addictive tale of the world’s end. It starts so innocuously with a white family from Brooklyn bringing their two kids to a distant part of Long Island for a summer va...

Three Sisters

by Heather Morris

Reviewed by Janet:By the author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz (who makes an appearance in this story as well) comes an incredible story of family, perseverance, and survival. Based on the true story of sisters Cibi, Magda, and Livia, this...

Everything Is Fine

by Vince Granata

Reviewed by Linda:In this moving, beautifully written memoir, the author relates how his loving family’s close ties were tested when his younger brother became ill with schizophrenia and, while untreated and in a psychotic episod...

Cloud Cuckoo Land

by Anthony Doerr

Reviewed by Janet:Another amazing novel by the author of All the Light We Cannot See, this book has plot lines in the past, present, and future, all linking to an ancient Greek book that tells the story of Aethon. Although centuries apart,...

Miss Benson’s Beetle

by Rachel Joyce

Reviewed by Linda:Rachel Joyce, author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, does not disappoint in this latest of her novels about very likable eccentric British characters. This time the characters - Margery Benson, a spinster schoolt...

The Guide

by Peter Heller

Reviewed by Janet:Relieved to escape the monotony of ranch life with his father, Jack is glad to find a job as a fishing guide at an exclusive resort out west, far from the viruses that have plagued the world for the past few years. He&...

Emily's House

by Amy Belding Brown

Reviewed by Linda:This novel provides a lovely way to get to know Emily Dickinson and her family. It is written from the perspective of Margaret Maher, the family’s Irish maid, who came to know everything about “Emi...

The Last Chance Library

by Freya Sampson

Reviewed by Janet:For June Jones, the library in her small village where she works as an assistant has always been her favorite place and refuge. Yet when the local council announces that the library is being considered for closure, the li...

The Midnight Library

by Matt Haig

Reviewed by Linda:This bestselling novel will make you rethink all of your regrets! Nora, a 35-year-old British woman decides that she has too many regrets to go on, but after attempting suicide finds herself hovering between life and death at...

The Guncle

by Steven Rowley

Reviewed by Janet:When Sara (Patrick’s best friend and sister-in-law) passes away and her husband (Patrick’s brother) goes to rehab, Patrick finds himself guardian to their children, Maisie and Grant. He brings them to ...

Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

by Katherine May

Reviewed by Linda:As much as I believe in reading library books, this is one that many people will want to own and to refer to in hard times and to share with others. British writer Katherine May has perfectly captured the difficulty that ...

Between Two Kingdoms

by Suleika Jaouad

Reviewed by Janet:Suleika never expected her life journey to take her from college to Paris to a cancer ward in New York City. No one expects a young woman in her 20s to have leukemia – not even the medical professionals she vis...

Shuggie Bain

by Douglas Stuart

Reviewed by Linda:Winner of the 2020 Booker Prize and a National Book Award finalist, this beautiful and heart-breaking novel is about a boy growing up in run-down public housing in Glasgow, Scotland. Shuggie adores his alcoholic mother, ...

You've Been Volunteered

by Laurie Gelman

Reviewed by Janet:A thoroughly fun read about the trials and travails of being the class mom. (Did you read the author’s previous novel, Class Mom?  Or how about the newest in the series, Yoga Pant Nation?  This...

Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty First Century

by Jessica Bruder

Reviewed by Linda:This book was recently turned into an award-winning documentary. Jessica Bruder offers a fascinating, eye-opening look at the recent phenomenon of senior citizens moving for financial reasons out of homes and into RVs an...

The Woman with the Blue Star

by Pam Jenoff

Reviewed by Janet:The newest historical novel by Jenoff takes us to Krakow, Poland during WW II. Sadie and her family have been forced to leave their apartment and move to the Jewish Ghetto. When the Ghetto is cleared, they flee to the sewers...

Ex Libris: 100+ Books to Read and Reread

by Michiko Kakutani

Reviewed by Linda:This gorgeously designed book is a quick read, but you’ll want to have a notepad handy because the former chief book critic of the New York Times and Pulitzer Prize-winning literary critic has enough reading suggestion...

Little Wonders

by Kate Rorick

Reviewed by Janet:What a fun read! I picked this up on my way out the library door for my vacation, and had so much fun visiting the Little Wonders Preschool. Daisy, a transplant from Southern California, has trouble fitting in with the othe...

The Thursday Murder Club

by Richard Osman

Reviewed by Linda:If you like your murder mysteries charming and your sleuths immensely likable, then this British treasure is for you. The Thursday Murder Club meets weekly in the Jigsaw Room of Coopers Chase, a retirement community. Eliz...

Peaces

by Helen Oyeyemi

Reviewed by Janet:As they board the excursion train called The Lucky Day, Otto and Xavier look forward to celebrating their non-honeymoon honeymoon. However, this train trip is unlike anything they might have expected. The past and the pre...

Migrations

by Charlotte McConaghy

Reviewed by Linda:A tragic, beautiful tale set in the near future when the oceans and the skies are nearly empty of life. Our Irish protagonist, Franny Stone, is at the start of the book a person of mystery. Wild, haunted by her past...

The Forest of Vanishing Stars

by Kristin Harmel

Reviewed by Janet:Having lived in the Nalibocka Forest since she was 2 years old, Yona knows how to shelter and find food in all seasons. When she discovers groups of people hiding in the forest in fear, she realizes that she needs to sha...

The Pull of the Stars

by Emma Donoghue

Reviewed by Linda:The author of the bestseller Room has written a powerful and gripping work of historical fiction set in Ireland during the deadly 1918 flu pandemic. Julia, a nurse midwife at a Dublin hospital, is working under extremely ...

The Ladies of the Secret Circus

by Constance Sayers

Reviewed by Janet:When Lara’s fiancé disappears on their wedding day, she is heartbroken. As she tries to make sense of it all, she discovers that another man disappeared from the same spot 30 years ago and that the...

The Vanishing Half

by Brit Bennett

Reviewed by Linda:This literary bestseller tells a fictional tale that has occurred unknown numbers of times throughout American history. Start with an African-American family and a member of that family who discovers he or she can pass as ...

Girls with Bright Futures

by Tracy Dobmeier and Wendy Katzman

Reviewed by Janet:It’s almost time to submit those Early Decision college applications for the seniors at the exclusive Elliot Bay Academy in Seattle, and the moms are taking it more seriously than the students. Playing ...

Sea Wife

by Amity Gaige

Reviewed by Linda:I tumbled into this amazing novel of a family on a year-long voyage through the Caribbean on a newly acquired sailboat, and never wanted to leave. The characters were so real and so sympathetic: Juliet, the mother of two yo...

The Liar’s Dictionary

by Eley Williams

Reviewed by Janet:Word lovers will have great fun with this entertaining romp through Swansby’s Encyclopaedic Dictionary. In 1899, Peter Winceworth spends his days working on entries for the S section of this ambitious multi-volume work. O...

The Erratics

by Vicki Laveau-Harvie

Reviewed by Linda:I'm a compulsive reader of memoirs about eccentric families. Vicki Laveau-Harvie takes a new approach to the topic. She describes with much dark humor how she and her sister were summoned back to their childhood hom...

The Rose Code

by Kate Quinn

Reviewed by Janet:Osla and Mab find themselves as unlikely roommates when they are sent from London to the mysterious Bletchley Park for some unspecified posting during World War II. Their landlady’s daughter, Beth, is recruited as ...

The Boy in the Field

by Margot Livesey

Reviewed by Linda:Novelist Margot Livesey excels at character development. In her latest work, teenagers Matthew and Zoe and their younger brother Duncan discover a boy who was beaten up lying in a field near their home in Oxford, England...

The Nature of Fragile Things

by Susan Meissner

Reviewed by Janet:To escape a miserable life in a New York tenement in 1905, Sophie becomes a mail order bride and travels to San Francisco as the bride of Martin Hocking and mother to his daughter Kat. As an insurance salesman, Martin is...

Hamnet: A Novel of the Plague

by Maggie O'Farrell

Reviewed by Linda:This highly acclaimed novel concerns the lives of a penniless Latin tutor; his wife, Agnes, an eccentric but gifted healer, and their three children in Stratford-upon-Avon in sixteenth-century England. Few in ...

Red Island House

by Andrea Lee

Reviewed by Janet:Set in a beautiful vacation home in Madagascar, this novel immerses us in scenes from the lives of Shay, an African American professor of literature, and Senna, her Italian husband. In fact, the house is so central to the st...

Disappearing Earth

by Julia Phillips

Reviewed by Linda:It's not often that an author's first book is a National Book Award finalist and a New York Times Best Book of the Year. This novel revolves around the lives that are upended when two young sisters are ...

One by One

by Ruth Ware

Reviewed by Janet:Liz is the odd one out at the corporate retreat to the ski chalet in the French Alps. As a former staffer at Snoop, she doesn’t quite fit in with the current inner circle, not that she has ever fit in anywhere &...

Interior Chinatown

by Charles Yu

Reviewed by Linda:This satirical look at racism in American culture won the National Book Award for Fiction. Written as the script of a TV show, the novel develops over 7 acts and features Willis Wu, an actor aspiring to move beyond being cas...

Klara and the Sun

by Kazuo Ishiguro

Reviewed by Janet:When fourteen-year-old Josie chooses Klara to be her AF (Artificial Friend), Klara uses her acute powers of observation and empathy to become the friend that lonely Josie needs. Reliant on solar power herself, Klara make...

We Keep the Dead Close: A Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of Silence

by Becky Cooper

Reviewed by Linda:Becky Cooper first hears the stories about the murder when she is a Harvard student. A female graduate student was said to have been killed decades earlier by her archaeology professor with whom she was having an affair. T...

The Kitchen Front

by Jennifer Ryan

Reviewed by Janet:From the author of The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir comes another heartwarming story from a small village in England during World War II. Just two years into the war, food rationing is a daily challenge in most househ...

Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning

by Cathy Park Hong

Reviewed by Linda:A Korean-American poet powerfully exposes the racism confronting Asian Americans. Growing up facing suspicion from the larger community and subsequently feeling shame, Hong probes the emotions that arise when you discov...

The Lions of Fifth Avenue

by Fiona Davis

Reviewed by Janet:The perfect novel for book lovers and library aficionados! In 1913, Laura and her family live in an apartment in the New York Public Library, where her husband is the building superintendent while writing his first novel in...

