Perhaps what attracted me to The Year of the Gadfly from the get-go was that this particular spin on the prep school world was influenced by the author’s own high school school experience of feeling like an outsider and also dealing with the death of her boyfriend.
Author Natalia Sylvester presenting one of her favorite independent bookstores, BookPeople in Austin, Texas.
Set primarily in the mountains of Georgia, GLOW moves back and forth in time, between 1836 and 1941, and highlights bonds of both blood and love that have been forged between generations of blacks, whites, and Cherokees.
Intriguing. Exhausting. Frustrating. Brilliant. All of these words describe Life After Life by Kate Atkinson for me.
I think THE LIFE LIST reminded me, once again, that there are many ways to reach the same goal. That there are many ways to be happy and it might not always be the way you think.
This WWII story is told from a variety of viewpoints including a Jew who has escaped a train headed to Auschwitz but poses as a German soldier, a young German girl from the rich farmlands of East Prussia, and a French girl Cecile who is imprisoned in a work camp.
Covering several countries, time periods, and points of view, Everything Beautiful Began After is the story of two men in love with the same woman. All three of them are trying to outrun their own histories …
I love when a single book so defines a trip that you can’t remember the journey without that book in your hand in every memory.
The three voices of The People of Forever Are Not Afraid weave together into a narrative that is blunt yet poetic. The nonlinear story, told in alternating points of view, is like a fever dream.
Bestselling author Jenna Blum presenting one of her favorite independent bookstores, Watermark Books in Wichita, Kansas
Orphan Train tells the story of two young girls, both displaced, both orphaned, both for all practical purposes abandoned to society.
In Travels with Epicurus, Klein, in his early 70s, seeks not the answer to a fulfilling life in general but specifically to living a fulfilling life in old age.
Carol Rifka Brunt’s Tell the Wolves I’m Home is a softly told, beautiful novel about coming of age, and about the relationships that change our lives.
What made me grab Untouchable by Scott O’Connor off the shelf at B&N was the round sticker on the cover that said, “Winner: Discover Great New Writers Award.”
Because the specter of death comes in the midst of life, and neither can entirely eclipse the other. This paradox is at the core of her book, The Still Point of the Turning World.
This historical fiction novel set in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and South Carolina in pre-Civil War 1800′s is Jessica’s first novel, It was the winner of the 2009 Freedom In Fiction contest and it was very apparent to me after reading it as to why she won.
THE LOST WIFE by Alyson Richman is one novel I’ve recently read that I fell in love with, not only for the cover art, but with the words, the story, and the pull I felt while reading to immerse myself in every word all the way to the end.
Lois Lowry’s Son is an immensely powerful story of a mother’s love and a parable about the dangers of social engineering. Son is the fourth in The Giver series, but it also stands alone beautifully.
Motivations behind some choices seem so impenetrable that even squinting close enough to crash into the subject you won’t find a mental foothold. That’s how I felt about Bernie Madoff and everything connected to his Ponzi scheme. How did he do it? Did his family really not know? How did he fool so many wise-in-the-ways-of-the-world investors?
This is a story that will change how you slow down to appreciate the days you are given and its characters will make you reconsider how seriously you take the bumps in your own personal road. It’s the type of fiction we all hope to find, because, in the end, aren’t we all just looking for books that change how well we live?
