I’m not sure I remember a time when it was so hard to think about reading, but the past two weeks have been hectic enough that I’m mentally and physically frazzled. Last week was my first trip to Ann Arbor—touring neighborhoods and looking at houses. While parts of it were fun (so much good food!) house hunting is exhausting—and it’s only beginning. All of which means focusing ... Read More...
A Place for Us: A Novel
A Place for Us opens just before the beginning of an Indian family wedding in California. The bride, Hadia, is hoping that her brother, Amar, will show up. No one in the family has seen him for three years, but Hadia hopes their bond is strong enough to bring him back, despite the problems with their father that made him run away. Amar does attend—marking the wedding as both an ... Read More...
The Book of Essie: A Novel
For most young girls, being seventeen and pregnant is not a good place to be. For Esther Hicks it’s even worse because she is the youngest daughter of a fundamentalist pastor and part of a reality TV show about their family. With a life played out in front of the camera and the nation, how can this be anything but catastrophic for Essie, and more importantly, for the show's ... Read More...
American Radical: Inside the World of an Undercover Muslim FBI Agent
Like some of the other non-fiction books I read last month (Educated, I’ll Be Gone in the Dark), American Radical by Tamer Elnoury reads like fiction. High-wire tension, thriller kind of reading. Tamer Elnoury (not his real name) is an undercover FBI agent. He was brought here from Egypt by his parents when he was a small boy. English is his first language and he speaks ... Read More...
The Night Diary by Veera Hiranandani
Set in 1947 The Night Diary is the story of twelve-year-old twins, Amil and Nisha, who live in what was once India but has now, almost overnight, turned into Pakistan. Their mother, who died giving birth, was Muslim, but their father is Hindu—making them unwelcome where they are. They must get across the border into India and begin a new life away from everyone they have known ... Read More...
A Column of Fire by Ken Follett
In the eyes of the church, the Bible was the most dangerous of all banned books...Priests said that ordinary people were unable to rightly interpret God's word, and needed guidance. Protestants said the Bible opened men's eyes to the errors of the priesthood. A Column of Fire is the third book in Ken Follett’s Kingsbridge series and he goes big in this final ... Read More...
