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Tangerine by Christine Mangan

July 18, 2018

tangerine

  If you run into trouble at home, do not be surprised to run into trouble here. You are still the same person. Tangier can be magic, but even she is not a miracle worker. Heiress Alice Shipley has found herself, at age 20, married and living in Tangier. It’s 1956 and not a place she ever thought she would go, but her new husband John was enamored, so while he goes ... Read More...

5 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: 1950s, ecco, friendship, morocco, suspense, thriller

A Place for Us: A Novel

July 2, 2018

place

A Place for Us opens just before the beginning of an Indian family wedding in California. The bride, Hadia, is hoping that her brother, Amar, will show up. No one in the family has seen him for three years, but Hadia hopes their bond is strong enough to bring him back, despite the problems with their father that made him run away. Amar does attend—marking the wedding as both an ... Read More...

2 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, cultural, debut, family, religion

The Book of Essie: A Novel

June 20, 2018

essie

For most young girls, being seventeen and pregnant is not a good place to be. For Esther Hicks it’s even worse because she is the youngest daughter of a fundamentalist pastor and part of a reality TV show about their family. With a life played out in front of the camera and the nation, how can this be anything but catastrophic for Essie, and more importantly, for the show's ... Read More...

8 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, contemporary life, debut, family, Knopf, religion

Fat Girl on a Plane

June 13, 2018

fat

When you’re fat, you’re very conscious of the area you occupy. Of all the people in the universe, the overweight are the most conscious of personal space. We never want you to have to rub up against us. Fat Girl on a Plane is both the title of Kelly DeVos’s debut novel and the defining moment in its heroine’s life. Cookie Vonn is a 17-year-old blogger on her way to NYC to ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: chick lit, contemporary life, debut, fashion, social issues, young adult

The Perfect Mother by Aimee Molloy

May 25, 2018

perfect

Summertime is thriller time. There’s something about the pacing, when it’s done right, that matches the weather to my brain—overheated and a bit frenetic. The Perfect Mother by Aimee Molloy is my most recent venture into twisted turn thriller territory. Molloy doesn’t go for subtle in choosing a plot guaranteed to ratchet up the tension: an infant disappears from his mother’s ... Read More...

10 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: debut, Harper, mystery, New York City, thriller, women

The Map of Salt and Stars

May 14, 2018

map

Making maps is the fulcrum for Jennifer Joukhadar’s debut novel, The Map of Salt and Stars. Rawiya and Nour are young women who tell their stories side by side even though they are separated by almost a thousand years. Rawiya is a sixteen-year-old in ancient Ceuta who longs to see the world beyond her village so she leaves home in the guise of a young man and becomes an ... Read More...

3 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: coming-of-age, contemporary life, cultural, Middle East, mythology, Touchstone, war

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