A seemingly happy marriage has cracks that shatter one summer when two families vacation together on the Norfolk coast. Two families with best friends at their center. Rosie and Lisa have known each other since they were teenagers so it was wonderful that their families aligned so well. Right up until Lisa has an affair with Nick, Rosie’s husband. Suddenly, what was, wasn’t, ... Read More...
It’s Not You, It’s Me: Mini-Reviews
Plausibility is a subjective concept, especially in reading. There are premises, plots, and characters in novels I love that make other readers put the book down. Today’s mini-reviews exemplify the term because both novels contain characters and situations that I could not believe in and so impacted my ability to enjoy the book as much as someone else might. In other words, ... Read More...
The Preservationist: A Novel by Justin Kramon
She’d never been looked at that way before, with that peculiar mix of intensity and distance. Sam is a thirty-nine-year-old kitchen worker at Stradler College. He’s led a life of movement from one place to another and one job to another at each of these places but turning forty is starting to press on him. Shouldn’t he be more settled? Shouldn’t he find a more ... Read More...
The Sleep Room
There is nothing more frightening than that which cannot be identified, no engine of fear more powerful than the unknown. It is 1955 and the psychiatric field is making its first foray into sleep as a treatment for extreme mental disorders like schizophrenia and bipolar. Dr. James Richardson has been studying the field and written a paper about it when he is summoned ... Read More...
The Bad Miss Bennet
The last time we saw the troublesome Miss Lydia Bennet, she was smirking triumphantly at her sisters while being driven away by her new husband, the bounder Mr. Wickham. Now she has resurfaced, a widow at the ripe old age of nineteen, and while she mourns her husband’s passing (not really) she’s ready to go after the life she feels she deserves. And so begins the romp that is ... Read More...
Accelerated
Sean is an artist working as an editor at a celebrity rag while trying to take care of his 8-year-old son, Toby. Several months ago his network executive wife decided she needed “time away” to find herself and abandoned father and son. Sean is left trying to manage his job and the care of his son, which includes negotiating the piranha-like waters of the posh private school ... Read More...
