Would anyone other than a mathematician pick up a book about math to read for pleasure? Perhaps not, but even those not mathematically inclined will find plenty to enjoy in “How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking.” Author Jordan Ellenberg grabs the reader in the early pages
Read More →When Rinker Buck was a young boy in the 1950s, his father took him on a covered wagon trip “to see America slowly.” That trip was the seed that led to his book “The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey.” Buck and his brother, Nick, an experienced team driver, go
Read More →Stationery and history — this is sure to be a big hit for stationery aficionados. Those various items you find on your desk every day, how did they come to be? And why did they come to be? Although the book starts out as advertised — the history of the
Read More →Comic books have been a lot more than cavorting caped crusaders and kitschy kids for decades now, yet serious artists and writers who go beyond superheroes and cartoons don’t always get the notoriety and readership they deserve. There are incredible indie comics, covering every genre imaginable, waiting to be discovered
Read More →Fantastical monsters, the Scottish Highlands, a complicated romance, and the events of World War II are all included in this coming-of-age story and period novel, “At the Water’s Edge,” written by “Water for Elephants” author Sara Gruen. The story begins New Year’s Eve of 1944 at a Philadelphia high society
Read More →Michael Perry’s first adult novel takes place in the small rural town of Swivel, Wisconsin. Forty-something Harley is a bachelor living alone on the remaining 15 acres of his parents’ farm; the rest having been lost mostly to development. He works at a factory, keeps a few beefers, volunteers at
Read More →In April 2009, the Iowa Supreme Court stunned the nation when it issued its decision legalizing same-sex marriage. At the time, marriage equality was the law in Massachusetts and Connecticut, but those were liberal, urban, coastal states. Iowa was viewed as conservative and rural and was in the dead center
Read More →“If there was a running motif throughout my brief life, it would be the close and present nature of death. I’d known it intimately from the start.” So begins the last day in the life of funeral home employee Paddy Buckley. His mother died when he was 4, his father
Read More →This is a J. P. Beaumont mystery with a twist. J.P. — or Beau to his friends — is having double knee replacement surgery. The surgery goes well, but in recovery he is visited by ghosts. It begins with the ghost of the first homicide he worked on as a
Read More →I am a confirmed pack rat. Despite my propensity to move every few years, I still seem to justify hauling around the same stuff, over and over again. Boxes of pictures that could easily be scanned, art projects from third grade and oh, so many books! I claim sentimental attachment,
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