When successful New York magazine and book editor George Hodgman returns to his hometown of Paris, Missouri, for his mother’s 91st birthday, he comes to the heartbreaking realization that his once-indomitable mother has lost her driver’s license and is not really able to live independently. His planned visit of two
Read More →“From the Halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Tripoli” are the beginning words of the Marine Corps Hymn. These words make little sense until you read about the first Barbary war. It is called the Forgotten War because that is what it is — seldom referred to in the
Read More →Meet Nimona. She’s a firecracker of shape-shifting energy, so eager to prove herself she ends up causing mayhem and disaster wherever she goes. She wants to shake things up, try something new and win the day, even if it means breaking the rules. In spite of her chaotic tendencies, she’s
Read More →Colm Toibin’s book, “Brooklyn,” is set in Brooklyn and Ireland in the early 1950s when a young woman crosses the ocean to make a new life for herself. Eilis Lacey, who lives with her mother and sister in small-town Ireland, is an aspiring bookkeeper who cannot find a job in
Read More →“Don’t Suck, Don’t Die” is a beautiful, haunting elegy to a lost friend and fellow musician. Kristen Hersh, frontrunner for the alternative rock band The Throwing Muses and author of the critically acclaimed memoir, “Rat Girl,” delivers a stunning, moving portrait of her time with indie singer/songwriter Vic Chesnutt. Relegated
Read More →Ruth Reichl has worked as a chef, a food writer, restaurant critic, cookbook writer, editor of Gourmet magazine and author of bestselling memoirs. “Delicious!” is her first foray into fiction. Billie Breslin has left California for New York, where she lands a job as an executive assistant to the editor
Read More →The grit is palpable in Joe Meno’s “Marvel and a Wonder.” So much so that at times I found myself forgetting that it took place in 1995 on a farm in Indiana and not out west in another century. The story starts with Jim Falls struggling to raise his grandson,
Read More →The timeframe of this book is the World War II years, the main characters are Henry Ford and his son, Edsel Ford, and the story is how the retooling of the manufacturing might of Detroit, so critically important to the winning of the war, was accomplished. Henry Ford was anti-war,
Read More →“A friendly desert community where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful and mysterious lights pass overhead while we all pretend to sleep. Welcome to Night Vale.” For those who are already fans of the wildly popular podcast, there’s not much I need to say other than be careful
Read More →“I am Mary Iris Malone, and I am not okay.” Mim has believed this for the past 16 years of her life. Mim lives in Jackson, Mississippi, with her father and stepmother, Kathy, but she refers to her hometown as Mosquitoland, and it doesn’t feel like home. After discovering
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