fiction

John Green writes novels for young adults, but you don't have to be young to enjoy them.  I'm forty-three, and he's one of my favorite contemporary authors.  I became a fan of Green not by reading his books but by watching videos on his amazing YouTube channels CrashCourse, Mental Floss, and Vlogbrothers.  I thought I was too sophisticated and mature to read a young-adult novel, but I love Green so much I gave him a shot.  Most fans of John Green that I know love his book The Fault in Our Stars the best, but my favorite John Green novel is Looking for Alaska.  It’s the story of a 16-year-old

In the days before Hurricane Katrina is to hit Bois Savage, Mississippi, families are preparing their homes for the event as they’ve always done. Young Esch and her brothers have been left to their own devices since their mother’s death as their father is usually too drunk to care for them. One brother struggles to win a coveted scholarship to basketball camp, one dotes on his Pit Bull who has just birthed a liter of valuable puppies, Esch reaches a startling and unwelcome epiphany, and the youngest just gets in everyone’s way.

This is a very difficult book to read, and thus this review isn’t

Poor Doug Parker. At 29, he’s living a life he never anticipated. And it's great. Surprisingly great. Great, until his wife Haley goes off and dies, leaving him alone to deal with his 16-year-old stepson, Haley's beefed-up ex-husband, and a crushing sadness that prevents him from really living.

Tropper has a gift for realistically portraying emotion. In the titles I’ve sampled, Tropper’s main characters are stuck in a suspended state, whether it be grief, or shock, surprise, bewilderment, or all of the above. And there is always a caste of wonderful characters, mostly dysfunctional family

A man decides to craft a book of definitions for his disabled son and struggles to find the right words. For his inspiration, he reads the poems of William Blake – an unlikely choice for the down-to-earth job of defining things but ultimately one that offers an amazing treasure for readers – reading Blake through the lens of an author who makes his poetry accessible without sacrificing its otherworldliness.   

Interspersed among poetic musings is the story of Eeyore, the disabled son – from his birth with an attached second brain to him becoming a young man with a burgeoning talent for

"One book. Two readers. A world of mystery, menace, and desire."  S is the brain child of Lost creator J. J. Abrams and put into form by Doug Dorst. It has mystery, romance, self-discovery, conspiracy, and the idea that nothing/no one is quite as they seem.

To start of with, this is a strange book. I first saw the book trailer for it, and knew that it was something I had to read. S is told in two parts (or maybe more depending on how you read it). First you have Ship of Theseus, a bizarre Lemony-Snicket-like story for adults. It is touted as the final work of one V.M. Straka, a enigmatic

A Chilean poet gives a young woman a writing desk full of drawers and cabinets and secret compartments and then disappears under Pinochet’s dictatorship. Later, another woman requests that the desk be returned, and so begins a grand and sorrowful story of the writers who share the desk as it moves from one recipient to another.

Each desk owner experiences an intricate world of love and loss to which the title of this book – Great House – likely refers, and to which the desk is a magnificent metaphor.  Author Nicole Krauss is particularly insightful about how the beguiling pull of desire for

Ryan Dean West, Winger to his friends, is determined to take control of his junior year. In the Venn diagram of life, most people overlap, or at least most junior guys at Winger's school, it is that little crescent outside that makes us stand out. For Ryan Dean, it is that he is a 14 year old junior, two years younger than his other classmates. That means he doesn't need to shave, hasn't hit his growth spurt, and has no skill with the ladies.



Winger's junior year gets off to a rocky start when he is placed in Opportunity Hall, a dorm for delinquent boys. His year continues to spiral downward

In The Husband's Secret the lives of three Australian women are intertwined in ways they would never have thought possible. For years, the tragedy of a teenage daughter’s death has haunted one of the women and unknowingly affected another. The third woman, faced with a marital earthquake, takes her young son to her hometown of Sydney. There, the three women interact, bringing the past into the present and altering all their lives forever.

Moriarty brings humor and wit to the drama and trauma these middle-aged and elderly women are living through. Fans of Maeve Binchy will likely enjoy the

In the 14th Century, Klaus lives the life of a simple woodcarver who begins to carve toys for all the children of his village after the Black Death strikes his village. In the years to come, his fame spreads through out the region. So much so, that it becomes impossible for him to deliver all the toys on one night. Here begins the magic and whimsy that will influence Klaus for the rest of his natural life...and beyond! Here starts the legend of Santa Claus!

With The Christmas Chronicles Tim Slover crafts the "real story" of Santa Claus. In this charming story, he takes bits and pieces of

For years, Batman has protected Gotham City from the darkness that seeks to destroy it. Within this darkness is the Court of Owls, an urban legend that tells of a shadowy conspiracy ruling Gotham City for centuries. Now the Court has placed the Batman in its sights, to take back their city from the Caped Crusader. Can Batman, the Dark Knight, survive the maneuverings of the Court or will he watch Gotham burn around him?

