The Book of Doors by Gareth Brown

The Book of Doors introduces us to Cassie Andrews, a kind, but reserved, clerk as a bookstore in New York City. Cassie shares an apartment with Izzy who is delightfully commonsensical and tough. A favorite customer dies at a desk in...

Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson

Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone opens with Ernest (Ern) Cunningham driving to a family reunion at a resort lodge in the mountains as a blizzard is on its way. The family is gathering to welcome home his brother...

Generation Ship

Generation Ship is a story about a colony ship that is approaching a planet they hope will support life so they can settle there. The ship has been traveling so long that they are several generations away from the founders...

Burntcoat by Sarah Hall

Burntcoat is the story of Edith Harkness and her reconciliation with Death as she prepares for her end from the relapse of a frightful disease, part of a global pandemic. She reminisces about her life, most of her memories concentrate...

Nice Girls by Catherine Dang

Nice Girls begins with "Ivy League" Mary moving back home from her prestigious college, moving back home with her father in disgrace after being expelled for fighting. Almost as soon as she is back in her affluent suburban hometown of...

Mary Jane by Jessica Anya Blau

Mary Jane is a delightful coming-of-age story about a fourteen-year-old girl from a rigid and sheltered home who enters a completely different world when she gets a summer job as a nanny for a neighboring couple, the Cones, who are...

All the Children Are Home by Patry Francis

All the Children Are Home is a story about a family, foster parents Dahlia and Louie, and the four children who stayed long enough to burrow deep into their hearts, Jimmy, Zaidie, Jon, and Agnes. The first three had been...

The (Other) You by Joyce Carol Oates

The (Other) You is an anthology of short stories by the incomparable Joyce Carol Oates. There are fifteen stories in this book and not one disappoints, though a few left me feeling devastated. In some ways, this book is the...

Eight Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson

I enjoyed The Girl with a Clock for a Heartso much I immediately read another book by Peter Swanon, Eight Perfect Murders. This is another story I can see as a film, one with Tom Hanks or Jimmy Steward in the...

The Girl with a Clock for a Heart by Peter Swanson

The Girl with a Clock for a Heart is the sort of thriller I can picture as a movie with Jimmy Stewart or Tom Hanks in the lead role. George Foss is at a local tavern with a long-time friend/lover...

The Word Is Murder by Anthony Horowitz

Anthony Horowitz has my number. He knows exactly what I like and I have not missed an episode of" Foyle's War" or "Midsomer Murders." He is so good at writing mysteries that if I see his name, I know I...

Highfire by Eion Colfer

Highfire is the story of a plucky young boy named Squib who is excels at going from the frying pan to the fire. His real name is Everett, but he's called Squib after losing a finger in a dynamite accident. The...

The Sacrament by Olaf Olafsson

The Sacrament is the story of a nun returning to Iceland years after she was sent to investigate a priest running a Catholic elementary school who had been anonymously denounced for molesting children. She narrates the story as we slip...

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell

The dramatic revelations of #MeToo are natural fodder for fiction. Fiction has been exploring the story of older men seducing underage girls for years, mostly from the perspective of the men. My Dark Vanessa explores what could be the tired story...

Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha

What is justice? How can we love people who do evil? Can someone be a good person in one realm and evil in another? These are just a few of the pressing questions Steph Cha' examines in Your House Will...