Skip to main content

Reviews

Reviews

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?

by Laura Zigman - Fiction, Women's Fiction

A year after her divorce, Joyce is settling into being single again and has developed a secret comforting hobby: trolling the neighborhood social networking site Small World for posts that help solve life’s easiest problems. When her older sister, Lydia, calls to tell her she’s moving back east after almost 30 years away, Joyce invites Lydia to temporarily move into her Cambridge apartment. But instead of forging the bond she always dreamed of having with Lydia, their relationship frays. And they rarely discuss the loss of their sister, Eleanor, who was significantly disabled and died when she was only 10 years old. When new revelations from their family’s history come to light, will those secrets further split them apart, or course-correct their connection for the future?

by Lynn Steger Strong - Fiction, Women's Fiction

It’s December 22nd, and siblings Henry, Kate and Martin have converged with their spouses on Henry’s house in upstate New York. This is the first Christmas the siblings are without their mother, the first not at their mother’s Florida house. Over the course of the next three days, old resentments and instabilities arise as the siblings, with a gaggle of children afoot, attempt to perform familiar rituals, while also trying to decide what to do with their mother’s house, their sole inheritance. As tensions rise, the whole group is forced to come together unexpectedly when a local mother and daughter need help.

written by Orhan Pamuk, translated by Robert Finn - Fiction, Historical Fiction

It is April 1900 on the imaginary island of Mingheria --- a state of the Ottoman Empire --- located between Crete and Cyprus. Half the population is Muslim, the other half are Orthodox Greeks, and tension is high between the two. When a plague arrives, the island revolts. To stop the epidemic, an accomplished quarantine expert races to the island. What follows is a shocking murder. The plague continues its rapid spread and stricter quarantine measures are declared, but the incompetence of the island’s governor, increased hostility between the two religions, and the people’s refusal to respect the bans doom the quarantine to failure. As the death count rises, warships blockade the island to keep the disease from spreading. Now the people of Mingheria are on their own, and they must find a way to defeat the plague themselves.