I have read a lot of Batman comics over the years. Some have been pretty bad (I am looking at you Dark Knight Strikes Again), but there have been many good ones (try the The

In the mood for detailed, lovingly described, slightly creepy, and very political high fantasy?  Have I got a book for you!

(In the mood for a quick, light read?  Come back later.)

Fortress in the Eye of Time is the first book in C. J. Cherryh's Fortress series, and it takes some time establishing the setting.  The book opens with an old wizard, living alone in an old fortress, working a great, old magic designed to create a perfect being to fulfill an old promise.  Being very, very old, he falters at the last, and instead creates Tristen: a lovely, innocent young man with the charm, good

When I picked up this book, I thought the title was reflective of a "good" house as opposed to a "bad" house, but actually the lead character and narrator of the novel is named Hildy Good. Hildy is a successful real estate agent in Wendover, Massachusetts, a town along Boston's north shore, where she "makes it her business to know everybody's business." She is the mother of two grown daughters and is an ex-wife to a husband who revealed to her he was gay after 20-plus years of marriage. This darkly comic story revolves around the fact that she is also a not-so recovering alcoholic, adept at

It doesn't take long to guess the storyline of this book, as page one takes you into a courtroom where T.J. Hill, a thirty-year old teacher, is on trial for having a sexual relationship with one of his female students. And it gets a little more interesting when the student, Morgan, enters the courtroom with her parents and proceeds to leave them behind and sit on her teacher's side. 

From there, the author takes you into each character's story, told from the perspectives of the three women-Morgan, Dinah & Rain. Morgan is a seventeen-year old honors music student, with thoughts of leaving her

The Flamethrowers is set in 1975 where Reno, a 25 year old woman interested in motorcycles and art falls in love with Sandro Valero, a much older artist from an uber wealthy Italian family. The story moves between the Bonneville Salt Flats, the 1970s New York City art scene and the Years of Lead, a period of socio-political turmoil in Italy that deeply affects the Valero dynasty. I was mesmerized by the setting, the characters, the situations and the conversations. One of my favorite books of 2013.

What makes life worth living?  Will Traynor is struggling with this very question since an accident left him paralyzed from the shoulders down and often in excruciating pain.  Confined to a wheelchair and dependent on others to assist with even the most basic tasks of daily life, Will isn't sure life is worth living.  Then his mother hires Louisa (Lou) Clark as his daytime assistant/caregiver.  Two very different personalities, Will and Lou get off to a rocky and stilted start.

As they spend more and more time together Will realizes that Lou has very little experience outside of her small

Parents: if you’re looking for a few hours of uninterrupted time to yourself, check out Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney--for your kid.  NoveList, an online database the Library subscribes to, is a great resource for books.  It lists the minimum reading level for this book at 2nd grade and the maximum reading level at 8th grade.  I’d agree that’s about right.  If you’ve got a 7-year-old Human Reading Vacuum, a 14-year-old reluctant reader, or anyone in between, it’s a good bet they’ll become engrossed in this book.  

I let our seven-year-old Human Reading Vacuum stay up way past her

Claire and Chris Canton are living the quintessential suburban life in Johnson County Kansas when the recession hits and Chris gets laid off from his job.  With a generous severance package Chris is sure that he will be able to find a job with no problem.  However, as the months go on with no job prospects in sight Chris retreats both physically and emotionally from Claire, their two kids and life in general.  Meanwhile, Claire is left to keep things going the way they always have to minimize the impact on their children, Josh and Jordan, while working part time from home.  As Chris continues

In Elizabeth Gilbert’s latest work of fiction, Alma Whittaker is born in 1800 to her parents, Henry and Beatrix, who are themselves interesting characters. Henry grew up poor and very resentful of this fact, although his father did teach him the one thing that changed his life, which was botany. Henry is a self-made man and is now one of the wealthiest men in America. Both he and Beatrix are very unconventional parents.  Scientific in nature, they encourage their daughter to explore their large estate—as long as she is doing something to further her intellect. Like her father, Alma becomes

The Girl You Left Behind is broken into two time periods: the first in 1916 with Sophie Lefevre struggling to keep herself and her family alive in a German-occupied town in France. Her beloved husband Edouard, a French artist who studied under Matisse, is fighting at the Front. When the local Kommandant takes an interest in a painting that Edouard did of his wife, Sophie is forced to make life-altering decisions regarding how much she will do to survive the war and save her husband.

Almost a century later, Liv Halston is a young widow in London, still recovering from the sudden death of her

In the vein of Laura Moriarity’s The Rest of Her Life or Chris Bojhalian’s The Buffalo Soldier, Hilderbrand puts normal, everyday people under a microscope after throwing a terrible tragedy at them.

In Summerland, twins Hobby and Penny Alistair are shining stars at Nantucket High School. But on graduation night of their junior year they are involved in a car accident that leaves Penny dead and Hobby in a coma for seven days. Character portrayals are authentic with each family of the four students in the car getting their share of scrutiny. The town also has a voice and a collective reaction.

