Reviews

Until recently, Occidental cultures felt superior to the Oriental cultures, but the west is now discovering inspiration in their centuries old wisdoms, art and architecture. Early travelers and missionaries wanted to impact the Occidental world, not to learn from it.   If you were to pick up this book to learn about the types of tea leaves, you may be disappointed.

I don't generally like reading negative reviews and I like writing them even less. But sometimes a book affects you so powerfully in all of the worst ways, you have to say something. This is how I feel about Lev Grossman's The Magicians.

Burke strays from his usual mystery genre, but not from his geography.   This Civil War tale is in part a story of his ancestors, Robert Perry and Willie Burke, and is set in and around New Iberia, Louisiana.  Willie is one of the main narrators of the story whi

For those familiar with Jane Rizzoli and Maura Isles, the story opens with Maura preparing for a two-week vacation in rural Maine at Evensong, the school that Julian “Rat” Perkins has been attending since he and Maura survived a harrowing ordeal in Ice Cold.  Julian, now 16, loves the unique and isolated school where all of the students have survived some traged

Do you ever wonder what would happen if several teenage beauty contestants crashed on a seemingly deserted island? This book is about survival:  Can a bunch of pretty teenagers work together or will they die trying?  Then there are the countless others who are sure the teenagers won’t survive more than a couple of weeks.

Cypress

n.    1. Any of various evergreen trees or shrubs of the genus Cupressus, native to Eurasia and  North America and having opposite, scale-like leaves and globose woody cones. 

 2. Cypess branches used as a symbol of mourning.

I admit: The reason I first picked up a book by Ayelet Waldman is because I have a literary crush on her husband, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Michael Chabon.  I wanted to get into the head of Waldman, to see what Chabon sees in her.  After having devoured all seven of her Mommy-Track Mystery series, I understand her appeal.

Sometimes called The Grapes of Wrath for Mexicans seeking refuge in the U.S., this political novel follows two families:  Candido and America; and Kyra and Delaney.  Candido has been to the U.S.

If you are a fan of Moning’s Highlander series you won’t want to miss this companion novella in which another modern young woman finds her true love in the Scottish Highlands of the distant past.  Working as a barista to pay the bills while writing romance novels and receiving rejection letter after rejection letter from publishers, Jane Sillee is lo