Gregg Olsen combines the action and mystery of a thriller with an added layer of memoir in his coverage of the murder of Ida, an Amish woman. On July 12, 1977, a mother in Ohio, Ida Stutzman, perished in a barn fire. Olsen first... Read More

Modest generosity is used to combat multigenerational poverty and racial prejudice in the rural South in Jeffrey Blount’s novel "Mr. Jimmy from Around the Way". “No good deed goes unpunished,” thinks Jimmy, a disgraced billionaire... Read More

In Stefan Mattessich’s fantastical novel "The Riverbed", an isolated teenager encounters a troubled friend’s fantasy world and learns to accept his own strangeness. After a move to Orange, California, Fox is feeling solitary, knowing... Read More

In Sherri Winston’s novel "Shark Teeth", an adolescent girl faces challenges when she and her younger siblings reunite after being in foster care. Twelve-year-old Kita kept her family together for years while her mother was drinking or... Read More

Comprehensive and inspiring, "The Story Is in Our Bones" reviews how women, Indigenous people, and other activists across the globe are working to counter climate change and protect ecosystems. In this persuasive book, Osprey Orielle... Read More

Rabbi Ellen Bernstein’s "Toward a Holy Ecology" is a meditative, captivating interpretation of Song of Songs that emphasizes the natural world, women’s strength, and wholeness. The Song of Songs, an enigmatic poem that celebrates a... Read More

A familiar idiom gets a picture-book twist in this story about a determined animal lover. Olivia’s mother sends her to buy eggs, but she can’t resist when she sees a circus for sale. When the animals make a mess of the house and the... Read More

Rebecca Roque’s "Till Human Voices Wake Us" is an engrossing thriller about a girl looking for her friend’s murderer. When Silencia’s friend Alice drowned, everyone believed it was suicide. There was a note, and Alice was reeling... Read More