This was a very engaging, interesting read. I especially appreciated the unusual point of view; this story was narrated by the disease itself. At first, the narrator was mildly suggestive: eat this, not that; run just a little further. As the anorexia began taking over, it became more and more demanding and controlling until it directed every aspect of 15 year old Mike's life. When he tried to make a decision that did not further the purposes of the disease, the anorexia talked to him, tricked him into believing that another choice was better. Mike actually heard the voice in his head and as

In contrast to books like Kevin Powers’ The Yellow Birds and Anthony Swofford’s Jarhead, where soldiers’ experiences are brought to life, What Changes Everything illuminates how war tears at those left at home. A refugee aid worker in Afghanistan is kidnapped, and his wife must decide on a course of action from across the world where no one agrees on how to proceed. How does a mother find solace when her young soldier son comes home a double amputee? A kind young man is killed at war and his mother and brother come unmoored after discrepancies behind his purple heart come to light. Almost like

I had to read this book twice to grasp its power. In its richness, it honestly deserves a third reading. The book jacket describes The Yellow Birds as "…the unforgettable story of two soldiers trying to stay alive." And it is that, but it’s also, and I would argue even more so, a cautionary tale.

Bartle, Murph, and even Seargent Sterling are still very young men when they are sent to Al Tafar, Iraq with the U.S. Army. Of the three, Sterling is the oldest at twenty four and has been to Al Tafar twice before. As a seasoned, higher-ranking soldier, Sterling pairs Bartle with Murph telling them,

If you think that a comedy about religious and ethnic tension is impossible or inappropriate, this movie will prove you wrong! Where Do We Go Now is a satirical fable depicting contemporary life in an isolated unnamed Middle Eastern village where Muslims and Christians coexist in peace. When word spreads that a civil war is engulfing the surrounding country, the people instantly forget about their common bonds and prepare for war. The once peaceful village is slowly drawn into violence, but village women - sick and tired of losing their husbands and sons to senseless warfare - band together to

When Ron Currie’s love tells him she needs space and that he should leave, he does. He moves to the Caribbean where he is supposed to work on his next novel and wait patiently for her to request his return. That’s not what happens. He spends his days drinking heavily, cohabitating with a young college drop-out, and writing the completely wrong novel. Upon his failed suicide, Curry realizes that he can just disappear; and he does. But just for a while. And when he resurfaces he finds that his life, or rather, his death, has taken a decidedly unanticipated turn. And now he must deal with the

When a missing 9-year-old girl from a small town in southern Missouri is found dead and a second has gone missing, Frank Curry, the editor from a small Chicago newspaper, sends Camille Preaker to get the scoop.  Both events just happen to have occurred in her hometown, Wind Gap, where her mother, stepfather and younger sister still live and to where Camille has no desire to return.  She comes from a very—maybe dysfunctional is too tame a word to describe her family, but I will say it—dysfunctional family.  Because it is a small newspaper and funds are limited, Camille’s editor believes she can

Trishna gives a new twist to the traditional Bollywood cinema. It is the Tess of the d'Urbervilles transferred to contemporary India.  The viewer is instantly cheering for an unusual relationship between two young people of different social levels, but all along the gut feeling says that in this love story something may go terribly wrong.   The movie presents the changing socio-economic structure of modern India: bustling, congested mega cities contrasted with poor traditional villages. Made by English filmmaker Michael Winterbotton with a full Indian cast, Trishna has beautiful scenery of the

In The Leftovers, Perrotta puts human relationships under a microscope, sometimes to chilling effect. The town of Mapleton has never stopped reeling after the Sudden Departure, when large numbers of random people simply vanished into thin air. When the smoke clears, those left behind not only grieve for their friends and family who are suddenly gone, but also wonder why they were spared (or not spared). Cults are formed, hate groups emerge, and others just try to pick up where they left off. The story focuses on Mayor Kevin Garvey. While he didn’t lose anyone directly to the Sudden Departure

Published in 1978, Once a Runner is dated; but charmingly so. While there is a noticeable absence of iPods, cell phones, and cable television, exclamations of “Great God in Heaven” and “they don’t know a flying you-know-what about spring sports” are the most notable indicators. Quentin Cassidy is a collegiate “miler”. After he is expelled from the fictional Southeastern University, fellow runner, friend and former Olympian Bruce Denton mentors him as he prepares to break the four minute mile. Olympic and professional athletes will recognize the driving force behind Quentin’s training program

It all started so innocently with a morning shave of a trademark moustache – but, nobody noticed. Nobody.  Neither the wife, nor the boss. All tried to convince him that he never even had a moustache ever before.  All feels like a twilight zone: Is he losing his mind or is it an elaborate group conspiracy against him?  The premise of this movie is rather original and intriguing and one expects this movie to be a comedy, but it turns dark a few fast frames later.  The viewer is kept guessing as the plot is continuously shifting further away from domestic solitude nearing a psychiatric asylum