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An Unlasting Home

May 23, 2022

unlasting

When Sara’s mother was 8 months pregnant, she lied to the airlines and flew from Missouri back to Kuwait, determined that her daughter be born in the country of her ancestors. This is just the first of many miles and countries crossed by the indomitable women in Mai Al-Nakib’s sweeping novel, An Unlasting Home. A fitting title for a book populated by women whose lives span ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, debut, family saga, Middle East, women

Lessons in Chemistry

April 20, 2022

lessons in chemistry

It's the 1960s and you’re a brilliant chemist exploring one of the most elusive topics in chemistry—the chemical reaction that led to life. You should be at the forefront of the scientific community. Instead, you’re grappling with your thesis advisor as he tries to rape you and later being called “luscious” by the director of a chemical laboratory where you work. This is ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: debut, historical fiction, humor, women

Memphis: A Novel by Tara Stringfellow

April 11, 2022

memphis

Memphis is both the title and location of Tara Stringfellow’s stirring debut novel. Three generations of women pass through the family’s home and tumultuous times in a city where racism and violence flourish. Hazel, August, Miriam, and Joan share lives that spill over with trauma, love, and resilience in this novel about the abiding strength in love and family. It's 1995 and ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, cultural, debut, Southern life

The Honeybee Emeralds

April 8, 2022

honeybee

The Honeybee Emeralds is about a young woman working at a Parisian magazine who discovers a gorgeous necklace in the pocket of an old coat. Is it real? Who did it belong to? The hunt is on in this fun, light novel. The magazine Alice interns at is failing fast, as evidenced by the fact that the heat has been off in the building for weeks. She and a surly neighbor are ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: debut, historical fiction, Paris

Four Treasures of the Sky

April 6, 2022

four

From the near-future in The Candy House I read my way through the distant past in Jenny Zhang’s Four Treasures of the Sky. The novel is the story of Daiyu, a young girl in China, kidnapped and smuggled to America in the early 1880s. A government law banning all Chinese from entering America had no impact on the market for beautiful young girls, a world Daiyu is forced into. Not ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, cultural, debut, historical fiction, literary

The Atlas Six: A Novel

March 30, 2022

atlas six

All authors recreate worlds with their fiction, but fantasy writers build new worlds from within their own mind. But what about the feat of taking the real world and generating a world that exists right alongside it? That’s what Olivie Blake does in her debut novel, The Atlas Six, a mesmeric story with the world of magic co-existing alongside we boring mortals (but not in Harry ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: fantasy

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