Posted on: February 9, 2021
by Emily St. John Mandel
Reviewed by Linda:Outstanding writing is the hallmark of this bestseller about the lives of people before, during, and after a plague wipes out much of human life on earth, and the remaining humans live in tight communities without...
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Posted on: February 9, 2021
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 ...
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Posted on: February 9, 2021
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...
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Posted on: February 9, 2021
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...
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Posted on: February 9, 2021
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...
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Posted on: February 9, 2021
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 ...
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Posted on: February 9, 2021
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...
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Posted on: March 29, 2017
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, ...
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Posted on: December 1, 2020
by Michele Harper
The author of this eloquent memoir is an ER doctor and a practitioner of yoga and meditation. Here she recounts how she overcame racist colleagues, a background of domestic violence, and the trauma of seeing suffering people every day at ...
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Posted on: August 21, 2020
by Annye C. Anderson with Preston Lauterbach; foreword by Elijah Wald
We are excited to offer this new weekly feature and to share a wide array of books about Black lives in America. It seems appropriate to begin with a new book by a well-known Amherst res...
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Posted on: January 4, 2021
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...
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Posted on: September 10, 2019
by Jayson Greene
Two-year-old Greta Greene was sitting with her grandmother on a park bench on the Upper West Side of Manhattan when a brick crumbled from a windowsill overhead, striking her unconscious. She is immediately rushed to the hospital. Once More...
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Posted on: August 7, 2019
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-provoking no...
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Posted on: September 10, 2019
by Fatima Farheen Mirza
A family caught between two cultures yields a resonant story of faith, tradition, identity, and belonging.
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Posted on: November 7, 2018
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 ...
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Posted on: July 24, 2019
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,...
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Posted on: November 17, 2015
by Judith Frank
For years, Matthew Greene and Daniel Rosen have enjoyed a quiet domestic life together in Northampton, Massachusetts. Opposites in many ways, they have grown together and made their relationship work. But when they learn that Daniel's twin ...
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