Simon the Fiddler

by Paulette Jiles

Reviewed by Linda:Poet and novelist Paulette Jiles, author of News of the World, has written another stunning tale set in Texas in the lawless era at the end of the Civil War. Simon Boudlin is 23 years old, a talented fiddler, and accusto...

A Million Aunties

by Alecia McKenzie

Reviewed by Janet:This short but thoroughly enjoyable novel immerses the reader in a neighborhood in rural Jamaica when Christopher, an American artist, retreats to the home of Auntie Della after a personal tragedy. A wonderful range of ...

COVID-19: The Pandemic that Should Never Have Happened and How to Stop the Next One

by Debora MacKenzie

Reviewed by Linda:Author MacKenzie is a distinguished British science journalist. She gives a broad overview of how the pandemic began in China and spread throughout the world. Her writing is clear for readers without a science backgrou...

Blue Ticket

by Sophie Mackintosh

Reviewed by Janet:From the author of The Water Cure comes a stark tale of a society where the color of a ticket drawn by girls on the day of their first bleed determines the rest of their life. From the moment Calla draws that blue tic...

Doomsday Book

by Connie Willis

Reviewed by Linda:I picked up this beloved sci fi classic because I thought 2020 might provide a unique opportunity for comprehending the experience of the Black Death that spread across Europe, Asia, and North Africa in the fourteenth cen...

His Only Wife

by Peace Adzo Medie

Reviewed by Janet:When Afi is convinced by her mother to marry Elikem, the son of an important local family, she isn’t quite sure how things will turn out. After all, he doesn’t even show up for the traditional weddi...

Deacon King Kong

by James McBride

Reviewed by Linda:One of the New York Times’s 10 best books of 2020, and most recently, a Carnegie Medal Winner, this novel furthers the author’s outstanding literary reputation. In 1969, the unlikely hero, a cranky, of...

Last Tang Standing

by Lauren Ho

Reviewed by Janet:Andrea finds that the family gatherings for this Chinese New Year have become a complete obstacle course, as she tries to avoid the aunties and their pointed questions about her marital status (still single!) and how her moth...

How to Be an Antiracist

by Ibram X. Kendi

Reviewed by Linda:This important book is receiving much well-deserved attention. The author is one of the country’s foremost historians and a leading voice on combatting racism. Here he combines an analysis of racism in America and the po...

We Ride Upon Sticks

by Quan Barry

Reviewed by Janet:This novel will take you back to the 80s, for a story of the Danvers High School field hockey team and Emilio Estevez – or at least, a notebook with his image on the cover. With their hearts set on making it to the...

You Again

by Debra Jo Immergut

Reviewed by Linda:Valley author Debra Jo Immergut follows up her Edgar-nominated novel The Captives with a page-turner that is also a meditation on life as an artist, on balancing family and finances with creating new work. Abby Willar...

The Jane Austen Society

by Natalie Jenner

Reviewed by Janet:The perfect read for Jane Austen fans! This novel takes us to Chawton, England where another group of Jane Austen fans gradually find each other and mobilize to preserve the property of their favorite author. Immersing u...

Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results

by James Clear

Reviewed by Linda:This bestseller looks at the science of how we form and maintain habits. The author provides lots of fascinating details about human nature as it relates to habits, and stories about how tiny changes in behavior can bring b...

The Guest List

by Lucy Foley

Reviewed by Janet:This feels like an Agatha Christie mystery at first, with a wedding being celebrated on a small island off the coast of Ireland, accessible only by boat. As a handful of characters take turns narrating the story, it becomes ...

The Exiles

by Christina Baker Kline

A special holiday two-fer from Janet and Linda!

Reviewed by Janet:Falsely accused of theft and left pregnant after being seduced by her employer’s son, Evangeline loses her post as a governess and is sentenced to 14 years&...

The Love Story of Missy Carmichael

by Beth Morrey

Reviewed by Linda:  Millicent Carmichael, a retired librarian living in London, is at loose ends after the death of her husband and the departure of her two adult children from her life (her beloved son moving with his fami...

Chosen Ones

by Veronica Roth

Reviewed by Janet:From the bestselling author of the Divergent series comes a sci-fi/fantasy/thriller for adults. Ten years ago, Sloane Andrews and four other teens, called the Chosen Ones, defeated the Dark One, who was wreaking havoc in ...

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of Plants

by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Reviewed by Linda:Robin Wall Kimmerer has written a very personal book about plants and our relationship to them and the natural world. She is both a biologist and a Native American who is steeped in traditional knowledge. Her book h...

You Had Me at Hola

by Alexis Daria

Reviewed by Janet:This new rom-com series for ScreenFlix could be just what Jasmine needs as the next step in her Leading Lady Plan. It could also be a career boost out of telenovelas for the secretive new leading man, Ashton. Yet their pro...

Know My Name: A Memoir

by Chanel Miller

Reviewed by Linda:This powerful book was just named the non-fiction winner of the 2020 Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Three years ago, the Internet lit up with the story of Jane Doe, a young woman who was raped while unconscious by a Stanfor...

All Adults Here

by Emma Straub

Reviewed by Janet:Astrid lives in a picturesque small town in upstate New York, and finds her world off-kilter after witnessing an acquaintance get struck by a local school bus. This event serves as a catalyst for Astrid, causing her to look...

The Glass Hotel

by Emily St. John Mandel

Reviewed by Linda:The author of Station Eleven has written a new bestseller entitled The Glass Hotel. This superbly written book looks at the insecurity of modern life, and how easy it is to lose one's moral compass when t...

Afterlife

by Julia Alvarez

Reviewed by Janet:Antonia is a retired professor from a Vermont liberal arts college, and the first anniversary of her husband’s death is approaching. Still struggling to find her “afterlife” following both of...

Will He Go? Trump and the Looming Election Meltdown in 2020

by Lawrence Douglas

Reviewed by Linda:Amherst College professor Lawrence Douglas has written a very timely book for all who are concerned about the upcoming presidential election. He assesses the likelihood of mayhem if Trump loses a close election or if t...

The Happy Ever After Playlist

by Abby Jimenez

Reviewed by Janet:This fun follow-up to The Friend Zone catches readers up with artist Sloan Monroe, a couple years after the end of the previous book. Witty and irreverent, this look at love, friendship, grieving, and being true to yoursel...

Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family

by Robert Kolker

Reviewed by Linda:What an astonishing true story! The Galvin Family of Colorado was always exceptional owing to its size (10 sons and 2 daughters). Six of the sons were tragically hit with schizophrenia as each reached adulthood. Little wa...

Conjure Women

by Afia Atakora

Reviewed by Janet:Rue is a healer and midwife on Marse Charles’ plantation, having learned her skills from her mother, May Belle. Varina is Marse Charles’ daughter, and being the same age as Rue, has been both playmate a...

The World as It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House

by Ben Rhodes

Reviewed by Linda:An Amherst College alum, Ben Rhodes was twenty-nine when he went to work for the Obama presidential campaign. For the next decade, he worked as a speechwriter, national security advisor, and aide to the President, with whom ...

The Dutch House

by Ann Patchett

Reviewed by Linda:A stunning Pennsylvania mansion called the “Dutch House” is more than just the setting in this novel by beloved author Ann Patchett. It remains vivid in the minds of family and staff who have lived and ...

The Bookish Life of Nina Hill

by Abbi Waxman

Reviewed by Janet:The perfect fun read for book lovers, trivia buffs, and fans of quirky novels! Nina Hill is quite content with her life – her job at an independent bookshop, her kick-butt trivia team, her cat Phil, and her perfec...

The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11

by Garrett M. Graff

Reviewed by Linda:This book tells the story of 9/11 from the perspective of the people who lived it. Everyone is included, from those who escaped the towers and the Pentagon and the families of the survivors and of those who perished, t...

These Ghosts Are Family

by Maisy Card

Reviewed by Janet:When his childhood friend is killed in a London dockside accident in 1970, Abel Paisley decides to assume Solomon’s identity, and permanently abandon his wife and family back in Jamaica. As Solomon, he begins a new...

Such a Fun Age

by Kiley Reid

Reviewed by Linda:This spring title, a selection of Reese’s Book Club, was soaring in popularity with many holds when the coronavirus hit. I was lucky enough to score a copy of the audiobook through Libby/Overdrive. It is a fascinat...

Master Class

by Christina Dalcher

Reviewed by Janet:From the author of Vox comes another gripping and haunting novel, set in a near future that will seem eerily possible. Imagine that education reform has created a tiered system of schools, where monthly testing determ...

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland

by Patrick Radden Keefe

Reviewed by Linda:This history of the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland is so gripping that, at times, it reads like a thriller. The author focuses on a devastating cold case from the 1970s, involving a widowed mother of ten ...

You Again

by Debra Jo Immergut

Reviewed by Linda:Valley author Debra Jo Immergut follows up her Edgar-nominated novel The Captives with a page-turner that is also a meditation on life as an artist, on balancing family and finances with creating new work. Abby Willar...

House of Trelawney

by Hannah Rothschild

Reviewed by Janet:After 800 years, the fortunes of the Scott family have disintegrated, as has Trelawney Castle. Kitto, the future earl, spends his days in London as chairman of a bank. Jane, his wife, holds hearth and home together wi...

Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss

by Margaret Renkl

Reviewed by Linda:Margaret Renkl, whose column appears weekly in the New York Times, has written a soaring collection of essays about the natural world outside her door in Nashville. She reveals surprises, beauty, and heartache in the liv...

Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators

by Ronan Farrow

Reviewed by Linda:I am in awe of Ronan Farrow for accomplishing what numerous other talented journalists tried and failed to do, to expose the dangerous predator Harvey Weinstein and the powerful interests that sought to protect him and oth...

The Music Book

by Karen Osborn

Reviewed by Linda:Local novelist Karen Osborn’s newest work looks back to the 1950s and the life of a gifted female musician at a time when few were allowed entry into the male world of professional classical musicians. Newly grad...

Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations

by Mira Jacob

Reviewed by Linda:Thank you to the colleague who recommended this graphic novel and said it was a very fast read. I’d seen it on multiple best of 2019 lists, and it fully deserves those spots. Mira Jacob writes of being an American ...

