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The Knockout Queen

April 27, 2020

knockout

Michael and Bunny are the unlikeliest of friends. Polar opposites in almost every way: his mother is in prison so he lives with his aunt, while she lives in a mansion with her father. He is less of a young man than he is supposed to be with long hair, a pierced nose, small and slender. He likes other boys, but no one knows. She is literally too much of a girl. Growing and ... Read More...

4 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, coming-of-age, contemporary life, literary

The Beauty of Your Face

April 15, 2020

beauty

All of her career Afaf has been a teacher. Now, she is the principal of a Muslim school for girls in a Chicago suburb. She’s also face-to-face with the man who has gone through her school shooting her students.  As the minutes between life and possible death tick by in The Beauty of Your Face, her mind travels to her past and the event that tore her family apart—the ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, cultural, debut, literary, racism

Valentine: A Novel by Elizabeth Wetmore

April 6, 2020

five best

When you encounter a scene like the one that opens Elizabeth Wetmore’s novel, Valentine, and the words …she imagines him facedown in the dust, lips and cheeks scoured by sand, his thirst relieved by only the blood in his mouth. sear themselves on your brain you know you are in for high-intensity reading and immersion in a heartbreaking world. A world where a 14-year-old girl ... Read More...

8 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, debut, Harper, literary

The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

March 27, 2020

glass hotel

A young woman named Vincent is at the heart of The Glass Hotel, a novel that stretches its plot around the globe and into the world of high finance, hotels, restaurants, and even global oceanic shipping. It’s a complex brew of stories and people who meet, side- step, brush up against, or collide, with each other in ways that mean much more to the big picture than they ... Read More...

6 Comments
Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: contemporary life, Knopf, literary, mystery

My Dark Vanessa

March 18, 2020

five best

Fiction has always been known for expanding on fact so it’s not surprising that the fiction of the last four years, with all the political and social upheaval, has gotten more and more outsized. Author Kate Russell joins the fray with, My Dark Vanessa, her debut novel about a young woman who has an ongoing relationship with a man that began when she was 15 and he was 42. Not ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: book clubs, contemporary life, debut, literary

Writers & Lovers by Lily King

March 4, 2020

writers

Everyone knows the writer’s life is not an easy one. For 31-year-old Casey it feels almost impossible. Her mother died suddenly, her boyfriend is gone, she’s working two jobs, and she lives in a space that used to be a potting shed.  She wants to write a novel, but after six years has made little progress. Her friends from college and grad school, many of whom wanted to be ... Read More...

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Fiction Tagged: contemporary life, Grove Press, literary

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