From the nice folks at HarperCollins, Missing Pieces by Heather Gudenkauf: Sarah Quinlan’s husband, Jack, has been haunted for decades by the untimely death of his mother when he was just a teenager, her body found in the cellar of their family farm, the circumstances a mystery. The case rocked the small farm town of Penny Gate, Iowa, where Jack was raised,… Read more
Downloaded my review copy of a new book I am really looking forward to! Back in 2011, I gave a great review to Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan’s Tiger in the Kitchen. Now, I get to review her first novel, Sarong Party Girls: On the edge of twenty-seven, Jazzy hatches a plan for her and her best girlfriends: Sher, Imo, and Fann. Before the… Read more
How about a little something different? Read more
I added a few things to my personal library over the holidays. First up, a little something from Kindle First: The Oddfits by Tiffany Tsao Eight-year-old Murgatroyd Floyd doesn’t fit in—not as a blue-eyed blonde living in Singapore, not in school, and certainly not with his aloof expatriate parents, who seem determined to make his life even harder. Unbeknownst to him, there’s… Read more
This review is part of my New Year’s Clean Up My Review Pile project. I finished this book months ago, but somehow never quite got around to the review. Something always came up – something else to review, or my Kindle had a dead battery, or something. But I came across it on the finished list a couple of weeks ago… Read more
I couldn’t live a week without a private library – indeed, I’d part with all my furniture and squat and sleep on the floor before I’d let go of the 1500 or so books I possess. – H. P. Lovecraft, American writer of horror fiction Read more
The Missing Piece by Kevin Egan is a different sort of courtroom drama. It revolves around the Salvus Treasure: a collection of silver pieces, bowls and plates and urns, dating back to ancient Rome. Together, the pieces are worth more than $70 million dollars, but their ownership is in dispute and the case will be tried in a Manhattan courtroom. Violence… Read more
I much prefer working with kids whose life could be completely upended by a reading of a book over a weekend. You give them a book to read – they go home and come back a changed person. And that is so much more interesting and exciting. – Russell Banks, American writer of fiction and poetry Read more