Greenstone, Minnesota is a hard luck little town. Once known for its taconite mines it has settled into a slow decline when Virgil Wander’s car goes over a cliff and into the lake one night in the midst of an unexpected snowstorm. He’s only alive because the local junkman was on the shore, dove in and saved him, but he suffers brain trauma that leaves him with vertigo, an ... Read More...
She Would Be King
An unlikely trio comes together in the fight for a new nation in She Would Be King, Wayétu Moore’s debut novel about Liberia. There is 18-year-old Gbessa, exiled from her small West African village as a witch, who survives the bite of a poisonous snake. June Dey is a 15-year-old Virginian slave, who kills two men while trying to save the woman who raised him. When others try ... Read More...
The Pasha of Cuisine
The light radiating from the Pasha of Cuisine spread across fields, gardens, orchards, and farms, and from there penetrated kitchens, the hands of cooks, and palates, beginning a new era of opulence, prosperity, joy, and health. In short, a new golden age of taste. Set in the time of Aghas and Sultans, in Constantinople, the greatest city of the Ottoman Empire, The Pasha of ... Read More...
It’s Not You, It’s Me: Mini-Reviews
I'm back, with two spring releases that I didn't care for, but that I recognize could very well work for someone else. The family of women in What Should Be Wild are cursed. They are the Blakelys and they go back generations to 400 A.D. when the first, the young Alys, is slain by conquerors. There are seven and range from Emma who is only five and was left in ... Read More...
Ten Books as Unusual as Their Titles
Another week, another top ten list! I’ve not done a lot of these in the past, but I’m at the point in my 2017 reading that I’d rather come up with fun book options for my readers than write a review of another book that left me uninspired. I don’t know about other bloggers, but there are two kinds of reviews that come naturally to me: those for books I’m evangelical ... Read More...
The Library at Mount Char
When Carolyn was eight, she and a number of her neighborhood friends lost their homes and families and were subsequently adopted by a man they called Father. And that’s as normal as Scott Hawkins’ debut novel The Library at Mount Char gets. The rest is a story that is wildly, imaginatively over-the-top good. You see it turns out that Father has been around for possibly 60,000 ... Read More...
