Everything I Never Told You Celeste Ng The Penguin Press Release Date: June 26, 2014 ISBN 978-1-59420-571-2 It absolutely slays me when debut novels are this good. Everything I Never Told You is the story of a family dealing with a tragic loss. It’s 1977 in Middlewood, Ohio, and Lydia […]
Safe from the Sea Peter Geye Unbridled Books First Edition:May 21, 2009 ISBN 978-1-60953-008-2 Duluth, Minnesota, located on Lake Superior’s North Shore, is the nation’s final inland harbor even though it is staunchly situated in the upper Midwest, accessible to ocean-going vessels via the Great Lakes Waterway and the Saint […]
Alliance: The Paladin Prophecy Book 2 Mark Frost Random House Release Date: January 7, 2014 ISBN 978-0-375-87046-7 Adventure/fantasy lit for young readers is really hot right now. Really hot. I’m not talking the young adult supernatural vampires and werewolves or zombies material – I mean stories where kids, sometimes barely […]
Vacationland Sarah Stonich University of Minnesota Press Release Date: March 25, 2013 ISBN 978-0-8166-8766-4 Vacationland is a book that grabs you, not because of some harrowing drama or gripping plot twist, not due to a flamboyant cast of characters or unexpected turn of events or even because ordinary people have […]
Some Kind of Fairy Tale Graham Joyce Doubleday/Anchor Publication Date: July 2, 2013 ISBN: 978-0-385-53578-6 Yet another World Fantasy Awards – Best Novel nominee, and yet another wonderful story. Many, many folk tales, fireside stories, elder manuscripts and vestiges of ancient lore tell of the abduction of (usually) fair young […]
Butter Anne Panning Switchgrass Books First Edition: October 15, 2012 ISBN 978-0-87580-681-5 We usually think of nostalgia as a sentimental warm fuzzy feeling, a wistful desire to return back to what was, when – true or not – things seemed to have been simpler, and “better.” What is so marvelous […]
On this day, December 3, in 1857, Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, Imperial Russia (modern
Ukraine, then a part of Poland). While he settled in England and wrote in English, he always considered himself a Pole. Heart of Darkness, one of the most famous of his 20 novels (which explores colonialism and the attitudes regarding what constitutes a barbarian versus civilized society) is considered one of the best English novels of the 20th century, as is his novel Lord Jim, which chronicles a crew’s abandonment of its disabled ship. Conrad died in England in 1924 at age 66.