My favorite book growing up was Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery. It’s still one of my all-time favorite books. I have to confess that the first time I tried to read it, I thought it was boring. I’d seen the movie somewhere and grabbed the book at the library, and I think […]
Most of you have probably already read The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak, but it’s my very, very favorite book right now and has been for a while. Liesel Meminger is a ten-year-old girl living in Nazi Germany and being sent to live with foster parents when her younger brother dies. This is the first […]
As luck would have it, the day Dashti enters the service of a lady is the very day said lady is bricked into a tower for seven years to learn obedience. Dashti goes along with her to keep her company and take care of her. Between fighting off rats, Lady Saren’s torpor, and the unsettling […]
Lucy Valentine has lost the family ability to match people based on their auras, and can now only find lost objects. After some negative publicity, Lucy finds herself in charge of the family matchmaking business for a few weeks. Not realizing what she’s getting herself into, she offers to try to find a new client’s […]
Fisherman and WWII veteran Carl Meine is found dead and tangled up in his fishing net one morning. At first glance it appears to be an accident, but the sheriff looks a little closer and starts to wonder. He soon arrests another fisherman, Kabuo Miyamoto, for murder. Against the backdrop of the murder trial, Guterson […]
Deirdre meets Luke at an audition one day. They play some amazing music together, and by the end of the day, Deirdre is more than a little infatuated. But Luke isn’t the only stranger appearing in her life. All kinds of weird people and events start surrounding her, and it’s obvious that Luke has something […]
There are roughly 30 years of Jesus’s life that are unaccounted for. Oh, there’s the one story about him teaching in the temple when he was 12, but other than that, he was born and then he started his ministry around the age of 30. Christopher Moore has fun imagining what exactly Jesus–or Joshua, as […]
The Boleyn Inheritance is the story of Anne of Cleves, Henry VIII’s fourth wife; Jane Boleyn, her lady-in-waiting and Anne Boleyn’s former sister-in-law; and Katherine Howard, a beautiful young maid-in-waiting. By now, Henry is a hugely fat, sick, stinking, paranoid tyrant. These three women try their best to keep him happy and stay safe. I […]
The lass is the last child in a family of nine and the fourth unwanted girl. She is so unwanted that her mother doesn’t even bother to name her. When a polar bear comes crashing through the door one night and asks her to live with him in his castle for a while, she agrees […]
“I should have thought it obvious,” I said impatiently, though even at that age I was aware that such things were not obvious to the majority of people. “I see paint on your pocket-handkerchief, and traces on your fingers where you wiped it away. The only reason to mark bees that I can think of […]
On a beautiful July evening, nine-year-old Katie Mackey disappears on her way to the library. And our hearts break. I just don’t know where to start. It’s hard not to compare this to Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones, but there’s a huge difference. As I remember it, The Lovely Bones dealt with the family’s grieving […]