There’s a new dog book in town and it’s written by two women who really know their dogs. In their nonfiction love story to dogs everywhere, “The Purest Bond: Understanding the Human-Canine Connection,” the authors share all the wonderful benefits and reasons to bring a dog (or two or more) into your family.
Continue reading
Usually I prefer to review picture books as a group, but my grandson loved “Beaky Barnes and the Devious Duck” by Caldecott Honor winner David Ezra Stein so much that he insisted on taking it home with him after reading it. When I asked him specifically what he loved about it, he said that it’s just really excellent. But he (and his grandfather) loved the humor. They loved the sneaky acts and the deviousness. They loved the characters. And they loved the plot.
Continue reading
In “Gather,” Kenneth M. Cardow introduces us to a teenager who has had to grow up much more quickly than anyone should have to. Ian is used to being abandoned; his father left Ian and his mother years before, and then his grandmother left them to move south to be with her sister. So now, it’s just Ian and his mother in the small, run-down family home, on land that has been in Ian’s family for many generations. His father’s family, that is.
Continue reading
Catherine Ryan Hyde is brilliant in her ability to write novels that make us think. Often her main characters face dilemmas or situations that seem impossibly difficult. But as with her newest novel, “A Different Kind of Gone,” Hyde demonstrates that most of us are more resilient than we might believe, and that people are not black and white.
Continue reading
The cat on the cover did it—I knew “Starter Villain” by John Scalzi was a book I wanted to read. Even if the cats weren’t the center of the plot. But to my delight, the cats were magnificent! And the dolphins were hysterical, in a tough-guy kind of way. But the substitute teacher, first person narrator Charlie Fitzer, is just a wonderful main character. The kind of guy we really root for and we want to attain his dream.
Continue reading
Atmosphere can be everything in a murder mystery, and Paula Munier goes to great lengths to ensure that “Home at Night” is filled with not only several dead bodies, but lots and lots of creepy Halloween vibes. The setting for the Mercy Carr mystery series is Vermont, where Mercy is from. She’s a veteran and her beloved dog Elvis was a working military dog for her fiancé who was killed in action. She lives in a beautiful cabin with Troy, the game warden she married, a young friend Amy and Amy’s baby, Amy’s boyfriend, Troy’s working dog Susie Bear, and a rescued cat. It’s a lot for a small house, so they’ve been house shopping.
Continue reading
Unlike her first explosive novel, “Honor,” which begins powerfully, in her new novel, “The Museum of Failures” author Thrity Umrigar builds our connection with the characters slowly and carefully. We meet Remy as he travels to his native India to see about adopting a baby. He arrives in Mumbai, which he still calls by the name he used in his childhood, Bombay, and is immediately drawn in and made at home by his childhood best friend Jango and his wife, Shenaz.
Continue reading
In this absolutely charming Regency mystery, Celeste Connally brings an unlikely hero into our midst. Lady Petra Forsyth is an independent woman of means who is determined not to let her existence be controlled by society’s demands. While at her level of upper class English nobility, women are expected to marry quickly, bear heirs, and keep their opinions to themselves, Petra refuses to comply.
Continue reading
There’s no mystery involved in “The Winthrop Agreement,” and the narrative in this historical fiction is fairly straightforward as author Alice Sherman Simpson takes us forward and backward in time right around the turn of the 20th Century. The only mystery we might consider is how, over the past century, so much has changed in terms of technology and our lifestyles, and yet so little has changed in terms of our class prejudices and the chasm that exists between the ultra-wealthy and the rest of us.
Continue reading
In her latest novel, the thrilling spy story “The Helsinki Affair,” Anna Pitoniak stretches our imagination as we travel not only in time—from the present back to the Cold War, but also geographically—from Washington, DC, to Algiers, Rome, Moscow, New York, and of course, Helsinki. Over the course of this story, we follow Amanda Cole and her father Charlie, both working for the CIA, as we watch and learn about the fascinating business of spycraft.
Continue reading