Book Review
Gone but Still Here
Jennifer Dance’s based-in-truth novel "Gone but Still Here" follows a tragedy-scarred multiracial family as one of its members is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Mary feels herself slipping. Despite her career as a published...
Book Review
Small Marvels
Midwestern magic abounds in Scott Russell Sanders’s fairy tale short story collection "Small Marvels". In Limestone, Indiana, Gordon Mills is a jack of all trades whose big family lives in a dilapidated house that only remains standing...
Book Review
Troubled Water
Jens Mühling’s colorful travelogue "Troubled Water" captures the history and cultures on the shores of the Black Sea. The Black Sea has been a crossroads for warring and colonizing societies since human civilization began to take form...
Book Review
Shabbat Sabotage
Emma Carlson Berne’s clever mystery novel "Shabbat Sabotage" is about friendship, community, and facing one’s fears. Maya doesn’t want to go to summer camp. She’s not athletic, she doesn’t enjoy the outdoors, and she has...
Book Review
She’s Unlikeable
Aparna Shewakramani’s memoir "She’s Unlikeable" is a rallying cry for women’s independence and empowerment. Looking for love and a South Asian Mr. Right, Shewakramani, a successful lawyer in Houston, auditioned for the reality show...
Book Review
A Conspiratorial Life
The origins of the conspiracy theories that permeate modern American politics are revealed in Edward H. Miller’s biography of Robert Welch, "A Conspiratorial Life". Born into a family of North Carolina farmers who fought in the...
Book Review
A Thing of Beauty
Musings on the myths of ancient Greece are intertwined with contemplations on climate change and Covid-19 in Peter Fiennes’s travelogue "A Thing of Beauty". As climate change set the world on fire and Covid-19 emerged, Fiennes traveled...
Book Review
Mud Sweeter than Honey
Personal testimonials reveal the lived truths of communist Albania in Margo Rejmer’s oral history book "Mud Sweeter than Honey". Of the communist states in Europe after World War II, Albania is less discussed. It was cut off from the...