When Lisa Ko’s debut novel The Leavers opens, we’re introduced to Deming Guo, a young Chinese immigrant (technically born in the U.S. but raised for a handful of years by his grandfather in rural China) living in New York City with his mother, [...]
Trout Run, the second novel in Paul Dage’s Eddy Trout trilogy, continues his main character’s story where the first novel, Trout Kill, left off. Without spoiling too much of the plot of that novel, it centers around a man, Eddy Trout, age 47. He [...]
Some people just stumble into their desires. Anna Blanc, the eponymous main character of Jennifer Kincheloe’s novel, The Secret Life of Anna Blanc, is a bored rich girl, afforded all of life’s niceties but chafing under her [...]
It’s 1881. The International Cotton Exposition is coming to Atlanta. But across the city, leading black entrepreneurs are being brutally murdered, the letter M inscribed on their mutilated bodies. Former Atlanta police officer Thomas Canby, [...]
Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad series of novels, each told in the voice of a different detective on the Murder Squad, features a collection of distinct narrators, each with their own peccadillos. Based in Dublin, Ireland, and surrounding [...]
Paul Dage’s Trout Kill tells the tale of Eddy Trout, a hard-living Vietnam vet who resides, along with his wife and dying dog, in a Podunk town in the Pacific Northwest. The product of a gruesomely traumatic childhood, Eddy is a jack of all [...]
Marilynne Eichinger is the founder of the Impression 5 Science Center in Michigan and former president of the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. Born into a well-off Jewish family in Philadelphia and married at a young age to an MIT student, [...]
Jan Surasky’s latest novel, The Lilac Bush Is Blooming, tells the story of a family through multiple generations. Narrated by the teenage Annie May Parker, the middle child in a now-fatherless family (her father has passed on), the book takes [...]
“Epic” is one of the most misused words in our language, having come to mean, essentially, anything a speaker thinks is cool. So great is the common misuse of the word that one might be left to wonder, “But what about things that are truly epic? [...]
Entrepreneur Jorge Newbery has been both wildly successful and deep in debt. In fact, at one point, he owed creditors over 26 million dollars. But by utilizing legal loopholes and tricks, he was able to erase his debt – much of it without [...]
Jeffrey Knowles’ The End of Bull is a brief, but ambitious thriller about a CIA agent, Barney Trent, in the midst of a late-coming midlife crisis, on the verge of losing his much younger wife, and going rogue against drug cartels in [...]
In Helltown, the third installment in his World’s Scariest Places series, Jeremy Bates takes readers to Summit County, Ohio where, we are told, dark and mysterious things happen. Urban legend – or is it? Set, as is every novel in the [...]
Edward Lewis Wallant’s The Pawnbroker is a dark, dreary tale of human suffering that somehow manages to maintain a sense, however slight, of hope – a weak flicker of light at the end of the tunnel. The 1961 novel, seminal in the genre of [...]
Felicity McGrath, a beautiful, coquettish actress who disappeared in the late 1980s, her career over, relegated to simplistic bimbo roles; William “The Conqueror” Bishop, a powerful and ruthless Hollywood mogul; Poniard, a mononymous and [...]
Bad managers. We’ve all had them. Some don’t value their employees; some don’t take responsibility for anything; some merely subscribe to what they view as an “old school” mentality that is, in reality, toxic to a productive work [...]
Jobeus has it rough. He has lost his entire family and is now being shipped from foster home to foster home. That’s rough for any child, especially one as strong-willed and unique as Jobeus. Things aren’t quite normal for him. He has an [...]
Alfred R. Taylor’s Full Circle series consists of exciting works of skillfully composed science fiction. Even for readers like your intrepid reviewer, who does not consider herself a fan of the genre, Taylor’s novels are intriguing, [...]
Emily Annette Running spent her youth and young adulthood studying dance, honing her craft and toning her body into a machine capable of carrying out the most intense and enthralling moves. A dancer, aerialist, and yoga instructor, Running is on [...]
When former soldier John Frist detonates a bomb outside the Red Cross, killing hundreds of innocent civilians, he believes he is seeking revenge for wrongs committed against him by his country. With traumatic brain injuries from an IED attack in [...]
Why must sci-fi book covers be so thoroughly disappointing? The often clichéd cover art, predictable fonts and images can easily turn non-sci-fi-minded readers off before even the synopsis is perused. Often, this is not a great loss. But [...]
