- December 19, 2018
My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry
Fredrik Backman
After her grandmother dies, eight-year-old Elsa is entrusted to deliver a batch of letters to people her grandmother had somehow wronged in life. While it sounds simple enough, the story that Backman constructs around this basic plot line is rich with details and quite entertaining. ...
Read more… - December 13, 2018
Public Library and Other Stories (2016)
Ali Smith
What better way to conclude National Library Week than with a quick review of Ali Smith’s short story collection, an homage to public libraries?
Smith is one of England’s best novelists; this book was published in 2015, at a time when budget cuts were forcing the closure of ...
Read more… - December 13, 2018
Children of Blood and Bone (2018)
Tomi Adeyemi
On an alternate African continent, there used to be magic. There used to be healing magic. There used to be killing magic. There is no magic any more, as the king has silenced it. He has acquired all of the magical artifacts and taken them away from those who ...
Read more… - December 13, 2018
New Boy (2017)
Tracy Chevalier
In this modern retelling of Othello, set in a 1970s Washington, D.C. schoolyard, a single day changes the characters for their entire lives.
Osei “O” Kokote is the son of a diplomat from Ghana. He is the only African American at his new school. Surrounded by white kids who have been shaped by ...
Read more… - December 13, 2018
How to Stop Time (2018)
Matt Haig
How would you live your life if you only aged one year for every fifteen? This novel is the story of 41-year-old protagonist Tom Hazard, who due to a rare medical condition has been alive for centuries. The clandestine Albatross Society protects his secret. As a member of the Society, ...
Read more… - December 13, 2018
All That Man Is (2016)
David Szalay
I shouldn’t have loved this book; it is, after all, just about men, being an exploration of the male ego through the arc of a lifespan.
In a series of subtly interconnected stories, different male protagonists each represent an “age of man,” from youth through old age. The book’s title ...
Read more… - December 13, 2018
We Are Okay (2017)
Nina LaCour
I had high expectations of this (dare I say ugly?) little book, because it was this year’s Printz Award winner. The Michael J. Printz Award is awarded by the American Library Association to the “best book for teens” in its publishing year (more information can be found by clicking here). ...
Read more… - December 13, 2018
After the Eclipse: A Mother’s Murder, A Daughter’s Search (2017)
Sarah Perry
In May 1994, Crystal Perry was brutally raped and murdered in the dead of night in her home in Bridgton, Maine. Sarah Perry, her only child, was twelve years old and in the house at the time. After the Eclipse is Sarah’s ...
Read more… - December 12, 2018
The Baker’s Secret (2017)
Stephen P. Kiernan
Set in a small town in Normandy, France in the time before the D-Day Invasion, The Baker’s Secret is a little gem of a novel about courage and resiliency.
Emma has lived in Vergers all her life and has suffered under the Nazis for the last two years. Phillippe, the young ...
Read more… - December 12, 2018
Home Fire (2017)
Kamila Shamsie
Home Fire is riveting. Devastating. An ode to the devotion and terrible decisions made in the names of love and justice. Isma, Aneeka, and Parvaiz Pasha are three British siblings born and raised in the Islamic faith; when all of their relatives pass away, Isma is 12 years old when she’s left ...
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