Category: FICTION

August 18, 2016

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi *** (of 5)

Gyasi uses her own experience as a Ghanaian American to create an original tale of history. We are asked to follow the descendants of one...

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August 18, 2016

The Long Way Home by Louise Penny *** (of 4)

Maybe the tenth in the series of mysteries for Chief Detective of the Quebec Surete, Armand Gamache. Having recently retired to Three Pines, now former...

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August 1, 2016

The Lazarus Project by Aleksander Hemon *** (of 5)

In 1908 a Jewish immigrant named Lazarus Averbuch knocked on the door of Chicago’s police chief. After handing the Chief Shippy a letter (we never learn...

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July 13, 2016

What we Talk about when we Talk about Anne Frank *** (of 4) by Nathan Englander

Eight short stories. All of them sad. Englander pitches his stories to test the limits of love in binding marriages, ageless friendships, families, and neighbors. Two...

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June 23, 2016

Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson **** (of 4)

In so many ways Tree of Smoke is easier to describe for what it really is not. The setting is Vietnam, and to a lesser...

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May 29, 2016

The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith *** (of 5)

Let’s first state the not-so-obvious: Robert Galbraith is the pseudonym used by J.K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame for her mystery series featuring detective Cormoran...

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May 11, 2016

Don’t Ever Get Old by Daniel Friedman ** (of 4)

Buck Schatz, an 87-year-old former tough guy cop from Memphis has never dropped his crusty exterior nor belligerent attitude toward bad guys even though he’s...

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May 1, 2016

The Incarnations by Susan Barker *** (of 4)

China, despite its rocket launch into modernity, is still a country of five thousand years of history. As Americans, a people that at best can only recall...

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April 8, 2016

Redeployment by Phil Klay *** (of 4)

Phil Klay’s short stories about Marine Corps life in Iraq and after Iraq begin so realistically that I had to check to confirm I was...

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February 28, 2016

Panic in a Suitcase by Yelena Akhtiorskaya ** (of 4)

In the first half of the book, Pasha, an intentionally depressive poet, because without depression there can be no decent poetry, arrives from Odessa to...

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