At the beginning of March, I was determined to keep my nose in a stack of backlisted books. Books like these are the kind that to keep my focus on my own shelves in this reading year. Chad Pelley’s Every Little Thing (2013) “Every day, every hour, really, it was a
Unsurprisingly, a story named for a main character is going to be preoccupied with names and identity. It's also the first thing readers observe Queenie saying to Chrissy, when she arrives in Toronto and is met at Union Station. Her husband thinks it sounds like an animal's name, so Chrissy
While Nina was playing tennis, Lewis was killing himself. Readers learn this at the outset. Nina played; Lewis died. Back and forth across the net, Nina volleyed and returned serves; Lewis plunged downward into first unconsciousness, then... Into, what? As a science teacher, who insisted that evolution be taught in classrooms
Days and days throughout this July have contained book after book after book: a swell of print. From graphic novels (revisiting the Game of Thrones saga in this medium) to short stories (lots of those!), from memoirs (I’ve just finished Zarqa Nawaz’s Laughing All the Way to the Mosque) to
Paradoxically, the phenomenon in The Fever has a chilling effect on characters and readers alike. The girls fall to the ground, one after the next; they writhe and tensions rise but blood is chilled. Little Brown & Company, 2014 “As Deenie walked out, a coolness began to sink
