I’m happy to start the week with a novel, Shrines of Gaiety, that left me thoroughly entertained. Nellie Coker is an iron-fisted matriarch running nightclubs in 1920s London and trying to groom at least some of her children to take over. After a short stint in prison, she returns home to find the vultures circling in the form of the police trying to shut her down and other ... Read More...
A Fever in the Heartland
I had little idea what to expect when I picked up Timothy Egan’s new book, A Fever in the Heartland. I knew it was about the Ku Klux Klan, but its subtitle seemed a bit dramatic: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them. It actually proved to be accurate in this little-known history of the KKK at a time and in a place I had never heard ... Read More...
Siren Queen: A Novel
After the penetrating reality of displacement in An Unlasting Home I opted to change reading direction and dive into fantasy. My choice, Siren Queen, led me deep into a 1920s Hollywood that was at once recognizable, but darkly surreal. A world one young American Chinese woman is desperate to be a part of, but only on her own terms. This premise alone gives Nghi Vo plenty of ... Read More...
The Christie Affair: A Novel
When Agatha’s husband informs her that he’s leaving her for another woman she doesn’t react well. In fact, she disappears. For eleven days, leaving their young daughter behind. This situation is both fact and the premise of Nina de Gramont’s novel The Christie Affair. Because yes, Agatha, is that Agatha and in 1925, when her husband asked her for a divorce she disappeared. ... Read More...
The Chosen and the Beautiful
Wouldn’t you know it—as soon as I post my overlooked books of 2021 another slips in under the wire. I finished The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo Wednesday morning after my post went live. This marvelous novel is a retelling of The Great Gatsby but from the perspective of Jordan Baker, seen in the original story mostly as Daisy Buchanan’s sidekick. Now, she is Asian and ... Read More...
Wealthy Women: Mini-Reviews
It’s no secret I like sorbet reading—the kind of fiction that is light on the brain and cleanses my mental palate for the heavier novels that linger in my heart and mind after I’ve finished them. This could also be called chick-lit, but while I think that’s a fun term I know there are plenty of women that think it's offensive. Political correctness aside, what I’m ... Read More...
