**Very minor spoilers for Big Stone Gap** Ave Maria has been married for eight years now. She and her husband have a beautiful daughter, but they’ve also had some very difficult times. Now Ave feels that they’re growing apart. Everyday life has gotten in the way of love, and it’s time for both of them Continue Reading…
A co-worker insisted on lending me this book. It doesn’t sound like my kind of thing, but I didn’t know how to tell her I wasn’t interested. We’ll see how this goes… Written in a format that leaves me wondering whether to classify this as fiction or non-fiction, The Richest Man in Babylon uses the Continue Reading…
Writer and bibliophile Helene Hanff strikes up a friendship through correspondence with the staff of a used bookshop in London. I think my expectations were too high. I remember other readers telling me, “Oh, if you liked The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, you will absolutely love 84, Charing Cross Road.” Well, I Continue Reading…
Forget the big, green, shuffling, moaning monster with bolts in his neck that we’ve all come to associate with Frankenstein. He does not appear in these pages. I wonder what book those old horror movie writers read? It wasn’t this one. Frankenstein’s monster is big, but the only other physical descriptions I really remember are Continue Reading…
Rebecca Brown is a 15-year-old New Yorker. She loves everything about her life in New York. You can imagine her dismay when she finds out that she has to go live with her aunt in New Orleans for six months because her father is going to China on business. The traditions and groups in New Continue Reading…
Three Bones, Fone Bone, Phoney Bone, and Smiley Bone, are run out of Boneville after Phoney Bone tries to pull a scam on the townspeople. They get separated in a desert. Fone Bone, the most honest of the bunch, eventually finds marooned in a beautiful valley. All is not as peaceful as it appears, however. Continue Reading…
This is primarily the story of Anna Karenina’s troubled affair with Alexey Vronsky. It’s also the story of Konstantin Levin’s search for love and truth in society. While reading this book, I kept wishing that I could just read a “good parts version” as William Goldman called The Princess Bride. I kept getting bogged down Continue Reading…
Take Rapunzel and plunk her down smack-dab in the middle of a Louis L’Amour book and you have the gist of this fun graphic novel. The framework of Rapunzel is here. Hungry mom, eager-to-please dad, evil witch, girl with crazy-long hair in a tower. But that’s about where the similarities end. See, Rapunzel doesn’t want Continue Reading…
Paul Copeland’s sister disappeared into the woods of their summer camp one night twenty years ago. The bodies of two of her friends were found. She wasn’t. Now, the past is surfacing and the mystery is begging to be solved. Eh. Had this been my first Coben book, I would’ve loved it. As it is, Continue Reading…
Daisy has been sent from NYC to live with her aunt and cousins in the English countryside. Shortly after her arrival, her Aunt Penn has to travel out of the country for work, leaving the teens alone for a few days. Terrorists strike and nothing is ever the same. This just wasn’t really my kind Continue Reading…
In 1925, Percy Fawcett, a seasoned Amazonian explorer, his son and son’s friend set out to find a fabulous city in the Amazon that Fawcett calls only “Z.” The world had become fascinated with the expedition. Fawcett sent back a few reports, but then none of the men were ever heard from again. Over the Continue Reading…