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Mudbound

February 10, 2016

  In 1939, at age thirty-one Laura is considered almost unmarriageable. All of her siblings have married and left the family home in Memphis. She has resigned herself to the fate of spinster schoolteacher when Henry McAllen appears and wants to marry her. He seems like a kind man, even if he is ten years older than her and with a limp from his time in France during ... Read More...

12 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: 1940s, Algonquin Books, book clubs, debut, historical fiction, literary, racism, Southern life

The Good Liar

February 8, 2016

good liar

  Roy Courtnay has been working one scam or another all his life. Now in his mid-70s he’s turned his hand to internet dating as a way to prey on wealthy widows. When he meets Betty she seems just his type—pretty and a bit ditzy. He provides her with welcome companionship and even opens up with his own concerns about his pension and how to stay financially afloat in ... Read More...

3 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, debut, Harper, mystery

Be Frank With Me

February 3, 2016

be frank

  M.M. (Mimi) Banning is a southern college drop-out who writes a novel at age 20 that wins the Pulitzer and sells millions of copies, after which time she withdraws from the world, never to write again. Sound familiar? (Hint: Harper Lee). All right, so it is, but from that single point author Julia Claiborne Johnson spins an exuberant tale of snark and intelligence in Be ... Read More...

8 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: contemporary life, debut, William Morrow

Girl Through Glass

January 29, 2016

girl through glass

  In the first chapter of Girl Through Glass, we meet Kate, who tells her story herself. She is in her early forties, a teacher of Dance History at a college in the Midwest. But in chapter two the novel slides back to 1977 and it is about eleven-year-old Mira who is trying to keep her balance between her unstable home life and the ballet school she loves. Burdened with an ... Read More...

2 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: ballet, debut, Harper, literary, mystery

Orhan’s Inheritance

January 20, 2016

orhan's inheritance

  Orhan runs a successful rug making factory in Istanbul. The company was started by his grandfather, Kemal, long before he was born. When his grandfather dies and the will is read, the company is left to Orhan, not his father, and even more surprisingly, the family home is left to a woman they’ve never heard of or know. This is Aline Ohanesian’s potent new novel, ... Read More...

5 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: Algonquin Books, Armenian genocide, book clubs, cultural, debut, historical fiction, World War I

Black Chalk

December 16, 2015

black chalk

  There are many games to be played in college but none quite like the one designed by Jolyon and his friend Chad in Christopher Yates’s debut novel Black Chalk. The novel, just like the Game itself, begins with innocuous pieces to lure you in—Chad, the shy American determined to make the friends in England that he could not make at home; Jolyon, the funny British boy who ... Read More...

3 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, coming-of-age, debut, friendship, mystery, Picador, suspense

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