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The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty

July 13, 2015

diver's

Plenty of people go on vacation to lose themselves but probably not in the way of the narrator in Vendela Vida’s novel The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty. She lands in Morocco and midway through the check-in process at her hotel realizes her backpack has been stolen, almost out of her hands. It contains every piece of ID she has, her wallet, new camera and her laptop. Despite the ... Read More...

4 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, contemporary life, ecco, literary, morocco, mystery, travel

The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton

June 10, 2015

miniaturist

Set in 1686 The Miniaturist by debut author Jessie Burton is the spellbinding story of an eighteen-year-old girl married off to an older merchant who lives in Amsterdam. She arrives on his doorstep with no idea of what marriage entails or the fact that she has been procured to enhance his reputation, for her family is poor but with a pedigree. Little does she know that her ... Read More...

9 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, debut, ecco, historical fiction

The Sacrifice

February 18, 2015

sacrifice

Joyce Carol Oates is not one to shy away from the tough subjects. The last book of hers I read was Daddy Love and it was a very difficult look at child abduction and pedophilia. In The Sacrifice she is back with the story of a black teenage girl found in an abandoned factory, raped, beaten, covered in feces and with racist obscenities scrawled on her torso. For those of you ... Read More...

8 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, ecco, historical fiction, Manhattan, mystery

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk

December 3, 2014

Billy lynn

Imagine you are a nineteen-year-old soldier and while stationed in Iraq your squad came under insurgent attack in an isolated area. You commit a heroic act of bravery and leave your vehicle to try and save a friend who is being dragged away by the enemy. A Fox news crew captures the entire attack and when it goes viral you are all brought back to the United States to be ... Read More...

5 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: American life, book clubs, contemporary life, ecco, war

Let Me Be Frank With You

November 5, 2014

let me be frank

  Frank Bascombe is back in Richard Ford’s Let Me Be Frank With You and I, for one am happy to see him again. Ford’s last novel, The Lay of the Land, covered Bascombe’s travails through his mid-fifties in a way that perfectly encapsulated the middle-age process of fight and accept. In Let Me Be Frank With You, Bascombe moves through four vignettes that are comprised of ... Read More...

1 Comment
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, contemporary fiction, ecco, short stories

Rooms: A Novel

October 10, 2014

rooms

  People, Caroline thought, were like houses. They could open their doors. You could walk through their rooms and touch the objects hidden in their corners. But something—the structure, the wiring, the invisible mechanism that kept the whole thing standing—remained invisible, suggested only by the fact of its existing at all.  Richard Walker has died and the country house ... Read More...

5 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, ecco, literary, mystery, paranormal

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