Aunt Dimity and the Wishing Well by Nancy Atherton, is just one in a series of novels about life in a small English village called Finch. Finch is a very small town where everyone knows everything about everyone else, and when mysteries arise, Lori, with the help of her Aunt Dimity from beyond the grave, unravels them. Quick, easy, fun reading if this is your sort of thing, and many people seem to love these books. I found it a…
The Word Exchange is the debut novel by Alena Graedon. Graedon writes of a time in the very near future where we are all addicted to our handheld devices called Memes.They can intuit what we want, order groceries for us, pay for a cab, make a call, etc and no one can remember how to live without them. In fact, people start forgetting how to use language itself, and need to purchase words and definitions on The Word Exchange. It…
The Book of Life by Deborah Harkness is the final book in the All Souls Trilogy. Witch scholar Diana Bishop and her Vampire scientist husband Matthew Clairmont, travel back to the present time as they continue their search to find the missing pages of Ashmole 782, an alchemical manuscript said to hold the secrets of the origins of all Witches, Vampires and Daemons. If you enjoyed the first two books in the series, you will find more of the same…
Moloka’i by Alan Brennert is historical fiction based on the lives of people living in Kalaupapa, the leper colony on Moloka’i. The book follows Rachel Kalama, who at seven years old is taken away from her family in Honolulu to live the rest of her life in Kalaupapa. This is a beautifully written book full of the untold tales of Kalaupapas residents daily lives, from the time of King Kalakaua through WWII and into the the 1970’s. Brennert writes with…
Thirty Girls by Susan Minot brings to light the atrocities committed by Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda for the past 30 years, where thousands of children have been abducted and forced to become child soldiers. The girls are taken as sex slaves and servants, many as young as ten years old. In Thirty Girls, Minot highlights a group of girls taken from a Catholic boarding school in the middle of the night and made famous worldwide…
What I Had Before I Had You is the debut novel by Sarah Cornwell. I read this book in a day, I just couldn’t put it down. It is the story of Olivia Reed, now a mother in her 30’s divorced and returning to her hometown of Ocean View on the Jersey shore. When her 9 year old bi-polar son goes missing, she revisits the summer she was 15, when her life changed forever, and she recalls memories of the…
Shadow of Night by Deborah Harkness is part two of the All Souls Trilogy. It picks up where A Discovery of Witches left off, with Oxford scholar and witch Diana Bishop and Vampire geneticist Matthew Clairmont traveling back in time to Elizabethan England, where they encounter Sir Walter Raleigh, William Shakespear and a number of other famous people of the time. They are searching for the alchemical manuscript that Diana came across in the first book, and Diana meets a…
I was in the mood for some really beautiful writing, so I thought I would revisit one of my favorite books, Gilead by Mailynne Robinson. Set in the small town of Gilead, Iowa in the 50’s and told through the voice of a Congregational preacher, Gilead is full of many gems, and rare honesty and grace. Reverend John Ames is at the end of his life, and the book is written as a long letter to his young son that…
A Discovery of Witches is the first book in Deborah Harkness’ All Souls Trilogy. Maybe because my daughter is going through a Harry Potter phase, I have been recently drawn to reading more books about magic and supernatural beings. This book pulled me in right away. Diana Bishop is a very powerful witch who has been denying her power since her parents were killed when she was a little girl. She is a scholar and teacher in Oxford and while…
Fallout by Sadie Jones is a novel set in London in the 70’s. Jones captures the feeling of London’s theater scene at the time, focusing on four young people in their 20’s as they come together as actors, writers, producers, and stage managers, falling in and out of love and friendship. I loved Luke, the main character, but had such a hard time liking or believing in Nina, his love interest, at times the novel seemed contrived to me. However,…