This faerie-centric reimagining of Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities offered a compelling story of redemption and self-sacrifice with a significant fantasy undercurrent that is key to the plot. I felt bogged down by the explanations of the workings of the faerie system, its punishments, and its policies. I feared this was the best of times; I hoped it could not get any worse. H. G. Parry's novel A Far Better Thing is a twist on Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities , and Parr

Woolever's experiences working for Mario Batali and Tony Bourdain are fascinating--and, in the case of Batali, often disturbing. The food-focused writing and restaurant workings are the highlights; the author also recounts the implosion of her personal life, addiction, and extramarital affairs as well as shaping a new normal for herself. Laurie Woolever is fresh from culinary school and realizing that she doesn't want to be a chef when she stumbles into a position as an assis

I like a story driven by a female investigaor of a main protagonist, and in this small-town mystery and tragedy, officer Emmy Clifton...

I've loved the other three books I've read by Lily King, but I didn't connect with the Heart the Lover characters and didn't believe in...

Ryan builds a vivid small-town Irish setting with its gloomy, then alarming, descent into corruption. The twenty-one points of view were...

This first installment in the series sets up an overlooked princess who becomes a heroine; deadly monsters who may be being treated...

I liked the unlikely modern-day friendship and depth of connection, and I love a best-friend story, but the past timeline and immense,...

I love the way Fortune builds a summer tableau, but the reasoning for this forbidden love didn't hold up for me, and I was frustrated by...

Comedian Maria Bamford's memoir is unflinching in examining her own base impulses and personal challenges such as mental illness and...

Norlin draws the reader into the eerie heart of a small group living sequestered in the Swedish forest as they gradually fall into...

Bug Hollow tracks the Samuelson family from an idyllic mid-1970s Northern California summer through a tragedy that upends already-tenuous...

Death of the Author explores the connection of an author to her work--and how a story can take on a life of its own--in this novel...

I loved the love for books in this novel, but I ultimately couldn't get past my issue with the premise, in which an actress plays the...

I'm a huge Amy Bloom fan, and while I appreciated the strong main female character here and the World War II-era crises, for me, the...

The first in the author's young adult steampunk Finishing School series offers wonderful, typically strong Carriger women with unique...

I was intrigued by the novel's premise, in which a father weaves elaborate lies to raise his daughter in a remote wilderness, away from...

Molly Jong-Fast's frank memoir explores her complicated, unsatisfying relationship with her famous mother Erica as she faces...

I loved Sunny's body positivity and her self-made-woman status. I didn't fully buy into one of her love interests but was hooked on the...

I loved the premise, in which a golden girl and barrel-racer returns home to small-town Wyoming to figure out her future. I was looking...

Ocean Vuong's literary fiction offers unexpected bonds between characters coping with desperation, addiction, lies, hunger, and past...