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Elizabeth Strout, author of Olive Kitteridge and The Burgess Boys, has recently published a new novel:  My Name is Lucy Barton.  Just before starting My Name is Lucy Barton, I read a Facebook post by another favorite author, Kelly Corrigan (The Middle Place, Glitter and Glue), about her interview with Elizabeth Strout. I had an interesting conversation last night with

Jason Gurley began writing Eleanor in the fall of 2001, and self published it in 2014.  Crown published it this year.  Eleanor is literary fiction with a fantasy element.  It is a moving exploration of parenting, siblings, grief and forgiveness.  So, for a person who steers clear of self published books, rarely reads fantasy and mid winter, doesn’t voluntarily pick up a

In my January stack of new books is a delicious little volume of short stories with an intriguing cover entitled American Housewife:  Stories by Helen Ellis.  Love the cover, and while I can’t say I curl my hair or file my nails wearing my readers, this book found its way to the top of the pile and into my hands.

Hello fans of The Art Forger…B.A. Shapiro has just come out with another fabulous art related novel.  Alizee Benoit is a young artist in the 1940s.  Interesting to me was that part of The New Deal and the WPA (Works Progress Administration) was the Federal Art Project.  They employed artists (over 10,000) to create art both as a relief effort

  The third in Robert Galbrith’s Cormoran Strike mystery series opens with the grisly delivery of a woman’s severed leg to Robin Ellacott, Strike’s assistant.  Tucked under the leg are the lyrics to the Blue Oyster Cult song “Mistress of the Salt” , a song that Strike’s mother, Leda Strike, had tattooed on her body. The threat to Strike and Robin

It is 1941, shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor.  Winston Churchill makes a visit to the United States, accompanied by Maggie Hope, a secret agent posing as his typist.  While they are in Washington, staying at the White House and the Mayflower Hotel, one of Eleanor Roosevelt’s aides purportedly commits suicide.  Or is it murder?  Maggie is quickly drawn

I really loved this book! Black-Eyed Susans is one of those books that takes place in the the past and in the present and I couldn’t wait to see what happened in each time period.  Usually there’s one story-line that I’m more interested in,  but Julia Heaberlin  makes the each time period section in this novel as compelling as the other.

Beatriz Williams’ books-they are, in a word, riveting!  I love the time period, the elegant settings, the well-crafted story.   It was truly a good day when Along the Infinite Sea arrived in the new books box at the Library! I met the Schuyler sisters in The Secret Life of Violet Grant, and then got to know them better in Tiny

I was somewhat conflicted about what to write about Saul Black’s The Killing Lessons.  On the one hand, I really liked the book, it was heart-pounding, agonizingly suspenseful, and very compelling.  On the other hand,  it  also describes in great detail, the darkest most  gruesome violence, inflicted mostly upon women,  by two men psychologically twisted beyond repair. In order to balance this misogyny,

Venturing outside my usual genres, I picked up Pretty Baby by Mary Kubica.  This is her second book, and her third will come out in May of 2016.    Worth the adventure.  Here is the story:  Heidi and Chris and their tween daughter Zoe live in downtown Chicago.  Heidi works at a literacy non-profit. Her husband Chris is a fairly successful