On Beauty

by Wally Swist

Reviewed by Cyndi:Amherst author Wally Swist is a prolific writer who easily crosses genres, as is evident in his latest publication that incorporates four types of writing not often seen side-by-side. The preface provides a guide to the who...

The Yellow House

by Sarah M. Broom

Reviewed by Linda: Sarah Broom’s first book has made quite an impression, winning the 2019 National Book Award for Nonfiction and being named one of the New York Times’s 10 Best Books of the Year for 2019. The...

The Last Train to London

by Meg Waite Clayton

Reviewed by Janet:While most Jews fleeing Hitler’s Nazi regime in the late 1930s had increasingly fewer places that would receive them, Jewish children fared a little better. The parallel stories in this novel – of ...

Hyper Education: Why Good Schools, Good Grades, and Good Behavior Are Not Enough

by Pawan Dhingra

Reviewed by Linda:Pawan Dhingra, a sociologist at Amherst College, has written an up-close look at the education arms race of after-school learning, academic competitions, and the perceived failure of even our best schools to educate child...

Just Breathe

by Cammie McGovern

Reviewed by Linda:This moving novel may remind readers of John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, both for its realistic portrayal of teens up against serious medical challenges and for its very sympathetic characters. David, the ...

The Giver of Stars

by Jojo Moyes

Reviewed by Linda:Library lovers will rejoice in popular British novelist Moyes’s latest work. She has turned her focus across the Atlantic to the Appalachian Mountains during the Great Depression and introduces the pack horse libra...

Oona Out of Order

by Margarita Montimore

Reviewed by Janet:Nineteen-year-old Oona is ready to celebrate her birthday on the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve. Her life lies before her, as does a crucial decision. Yet after the clock strikes twelve, Oona finds h...

Battle Dress: Poems

by Karen Skolfield

Reviewed by Cyndi:With beautiful language and imagery, Karen Skolfield engages with the best and worst of humanity through the lens of her unique experiences as a female U.S. Army veteran. Her way with language is particularly noticeable...

The 100% Solution: A Plan for Solving Climate Change

by Solomon Goldstein-Rose

Reviewed by Linda:This very eye-opening book should be read by all concerned citizens, scientists, engineers, public officials, activists, donors, farmers, and educators. Written by a well-known local activist, it makes clear how ...

How to Love a Country: Poems

by Richard Blanco

Reviewed by Cyndi:This new volume from Richard Blanco, the Presidential Inaugural Poet for Barack Obama, wrestles with complex and challenging aspects of our nation. He tackles issues such as immigration, gender, race, and sexuality by gr...

These Fevered Days: Ten Pivotal Moments in the Making of Emily Dickinson

by Martha Ackmann

Reviewed by Cyndi:Even if you’re not a fan of Emily Dickinson, Martha Ackmann’s beautiful prose and vivid descriptions are certain to delight you. For Dickinson fans, These Fevered Days provides new insights into the l...

The Yellow Bird Sings

by Jennifer Rosner

Reviewed by Linda:Jennifer Rosner, formerly of Leverett and now living on the other side of the river, is known to many in the community. It is very exciting to see the publication of her debut novel (and second adult book). The book is ...

The Floating Feldmans

by Elyssa Friedland

Reviewed by Linda:Three generations of a family embark on a cruise to celebrate the imposing matriarch’s seventieth birthday. As it has been over a decade since they spent more than 24 hours under the same roof, togetherness d...

The Starless Sea

by Erin Morgenstern

Reviewed by Janet:Calling all lovers of words, stories, tales, and books! From the author of The Night Circus comes this amazingly constructed book, which weaves the narrative of Zachary Ezra Rawlins with other stories and tales, creati...

The Turn of the Key

by Ruth Ware

Reviewed by Linda:Another delightfully creepy Gothic novel from Ruth Ware. Our narrator, who is keeping a big secret from us, is a young woman who moves from London to an isolated Scottish mansion to be a nanny to four girls, ranging in age fr...

A Ladder to the Sky

by John Boyne

Reviewed by Amy:Ambitious yet talent-less Maurice is deadly focused on getting published and being a famous author. He endears himself to one very famous writer, who shares a tip with Maurice: wherever there is a secret, you will find a good ...

Out of Darkness, Shining Light

by Petina Gappah

Reviewed by Linda:Out of the darkness of Africa in the late nineteenth century was brought a shining light, explorer and missionary David Livingstone, his body carried by the faithful members of his final expedition. The Scottish traveler ...

Five-Carat Soul

by James McBride

Reviewed by Linda:One of the pleasures of a book group is that it introduces you to books you would not otherwise have read. In this way, I discovered this collection of short stories by the National Book Award-winning author of The Good L...

Red at the Bone

by Jacqueline Woodson

Reviewed by Janet:Pivoting around the occasion of Melody’s coming-of-age ceremony, this novel takes us back and forth in time as it explores the history and community that have influenced the decisions, actions, and relation...

The Guest Book

by Sarah Blake

Reviewed by Linda:If you have ever known and loved a beautiful place, particularly one where extended family went together, you will sympathize with Evie Milton who is distraught at the idea of selling the family’s summer island in...

Olive, Again

by Elizabeth Strout

Reviewed by Janet:We return to Crosby, Maine and the outspoken Olive Kitteridge in this most recent book by Elizabeth Strout. Each chapter immerses us briefly – yet intensely - into Olive’s own narrative or the life ...

Once More We Saw Stars

by Jayson Greene

Reviewed by Linda:This exquisitely written memoir takes readers into one of the saddest experiences imaginable, the loss of a young child. The author, a Brooklyn resident and writer, shares openly and honestly the story of the death of his...

A Door in the Earth

by Amy Waldman

Reviewed by Janet:The author, a former New York Times reporter covering Afghanistan, immerses us in a small village in northern Afghanistan. Inspired by a book recounting another American’s work to build a women’s clinic,...

A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II

by Sonia Purnell

Reviewed by Linda:Open this book and meet a truly remarkable woman, one who was instrumental in liberating France from the Nazis. Virginia Hall was considered a most unlikely candidate to be a spy: a socialite from Baltimore who had a pros...

The Water Dancer

by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Reviewed by Janet:This Oprah’s Book Club pick takes us to Virginia, where the elevated white culture based on the tobacco crop is eroding as the fields produce less and less. Hiram, who Tasks on the Lockless plantation, cannot...

I Owe You One

by Sophie Kinsella

Reviewed by Linda:I relished listening to this latest novel by Sophie Kinsella, the queen of Chick lit. Fixie Farr is devoted to her late father’s housewares shop and has a monumental crush on her childhood friend Ryan. Both br...

Where the Crawdads Sing

by Delia Owens

Reviewed by Janet:Just in case you haven’t read this one yet, add it to your list! This evocative novel creates a wonderful sense of place in the marshes of the North Carolina coast, where Kya lives as one with the nature that surr...

Evergreen Tidings from the Baumgartners

by Gretchen Anthony

Reviewed by Linda:This satire of those obnoxious newsy holidays letters is a fun read any time of the year. With a gentle touch, the author pokes fun at Violet Baumgartner, a formidable Midwestern matriarch who writes glowing family upd...

The Secrets We Kept

by Lara Prescott

Reviewed by Janet:An engrossing tale of the Cold War, told as parallel stories from the East and from the West. Olga is Boris Pasternak’s mistress, and is sent to the Gulag by Stalin for not revealing the plot of Dr. Zhivago whil...

The Mother-in-Law

by Sally Hepworth

Reviewed by Linda:I spent a recent long car trip happily listening to the audio version of this novel. A work of domestic suspense that rivals those of Liane Moriarty, this novel is also set in Australia (the audio reader has a charming a...

Searching for Sylvie Lee

by Jean Kwok

Reviewed by Janet:Amy’s immigrant parents work very hard, and she gets temp office work when she can, but the family is struggling. When Grandma, who lives near Amsterdam with Ma’s cousin, is dying, only Sylvie, Amy&rsq...

Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss

by Rajeev Balasubramanyam

Reviewed by Linda:This entertaining spoof of academia features a distinguished professor of economics at Cambridge, who in the opening scene has the media camped outside his door waiting to see if he wins the Nobel Prize. He may b...

The Rosie Result

by Graeme Simsion

Reviewed by Janet:Now back in Australia for the final book in this trilogy, Don and Rosie are adjusting to their jobs while their 11-year-old son Hudson adjusts to his new school. When the school calls about some issues that have arisen, ...

The Cactus

by Sarah Haywood

Reviewed by Linda:This novel is for anyone who loved Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine. A British woman in her mid-40s, Susan Green has no patience for messy emotions. Her life is completely orderly, with a one-bedroom flat, a job that d...

The Nickel Boys

by Colson Whitehead

Reviewed by Janet:This short novel takes us to the Jim Crow South in the 1960s, where Elwood, a hardworking and intelligent young man, has been raised by his grandmother. On the verge of finishing high school and heading to college, Elw...

Lost Children Archive

by Valeria Luiselli

Reviewed by Linda:This brilliant novel can be difficult to read because it explores two painful topics: the tragedy at the US-Mexico border as it affects children and the break-up of a blended family from New York City with two very bri...

The Lager Queen of Minnesota

by J. Ryan Stradal

Reviewed by Janet:Edith has worked hard all her life, in part because her sister Ruth inherited the family farm while Edith got nothing. However, when the pies Edith bakes at the nursing home are named the third best in the state of Minn...

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

by Ocean Vuong

Reviewed by Linda:A faculty member in the UMass MFA Program and recently named a 2019 MacArthur Fellow, Ocean Vuong earned comparisons to Emily Dickinson with his first book, a collection of poetry. For his second, he turned to autobiographi...

City of Girls

by Elizabeth Gilbert

Reviewed by Janet:It all begins in 1940, when Vivian Morris flunks out of Vassar. Her wealthy parents send her to New York City to live with her Aunt Peg, owner of a neighborhood theater in Midtown. Vivian immerses herself in this unco...

No Visible Bruises: What We Don't Know about Domestic Violence Can Kill Us

by Rachel Louise Snyder

Reviewed by Linda:Finally, a book that does for domestic violence what Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow did for racism in the criminal justice system, i.e., shine a bright light on it. A powerful and insightful book, ...

