Courtesy of Beaverdale Books Review by Cathryn Lang “The Girls of Atomic City” Touchstone Books 3/11/14 $16 373 pp. The scientists behind the Manhattan Project (especially J. Robert Oppenheimer) are well-known. In “The Girls of Atomic City,” Kiernan brings us the “bottom-up” stories of the workers who actually constructed the
Read More →Review by Kris Kelly Gannett, Inc. 2/29/14 80 pp. First-time author and former Gannett Inc. staff writer Aric Jones squeezes the pulpy backstory out of one of the Des Moines metro’s free publications with his new book, “No Pulp, Please.” Jones said he got the idea he wanted to be
Read More →Courtesy of Beaverdale Books Review by Fay Jones William Morrow & Company 11/19/13 $26.99 300 pp. Shandi Pierce is 21 years old living life with her precocious 3-year-old son, Natty, and her best friend, Walcott, in tow while trying to better her life. She’s taking herself and Natty from her
Read More →Courtesy of Beaverdale Books Review by Sally Wisdom Random House Jan. 28, 2014 $26 252 pp. For nearly 40 years, Anna Quindlen has written columns, essays and novels that examine the complexity of human interaction and have special appeal to women of the baby boomer generation. Her newest novel, “Still
Read More →Courtesy of Beaverdale Books Review by Shirley Shiffler Scribner Book Company 4/2/13 $16 352 pp. If you are like me, you get a little thrill when a book you’ve read stands out as something extraordinary. The “Light Between Oceans” is one such book, captivating me with its strongly developed characters,
Read More →Courtesy of Beaverdale Books Review by Harriet Leitch Walden Pond Press Sept. 24, 2013 Hardcover $16.99 341 pp. Anne Ursu’s “The Real Boy” is a work of magic and fantasy that revolves around numerous themes of friendship, self-esteem, self-reliance and societal over-dependence on life-saving magic. Oscar is the “hand” for
Read More →Courtesy of Beaverdale Books Review by Shirley Shiffler Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill 5/21/13 $14.95 355 pp. Though an over-used description, “The Art Forger,” by B.A. Shapiro, is a genuine page-turner of a book. I read it in a four-hour sitting — and much too late into the night. In
Read More →Courtesy of Beaverdale Books Review by Julie Goodrich 9/24/13 $17.99 240 pp. Holy unanticipated occurrences! Ulysses the squirrel lives a pretty basic squirrel existence until a near-death experience with a vacuum cleaner changes his life in “Flora and Ulysses,” by Kate DiCamillo and K.G. Campbell. Flora, a self-proclaimed cynic, saves
Read More →Courtesy of Beaverdale Books Review by Fay Jones Random House 9/10/13 $26 256 pp. Paul Harding’s moving second novel takes place in the same fictional Massachusetts town, Enon, as his debut novel, the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Tinkers.” He also writes of the same family: Charlie Crosby, the first-person narrator of “Enon,”
Read More →Courtesy of Beaverdale Books Review by Sally Wisdom Penguin Books Nov. 6, 2013 $16 448 pp. The somewhat fictionalized story of Philomena Lee, a young Irish woman who was forced by circumstance to relinquish her 3-year-old son, is masterfully told in the movie “Philomena,” starring Dame Judi Dench in the
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