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Reviews

Reviews

by Mark Slouka - Fiction, Historical Fiction

Racked by guilt over his older brother’s childhood death, 16-year-old Jon Mosher turns his rage into victories running track. Meanwhile, Ray Cappicciano is trying to take care of his baby brother while staying out of the way of his abusive father. Jon and Ray form a tight friendship, but it’s not until Ray falls in love with Karen Dorsey that the three friends begin to dream of breaking away from Brewster for good. Freedom, however, has its price.

by Ron Carlson - Fiction

In the small town of Oakpine, Wyoming, four men try to make peace with who they are in the world. In high school, they were in a band, and readers learn what has become of these friends and the different directions of their lives. Now that they are reunited, getting the band back together might be the most important thing they can do.

by Joseph J. Ellis - History, Nonfiction

While the 13 colonies came together in 1776 and agreed to secede from the British Empire, the British were dispatching the largest armada ever to cross the Atlantic to crush the rebellion in the cradle. The Continental Congress and the Continental Army were forced to make decisions on the run, improvising as history congealed around them. In REVOLUTIONARY SUMMER, Joseph J. Ellis meticulously examines the most influential figures in this propitious moment.

by Andrew Sean Greer - Fiction

After the death of her beloved twin brother and the abandonment of her long-time lover, Greta Wells undergoes electroshock therapy. Over the course of the treatment, Greta finds herself repeatedly sent to 1918, 1941, and back to the present. In these other worlds, Greta finds her brother alive and well --- though fearfully masking his true personality. And her former lover is now her devoted husband. But will he be unfaithful to her in this life as well?

by Philipp Meyer - Fiction, Historical Fiction

Philipp Meyer, the acclaimed author of AMERICAN RUST, returns with THE SON. This utterly transporting novel is an epic of the American West and a multigenerational saga of power, blood, land and oil that follows the rise of one unforgettable Texas family --- from the Comanche raids of the 1800s to the oil booms of the 20th century.

by Rachel Kushner - Fiction

The year is 1975, and Reno has come to New York intent on turning her fascination with motorcycles and speed into art. There, she begins an affair with an artist named Sandro Valera, the semi-estranged scion of an Italian tire and motorcycle empire. When they visit Sandro’s family home in Italy, Reno falls in with members of the radical movement that overtook Italy in the ’70s. Betrayal sends her reeling into a clandestine undertow.

by Mohsin Hamid - Fiction

Mohsin Hamid’s third novel follows its nameless hero to the sprawling metropolis where he begins to amass an empire built on that most fluid, and increasingly scarce, of goods: water. Yet his heart remains set on something else, on the pretty girl whose star rises along with his, their paths crossing and recrossing, a lifelong affair sparked and snuffed and sparked again by the forces that careen their fates along.

by Elizabeth Strout - Fiction

Haunted by the freak accident that killed their father when they were children, Jim and Bob Burgess escaped from their hometown. But their long-standing dynamic is upended when their sister urgently calls them home. And so Jim and Bob return to the landscape of their childhood, where the long-buried tensions that have shaped and shadowed their relationship begin to surface in unexpected ways that will change them forever.

by Amber Dermont - Fiction, Short Stories

DAMAGE CONTROL displays Amber Dermont's remarkable gift for portraying characters at crossroads. In “Damage Control,” a young man works at an etiquette school while his girlfriend is indicted for embezzlement. A widow rents herself to elderly women and vacations with them as a “professional grandchild” in “Stella at the Winter Palace.” And in “The Language of Martyrs,” a couple houses a mail-order bride on behalf of the husband’s Russian mother.

by Jim Harrison - Fiction, Short Stories

Jim Harrison delivers two absorbing studies of men at the opposite ends of adult life, noteworthy both for an absence of illusion and a sympathy that never slips into sentimentality. The stories revisit some of Harrison’s habitual concerns --- the world of nature, Native American myth, the sensual pleasures of food and the persistence of sexual desire --- in his characteristically rugged and entertaining style.