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Reviews

Reviews

by Elton John - Autobiography, Music, Nonfiction

Christened Reginald Dwight, he was a shy boy with Buddy Holly glasses who grew up in the London suburb of Pinner and dreamed of becoming a pop star. By the age of 23, he was performing his first gig in America, facing an astonished audience in his bright yellow dungarees, a star-spangled T-shirt and boots with wings. Elton John had arrived, and the music world would never be the same again. His life has been full of drama, from the early rejection of his work with song-writing partner Bernie Taupin to spinning out of control as a chart-topping superstar; from half-heartedly trying to drown himself in his LA swimming pool to disco-dancing with Princess Diana and Queen Elizabeth. All the while, Elton was hiding a drug addiction that would grip him for over a decade.

by Demi Moore - Memoir, Nonfiction

For decades, Demi Moore has been synonymous with celebrity. From iconic film roles to high-profile relationships, Moore has never been far from the spotlight --- or the headlines. Even as Demi was becoming the highest paid actress in Hollywood, however, she was always outrunning her past, just one step ahead of the doubts and insecurities that defined her childhood. In this deeply candid and reflective memoir, Demi pulls back the curtain and opens up about her career and personal life --- laying bare her tumultuous relationship with her mother, her marriages, her struggles balancing stardom with raising a family, and her journey toward open-heartedness.

by Ann Patchett - Fiction

At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves. The story is told by Cyril’s son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother. The two wealthy siblings are thrown back into the poverty their parents had escaped from and find that all they have to count on is one another. It is this unshakeable bond between them that both saves their lives and thwarts their futures.

by Shari Lapena - Fiction, Psychological Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

In a quiet, leafy suburb in upstate New York, a teenager has been sneaking into houses --- and into the owners' computers as well --- learning their secrets, and maybe sharing some of them, too. Who is he, and what might he have uncovered? After two anonymous letters are received, whispers start to circulate, and suspicion mounts. And when a woman down the street is found murdered, the tension reaches the breaking point. Who killed her? Who knows more than they're telling? And how far will all these very nice people go to protect their own secrets? In this neighborhood, it's not just the husbands and wives who play games. Here, everyone in the family has something to hide.

by Beatriz Williams - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Women's Fiction

Newly widowed Leonora “Lulu” Randolph arrives in the Bahamas to investigate the Governor and his wife for a New York society magazine. After all, American readers have an insatiable appetite for news of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, that glamorous couple whose love affair nearly brought the British monarchy to its knees five years earlier. What more intriguing backdrop for their romance than a wartime Caribbean paradise, a colonial playground for kingpins of ill-gotten empires? But as she infiltrates the Duke and Duchess’s social circle, and the powerful cabal that controls the islands’ political and financial affairs, Lulu uncovers evidence that beneath the glister of Wallis and Edward’s marriage lies an ugly --- and even treasonous --- reality.

by Melanie Benjamin - Fiction, Historical Fiction

Blanche Auzello and her husband, Claude, the mistress and master of the Ritz, allow the glamour and glitz of the hotel to take their minds off their troubled marriage, and off the secrets that they keep from their guests --- and each other. Until June 1940, when the German army sweeps into Paris, setting up headquarters at the Ritz. Suddenly, Blanche and Claude must navigate a terrifying new reality. In order to survive, and strike a blow against their Nazi “guests,” they must spin a web of deceit that ensnares everything and everyone they cherish. But one secret is shared between Blanche and Claude alone --- the secret that, in the end, threatens to imperil both of their lives, and to bring down the legendary Ritz itself.

by Renée Rosen - Fiction, Historical Fiction

New York City is filled with opportunities for single girls like Alice Weiss, who leaves her small midwestern town to chase her big-city dreams and unexpectedly lands the job of a lifetime working for the first female editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine, Helen Gurley Brown. Nothing could have prepared Alice for the world she enters as editors and writers resign on the spot, refusing to work for the woman who wrote the scandalous bestseller SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL, and confidential memos, article ideas and cover designs keep finding their way into the wrong hands. When someone tries to pull Alice into a scheme to sabotage her boss, she is more determined than ever to help Helen succeed.

by Sylvia Plath - Fiction

Never before published, this newly discovered story by literary legend Sylvia Plath stands on its own and is remarkable for its symbolic, allegorical approach to a young woman’s rebellion against convention and forceful taking control of her own life. Written while Plath was a student at Smith College in 1952, MARY VENTURA AND THE NINTH KINGDOM tells the story of a young woman’s fateful train journey. Lips the color of blood, the sun an unprecedented orange, train wheels that sound like “guilt, and guilt, and guilt”: these are just some of the things Mary Ventura begins to notice on her journey to the ninth kingdom. “But what is the ninth kingdom?” she asks a kind-seeming lady in her carriage. “It is the kingdom of the frozen will,” comes the reply. “There is no going back.”

by Jean Thompson - Fiction

Spanning from World War II to the present, A CLOUD IN THE SHAPE OF A GIRL is about three generations of the Wise family --- Evelyn, Laura and Grace --- as they hunt for contentment amid chaos of their own making. We see these women and their trials, small and large: social slights and heartbreaks; marital disappointments and infidelities; familial dysfunction; mortality. One of the burning questions Jean Thompson asks is: By serving her family, is a woman destined to repeat the mistakes of previous generations, or can she transcend the expectations of a place, and a time? Can she truly be free?

by Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger - Biography, History, Nonfiction

When 64-year-old Jackie Kennedy Onassis died in her Fifth Avenue apartment, her younger sister Lee wept inconsolably. Then Jackie’s 38-page will was read. Lee discovered that substantial cash bequests were left to family members, friends and employees --- but nothing to her. "I have made no provision in this my Will for my sister, Lee B. Radziwill, for whom I have great affection, because I have already done so during my lifetime," read Jackie’s final testament. Drawing on the authors’ candid interviews with Lee Radziwill, THE FABULOUS BOUVIER SISTERS explores their complicated relationship, placing them at the center of 20th-century fashion, design and style.