‘A Girl, A Raccoon, and the Midnight Moon’ Ten-year-old Pearl Moran, born in the Lancaster Avenue branch of the NYC public library, where her mom is the circulation librarian, and raised there by her mother and the other staff, begins the story with a piercing shriek as she notices the
Read More →‘American Dirt’ “American Dirt” tells the story of Lydia and her son, Luca. They are migrants heading toward the United States, fleeing a vengeful cartel. Jeanine Cummins shares their gruesome journey in picturesque detail. The reader is transported to the top of La Bastia beside Lydia, Luca and the band
Read More →‘The Bourbon King: The Life and Crimes of George Remus, Prohibition’s Evil Genius’ The son of German immigrants, George Remus became a pharmacist at a young age and soon became a lawyer. He was a theatrical lawyer, at times mixing his knowledge of pharmacy and the law to the benefit
Read More →‘Gideon the Ninth’ Serious fiction is important and valuable to the societal landscape, and it is rightly a focus of much scholarly work. However, sometimes you just need a crazy adventure story with necromancers, lesbian swordswomen and a premise so weird and wonderful that you can’t look away. “Gideon the
Read More →‘Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee’ After assisting Truman Capote with his research for “In Cold Blood,” Harper Lee endeavored to follow her bestselling “To Kill a Mockingbird” with her own book of true crime, spending a year in the late 1970s in her native Alabama reporting on a
Read More →‘Black Death at the Golden Gate: The Race to Save America from the Bubonic Plague’ Both fascinating and frightening, this tale of the entry of the bubonic plague into the continental United States has elements that should sound familiar to the reader. The first victim of Yersina pestis (the bacterium
Read More →‘Country Dark’ Chris Offutt deftly captures life in rural Kentucky. “Country Dark” begins in 1954 when Tucker, not quite 18, leaves Korea as a decorated veteran and heads toward his Kentucky home. Navigating life outside of warfare, he’s not too far into the woods when he saves a young girl
Read More →‘Biloxi’ “Always Happy Hour” by Mary Miller was one of my favorite books of the year when it came out, and she did not disappoint with her latest offering, “Biloxi.” “Biloxi” is named for the city in which it takes place, Biloxi, Mississippi. Miller tells the story of Louis McDonald,
Read More →‘American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic’ Dr. David Hosack was a doctor and botanist who lived among and treated some of the Founding Fathers. In the later part of the 18th century, he traveled to England to add to his medical knowledge.
Read More →‘The Calculating Stars’ There is a small handful of writers who don’t just craft a good story, or comment smartly on modern life, or create fascinating characters you’d want to have a beer with. Instead, they do all three while entertaining even the most experienced reader. Mary Robinette Kowal is
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