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Reviews

Reviews

by Ramona Ausubel - Fiction

Teenage sisters Eve and Vera never imagined their summer vacation would be spent in the Arctic, tagging along on their mother’s scientific expedition. But there’s a lot about their lives lately that hasn’t been going as planned, and their single mother might not be so happy either. Now in Siberia with a bunch of serious biologists, Eve and Vera are just bored enough to cause trouble. Fooling around in the permafrost, they accidentally discover a perfectly preserved, 4,000-year-old baby mammoth. This sets off a surprising chain of events, leading mother and daughters to go rogue, pinging from the slopes of Siberia to the shores of Iceland to an exotic animal farm in Italy, and resulting in the birth of a creature that could change the world --- or at least this family.

by Stephanie Marie Thornton - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Women's Fiction

1792. As the author of A VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN, Mary Wollstonecraft refuses to bow to society’s conventions and instead supports herself with her pen until an illicit love affair challenges her every belief about romance and marriage. When she gives birth to a daughter and is stricken with childbed fever, Mary fears it will be her many critics who recount her life’s extraordinary odyssey. 1818. The daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley struggles to balance an ever-complicated marriage with motherhood while nursing twin hopes that she might write something of her own one day and discover the truth of her mother’s unconventional life. Mary’s journey will unlock her mother’s secrets, all while leading to her own destiny as the groundbreaking author of FRANKENSTEIN.

by Mona Simpson - Fiction

When Diane Aziz drives her oldest son, Walter, from Los Angeles to college at UC Berkeley, it will be her last parental act before falling into a deep depression. A single mother who maintains a wishful belief that her children can attain all the things she hasn’t, she’s worked hard to secure their future in caste-driven 1980s Los Angeles, gaining them illegal entry to an affluent public school. When she enters a state hospital, her closest friend tries to keep the children safe and their mother’s dreams for them alive. Moving from Berkeley and Los Angeles to New York and back again, this is a story about one family trying to navigate the crisis of their lives, a crisis many know firsthand in their own families or in those of their neighbors.

by Margot Douaihy - Fiction, Mystery

When Saint Sebastian’s School becomes the target of a shocking arson spree, the Sisters of the Sublime Blood and their surrounding New Orleans community are thrust into chaos. Patience is a virtue, but punk rocker turned nun Sister Holiday isn’t satisfied to just wait around for officials to return her home and sanctuary to its former peace, instead deciding to unveil the mysterious attacker herself. Her investigation leads her down a twisty path of suspicion and secrets, turning her against colleagues, students and even fellow Sisters along the way. And to piece together the clues of this high-stakes mystery, she must at last reckon with the sins of her own past.

by Lisa Scottoline - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Women's Fiction

Franco Fiorvanti is a handsome lemon grower toiling on the estate of a baron. When the baron asks him to kidnap a little boy named Dante, Franco makes a decision that will change his life --- and even the history of Sicily --- forever. Gaetano Catalano is an idealistic young lawyer who is a member of the Beati Paoli, a real-life secret society of aristocrats who investigate crime in Palermo. Gaetano sets out to find the boy and punish the kidnapper, but his mission leads him to a darker place than he had ever imagined. Meanwhile, Mafalda Pancari is a new mother rejoicing at the birth of her daughter, Lucia, when disaster strikes. And Alfredo D’Antonio is a reclusive goatherd under constant threat of being discovered as a Jew. These characters will collide as LOYALTY twists and turns to its monumental showdown.

by Cathleen Schine - Fiction

For years Mamie Künstler has lived happily in her bungalow in Venice, California, with her inscrutable housekeeper and her gigantic St. Bernard dog. Their tranquility is upended when Mamie’s grandson, Julian, arrives from New York City to seek his fortune in Hollywood. But it is 2020, the pandemic sweeps in, and Julian’s short visit suddenly has no end in sight. Mamie was only 11 when the Künstlers escaped Vienna in 1939. They made their way to sunny, surreal Los Angeles where they joined a colony of distinguished Jewish musicians, writers and intellectuals also escaping Hitler. Now, Mamie begins to tell Julian the buried stories of her early years in Los Angeles. While the pandemic cuts Julian off from the life he knows, Mamie’s tales open up a world of lives that came before him.

by Samantha Shannon - Fantasy, Fiction

Tunuva Melim is a sister of the Priory. For 50 years, she has trained to slay wyrms. But none have appeared since the Nameless One, and the younger generation is starting to question the Priory's purpose. To the north, in the Queendom of Inys, Sabran the Ambitious has married the new King of Hróth, narrowly saving both realms from ruin. Their daughter, Glorian, trails in their shadow --- exactly where she wants to be. The dragons of the East have slept for centuries. Dumai has spent her life in a Seiikinese mountain temple, trying to wake the gods from their long slumber. Now someone from her mother's past is coming to upend her fate. When the Dreadmount erupts, bringing with it an age of terror and violence, these women must find the strength to protect humankind from a devastating threat.

by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ - Fiction, Women's Fiction

Wuraola is a golden girl, the perfect child of a wealthy family. Now an exhausted young doctor in her first year of practice, she is beloved by Kunle, the volatile son of an ascendant politician. Eniola is tall for his age, a boy who looks like a man. Because his father has lost his job, Eniola spends his days running errands for the local tailor, collecting newspapers, begging when he must and dreaming of a big future. When a local politician takes an interest in Eniola and sudden violence shatters a family party, Wuraola's and Eniola’s lives become intertwined. In A SPELL OF GOOD THINGS, Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ shines her light on Nigeria, the gaping divide between the haves and the have-nots, and the shared humanity that lives in between.

by Deepti Kapoor - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

New Delhi, 3 a.m. A speeding Mercedes jumps the curb, and in the blink of an eye five people are dead. It’s a rich man’s car, but when the dust settles there is no rich man at all --- just a shell-shocked servant who cannot explain the strange series of events that led to this crime. Nor can he foresee the dark drama that is about to unfold. Deftly shifting through time and perspective in contemporary India, AGE OF VICE is an epic, action-packed story propelled by the seductive wealth, startling corruption and bloodthirsty violence of the Wadia family --- loved by some, loathed by others, feared by all. In the shadow of lavish estates, extravagant parties, predatory business deals and calculated political influence, three lives become dangerously intertwined.

by Bret Easton Ellis - Fiction, Literary, Psychological Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

Seventeen-year-old Bret is a senior at the exclusive Buckley prep school when a new student arrives with a mysterious past. Robert Mallory is shielding a secret from Bret and his friends even as he becomes a part of their tightly knit circle. Bret’s obsession with Mallory is equaled only by his increasingly unsettling preoccupation with the Trawler, a serial killer on the loose who seems to be drawing ever closer to Bret and his friends. The coincidences are uncanny, but they are also filtered through the imagination of a teenager whose gifts for constructing narrative from the filaments of his own life are about to make him one of the most explosive literary sensations of his generation. Can he trust his friends --- or his own mind --- to make sense of the danger they appear to be in?