In West Camel’s "Attend", something mythic lingers just below the surface of Deptford, England, that will bind together three lives at loose ends. A recovering drug addict, middle-aged Anne has moved home to face her family, sobriety,... Read More

Vanda Symon introduces a cheeky, brave new heroine in "Overkill", the first in her Sam Shephard series of mysteries set in New Zealand. When Sam, the lone officer in tiny Mataura, is called in to investigate a missing person case, she... Read More

In Varley O’Connor’s historical novel "The Welsh Fasting Girl", Sarah Jacob is a humdrum farm girl. When she stops eating in the 1860s, she swiftly gains notoriety throughout the United Kingdom and United States, becoming the... Read More

In Lynn Lurie’s "Museum of Stones", a woman experiences parenting as a cross between profound love and constant, only sometimes low-grade terror. Swinging between the past and the present, the novel moves from the mother’s rough... Read More

Nationalism and patriotism are not unfamiliar substances in America’s bloodstream. As Peter Martin’s "The Dictionary Wars" illustrates, such fervor extended into heated debates over English language usage. In its infancy, the United... Read More

Carolyn Kirby’s "The Conviction of Cora Burns" finds twenty-year-old Cora Burns desperate to discover what’s hidden in her memory’s shadows. It’s 1885, and she’s a child of the system. Raised in the Union workhouse, transferred... Read More

Set in a time and place when humans have already nearly destroyed the Earth once, Alex Lyttle’s "The Rise of Winter" is a richly imagined middle grade fantasy about a young girl who joins with a select group of animals to protect the... Read More

Matthew Budman’s "Book Collecting Now" is both an enthusiastic, clear-eyed look at book collecting in the digital age and an info-rich primer for those who want to begin, expand, or refocus their collections. Despite predictions, print... Read More