The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters

by Balli Kaur Jaswal

Reviewed by Janet:Obeying their mother’s dying wish, sisters Rajni, Jezmeen, and Shirina have set aside their daily lives to undertake a journey to India, following through with the opportunities of service and remembrance so...

The Mothers

by Brit Bennett

Reviewed by Linda:Welcome to Upper Room Chapel, an African American church in Southern California. The elderly women of that congregation act as a Greek chorus throughout this gripping first novel. They cast their eyes—sometimes l...

The Flight Portfolio

by Julie Orringer

Reviewed by Janet:Immerse yourself in 1940 Marseille, where Varian Fry has come to do the work of the Emergency Rescue Committee by helping threatened artists and writers escape the grasp of Vichy France and the Nazis. Accustomed to keepi...

Hearth and Soul: A History of the Jones Library at One Hundred

by Bruce Watson

Reviewed by Linda:To celebrate our centennial, the Jones Library decided to commission a history of the library. Not an academic, dry tome, but a short, entertaining book by an author who frequently writes for Smithsonian and who for years ...

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek

by Kim Michele Richardson

Reviewed by Janet:Cussy loves her job as a librarian for the Kentucky Pack Horse Library Project, bringing books via mule to the folks in the hollers. Many patrons eagerly await her visits, yet some people are suspicious of this g...

The Limits of the World

by Jennifer Acker

Reviewed by Linda:Jennifer Acker of Amherst College is editor of the school’s literary magazine The Common and organizer of LitFest, which brings distinguished writers to campus each spring. This elegantly written and thought-pr...

The Farm

by Joanne Ramos

Reviewed by Janet:Golden Oaks is a lovely retreat nestled in the Hudson Valley, offering every luxury to its residents – organic food, personal trainers, massages – who go through a thorough application and vetting proce...

The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother's Life in the Detroit Numbers

by Bridgett M. Davis

Reviewed by Linda:As some of you know, I love to read accounts of inspiring mothers. This book was an outstanding example of this genre. Fannie Davis ran a Numbers racket in the city of Detroit for decades. The granddaughter of slaves,...

The Library of Lost and Found

by Phaedra Patrick

Reviewed by Janet:After caring for her ailing parents for 15 years, Martha is accustomed to being helpful. Her house is crammed with projects and favors she has undertaken to do for others, including friends and patrons from the library ...

The Overstory

by Richard Powers

Reviewed by Linda:This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, although perhaps overly long, is a profound and insightful look at our understanding of trees. Joining The Secret Lives of Trees and other recent works, it causes the reader to re-evalu...

The Huntress

by Kate Quinn

Reviewed by Janet:After World War II, Ian Graham dedicated his life to tracking down Nazis who have been able to escape the consequences of their wartime deeds. A particular target is The Huntress, who was responsible for killing his brother....

The Uninhabitable Earth: Life after Warming

by David Wallace-Wells

Reviewed by Linda:I’ve been waiting for a book to be published that will rouse Americans to confront the issue of climate change (as Uncle Tom’s Cabin did for slavery). This may be that book. The author, a journal...

Lost and Wanted

by Nell Freudenberger

Reviewed by Janet:Nell teaches physics at MIT, and her best friend from college was working in Hollywood when she hears of Charlie’s death. Grieving the loss of her friend and regretting the distance between them (both physi...

The Friend

by Sigrid Nunez

Reviewed by Linda:Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction, this novel is for and about writers, teachers of writing, and those who love fine writing. The narrator is a woman who loses her beloved literary mentor to suicide and finds h...

The Lost Girls of Paris

by Pam Jenoff

Reviewed by Janet:Running late for work in 1946, Grace literally stumbles over a suitcase in Grand Central Station, and finds some photos of women in uniform. Wanting to return them – and the suitcase – to the rightful own...

Small Fry: A Memoir

by Lisa Brennan-Jobs

Reviewed by Linda:Named one of the New York Times’s ten best books of 2018, this memoir by the eldest daughter of Steve Jobs is a powerful and painful account of her childhood. The founder of Apple was a master manipulator as...

Chronicles of a Radical Hag

by Lorna Landvik

Reviewed by Janet:After columnist Haze Evans suffers a massive stroke, Susan McGrath, the editor of the local paper, decides to re-run some of her old columns in the interim. As selections from 50 years’ worth of work is republis...

Unsheltered

by Barbara Kingsolver

Reviewed by Linda:Find an audiobook (on CD, a Playaway, or a digital download through Libby/Overdrive) and hear the author doing an exquisite reading of her latest novel. She addresses crucial themes from today like how the gypsy life...

The River

by Peter Heller

Reviewed by Janet:Fishing. Wild blueberries. Northern lights. Canoeing. Camping. Whitewater rapids. Missing person. Forest fire. Wilderness survival. College friends Wynn and Jack plan a relaxed canoe trip in northern Canada, but things don...

Crazy Rich Asians

by Kevin Kwan

Reviewed by Linda:It’s always more rewarding when you can read the book before seeing the movie. And it is always fun to read a book that mocks the ultra-rich wherever in the world they might live. This novel imagines a young Americ...

The Water Cure

by Sophie Mackintosh

Reviewed by Janet:Grace, Lia, and Sky have grown up on an island, protected by their parents and their rituals from the greatest contamination from outside – men. Over the years, other women have sought refuge there from the ...

My Ex-Life

by Stephen McCauley

Reviewed by Linda:I’m sad to have finished listening to this novel and to be leaving the company of its quirky, funny characters. David and Julie were married briefly years ago and parted mostly amicably when David realized he...

Once Upon a River

by Diane Setterfield

Reviewed by Janet:In an inn by the river, a seeming miracle occurs on the winter solstice, which creates a stir in the lives of a number of local residents. As tributaries flow into a greater river, each of their stories contributes to...

Nine Perfect Strangers

by Liane Moriarty

Reviewed by Linda:Reading novelist Moriarty is like having a funny best friend in Australia. In her latest romp, she describes what happens when nine people meet at a remote health resort, all hoping to bring about major changes in their ...

The Weight of Ink

by Rachel Kadish 

Reviewed by Cyndi:Kadish seamlessly weaves together the lives of two remarkable women – one from the 17th century and one from the 21st – in a sophisticated story. Ester Velasquez is a 17th century Jewish woma...

The Paragon Hotel

by Lyndsay Faye

Reviewed by Janet:Fleeing from the New York Mafia during Prohibition, Alice James arrives in Portland with a fresh bullet wound and suitcase full of money. Brought to the Paragon Hotel by the Pullman porter for medical care on the down low,...

The Travelling Cat Chronicles

by Hiro Arikawa

Reviewed by Linda:A bestseller in Japan and now in the United States, this novel is narrated by Nana, a once stray cat with a resourceful outlook on life. Satoru, Nana’s owner, takes him on a road trip to visit three of his deares...

Night of Miracles

by Elizabeth Berg

Reviewed by Janet:In this heartwarming and bittersweet novel, we return to Mason, Missouri and the characters we met in The Story of Arthur Truluv. Lucille has a new assistant for her baking classes (Iris) and new neighbors in the house n...

The Female Persuasion

by Meg Wolitzer

Reviewed by Linda:This highly reviewed novel explores the new wave of feminism in the United States. College student Greer Kadetsky is enraged when the administration declines to punish the male student who has sexually harassed her and man...

If They Come for Us: Poems

by Fatimah Asghar

Reviewed by CyndiA powerful and important read, this book provides us with poems that are vulnerable, compassionate, and bear both anguish and joy. Asghar, as a young Pakistani Muslim woman in contemporary America, shares her unique under...

Transcription

by Kate Atkinson

Reviewed by Janet:Juliet’s job at the BBC producing children’s programming is much less exciting than working for MI5 during the war. When she spots someone on the street from her wartime operation and he denies knowing...

They May Not Mean To, But They Do

by Cathleen Schine

Reviewed by Linda:The Contemporary Book Club recently enjoyed discussing this book, whose author is sometimes compared to Jane Austen. The Bergman clan of New York City is confronting the aging of its two senior members. With compassion ...

The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

by Stuart Turton

Reviewed by Janet:Reading this book was like being caught in a mash-up of the classic board game Clue, an Agatha Christie mystery, and the 2014 movie “The Edge of Tomorrow”. Aiden Bishop finds himself at a classic Engli...

Meet Me at the Museum

by Anne Youngson

Reviewed by CyndiThis epistolary novel brings together two people with very different lives that form a deep friendship that begins with their shared fascination with the Tollund Man. Through their letters, and growing friendship, they are...

Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America

by Beth Macy

Reviewed by Linda:If you would like to understand how the opioid crisis that is gripping America came about, then this is the book for you. Journalist Beth Macy had an insider’s view of the epidemic’s arrival in her communi...

Never Stop Walking

by Christina Rickardsson

Reviewed by Lynne:A heartrending story of survival told from the point of view of a homeless child in a Brazilian favela. It begins with a recounting of shocking poverty, hunger, and unfathomable violence, followed by a jarring cul...

Have Dog, Will Travel: A Poet's Journey

by Stephen Kuusisto

Reviewed by Linda:If you are fascinated by the dog/human relationship, then you will want to add this powerful true story to your reading list. The author grew up in a family that was ashamed of his poor vision, and so he spent decades ...

Washington Black

by Esi Edugyan

Reviewed by Janet:When the new master arrived after the old master’s death, the slaves on Faith Plantation didn’t know what to expect. For 11-year-old Washington Black, becoming the protégé of the ma...

The Death of Mrs. Westaway

by Ruth Ware

Reviewed by Linda:Ruth Ware is being called a modern-day Agatha Christie. The menacing tone and many plot twists in her psychological suspense will keep you up late to find out what really happened. Harriet (“Hal”) is a yo...

The Garden Party

by Grace Dane Mazur

Reviewed by Janet:Celia Cohen is in her Brookline garden, preparing for her son’s wedding rehearsal dinner, contemplating this merging of families. The Cohens are academics, activists, and artists, while the Barlows are lawyer...

Force of Nature

by Jane Harper

Reviewed by Linda:Five female coworkers walk into the Australian bushland on a corporate leadership retreat. Days later four emerge from the isolated wilderness battered and bruised. Agent Aaron Falk has a special reason for wanting to find ...

