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Tornado Weather: A Novel

July 24, 2017

tornado

The town is Colliersville, Indiana, but it could be any number of small towns scattered across the United States. Towns where, as the jobs get smaller, the economic disparity gets bigger. This is where Deborah Kennedy chooses to set her debut novel, Tornado Weather and it’s the epitome of the tinderbox that is America right now. It’s a greedy dairy farmer who, in an effort to ... Read More...

6 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, contemporary life, debut, Flatiron Books, literary

Miss Jane by Brad Watson

July 12, 2017

miss jane

Summer is generally a time when I enjoy lighter books, those that don't take up too much brain space. Sometimes, though, it’s also lovely to disengage from all the activity, find a shaded space and give yourself up to gorgeous prose and stories with meaning. Miss Jane, one of my favorite novels from 2016 is out in paperback this week and fits the bill for this kind of reading. ... Read More...

1 Comment
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, family, literary, Southern life, W.W. Norton

Goodbye, Vitamin: A Novel

July 10, 2017

goodbye

  Rachel Khong's debut novel, Goodbye, Vitamin begins with a young woman named Ruth making the trip home for the holidays and her mother asking her if she could stay for a while longer because of her father. Because her father, a well-regarded history professor has begun forgetting things, to the point of being asked to take a leave from his job. And it turns out that by ... Read More...

9 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, contemporary life, family, Henry Holt and Company, humor, literary

Everybody’s Son: A Novel

June 15, 2017

son

When a novel opens during a heat wave with a ten-year-old boy breaking a window to get out of an apartment with no electricity after being left alone for a week while his mother goes out to buy drugs it doesn’t seem as if much nuance to the story can follow. Unless the author is Thrity Umrigar, one of my favorite writers for presenting human emotion at its messy, inconvenient, ... Read More...

5 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, contemporary life, family, Harper, racism, social issues

Salt Houses: A Novel

May 15, 2017

salt

There are plenty of times when fiction ventures into territory that is unfamiliar—in fact, that’s one of the reasons I love it so much. But Salt Houses, the debut novel from Hala Alyan is about a subject that I almost can’t wrap my mind around. The fact of having been driven out, by force or war, from not just your home, but virtually every country where you’ve settled. For ... Read More...

5 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, cultural, debut, family saga, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Middle East, war

The Witchfinder’s Sister

May 3, 2017

witchfinder

  The Witchfinder’s Sister is Beth Underdown’s dark novel of dark times. It’s 1600s England and Alice is pregnant, her husband is dead and she must return to live with her brother whom she hasn’t seen in five years. Her brother who wanted to become a minister, but due to their father’s death had to earn a living as a scribe. Now grown, he has become the man charged with ... Read More...

4 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: 1600s, Ballantine, book clubs, debut, England

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