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Reviews

Reviews

by Jamie Quatro - Fiction

Maggie is entirely devoted to her husband Thomas, their two beautiful children, and to God --- until what begins as a platonic intellectual and spiritual exchange between writer Maggie and poet James transforms into an erotically charged bond that challenges Maggie’s sense of loyalty and morality, drawing her deeper into the darkness of desire.

by Thomas Pierce - Fiction

Jim Byrd died. Technically. For a few minutes. The diagnosis: heart attack at age 30. Revived with no memory of any tunnels, lights or angels, Jim wonders what, if anything, awaits us on the other side. Then a ghost shows up. Maybe. Jim and his new wife, Annie, find themselves tangling with holograms, psychics, messages from the beyond, and a machine that connects the living and the dead. As Jim and Annie journey through history and fumble through faith, they confront the specter of loss that looms for anyone who dares to fall in love.

by Luke Kennard - Dystopian, Fiction, Satire

Do you or your partner spend more than you earn? Have your credit card debts evolved into collection letters? Has either of you considered turning to a life of a crime? You are not alone. We know. We can help. Welcome to the Transition. While taking part in the Transition, you and your partner will spend six months living under the supervision of your mentors, two successful adults of a slightly older generation. Freed from your financial responsibilities, you will be coached through the key areas of the scheme --- Employment, Nutrition, Responsibility, Relationship, Finances and Self-respect --- until you are ready to be reintegrated into adult society. At the end of your six months, who knows what discoveries you’ll have made about yourself?

by Robin MacArthur - Fiction

It’s August 2011, and Tropical Storm Irene has just wreaked havoc on Vermont, flooding rivers and destroying homes. One thousand miles away, Vale receives a call and is told that her mother, Bonnie, has disappeared. Despite a years-long estrangement from Bonnie, Vale drops everything and returns home to look for her. As she begins her search, the narrative opens up and pitches back and forth in time to follow three generations of women --- a farming widow, a back-to-the-land dreamer and an owl-loving hermit --- as they seek love, bear children and absorb losses. All the while, Vale’s search has her unwittingly careening toward a family origin secret more stunning than she ever imagined.

by Chloe Benjamin - Fiction

It's 1969 in New York City's Lower East Side, and word has spread of the arrival of a mystical woman, a traveling psychic who claims to be able to tell anyone the day they will die. The Gold children --- four adolescents on the cusp of self-awareness --- sneak out to hear their fortunes. Their prophecies inform their next five decades. Golden-boy Simon escapes to the West Coast, searching for love in '80s San Francisco; dreamy Klara becomes a Las Vegas magician, obsessed with blurring reality and fantasy; eldest son Daniel seeks security as an army doctor post-9/11, hoping to control fate; and bookish Varya throws herself into longevity research, where she tests the boundary between science and immortality.

by Sam Graham-Felsen - Fiction

David Greenfeld is one of the few white kids at the Martin Luther King, Jr., Middle School. Everybody clowns him, girls ignore him, and his hippie parents won’t even buy him a pair of Nikes, let alone transfer him to a private school. Nobody is more surprised than Dave when Marlon Wellings sticks up for him in the school cafeteria. Mar is a loner from the public housing project on the corner of Dave’s own gentrifying block, and he confounds Dave’s assumptions about black culture. But as Dave welcomes his new best friend into his world, he realizes how little he knows about Mar’s. Cracks gradually form in their relationship, and Dave starts to become aware of the breaks he’s been given --- and that Mar has not.

by Fiona Mozley - Fiction

The family thought the little house they had made themselves in Elmet, a corner of Yorkshire, was theirs. Cathy and Daniel roamed the woods freely, occasionally visiting a local woman for some schooling, living outside all conventions. Their father built things and hunted, working with his hands; sometimes he would disappear, forced to do secret, brutal work for money, but to them he was a gentle protector. But when a local landowner shows up on their doorstep, their precarious existence is threatened. Daddy and Cathy, both of them fierce, strong and unyielding, set out to protect themselves and their neighbors, putting into motion a chain of events that can only end in violence.

by David Lebovitz - Memoir, Nonfiction

When David Lebovitz began the project of updating his apartment in his adopted home city, he never imagined he would encounter so much inexplicable red tape while contending with the famously inconsistent European work ethic and hours. Lebovitz maintains his distinctive sense of humor with the help of his partner Romain, peppering this renovation story with recipes from his Paris kitchen. In the midst of it all, he reveals the adventure that accompanies carving out a place for yourself in a foreign country --- under baffling conditions --- while never losing sight of the magic that inspired him to move to the City of Light many years ago, and to truly make his home there.

by Caroline Fraser - Biography, History, Nonfiction

Millions of readers of Little House on the Prairie believe they know Laura Ingalls --- the pioneer girl who survived blizzards and near-starvation on the Great Plains, and the woman who wrote the famous autobiographical books. But the true saga of her life has never been fully told. Now, drawing on unpublished manuscripts, letters, diaries, and land and financial records, Caroline Fraser fills in the gaps in Wilder’s biography. Revealing the grown-up story behind the most influential childhood epic of pioneer life, she also chronicles Wilder's tumultuous relationship with her journalist daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, setting the record straight regarding charges of ghostwriting that have swirled around the books.

by Elizabeth Berg - Fiction

For the past six months, Arthur Moses’ days have looked the same: He tends to his rose garden and to Gordon, his cat, then rides the bus to the cemetery to visit his beloved late wife for lunch. Seventeen-year-old Maddy Harris is an introspective girl who often comes to the cemetery to escape the other kids at school and a life of loss. She’s seen Arthur sitting there alone, and one afternoon she joins him --- a gesture that begins a surprising friendship between two lonely souls. Moved by Arthur’s kindness and devotion, Maddy gives him the nickname “Truluv.” As Arthur’s neighbor Lucille moves into their orbit, the unlikely trio bands together, helping one another, through heartache and hardships, to rediscover their own potential to start anew.