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The Top of the World by Ethan Joella

August 20, 2026

top of the world

When Maggie’s older brother, Chip disappears for the summer after the end of his senior year in high school it’s a big deal. Because it’s probably the last summer he’ll ever have and she and her parents are left alone and wondering if they’ll ever see him again. They do, but he never says anything about his time away. A year later Maggie seeks some kind of closure around his ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, coming-of-age, family, historical fiction, vacation reading

Land by Maggie O’Farrell

July 13, 2026

land

One family and a country wiped out by famine are the heart and soul of Land, Maggie O’Farrell’s sweeping new novel. The lives of Tomás, Phina, and their children, Liam, Enda, Rose, and Eugene play out on the page with all the verdant vibrancy of the land they love. It's a decade after the Great Hunger in Ireland and Tomás has found much needed work as a cartographer for the ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: historical fiction, Ireland, literary

Workhorse: A Novel

January 12, 2026

workhorse

Clo Harmon is a 25-year-old assistant at a fashion magazine. She’s a workhorse—eager, bright, hardworking, but with no fashion pedigree. Meaning she will never achieve her dream of being an editor because those jobs only go to the show horses—wealthy, skinny girls with Ivy League degrees and all the right connections.  What’s an ambitious, but unconnected woman to do? In ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: 21st century, fashion, historical fiction, Manhattan

Let’s Call Her Barbie

March 20, 2025

barbie

  As a child of the 60s/70s I was one of the numerous little girls clamoring for a Barbie doll. Much like the opening for the movie Barbie (fabulous, a must see) I’d loved my baby doll to death, but needed something more and Barbie was the dream, but it was not to be for me. My personal trauma aside,  Renée Rosen now takes readers on an in-depth journey of how the ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: 1950s, 1960s, historical fiction, pop culture

Belgravia by Julian Fellowes

November 2, 2023

belgravia

I decided to leave the gloom of October behind and start November with an uncomplicated, lovely novel that opens in a time that seems quiet to us, but was tumultuous for those living it. The novel is Belgravia and it begins with a very real event, the Duchess of Richmond’s ball in Brussels in 1815. In history, this glamorous event, attended by some of the highest aristocrats ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: 19th century, historical fiction, London, vacation reading

Bright Young Women

October 10, 2023

bright young

Pamela Schumacher is the president of her sorority at Florida State University, a job she takes so seriously she doesn’t go out with her friends one Saturday night because she has too much work to do. In the early hours of the following morning this same sense of responsibility will uproot her life from its carefully laid out path, depositing her in the dark swamp of one of ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: 1970s, book clubs, historical fiction, suspense

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