Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009
“Strange as this weather has been” by Ann Pancake
Editorial Reviews from Amazon.com From Publishers Weekly A hard-living Appalachian family weathers a contemporary coal boom in the debut from West Virginia native Pancake. Soon after their first meeting in the 1980s, college freshman Lace See and 15-year-old local boy James Makepeace Turrell (Jimmy Make) conceive their first child. Nearly 20 years later, Lace is [...]
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Thursday, October 15th, 2009
The Winthrop Woman by Anya Seton
From the Publisher First published in 1958 and set in the early 17th century, this bestselling novel—and follow-up to Katherine—follows Elizabeth Winthrop, a courageous Puritan woman who finds herself at odds with her heritage and surroundings. A real historical figure, Elizabeth married into the family of Governor John Winthrop of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In [...]
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Sunday, September 6th, 2009
“Never Let Me Go” by Kazuo Ishiguro
“Madame was afraid of us. But she was afraid of us in the same way someone might be afraid of spiders. We hadn’t been ready for that. It had never occurred to us to wonder how we would feel, being seen like that, being the spiders.” source for synopsis and Washington Post Review Synopsis From [...]
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Thursday, August 20th, 2009
“Swann’s Way” by Marcel Proust, translated by Lydia Davis
Barnes and Noble Review: Swann’s Way is the first novel of Marcel Proust’s seven-volume magnum opus À la recherche du temps perdu, or Remembrance of Things Past. Following the narrator’s opening ruminations about the nature of sleep is one of twentieth-century literature’s most famous scenes: the eating of the madeleine soaked in a “decoction of [...]
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Monday, August 10th, 2009
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
Editor’s Review From Publishers Weekly Oskar Schell, hero of this brilliant follow-up to Foer’s bestselling Everything Is Illuminated, is a nine-year-old amateur inventor, jewelry designer, astrophysicist, tambourine player and pacifist. Like the second-language narrator of Illuminated, Oskar turns his naïvely precocious vocabulary to the understanding of historical tragedy, as he searches New York for the [...]
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Monday, August 3rd, 2009
Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
Synopsis: With only a yellowing photograph in hand, a young man — also named Jonathan Safran Foer — sets out to find the woman who may or may not have saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Accompanied by an old man haunted by memories of the war; an amorous dog named Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior; [...]
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Thursday, July 30th, 2009
Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky
Synopsis: From The Washington Post This extraordinary work of fiction about the German occupation of France is embedded in a real story as gripping and complex as the invented one. Composed in 1941-42 by an accomplished writer who had published several well-received novels, Suite Française, her last work, was written under the tremendous pressure of [...]
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Saturday, July 25th, 2009
To Dance With Kings by Rosalind Laker
Synopsis: From Publishers Weekly Her storytelling skills displayed with panache in this captivating historical novel, British author Laker ( The Silver Touch ) should gain an appreciative audience here. Set during the reigns of Louis XIV and Louis XVI, the sweeping saga takes place mainly in the Chateau of Versailles and the surrounding town from [...]
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Thursday, May 15th, 2008
Wideacre by Philippa Gregory (Book 1 of the Wideacre Trilogy)
Synopsis Beatrice Lacey, as strong-minded as she is beautiful, refuses to conform to the social customs of her time. Destined to lose her family name and beloved Wideacre estate once she is wed, Beatrice will use any means necessary to protect her ancestral heritage. Seduction, betrayal, even murder — Beatrice’s passion is without apology or [...]
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Tuesday, May 13th, 2008
Birth of Venus by Sara Dunant
Synopsis Alessandra Cecchi is not quite fifteen when her father, a prosperous cloth merchant, brings a young painter back from northern Europe to decorate the chapel walls in the family’s Florentine palazzo. A child of the Renaissance, with a precocious mind and a talent for drawing, Alessandra is intoxicated by the painter’s abilities. But their [...]
