Book Review
The Gowkaran Tree in the Middle of Our Kitchen
by Karen Rigby
In Shokoofeh Azar’s intricate fabulistic novel "The Gowkaran Tree in the Middle of Our Kitchen", an Iranian girl comes of age in a time of war. When a gowkaran tree—likened to the Tree of Life, though no one seems certain about its...
Book Review
The Miniaturist's Assistant
by Karen Rigby
An art conservator, a scholar, and a portraitist embrace the mysteries of love and ancestry in Katherine Scott Crawford’s enchanting fantasy novel The Miniaturist’s Assistant. In 2004, Gamble works in a Charleston museum. Fascinated...
Book Review
North of Sunset
by Karen Rigby
An inventive, fabulistic novel, "North of Sunset" sets a dark scientific experiment against a background of glittering opulence. In Haley Ahern’s alluring futuristic novel "North of Sunset", a young man becomes involved with a tycoon...
Book Review
A Man Askew
by Karen Rigby
"A Man Askew" is an intriguing novel in which an everyman’s fortunes take unusual twists. A downtrodden copy editor investigates his detective father’s past in Joe Costanzo’s brooding novel "A Man Askew", about uncertainties in the...
Book Review
The Moth
by Karen Rigby
"The Moth" is a wry noir novel in which an everyman with a complicated past navigates criminality and its consequences in Los Angeles. A pawnbroker on the criminal fringes encounters trouble in Scott Archer Jones’s entertaining novel...
Book Review
Love in a Dark Place
by Karen Rigby
A man revisits an ill-fated love affair in the gritty, tragedy-infused Atlantic City novel "Love in a Dark Place". A former lover reflects on his lost partner in Geoffrey Douglas’s historical novel "Love in a Dark Place", about...
Book Review
We Walked On
by Karen Rigby
A girl comes of age in a time of war, holding on to memories of her city as it once existed, in the poignant historical novel "We Walked On". Lebanon’s civil war unites a teacher and student in Thérèse Soukar Chehade’s illuminating...
Book Review
Snake in the Grass
by Karen Rigby
A Latina girl sleuths on Capitol Hill to help her congressman friend in Kitty Felde’s entertaining, civic-minded mystery novel "Snake in the Grass". Fina is a California congressman’s daughter who is used to meeting her father’s...