Number One Chinese Restaurant

by Lillian Li

Reviewed by Janet:When Jimmie Han inherited the Beijing Duck House from his father, he inherited his father’s vision of a Chinese restaurant in the United States, as well as the staff, the menu, and the décor. Yet as Jimm...

The Incomplete Book of Running

by Peter Sagal

Reviewed by Linda:This oddly engaging book is recommended for runners and people looking for inspiration to start running and for fans of NPR’s beloved quiz show "Wait Wait ... Don’t Tell Me!" which is hosted by...

Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen

by Sarah Bird

Reviewed by Janet:From slave to Buffalo Soldier, this novel sweeps the reader along on an adventure of determination and survival, from the last year of the Civil War to the late 1860s. After her master’s plantation is burned by Gen...

Circe

by Madeline Miller

Reviewed by Linda:Circe, the sorceress of ancient Greek mythology, appeared in tales about the Minotaur, Daedalus and Icarus, and Odysseus, but at last she is at the center of her own tale. This spellbinding novel will keep readers rapt ...

Memento Park

by Mark Sarvas

Reviewed by Janet:A B-list Hollywood actor, Matt is amazed to learn that a painting owned by his Hungarian relatives before the Nazis invaded Budapest could be restituted to him, if the courts approve the case. This process shakes up his rel...

The Shakespeare Requirement

by Julie Schumacher

Reviewed by Linda:Good news for all who love wicked satires of academia: Jason Fitger, the hapless English professor at Payne University (last seen in the uproariously funny Dear Committee Members) is back! Now he is Chair of the Englis...

Vox

by Christina Dalcher

Reviewed by Janet:Imagine you are allowed to speak only 100 words each day – a wrist counter keeps track. And something bad happens when this number is exceeded. In this futuristic United States, women have lost the right to ...

The Wreckage of Eden

by Norman Lock

Reviewed by Linda:This eloquently written novel depicts the breakdown of the social fabric of antebellum America, as observed by an army chaplain who served in the Mexican War and the Mormon Rebellion. Robert Winters (a fictitious character)...

There There

by Tommy Orange

Reviewed by Janet:This powerful novel begins as a series of loosely connected short stories, but turns into something so much more in this exploration of the plight of the urban Native American. Each of the characters follows their own path...

Warlight

by Michael Ondaatje

Reviewed by Linda:Fans of the author’s novel The English Patient and of the Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante will welcome this coming-of-age mystery. At the close of World War II, 14-year-old Nathaniel and his olde...

Fruit of the Drunken Tree

by Ingrid Rojas Contreras

Reviewed by Janet:Seven year old Chula and her older sister live safely in a gated community in Bogotá, Colombia during Pablo Escobar’s reign of terror. Petrona, the family’s young housemaid, who has...

Waking Lions

by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen 

Reviewed by Linda:This New York Times Notable Book by Israeli novelist Gundar-Goshen is a riveting moral thriller. A neurosurgeon living with his wife and young children in southern Israel finds his life changes in an inst...

How Hard Can It Be?

by Allison Pearson 

Enjoy this week’s special double review!

Reviewed by Linda:Sisters, if you are in the "Sandwich Generation" and need a hearty laugh, check out this hilarious and very smart novel about a London woman with two...

Dear Mrs. Bird

by A. J. Pearce

Reviewed by Janet:Emmeline Lake aspires to be a Lady War Correspondent, so when she spots a job advertisement placed by the publishers of the London Evening Chronicle, it seems meant to be. However, the dream job actually consists of typing...

Persons Unknown

by Susie Steiner

Reviewed by Linda:A British cop, five months pregnant, fights against the racism of the justice system and she seeks to absolve her teenage son of murder charges. The second in a series (but it can be read as a stand alone), it has dark hu...

The Missing Guests of the Magic Grove Hotel

by David Casarett 

Reviewed by Janet:Armchair travelers will enjoy northern Thailand as they immerse themselves in this unique mystery series, of which this is book two. Nurse ethicist Ladarat Patalung oversees ethical care for the patients at her...

Tangerine

by Christine Mangan

Reviewed by Linda:Film rights have already been sold for this debut novel. Smart, stylish, and oh-so-creepy, it begs for a master like Alfred Hitchcock to produce it. In the novel, two young women--former college roommates--meet up in T...

Other People’s Houses

by Abbi Waxman

Reviewed by Janet:When Frances walks into her neighbor’s house after driving the carpool to school, she discovers Anne enjoying the company of someone not her husband. She backs out of the house discretely, but events have been set...

Factfulness: 10 Reasons We're Wrong About the World, And Why Things Are Better Than You Think

by Hans Rosling, with Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund 

Reviewed by Matt:Doctor, educator, and TED Talker Hans Rosling explains why — when it comes to long-term global trends — people everywhere hold views that ar...

Educated: A Memoir

by Tara Westover

Reviewed by Linda:The author of this remarkable book was raised by survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, where she and her six siblings prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling food. Born at home, Tara had no birth certificate; n...

The Great Alone

by Kristin Hannah

Reviewed by Janet:When Ernt Allbright, who has been scarred physically and psychologically by his time in Vietnam, learns he has inherited land in Alaska, he sees it as a place to begin again. Cora and Leni, his wife and daughter, soon c...

I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death

by Maggie O’Farrell

Reviewed by Linda:A highly regarded British novelist offers a beautifully written memoir told entirely in seventeen near-death experiences stemming from a dangerous childhood illness, accidents, an encounter with a disturbed ...

I’ll Be Your Blue Sky

by Marisa de los Santos

Reviewed by Janet:During her wedding weekend, Clare bumps into an elderly woman named Edith several times on the grounds of the resort.  And just when it’s needed, Edith offers some profound advice.  Week...

Less

by Andrew Sean Greer

Reviewed by Linda:Less introduces us to the endearingly awkward eponymous hero of this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Arthur Less is about to turn fifty and his love life and work life are both in shambles. In desperation, the strugglin...

The House of Broken Angels

by Luis Alberto Urrea

Reviewed by Janet:From this Pulitzer Prize finalist comes an engrossing and intricately told story of family, love, loss, and reconciliation, set over the course of two days. When his mother dies just days before his 70th birthday, Bi...

Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder

by Caroline Fraser

Reviewed by Linda:Generations of Americans have grown up reading the books of Laura Ingalls Wilder with their unforgettable stories of her pioneer childhood. This fascinating biography is the first true account of the author’s...

The Flight Attendant

by Chris Bohjalian 

Reviewed by Janet:Always up for adventure (and a drink or two … or three), flight attendant Cassie Bowden wakes up one morning after a flight to Dubai and finds last night’s lover dead beside her. Unsure of...

Sing, Unburied, Sing

by Jesmyn Ward

Reviewed by Linda:Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction, this novel follows three generations of an African American family in Mississippi over the course of a few days. Ward, a two-time winner of the NBA, writes powerfully of how p...

The Indigo Girl

by Natasha Boyd

Reviewed by Janet:When her ambitious father returns to the Caribbean in 1739 to further his career, 16 year old Eliza Lucas is left in charge of their South Carolina plantations. In the face of great debt left by her father, Eliza attempts ...

Saving Charlotte: A Mother and the Power of Intuition

by Pia de Jong

Reviewed by Linda:Some people love adventure tales by mountaineers who scale the world’s highest peaks, but I savor memoirs by parents who overcome or persevere through great difficulties in the lives of their children. This volum...

Mrs.

by Caitlin Macy

Reviewed by Janet:The privileged families whose youngsters attend St. Timothy’s preschool in Manhattan seem to have it all. Yet Philippa Lye’s envied life is precariously balanced, despite her investment banker husband&...

When the English Fall

by David Williams

Reviewed by Linda:A very fast read, this novel will stay with you long after you close the book. An Amish farmer records the satisfying details of his daily life with his wife and 2 children and their close-knit community. But all that i...

Something Like Happy

by Eva Woods

Reviewed by Janet:While visiting her mother in hospital, Annie finds herself being swept out of her unhappy life and along with the irresistible force that is Polly. A colorful, irrepressible patient with a brain tumor, Polly has chosen to ma...

Thanks Obama: My Hopey, Changey White House Years

by David Litt 

Reviewed by Linda:A sometimes very funny, sometimes bittersweet memoir by Obama’s youngest speechwriter and the president’s go-to writer for comedy.

Into the Water

by Paula Hawkins

Reviewed by Janet:From the author of The Girl on the Train comes another thriller, this time set in a small riverside English town. So far this year, two women have drowned in the Beckford Pool, which has a dark history of similar tragedy....

Home Fire

by Kamila Shamsie

Reviewed by Linda:This widely praised novel (which was on the long list for the Man Booker Prize) begins as a mesmerizing tale about a British family of Pakistani descent, and ends as a heart-thudding drama. The author, who received an MF...

The Music Shop

by Rachel Joyce

Reviewed by Janet:Frank always seems to know exactly which record his customers need to hear. (Yes, vinyl records – not those awful cassette tapes or newfangled shiny CDs.) Yet when Ilse comes into his shop, fixes his pencil sharp...

To the New Owners: A Martha’s Vineyard Memoir

by Madeleine Blais

Reviewed by Linda:Are you fortunate to have a place that means everything to you, that is central to your extended family’s identity, a place that you think about to restore yourself? For Madeleine Blais, who will be honored at...

The Alice Network

by Kate Quinn

Reviewed by Janet:Worried about the fate of her French cousin Rose in the wake of World War II, Charlie leaves her mother in London and heads to France with some unlikely companions to chase down an elusive lead. Eve, with her shadowy contact...

Pachinko

by Min Jin Lee

Reviewed by Linda:A recent favorite of the library’s Contemporary Book Club, this novel was just selected as one of the New York Times Book Review’s Ten Best Books of 2017. The author takes us into a world little known to...

The Woman in the Window

by A. J. Finn

Reviewed by Janet:Anna is agoraphobic, and confined to her home on a residential street in New York City. She spends her time watching classic movies, playing chess online, counselling other agoraphobics, and watching her neighbors. And drink...

Be Frank with Me

by Julia Claiborne Johnson

Reviewed by Linda:Alice Whitley, publishing assistant, receives a most unusual assignment from her boss: Go and join a reclusive literary legend in her Bel Air mansion and ensure she gets her first novel in decades written on sch...

