Reviews

We read books to help us parent well, to strengthen our marriage, to improve our careers and to manage our finances, but it seems off-putting to read a book to help us prepare for death.  But Lani Leary, author of No One Has To Die Alone: Preparing fo

It’s hard to read a tough book – a book that hits hard at your fears, with no solutions.  Such is the novel Still Alice by Lisa Genova.  Dr. Alice Howland, renowned Harvard professor, is at the peak of her profession at age 50.

Dauntless by Jack Campbell is the first book of his military science fiction series, The Lost Fleet.  It tells of the adventures of John “Black Jack” Geary, a military commander from a previous era whose legend has become more than the man.

A group of college kids head up to the woods for a weekend campout, only to fall into the murderous plot of a couple of backwoods hicks.

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A couple of friends head out to their cabin in the woods to make repairs on their vacation home-to-be, only to run into some paranoid college kids who seem bent on their destruction.

Please, judge this book by its cover.

Dongen tells the story of the tulip from ancient times, when the tulip was first admired as early as the 1050s in the area of what is now China, Tibet and Russia. Tulips are also mentioned frequently in Arabic and Persian poetry.

Wonderful, thought provoking scholarship.  Not easy reading, exactly.

Robert B. Parker is mostly known for his crime fiction, but his final novel published before his 2010 death was the fourth in a series of terrific westerns.

The setting is San Francisco, current day.  A wayward teen never adopted has maxed out on state help and is forced out into the world.  As the story unfolds the back story of Victoria’s life is revealed, including the many mistakes she has made.  She has a

This book is one of those novels that makes you want to keep a notebook near you, so you can write down all the terribly witty and wonderful things people say (maybe in hopes of using them yourself someday and coming off as spontaneously brilliant as the heroine).

Yet another great science fiction thriller by Michael Crichton was published posthumously, completed by science and fiction writer Richard Preston.