This Is Your Life Harriet Chance (NetGalley) by Jonathan Evison Algonquin Books Harriet Chance sits in Father Mullinix’s study. Her husband Bernard, dead for two years, has been showing up unannounced: leaving his slippers next to hers, setting out a can of WD-40 so she could silence a hinge, showing up unannounced at the grocery …
Come Rain or Shine Jan Karon G.P. Putnam It’s the month before Dooley and Lace’s wedding–Father Tim and Cynthia are living at Meadowgate holding down the fort and prepping both house and yard for the wedding. (Father Tim is charged with creating a lush, green lawn out of the weedy patches.) While Dooley finishes his …
The Heart Goes Last (Edelweis ARC) Margaret Atwood Nan A. Talese I read Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale a couple years after it was first published in 1985 and it’s one of those books that, because of life’s circumstances at the time, I’ll remember always. I remember feeling chilled when the narrator’s access to her credit …
Last week I wrote about my own memories of the Cuban Missile Crisis and reviewed a book just published just this week, A Place We Knew Well. Well, today I’m happy to share with you a guest post by the author of that novel, Susan Carol McCarthy. Ms McCarthy share some of her memories of that …
A Place We Knew Well (NetGalley) Susan Carol McCarthy Bantam Books/Random House release date: September 29 I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis through the eyes of a five-year-old. Of course, I knew nothing about it really. There’s a memory of my mom and dad sitting in the living room with a neighbor couple, and I …
I remember the months dragging on while I waited for another adventure with Fr. Tim from Jan Karon’s Mitford series, or, drumming my fingers with the rest of the world for another Harry Potter caper. My love for little Flavia De luce is just as abiding and it can be maddening knowing the last volume of the series, Chimney …
Eleanor and Park Rainbow Rowell St. Martin’s Griffin They say kids don’t read anymore. And every school year I do have sixteen-year-olds who swear they’ve never read an entire book. And I sure don’t have many of those kids who (like me!) indiscriminately scan through the fiction section and check out their seven library book limit just …
Kitchens of the Great Midwest (Netgalley) J. Ryan Stradal Viking Sometimes my husband and I play “Do you remember eating … ?” We both grew up in the Midwest and church supper casseroles and desserts, as well as our own moms’ cooking, provide plenty of fodder. Do you remember … Tater tot casserole? Chocolate éclair …
The Woman Upstairs Claire Messud Vintage Nora Eldridge is angry. She’s done pretty much everything expected of her: graduates college, holds her dying mother’s hand, calls her father every day, works a respectable job. Except that she was supposed to be a Great Artist, but instead she’s teaching eight-year-olds. And she’s forty two and single. …
Circling the Sun (NetGalley) Paula McLain Ballantine Books There was a time when I thought I was born in the wrong time and place–a time when I dreamed I was meant to stand on the wide savanna scanning the horizon, when I thought I might have my own antelope calf as a pet and sit …
This is my symphony 