Radio Free Vermont

by Bill McKibben

Reviewed by Janet:This "fable of resistance" will make you laugh out loud as you thoroughly enjoy the exploits and reflections of Vern Barclay, who finds himself inspiring a group of Vermont patriots to consider an independent Ve...

Who Is Rich? A Novel

by Matthew Klam

Reviewed by Linda:This academic satire was just named one of the New York Times Book Review’s best 100 books of 2017. The novel is a funny and disturbing look at the life of a once-sort-of famous cartoonist (named Rich) during a w...

Caroline: Little House, Revisited

by Sarah Miller

Reviewed by Janet:For those who loved the Little House on the Prairie series as children, this is a perfect opportunity to revisit the Ingalls family as they leave Wisconsin and head for Indian Territory. Told from the perspective of Caroli...

Seven Days of Us

by Francesca Hornak 

Reviewed by Linda:The Birch Family parents--devoted mother Emma and father Andrew, a scathing restaurant reviewer--spend Christmas with their 2 adult daughters on their dilapidated estate in the British countryside. But this i...

The Essex Serpent

by Sarah Perry

Reviewed by Janet:This novel immerses the reader in 1893, where on the Essex coast, fear of a great sea creature has fisherman and townspeople suspicious and superstitious. News of this curiosity reaches London, and brings amateur naturalist...

The Girl with Seven Names: Escape from North Korea

by Hyeonseo Lee

Reviewed by Linda:A riveting tale of courage and a fascinating look at daily life in the world’s most secretive country. The author was only seventeen when she crossed into China, where she lived for over a decade in fear of being...

The Little French Bistro

by Nina George

Reviewed by Janet:After 41 years in a boring, loveless marriage, Marianne wants out.  Led to the coast of Brittany by a hand painted ceramic tile, she finds work in a bistro, starts to learn French, and meets the cast of characters ...

The Locals

by Jonathan Dee

Reviewed by Linda:I once met a librarian from the Berkshires who told me that many of the new houses in his hometown have helicopter pads in the backyards. I thought of him as I devoured Jonathan Dee’s new novel about a small Berk...

Beartown

by Fredrik Backman

Reviewed by Janet:The people of Beartown live and breathe hockey. And this year, their junior league has a chance of winning the championship and putting Beartown back on the map. Yet the events at a post-semi-finals party ripple out to ...

Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right

by Arlie Russell Hochschild 

Reviewed by Linda:A renowned sociologist from Berkeley spends months getting to know conservatives in Louisiana bayou country. She wants to understand the feelings that drive their politics, the “deep story&a...

Little Fires Everywhere

by Celeste Ng

Reviewed by Janet:When things don’t go to plan in the planned community of Shaker Heights, Elena Richardson finds herself struggling to make sense of it all. The secrets she uncovers about her tenants Mia and Pearl threaten to disru...

Magpie Murders

by Anthony Horowitz

Reviewed by Linda:A fiendishly clever whodunit, perfect for an inter-generational car trip! Susan, an editor for a British publisher, eagerly reads the final manuscript from the firm’s bestselling mystery writer who died short...

Lucky Boy

by Shanthi Sekaran

Reviewed by Janet:Soli is a young Mexican woman who finds her way across the border to her cousin in northern California in search of a better life. Kavya is the chef at a UC-Berkeley sorority who realizes that her desire for a child fal...

The Baker’s Secret

by Stephen P. Kiernan

Reviewed by Janet:Emmanuelle finds herself baking a dozen baguettes for the officers’ mess every day, by the order of the German Kommandant of the occupying forces in her village. Her secret is that she stretches this daily ...

Man at the Helm

by Nina Stibbe

Reviewed by Linda:This charming and bittersweet novel is narrated by 10-year-old Lizzie, whose family is in perilous straits. Following her parents’ divorce in the 1970s, Lizzie, along with her beloved older sister, nervous younger...

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

by Yuval Noah Harari

Reviewed by Linda:This gripping history of human beings begins 70,000 years ago by asking why we sapiens are the only species of human--there were at least six that scientists know of so far--still in existence. The author continues to...

Class Mom

by Laurie Gelman

Reviewed by Janet:Jen Dixon brings her own personal style to being class mom for her son’s kindergarten class. She takes no - um - guff from anyone, and her in-your-face approach to getting parents to volunteer for snacks and cha...

Say What You Will

by Cammie McGovern

Reviewed by Linda:A young adult novel by Amherst’s Cammie McGovern. If you like novels by John Green, you will be hooked on this moving tale of two teens, each facing a serious disability. Brilliant, book-loving Amy was born wi...

The Nightingale

by Kristin Hannah

Reviewed by Janet:I don’t know how I missed this one when it first came out! This wonderful novel is an evocative and bittersweet story of two sisters in occupied France during World War II. Vianne’s husband is a priso...

The Leavers

by Lisa Ko

Reviewed by Linda:When Deming Guo is 11, his mother, an undocumented Chinese immigrant, disappears without a trace. The boy is eventually adopted by a pair of white professors in upstate New York, who rename him Daniel Wilkinson. This timely nov...

Anything is Possible

by Elizabeth Strout

Reviewed by Janet:For those who enjoyed Strout’s My Name Is Lucy Barton, this collection of short stories takes us back to Lucy’s hometown in Illinois, and the people who knew her there. Characters in these interconn...

The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman

by Denis Thériault

Reviewed by Linda:The eponymous hero lives quietly in Montreal, his only hobby secretly steaming open selected envelopes and reading the letters inside. But everything changes when he discovers a letter containing a single hai...

The Mother’s Promise

by Sally Hepworth 

Reviewed by Robin:An emotional tale of a single mom with a 15 year old daughter who suffers from social anxiety disorder and those who want to help but whose own lives have their fair share of life’s struggles. Nonethe...

Hillbilly Elegy

by J.D. Vance 

Reviewed by Janet:With family roots in the hollers of Kentucky and a law degree from Yale, J.D. Vance has achieved much. In this memoir, he describes a culture in crisis – that of white, working class Americans. Through hi...

Swing Time

by Zadie Smith

Reviewed by Linda:Acclaimed novelist Zadie Smith writes movingly of two brown girls in Britain who whose friendship centers around their love of dance. One of the girls has great talent. Both face heartache in their home lives. As they each ...

Lincoln in the Bardo

by George Saunders

 Reviewed by Matt:This strange and unexpectedly moving novel follows President Lincoln’s 11-year-old son Willie beyond his death from typhoid fever into an intermediate realm full of restless souls in a Georgetown ceme...

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

by Gail Honeyman

Reviewed by Janet:Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine, thank you very much. She is quite settled and safe in her routine, keeping herself to herself, moving from work to home and back, with 2 bottles of vodka on the weekend. Yet her carefu...

Lab Girl

by Hope Jahren

Reviewed by Linda:No less an authority than the New York Times described this book as doing for botany what Oliver Sacks did for neurology and Stephen Jay Gould for paleontology. If the goal was making her subject matter fascinating for non-...

The Devil and Webster

by Jean Hanff Korelitz 

Reviewed by Robin: Set on a college campus in the Amherst area with lots of local color, this story told with irreverent wit and suspense takes on issues of class, privilege, activism and the dilemmas faced by both...

History of Wolves

by Emily Fridlund

Reviewed by Janet:Life in rural Minnesota can be tough, especially if you are a teenager who doesn’t fit in anywhere. After a favorite teacher is fired and she is even more isolated, Linda spends her summer babysitting for the f...

The Past

by Tessa Hadley

Reviewed by Linda:Four adult siblings and their partners and children spend a long vacation together at the soon-to-be-sold family cottage in the English countryside. As the adults—each richly portrayed—wrestle with past...

The Garden of Small Beginnings

by Abbi Waxman

Reviewed by RobinA young book illustrator with two small children is trying to manage her life and that of her daughters after her husband’s sudden death. Although she hasn’t been doing a very good job of it, a new work a...

Moonglow

by Michael Chabon

Reviewed by Janet:In this faux memoir, the narrator’s grandfather is dying of cancer and during his last weeks, shares stories of his life that his grandson had never heard. From World War II to the Challenger space shuttle, fro...

The Hate U Give

by Angie Thomas

Reviewed by Linda:This YA crossover is drawing lots of attention for its riveting portrayal of the shooting death of an unarmed black teen. The novel is narrated by 16-year-old Starr Carter, who is an expert at navigating two worlds: the ur...

Glory O'Brien's History of the Future

by A.S. King

Review by MiaGlory O’Brien is on the cusp of graduating from high school, and doesn’t know where her life is going next.  When she and her best friend drink the remains of a mummified bat on a dare, they begin to s...

The Sellout

by Paul Beatty

Reviewed by Janet:This winner of the 2016 Man Booker Prize is a satirical look at race and racial identity in the United States. Raised in isolation by his professor father, the narrator finds himself the subject of many a psychological stud...

The Excellent Lombards

by Jane Hamilton 

Reviewed by Linda:A novel about a high-spirited girl growing up on an idyllic Wisconsin apple orchard, which is owned jointly by her father and his cousin. As a child, Frankie assumes that she and her brother will inherit this be...

Today Will Be Different

by Maria Semple

Reviewed by Janet:Eleanor Flood vows to herself that today will be different – she will be present, play a game with her son, take pride in her appearance, radiate calm, and be her best self. Yet throughout the day, events arise t...

Economism: Bad Economics and the Rise of Inequality

by James Kwak

Reviewed by Linda:In this important book, James Kwak of Amherst refutes the prevailing economic view that the high levels of economic inequality in the United States are unavoidable. He shows how modern economic theory has been twisted into a...

The Girl Before

by JP Delaney

Reviewed by Janet:There are about 200 contractual conditions to agree to before the house at One Folgate Street can be rented.  Plus a long questionnaire.   And an interview with the architect. Through the suspenseful parall...

A Gentleman in Moscow

by Amor Towles

Reviewed by Linda:An utterly charming and moving tale of a Russian count, one Alexander Ilyich Rostov, who is called before a Bolshevik tribunal in 1922 for having written an incendiary poem, and is sentenced to house arrest at the Metropol,...

Commonwealth

by Ann Patchett

Reviewed by Janet:A chance encounter at a christening party forever changes the lives of two families in this new book by Ann Patchett.   As the lives of these six children and four parents are reconfigured, they explore the meanin...

