Office politics are the subject of Natalie Sue’s debut dramedy novel, I Hope This Finds You Well. Jolene works at the corporate offices of a big box store, Supershops. Her desperate loneliness is as redolent as the smell of burnt popcorn in the staff room microwave. It is in fact, a smell that kicks…
Award-winning author Clare Chambers has set this story in 1964 England, when the effects of World War II are a not-so-distant memory, and social changes are rocking society. The author introduces us in alternating chapters to two seemingly disconnected characters: William, a bearded, mute man living with his elderly aunt, and Helen, a practitioner…
What begins as a group hike ends up as a rain-soaked, blister-packed meet cute. Michael and Marnie have a mutual friend who’s tired of hearing their love-lorn complaints and dire divorce stories so Cleo plans the trip of a lifetime trekking coast-to-coast along a rugged route in the north of England. In You Are Here,…
In my first iteration as a librarian, I worked in the Children’s Room and was lucky enough to order folk and fairy tales. I loved poring over the various versions of classics, and sought out esoteric tales and stories from other lands. Once I read a little-known Brothers Grimm story called “Bearskin.” It’s about a…
I’m celebrating 25 years of marriage this week, so The Husbands, a book about a husband-generating magic attic was certainly timely! After a night out celebrating the impending nuptials of a dear friend, Lauren is shocked to be greeted at the door by her husband. While she’s had quite a bit to…
“There are those of us who wobble like blancmange in a crisis, and then there are those lucky souls who rise magnificently to the occasion, like a perfectly baked truffle souffle. Ian was the latter type.” (Sykes, 337) While ostensibly about the “Yummy Mummies” , the super-wealthy and status conscious ladies of the English…
Irish writer, Tana French is best known for her excellent Dublin Murder Squad books. Unlike that series, her books featuring retired Chicago cop, Cal Hooper, really have to be read in order. As a follow up to The Searcher (Cal Hooper #1), teenager Trey continues to wrestle with the secrets kept…
Izzy is a frustrated Pitbull impersonator trying to make his way in modern-day Miami until the real-life rapper threatens him to cease and desist. Having come to America as a seven-year-old from Cuba, he fights to carve out a sense of identity. Is he a Cuban, or is he an American? Like many immigrants…
“Sometimes I think I have a parasite. I feel like there is a creature crawling inside me, trying to migrate to my brain. I picture him like Plankton from SpongeBob SquarePants; a malevolent little mastermind who is trying to use my body like a Trojan horse. I worry that I am a shell for something…
Through her subtitle and the opening quote from Philip Larkin, Keegan sets the tone for So Late in the Day: Stories of Women and Men, a series of three vignettes set in contemporary Ireland and explores men wrestling with frustrations and women reacting to their own desires. From “Aubade” by Philip Larkin: ”It stands…
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