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Reviews

Reviews

by Josh Hanagarne - Nonfiction

Although he wouldn’t officially be diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome until his freshman year of high school, Josh Hanagarne was six years old when he first began exhibiting symptoms. By the time he was 20, the young Mormon had reached his towering adult height of 6’7” when his Tourette’s tics escalated to nightmarish levels. Despite undergoing treatments that failed miserably, Josh persevered to marry and earn a degree in Library Science.

by Maya Angelou - Nonfiction

For the first time, Maya Angelou reveals the triumphs and struggles of being the daughter of Vivian Baxter, an indomitable spirit who was absent during much of Angelou’s early life. Their eventual reunion began a story that has never before been told. In MOM & ME & MOM, Angelou dramatizes her years reconciling with the mother she preferred to simply call “Lady,” revealing the profound moments that shifted the balance of love and respect between them.

by David Shields - Essays, Nonfiction

Blending confessional criticism and anthropological autobiography, David Shields explores the power of literature to make life survivable, maybe even endurable. He evokes his deeply divided personality, character flaws, woes, and serious despairs. Books are his life, but when they come to feel unlifelike and archaic, he revels in a new kind of art that is based heavily on quotation and consciousness and self-consciousness.

edited by Ronald Rice - Essays, Nonfiction

In MY BOOKSTORE, 81 authors write about the pleasure, guidance and support that their favorite bookstores and booksellers have given them over the years. It's a joyful, industry-wide celebration of our bricks-and-mortar stores and a clarion call to readers everywhere at a time when the value and importance of these stores should be shouted from the rooftops.

by Eve LaPlante - Biography, Nonfiction

Since its release nearly 150 years ago, Louisa May Alcott’s classic LITTLE WOMEN has been a mainstay in American literature, while passionate Jo March and her calm, beloved “Marmee” have shaped generations of young women. In this riveting dual biography, Eve LaPlante draws on unknown and unexplored letters and journals to show that Louisa’s “Marmee,” Abigail May Alcott, was the intellectual and emotional center of her daughter’s world.

by Juliet Nicolson - Fiction, Historical Fiction

Historical events are traditionally identified with those who set them in motion, but headlined names are only the public layer of the story. In ABDICATION, Juliet Nicolson creates an absorbing fictional backdrop to the infamous abdication of Edward VIII through the lives of several not-so-common commoners as they plot their own paths through the tumultuous year of 1936.

by Margaret Atwood - Essays, Literary Criticism, Science Fiction

In this collection of essays and lectures, Margaret Atwood illuminates her lifelong relationship with the literary genre of science fiction.

by Alison Weir - Biography, History, Nonfiction

Alison Weir reconstructs the real story of the much-misrepresented Mary Boleyn. Mary was a woman whose star rose and fell in the glittering Tudor court, whose life ended in banishment and relative obscurity when she dared to marry for love.

by Theresa Weir - Nonfiction

THE ORCHARD is really two stories in one novelized memoir --- Theresa Weir's patchwork existence before marrying into a mid-west apple growing family, and how she found a purposeful life in a heroic effort to reclaim the dying art of traditional orchardists.

by Tahmima Anam - Fiction

In her compelling second novel (following A GOLDEN AGE), rising young Bangladeshi writer Tahmima Anam goes deep within the heart of a family torn between practical religion and ritualistic isolation by a brother and sister’s differing views on how best to live by the teachings of Islam.