Barkskins

by Annie Proulx

Reviewed by Linda:Sometimes a novel captures a historical tragedy more powerfully than does a work of history. In this instance, the author - winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award - writes a heart-breaking tale of th...

The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir

by Jennifer Ryan

Reviewed by Janet:When the vicar decides to close the church choir since all the men have gone to war, the women of Chilbury go rogue and form their own women-only community choir. These assorted women find the support, encouragement, and ...

Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk

by Kathleen Rooney

Reviewed by Amy:A woman in her mid-80’s leaves her New York City apartment on the afternoon of New Year’s Eve, and begins walking the streets, stopping at her favorite restaurants and bars, and reminisces, with spot-o...

News of the World

by Paulette Jiles

Reviewed by Janet:Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd spends his days traveling post-Civil War northern Texas, performing readings from newspapers to citizens hungry for news of the world. He finds himself agreeing to return 10 year old Johanna, ...

Just Another Jihadi Jane

by Tabish Khair

Reviewed by Linda:This gripping novel explains far more clearly than any news story why young Islamic immigrants in the West might choose to give up their freedoms and turn to Isis for a sense of belonging. Thoughtful Jamilla and rebellious...

Sweetbitter

by Stephanie Danler

Reviewed by Janet:In search of the rest of her life, Tess has fled to New York City and finds work as a backwaiter at a famous restaurant.  We are immersed in the richly described foodie world of wine, seafood, and tomatoes, al...

Valiant Gentlemen

by Sabina Murray

Reviewed by Linda:Congratulations to local author Sabina Murray, whose newest novel was chosen as one of the New York Times Book Review’s Best Books of 2016! Utterly engrossing, the book follows the lives of three remarkable hist...

Lilac Girls

by Martha Hall Kelly

Reviewed by Janet:The daily life of Caroline, a New York socialite, would seem totally removed from that of Kasia, a Polish teenager, or Herta, on the verge of becoming a doctor in Nazi Germany.  Eventually brought together by...

Dog Medicine: How My Dog Saved Me from Myself

by Julie Barton

Reviewed by Linda:A moving tale of how a soulful golden retriever helped to rescue a young woman from a severe depression.   At age 22, the author collapsed in her NYC apartment when mental illness brought on by unacknowledged chil...

The Wonder

by Emma Donoghue

Reviewed by Janet:Having served as a nurse under Florence Nightingale, Lib Wright is taken aback when her current assignment doesn’t require her advanced skills. She has been brought to Ireland to merely observe an 11 year old gi...

Modern Lovers

by Emma Straub

Reviewed by Linda:This entertaining domestic drama follows two families in Brooklyn during a year of surprising developments for the parents, Elizabeth & Andrew and Zoe & Jane. They have lived as neighbors since the break-up of their...

The Assistants

by Camille Perri

Reviewed by Janet:Behind every powerful media tycoon is the executive assistant who makes things happen.  When an expense report mix-up presents Tina Fontana with the means to pay off her student loan debt in one fell swoop with n...

Walk Through Walls: A Memoir

by Marina Abramovic

Reviewed by Mia:Marina Abramovic’s early life as the daughter of Yugoslavian communist war heroes sets the tone for a memoir filled with sardonic wit and driven by a work ethic that at times seems to push her beyond the limits...

Nora Webster

by Colm Tóibín

Reviewed by Linda:A quiet novel of an ordinary life, which nonetheless keeps the reader spellbound. Nora Webster, an Irish mother of 4 children and young adults, learns to live anew after the death of her beloved husban...

Victoria

by Daisy Goodwin

Reviewed by Janet:From the creator of the upcoming PBS presentation of Victoria comes a novel of the same name, tracing the young queen’s ascension to the throne and her reign before her marriage.  As this young, shelter...

The Heart of a Lion: A Lone Cat's Walk across America

by William Stolzenburg

Reviewed by Linda:When a large mountain lion was killed on a Connecticut highway in 2011, Americans were startled. When DNA analysis revealed that the 3-year old male had walked thousands of miles from its birthplace in South Dakota ...

The Woman in Cabin 10

by Ruth Ware

Reviewed by Janet:Before dinner the first night at sea on an exclusive luxury cruise, Lo Blacklock, a travel writer, borrows some mascara from the woman in the cabin next door.  Later that night, Lo is awakened from an alcohol-enhance...

Dimestore: A Writer's Life

by Lee Smith

Reviewed by Linda:Novelist Lee Smith knows how to tell a story. In this deeply moving memoir of her Appalachian childhood and subsequent departure from all that was familiar, she describes a lost world that we are all richer for knowing. As a ...

The Underground Railroad

by Colson Whitehead

Reviewed by Janet:When Cora flees a Georgia cotton plantation with a fellow slave, she discovers that the Underground Railroad is an actual railroad.  Every station brings her to a new world along the route to the elusive freed...

All of Us and Everything

by Bridget Asher

Reviewed by Linda:The three Rockwell sisters grew up doubting their mother’s claim that their father was absent from their lives because he was a spy, whose very presence might endanger them. Spoiler:  It was true, and t...

The City Baker’s Guide to Country Living

by Louise Miller

Reviewed by Janet:When a Baked Alaska disaster forces pastry chef Olivia Rawlings to flee Boston, she never images that refuge with her best friend in rural Vermont would lead her to the Sugar Maple Inn and a new job.  Drawn into ...

Break in Case of Emergency

by Jessica Winter

Reviewed by Linda:Jump in to this entertaining satirical novel along with Jen, a likeable New Yorker in her early 30s, her delightfully goofy husband Jim, and her two beloved best friends. Jen has a poorly defined job at a philanthropy fo...

The Book of Speculation

by Erika Swyler

Reviewed by Janet:On the verge of losing both his home (perched on a cliff) and his job as a reference librarian (budget cuts), Simon’s life is shaken even further when he receives an old circus log book that mentions the name of ...

Charlotte

by David Foenkinos

Reviewed by Linda:This award-winning French novel, composed as a prose poem, tells the heartbreaking life story of the brilliant artist Charlotte Salomon, who was killed by the Nazis at age 26. Salomon must, from a young age, overcome a ...

Homegoing

by Yaa Gyasi

Reviewed by Janet:Half-sisters Effia and Esi were born in different villages in 18th century Ghana, and they never know each other. Alternating chapters trace the generations of Effia’s descendants in Ghana and Esi’s in the...

Putin Country: A Journey into the Real Russia

by Anne Garrels

Reviewed by Linda:Vladimir Putin has become a topic in the U.S. presidential election. Anne Garrels, longtime NPR foreign correspondent, believes that Americans have little understanding of why the Russian people are so loyal to him, despit...

Before the Fall

by Noah Hawley

Reviewed by Janet:Eighteen minutes after taking off from Martha’s Vineyard, a private plane headed for New York City crashes into the ocean. While a team of experts try to figure out what caused the crash, the survivors try to put ...

The Girls

by Emma Cline

Reviewed by Linda:In this rich and insightful novel, Emma Cline has re-created the infamous Charles Manson cult as seen through the eyes of a young teenage girl. Evie, who is soon to be shipped off to boarding school by her distracted parents...

Eligible

by Curtis Sittenfeld

Reviewed by Janet:After her father’s heart attack, Liz Bennet comes home to Cincinnati to help out her parents, and meets Fitzwilliam Darcy, a neurosurgeon, at a barbecue hosted by the Lucases. Liz’s older sister, J...

Catastrophic Happiness

by Catherine Newman

Reviewed by Linda:Wow, can Amherst resident Catherine Newman write! She elevates her tales of parenting two children into an art form. Required reading for new parents and for any parent wanting to recall that exhausting, messy, exhilar...

The Summer Before the War

by Helen Simonson

Reviewed by Janet:From the author of Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand comes a novel set in the early days of World War I. After the death of her father, Beatrice Nash finds a post as a Latin teacher in Rye on the coast of England. A...

Shelter

by Jung Yun

Reviewed by Linda:This powerful novel, by Valley author Jung Yun, exposes the dark secrets hidden by an outwardly successful Korean American family living in a Massachusetts college town. The novel tells the story of Kyung Cho, a young husband ...

Life Without a Recipe

by Diana Abu-Jaber

Reviewed by Janet:In this memoir, novelist Diana Abu-Jaber, author of Crescent and Birds of Paradise, looks at her life as a celebration of journeying without a map, of finding one’s own way through life in a way that may not m...

The Nest

by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney

Reviewed by Linda:The adult children in the dysfunctional Plumb family have long looked forward to the date when they will finally receive the monies in their joint trust fund. Each of the four siblings in this entertai...

Everyone Brave Is Forgiven

by Chris Cleave

Reviewed by Janet:The author of Little Bee brings World War II London to life in his newest novel inspired by his grandparents’ love letters. Mary North is assigned to be a teacher after she volunteers at the War Office, which is ...

Spill Simmer Falter Wither

by Sara Baume

Reviewed by Linda:Language lovers, this novel will thrill you to the core with its sentences that taste and devour the gorgeous wildness of Ireland. The book takes us on a journey around that land in the company of two outcasts, one human and...

The Girl in the Red Coat

by Kate Hamer

Reviewed by Janet:Beth finds herself living every parent’s nightmare – her 8 year old daughter Carmel disappears while they are visiting an outdoor festival. Their separate stories are told in alternating sections as they ...

Best Boy

by Eli Gottlieb

Reviewed by Linda:If you enjoyed The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, then you will welcome this moving, eloquent novel about Todd Aaron, an autistic man of 50 who lives in a progressive institution. Sensitively told from Todd&...

What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

by Helen Oyeyemi

Reviewed by Janet:From the author of Boy, Snow, Bird comes a collection of vaguely interconnected short stories, all of which have in common the theme of keys, literal and metaphorical. As doors, secrets, books, and boxes are unlocked, the...

Vanessa and Her Sister

by Priya Parmar

Reviewed by Linda:I was mesmerized by this novel about the Bloomsbury Group, which is told from the perspective of the artist Vanessa Bell, sister of Virginia Woolf. In 1905 in the London neighborhood of Bloomsbury, Vanessa and her three si...

