Cookbook lovers are a special breed and seemingly always on the lookout for something new, different or simply with awesome pictures. We have stacks and stacks of books — never mind that the Internet has all the recipes you’d ever need, it just not the same as those gorgeous, picture-filled
Read More →Christopher Scotton has published a splendid debut novel, a coming-of-age story as devastating as it is hopeful. Scotton’s story takes us to the mid-1980s to the small, impoverished coal-mining town of Medgar, Kentucky. Kevin Gillooly, 14, has just moved there with his mother. His grandfather, Arthur “Pops” Peebles, invited them
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Posted January 14, 2015in Book Review
“The Resurrection of Tess Blessing” is a poignant, heart-tugging and often hilarious new novel from award-winning Wisconsin author Lesley Kagen. Tess Blessing is facing many of the normal challenges of middle age, including sullen, teen-aged children with hair-trigger emotions and a husband going through his own mid-life crisis. She also
Read More →“The Rosie Effect” furthers the adventures of socially awkward genetics professor Don Tillman and his wildly unpredictable wife Rosie Jarman in a sequel to Australian Graeme Simsion’s acclaimed first novel, “The Rosie Project.” Forty-one-year-old Don has abandoned his Standardized Meal System and relaxed much of his highly organized life in
Read More →As a young girl, I fell in love with the stories by Jim Kjelgaard about the Irish Setter (“Big Red, Irish Red”). I have again fallen in love with a dog story, this time about the Borzoi or Russian wolfhound. Written for the younger reader aged 10 to 14,
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Posted December 24, 2014in Book Review
Howard Phillips (H.P.) Lovecraft is a towering figure in the world of horror, short stories, American literature and the just plain weird. Collecting many noteworthy and beloved stories, Leslie Klinger’s “The New Annotated H.P. Lovecraft” delves deeply into Lovecraftian scholarship with a passion and depth to satisfy the most
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Posted December 17, 2014in Book Review
Wendell Berry, who turned 80 this year, has written more than 50 books of fiction, poetry and non-fiction. Berry is an award-winning author, the recipient of numerous esteemed prizes from a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 1962 to the recently-earned National Humanities Medal. His writing has had great influence on contemporary poetry
Read More →Courtesy of Beaverdale Books Review by Sally Wisdom Farrar Strauss Giroux Oct. 7, 2014 $26 261 Pages University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop professor Marilynne Robinson returns to the fictional town of Gilead, Iowa, in her beautifully written new novel “Lila.” The town and most of its characters were introduced in
Read More →Courtesy of Beaverdale Books Review by Harriet Leitch Tor Books Oct. 14, 2014 Hardcover $17 304 pages Sometimes a book just grabs me because of its title. There was no way I could resist “The Accidental Highwayman: Being the Tale of Kit Bristol, His Horse Midnight, a Mysterious Princess, and
Read More →Courtesy of Beaverdale Books Review by Harriet Leitch Ballentine Books Oct. 7, 2014 Hardcover $25 209 Pages Jon Katz, author of “The Dogs of Bedlam Farm,” also an autobiographical book, has extended his writings on animals in our lives by writing of his recent experience with Simon, an abused and
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