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Reviews

Reviews

by Ian McEwan - Fiction, Psychological Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

Trudy has been unfaithful to her husband, John. What’s more, she has kicked him out of their marital home, a valuable old London town house, and in his place is his own brother, the profoundly banal Claude. The illicit couple have hatched a scheme to rid themselves of her inconvenient husband forever. But there is a witness to their plot: the inquisitive, nine-month-old resident of Trudy’s womb. As Trudy’s unborn son listens, bound within her body, to his mother and his uncle’s murderous plans, he gives us a truly new perspective on our world, seen from the confines of his.

by Anna Quindlen - Fiction

For generations, the Millers have lived in Miller’s Valley. Mimi Miller tells about her life with intimacy and honesty. As Mimi eavesdrops on her parents and quietly observes the people around her, she discovers more and more about the toxicity of family secrets, the dangers of gossip, the flaws of marriage, the inequalities of friendship, and the risks of passion, loyalty and love. Home, as Mimi begins to realize, can be “a place where it’s just as easy to feel lost as it is to feel content.”

by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney - Fiction

The Plumb family is spectacularly dysfunctional. Years of tensions finally reach a breaking point as Melody, Beatrice and Jack Plumb gather to confront their older brother, Leo, freshly released from rehab. Months earlier, an inebriated Leo got in a car accident that has endangered the Plumbs' joint trust fund, “The Nest,” which they are months away from finally receiving. Now, the siblings must grapple with old resentments, present-day truths and the significant emotional and financial toll of the accident, as well as finally acknowledge the choices they have made in their own lives.

by Jane Smiley - Fiction

It’s 1987, and the next generation of Langdons is facing economic, social and political challenges unlike anything their ancestors have encountered. Michael and Richie, twin sons of World War II hero Frank, work in the high-stakes worlds of government and finance --- but their fiercest enemies may be closer to home. Charlie, the charmer, struggles to find his way; Guthrie is deployed to Iraq, leaving the Iowa family farm in the hands of his younger sister, Felicity --- who, as always, has her own ideas. Determined to help preserve the planet, she worries that her family farm’s land is imperiled, and not only by the extremes of climate change.

by Jonathan Evison - Fiction

Seventy-eight-year-old Harriet Chance impulsively sets sail on an ill-conceived Alaskan cruise that her late husband, Bernard, had planned. There, between the imagined appearances of Bernard and the very real arrival of her estranged daughter midway through the cruise, Harriet is forced to take a long look back, confronting the truth about pivotal events that changed the course of her life. In the process, she discovers that she’s been living the better part of that life under entirely false assumptions.

by Erica Jong - Fiction

Vanessa Wonderman watches her parents age, attends doctor appointments with her pregnant daughter, and sits by the hospital bed of her husband, Asher, 15 years her senior. With her best years as an actress behind her, she's discovering that beginnings are easy, but endings can be hard. Could her fountain of youth fantasies be fulfilled on zipless.com? A site inspired by the writings of her best friend, Isadora Wing, it promises "no strings attached" encounters --- and Vanessa is so restless that she's willing to try anything.

by Brian Doyle - Fiction

Dave is 14 years old and living with his family in a cabin on Oregon’s Mount Hood. He will soon enter high school, with adulthood and a future not far off --- a future away from his mother, father, his precocious younger sister, and the wilderness where he’s lived all his life. Meanwhile, Martin, a pine marten (of the mustelid family), is leaving his own mother and siblings and setting off on his own as well. As Dave and Martin embark on their own adventures, their lives, paths and trails will cross, weave and blend.

by Jane Smiley - Fiction, Historical Fiction

EARLY WARNING opens in 1953 with the Langdon family at a crossroads. Their stalwart patriarch, Walter, has suddenly died, leaving their five children, now adults, looking to the future. As the country moves out of post-World War II optimism through the darker landscape of the Cold War and the social and sexual revolutions of the 1960s and ’70s, and then into the unprecedented wealth (for some) of the early 1980s, the Langdon children each follow a different path in a rapidly changing world.

by Nick Hornby - Fiction, Historical Fiction

Set in 1960s London, FUNNY GIRL is a lively account of the adventures of the intrepid young Sophie Straw as she navigates her transformation from provincial ingénue to television starlet amid a constellation of delightful characters. Insightful and humorous, Nick Hornby's latest does what he does best: endears us to a cast of characters who are funny, if flawed, and forces us to examine ourselves in the process.

by Denis Johnson - Fiction, Literary, Suspense, Thriller

After 10 years’ absence, Roland Nair returns to Freetown, Sierra Leone, to reunite with his friend, Michael Adriko. Adriko is an African who styles himself a soldier of fortune, newly engaged to a college girl named Davidia from Colorado. Together the three set out to visit Adriko’s clan in the Uganda-Congo borderland --- but each of these travelers is keeping secrets from the others. Their journey through a land abandoned by the future leads Adriko, Nair and Davidia to meet themselves not in a new light, but rather in a new darkness.