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Posted on: May 31, 2023

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...

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Posted on: March 22, 2023

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...

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Posted on: February 8, 2023

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...

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Posted on: January 25, 2023

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...

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Posted on: January 11, 2023

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,...

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Posted on: November 30, 2022

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, ...

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Posted on: August 10, 2022

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...

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Posted on: April 21, 2021

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 households, and ...

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Posted on: May 5, 2021

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...

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Posted on: August 12, 2020

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...

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Posted on: March 18, 2020

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...

Posted on: December 18, 2019

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...

Posted on: September 25, 2019

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...

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Posted on: March 20, 2019

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,...

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Posted on: May 22, 2019

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...

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Posted on: October 17, 2018

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 ...

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Posted on: October 3, 2018

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...

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Posted on: July 11, 2018

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 co...

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Posted on: May 16, 2018

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 ...

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Posted on: April 18, 2018

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 mak...

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Posted on: February 21, 2018

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, counseling other agoraphobics, and watching her neighbors. And drinki...

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Posted on: January 24, 2018

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...

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Posted on: December 27, 2017

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 ...

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Posted on: November 8, 2017

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 ...

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Posted on: October 4, 2017

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...

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Posted on: August 9, 2017

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...

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Posted on: May 4, 2017

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,...

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Posted on: April 12, 2017

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, encourage...

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Posted on: September 6, 2016

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 ...

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Posted on: June 30, 2021

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 ...

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Posted on: December 29, 2021

Cloud Cuckoo Land

by Anthony Doerr

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Posted on: February 23, 2022

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...

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