Childhood Archives - The Gilmore Guide to Books

The Bright Years

Catherine — Tue, 29 Apr 2025 07:42:44 +0000

Four generations of one Texas family unfold on the pages of Sarah Damoff’s intimate debut, The Bright Years. What begins with the simple act of falling in love turns into something deeper and more profound as secrets and addiction pull apart the loving trio of father Ryan, mother Lillian, and daughter Georgette (Jet), leaving each […]

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March Reading Recap

Catherine — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 07:56:08 +0000

Hello, fellow readers! I’m not sure I’ll get to say this again, but despite a completely miserable and toxic month in the news, my March reading was calmly solid. I only had one book I didn’t finish, am fully immersed in a fabulous fantasy series, and read six books that were successful (3.5 stars or […]

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Behind the Scenes at the Museum

Catherine — Fri, 07 Feb 2025 08:16:40 +0000

Ruby Lennox has no intention of waiting to be noticed. She is the front and center, the axis in the familial wheel that is Kate Atkinson’s Behind the Scenes at the Museum. The novel begins with her announcing her own conception when her father drunkenly impregnates her mother. From this instant on we journey with […]

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This Motherless Land

Catherine — Mon, 27 Jan 2025 08:30:06 +0000

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 […]

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Instructions for a Heatwave

Catherine — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 08:13:21 +0000

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 […]

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The Things We Didn’t Know

Catherine — Wed, 13 Mar 2024 07:23:56 +0000

When Andrea is 9-years-old she finds herself and her little brother Pablo uprooted from their home in Woronoco, Massachusetts and left in a small Puerto Rican village with an aunt they’ve never met. All because their mother hates living in their small 1950s factory town in America and is lonely. This unsettling turn of events […]

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Leaving Atlanta by Tayari Jones

Catherine — Fri, 09 Feb 2024 08:25:05 +0000

In 1979 a serial killer in Atlanta began targeting Black children. This disturbing truth is the premise for Leaving Atlanta by Tayari Jones. A painfully powerful novel it chronicles the lives of three 10-year-olds living in the neighborhoods where children were vanishing. For each, the disappearances and murders will have an impact on their lives, […]

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All That is Mine I Carry With Me

Catherine — Tue, 12 Sep 2023 07:45:31 +0000

The scene is cleanly set when in the simpler times of 1975 10-year-old Miranda arrives home from school to find the house locked and, after she uses the hidden key to get in, empty. Her mother should be there. Her mother is always there to greet her after school. Her car, keys, handbag all in […]

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The Light Pirate

Catherine — Mon, 02 Jan 2023 08:58:28 +0000

Frida’s baby isn’t due for another month, but as Wanda, a Cat 4 hurricane, bears down on the family’s home in a small Florida town she decides to make her entrance to the world. To mark the event Frida names her Wanda, hoping the storm’s power and strength will manifest in her daughter. What she […]

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Winterland: A Novel

Catherine — Mon, 28 Nov 2022 08:42:21 +0000

Does anyone else remember the USSR dominance in women’s gymnastics in the 1970s? When a name like Ludmilla Tourischeva might be the only Russian an American knew? A new novel, Winterland, takes place in the years when the balletic old guard of gymnasts like Tourischeva is giving way to fearless sprites like Olga Korbut. It’s […]

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