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Wild Dark Shore

March 17, 2025

wild dark

A teenage girl who lives on the beach amidst a colony of seals. Her older brother who plays the violin, loves whales, but has a temper so ferocious he boxes to exhaustion on a punching bag. Her younger brother knows more about the Earth’s plants and biodiversity than most scientists. These are the children of Dominic Salt, the caretaker on Shearwater Island, a remote isle near ... Read More...

6 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, climate fiction, literary

The Heart of Winter

March 10, 2025

heart of winter

When Abe and Ruth meet on a blind date while students at the University of Washington it’s not love at first sight. In fact, it’s not even like. Ruth finds Abe to be stodgy, full of himself, and boring. He, on the other hand, is captivated by her vivacious personality and her varied interests, even if her ideas about the future seem flaky. From this inauspicious beginning, The ... Read More...

4 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: 20th century, book clubs, marriage, Pacific Northwest

Penitence: A Novel

February 3, 2025

penitence

When Penitence begins 13-year-old Nora is alone in a jail cell after turning herself in for killing her 14-year-old brother. An opening like this has the heft to carry a traditional thriller/mystery whether as a police procedural (solving the crime) or a courtroom drama (Nora on trial). Instead, debut author Kristin Koval forges a completely different path in what becomes a ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, debut, family, literary, mystery

This Motherless Land

January 27, 2025

motherless

A loving, happy, Nigerian family is torn apart when a daughter survives a horrific car crash that leaves her mother and brother dead and her father’s grief makes him hate her for surviving. This is This Motherless Land and Funke is the daughter, who at eight finds herself on a plane to England to live with her mother’s white family, people she’s never met and knows almost ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, childhood, cultural, family

Instructions for a Heatwave

January 16, 2025

instructions

In 1976 England was in the midst of a terrible drought and heat wave. It’s an inauspicious and unexpected time for a happily married, retired man to go missing, but Robert does, taking only his keys and his passport. His wife Gretta is left in a frazzled state and his adult children have all been called to come home and look for him in Maggie O’Farrell’s novel, Instructions for ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, England, family, historical, literary

Crow Mary by Kathleen Grissom

January 13, 2025

crow mary

In the northern territory of Montana in 1872 a 16-year-old Crow Nation girl named Goes First marries an American fur trader twice her age. Her life and travels with him form the center point of Kathleen Grissom’s engrossing novel, Crow Mary. Goes First’s life has been a typical one amongst her people, nomadic, with the years following the migrations of the buffalo. She ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction

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