

Review of Fault Lines in the Constitution: The Framers, Their Fights, and the Flaws that Affect Us Today by Cynthia and Sanford Levinson
Cynthia and Sanford Levinson, a noted children's author and a constitutional scholar, have created a fascinating nonfiction book for...
Feb 26, 2025


Review of Junie by Erin Crosby Eckstine
Erin Crosby Eckstine's richly detailed historical fiction explores the life of Junie, an enslaved young woman in rural Alabama haunted by...
Feb 25, 2025


Review of To the Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey
Eowyn Ivey is masterful at intertwining fantastical elements with the grounding of the vivid details of nature. To the Bright Edge of the...
Feb 20, 2025


Review of The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt
I had unreasonable hopes for gaining compassionate understanding of disparate political views through reading Haidt's book. I was...
Feb 13, 2025


Review of The Road to Dalton (Dalton, Maine #1) by Shannon Bowring
This slim, debut novel about a small-town community in northern Maine introduces various faulted, interconnected characters making their...
Feb 12, 2025


Review of What In the World?! A Southern Woman's Guide to Laughing at Life's Unexpected Curveballs and Beautiful Blessings by Leanne Morgan
Comedian Leanne Morgan's memoir traces her path from an attention-seeking, beloved young girl to a young adult facing missteps and...
Feb 11, 2025


Review of The Bletchley Riddle by Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin
This middle-grade writing collaboration inserts a clever young protagonist into the behind-the-scenes World War II British codebreaking...
Feb 6, 2025


Review of Isola by Allegra Goodman
Isola , based upon the story of a real-life sixteenth-century woman, shifts between details of a life of moneyed ease and an abandonment...
Feb 5, 2025


Review of There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak
There Are Rivers in the Sky weaves together three stories set in three timelines, featuring disparate characters, to explore...
Feb 4, 2025


Review of All the Water in the World by Eiren Caffall
Nonie is the young protagonist of this stark climate-change dystopian future, in which her small community fights to survive and to...
Jan 30, 2025


Review of Spellslinger (Spellslinger #1) by Sebastian de Castell
Kellen begins as a principled, headstrong young man lacking in the magic crucial for power, familial stability and social standing in his...
Jan 29, 2025


Review of Fallen Land by Taylor Brown
The debut novel from one of my favorite authors tracks a horse thief and an orphan who bond and find love amid the turmoil and...
Jan 23, 2025


Review of Lula Dean's Little Library of Banned Books by Kirsten Miller
Lula Dean focuses on the incredible power of books and truth-telling as characters discover their bravest selves and confront difficult...
Jan 22, 2025


Review of My Oxford Year by Julia Whelan
My Oxford Year takes a light, romantic tone and within it, explores weighty issues like serious illness, loss, grief, vulnerability, and...
Jan 21, 2025


Review of Death at the Sign of the Rook (Jackson Brodie #6) by Kate Atkinson
Atkinson's cozy, Agatha Christie-style novel features former lawman Jackson Brodie, a mystery within a mystery, a real-life killer who...
Jan 16, 2025


Review of The Blood of the Old Kings (Bleeding Empire #1) by Sung-Il Kim
In this first installment of The Bleeding Empire, Kim sets three characters on paths to discover their worth, their purpose, and their...
Jan 15, 2025


Review of The Resurrectionist by A. Rae Dunlap
Dunlap's debut novel explores early Edinburgh surgical schools, questionable methods of obtaining study subjects, a main protagonist's...
Jan 14, 2025


Review of The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden
Much of The Safekeep feels claustrophobic, quiet, and hopeless, but unexpected shifts late in the story turn accepted histories on their...
Jan 9, 2025


Review of Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner
I loved the premise of Creation Lake , and I was captivated by the mocking, ruthless, fickle freelance spy "Sadie." But the story and...
Jan 8, 2025


Review of Hum by Helen Phillips
The dystopian future of Hum is haunting in its familiar elements, its plausible, terrible climate-change effects, the extreme reliance on...
Jan 7, 2025