The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper

by Phaedra Patrick

Reviewed by Janet:It’s the anniversary of his wife’s death, and Arthur Pepper diverges from his strict daily schedule to finally clear out her closet. Wedged in the toe of a boot, he finds an expensive piece of jewelr...

The Dogs of Littlefield

by Suzanne Berne

Reviewed by Linda:In this comedy of manners, a bitter divide forms between dog owners and dog-less residents in a Massachusetts college town that sounds very similar to our own. Someone is poisoning the town’s dogs, and the regul...

When Breath Becomes Air

by Paul Kalanithi

Reviewed by Janet:Paul Kalanithi was a promising young neurosurgeon on the verge of completing his residency. A talented doctor, he sought to connect with his patients as individuals, not merely problems to be fixed in surgery. Yet a diag...

Horrorstör

by Grady Hendrix

Reviewed by Linda:This spoof of a horror tale takes place at the Ohio branch of an "Orsk" furniture store that greatly resembles a certain Scandinavian chain. The book is designed as a catalog with each chapter named after pieces...

The Little Red Chairs

by Edna O’Brien

Reviewed by Janet:One dark night, a self-proclaimed healer and therapist named Vlad arrives in a small Irish town. The townspeople begin to welcome him into their community, but their idyllic village is turned upside down when his...

The Evening Spider

by Emily Arsenault

Reviewed by Linda:Emily Arsenault, a Pioneer Valley resident, skillfully combines psychological suspense and true crime in her latest novel. A young mother named Frances is taken from her home and family, and confined to the Northampton ...

The Widow

by Fiona Barton

Reviewed by Janet:Jean Taylor is plagued by the press after her husband is hit and killed by a bus, not because of his death, but rather because of the crime for which Glen was under investigation. Alternating between the aftermath of his d...

A Mother’s Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy

by Sue Klebold

Reviewed by Linda:The mother of Dylan Klebold--one of two perpetrators of the Columbine High School massacre--the author has spent the past fifteen years recalling every detail of her child’s life trying to comprehend how he became...

American Housewife: Stories

by Helen Ellis

Reviewed by Janet:These delightful short stories will definitely make you smile – and maybe even laugh out loud. From a war conducted via email about a co-op’s shared hallway to the unusual requirements for joining a book...

Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape

by Lauret Savoy

Reviewed by Linda:Mount Holyoke professor Lauret Savoy, a scholar of environmental studies and geology and a woman of mixed heritage, writes lyrically of the American landscape and its troubled past. Which inhabitants of the land are rememb...

The Night Watch

by Sarah Waters

Reviewed by MiaSarah Waters excels at revisiting iconic moments in British history and presenting these eras through unique viewpoints. In The Night Watch, she tells her story of London during WWII backwards, weaving together the lives of s...

The Lake House

by Kate Morton

Reviewed by Janet:During a Midsummer’s Eve party in 1933, 18 month old Theo disappears from his nursery and is never found. Seventy years later, Detective Constable Sadie Sparrow, on leave from the London force, is visiting her gra...

The Clasp

by Sloane Crosley

Reviewed by Linda:A debut novel from the author of I Was Told There’d Be Cake. Crosley writes entertainingly about 3 sophisticated twenty-somethings who are old college buddies. All are dissatisfied with their work and love live...

Primates of Park Avenue

by Wednesday Martin

Reviewed by Janet:This engaging and humorous memoir looks at the mothers of the Upper East Side of New York City from an unusual perspective. The author brings her expertise in anthropology and primatology to this habitat, and analyzes ...

Alice in Bed

by Judith Hooper

Reviewed by Linda:In Amherst author Judith Hooper’s fascinating work of historical fiction it wasn’t hysteria that kept brilliant Alice James trapped in bed. Sister to the famous writer Henry and psychologist William, s...

My Name is Lucy Barton

by Elizabeth Strout

Reviewed by Janet:Readers have been eagerly awaiting this new title from Pulitzer Prize winning author Elizabeth Strout, and here it is! During an extended hospital stay, Lucy Barton awakes to find her mother in the bedside chair. After...

Harriet Wolf's Seventh Book of Wonders

by Julianna Baggott

Reviewed by Linda:Congratulations to Julianna Baggott of Amherst on her latest bestselling novel. Named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and widely praised by reviewers, the novel introduces us to three generations of women, fr...

The Japanese Lover

by Isabel Allende

Reviewed by Janet:While working in the Lark House nursing home, Irina becomes intrigued by the mysterious letters and gifts that resident Alma Belasco receives, never imagining a secret love affair that began over 70 years ago. As Alma&am...

Between the World and Me

by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Reviewed by Linda:The latest winner of the National Book Award for Nonfiction, Between the World and Me takes the form of a father’s passionate letter to his son about racism in America. Although a short book, the devastating ...

The Witches: Salem, 1692

by Stacy Schiff

Reviewed by Mia:If you have ever lived in Massachusetts or studied early American history, the story of the paranoia that swept through Salem in 1692 is hardly new. Rather than pointing to psychological causes that may have influenced the v...

Fates and Furies

by Lauren Groff

Reviewed by Janet:This is the story of Lotto and Mathilde over the course of their life together, from the lean years after college to later successes. Halfway through the book, the perspective shifts and disparate story threads come togeth...

Memories

by Lang Leav

Reviewed by Cyndi:Lang Leav combines the best poems from her two previous publications in new ways alongside her latest work to create her most evocative book to date. Leav’s poems embody rather than express the complex emotions and ...

This Is Your Life, Harriet Chance

by Jonathan Evison

Reviewed by Linda:Harriet Chance, age 78 and recently widowed, embarks on an Alaskan cruise that she was surprised to learn had been booked by her husband. On board, amid the overwhelming buffets and with views of stunning glaciers, she ...

The Girl in the Spider's Web

by David Lagercrantz

Reviewed by Janet:For those who enjoyed The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Lisbeth Salander’s story continues here as Stieg Larsson’s trilogy is carried on by a new author. Journalist Mikael Blomquist stumbles upon a ...

Erratic Facts

by Kay Ryan

Reviewed by Cyndi:Kay Ryan’s latest book of poetry, Erratic Facts, is a real gem: small in size, multi-faceted, and a rarity to be treasured. Her poems are small and narrow, but that is a clever visual deceit as the reader can quickly...

Miss Emily

by Nuala O’Connor

Reviewed by Linda:Just when we think we are familiar with Emily Dickinson and her family, along comes Irish writer O’Connor with a refreshingly new perspective. In this eloquent historical novel, Emily is viewed throug...

In a Dark, Dark Wood

by Ruth Ware

Reviewed by Janet:It’s been 10 years since Nora has seen Clare, her best friend from school. So it’s with great surprise that she is invited to attend Clare’s bachelorette celebration. Yet once there, secrets rank...

Twain's End

by Lynn Cullen

Reviewed by Cyndi:Set at the end of Mark Twain’s life, this novel features the fictionalized account of Twain’s relationship with his secretary, Isabel Lyon. Based loosely on Lyon’s diary and Twain’s w...

The Finest Hours: The True Story of the U.S. Coast Guard's Most Daring Sea Rescue

by Michael J. Tougias and Casey Sherman

Reviewed by Linda:This account of one of the most heroic rescues of all time will thrill readers who enjoyed The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger. In 1952, one of the worst nor’easters of the century hit N...

Three Minutes in Poland: Discovering a Lost World in a 1938 Family Film

by Glenn Kurtz

Reviewed by Janet:In 1938, David Kurtz filmed parts of his trip to Europe for a family film. In 2009, his grandson Glenn found the old film and became intrigued by the segment on a Jewish community in rural Poland. This memoir traces the jou...

The Pursuit of Love & Love in a Cold Climate

by Nancy Mitford

Reviewed by Mia:Nancy Mitford’s writing career took off in the 1920s and 30s as she satirized the English country society of her youth. These two witty novels based on her own eccentric, interesting, controversial family depict t...

The Bishop's Wife

by Mette Ivie Harrison

Reviewed by Linda:This intriguing novel takes the reader deep into the life of a Mormon family and especially its independent-minded wife and mother. Linda Wallheim struggles to fulfill her twin roles as homemaker and as unofficial c...

Balm

by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

Reviewed by Janet:Sadie, Madge, and Hemp find themselves in Chicago in the aftermath of the Civil War, each searching for something as they begin a new life. The emotional injuries suffered due to the war and its aftermath challenge...

The Girl in the Dark

by Anna Lyndsey

Reviewed by Roxanne:This memoir traces the development of Anna’s rare medical condition, which makes her intolerant of both florescent and natural light, and reveals how she combats the despair that fills her as she attempts to li...

The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed out the Window and Disappeared

by Jonas Jonasson

Reviewed by Linda:This humorous tale, an international bestseller originally published in Sweden, revolves around the escapades of one Allan Karlsson, a centenarian who chose to escape from a nursing home and spend his birthday on the run...

Kitchens of the Great Midwest

by J. Ryan Stradal

Reviewed by Janet:Each chapter in this book brings a new food or ingredient into Eva Thorvald’s life – and her once-in-a-generation palate. From a tragic and challenging childhood, Eva’s spirit and resilienc...

The Rocks

by Peter Nichols

Reviewed by Linda:A novel of two love stories set decades apart on the beautiful Mediterranean island of Mallorca. Much of the plot takes place at "the Rocks," a seaside resort for upscale British tourists. Lulu, the proprietor, ...

A Little Life

by Hanya Yanagihara

Reviewed by Janet:For readers who want to immerse themselves in the lives of four friends and the ebbs and flows of their relationships over the course of 30 years, this novel follows the daily lives of Jude, Willem, JB, and Malcolm. Ju...

A History of Loneliness

by John Boyne

Reviewed by Robin:Odran Yates, a Catholic priest in Ireland, is the narrator of this fictional story about his forty years in the Catholic church. Odran is satisfied with his priestly duties at a boys’ school, but when the Catholic ...

The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics

by Barton Swaim

Reviewed by Linda:English language lovers will devour this true story of an unlikely spin doctor: a newly minted PhD with a family to support and no academic job prospects who goes to work for his state’s governor. Here he hopes t...

The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty

by Vendela Vida

Reviewed by Janet:A trip to Morocco goes off track when her backpack is stolen from the hotel lobby. Without her identification or money, she is free to become anyone she chooses. When a chance encounter with a Hollywood actress provides a ...