How often a new lens opens a whole new world! And what a new vista Tom Standage, deputy editor for The Economist, opens up for readers. The whole of human history divided into six eras, each defined by a different beverage. Six glasses: from beer, wine and spirits through coffee, tea and Coca-Cola. Set your course […]
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout explores the mysteries of marriage and the secrets we keep, as a former couple reckons with where they’ve come from—and what they’ve left behind. ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York […]
When a home aide arrives to assist a rambunctious family at a crossroads, simmering tensions boil over in this “witty, exuberant debut” (People) that is an “absolute delight from start to finish” (Sarah Haywood, New York Times bestselling author)—perfect for fans of Where’d You Go, Bernadette and Evvie Drake Starts Over.
When Kevin Gogarty’s eighty-three-year-old mother is caught shoplifting yet again, he has no choice but to hire a caretaker to keep an eye on her. Kevin, recently unemployed, is already at his wits’ end tending to a full house while his wife travels to exotic locales for work, leaving him solo with his sulky, misbehaved teenaged daughter. Into the Gogarty fray steps Sylvia, the upbeat home aide, who appears at first to be their saving grace—until she catapults the Gogarty clan into their greatest crisis yet.
“Bracing, hilarious, warm” (Judy Blundell, New York Times bestselling author), Good Eggs is an irresistibly charming study in self-determination; the notion that it’s never too late to start living; and the unique redemption that family, despite its maddening flaws, can offer.
Jonathan Franzen’s gift for wedding depth and vividness of character with breadth of social vision has never been more dazzlingly evident than in Crossroads. It’s December 23, 1971, and heavy weather is forecast for Chicago. Russ Hildebrandt, the associate pastor of a liberal suburban church, is on the brink of breaking free of a marriage he […]
Two neuroscientists reveal why consciousness exists and how it works by examining eighteen increasingly intelligent minds, from microbes to humankind—and beyond. Why do you exist? How did atoms and molecules transform into sentient creatures that experience longing, regret, compassion, and even marvel at their own existence? What does it truly mean to have a mind—to […]
Detroit. 1932. The fates of four people converge during a violent week of labor unrest in the bleakest year of the Great Depression. Detective Clarence Brown is one of a handful of Black officers in the Detroit Police Department, navigating a thicket of lies and racism to find the killer of a young Black man. […]
A New York Times bestseller and a “Best Thriller of the Year” Winner of the Goncourt Prize and now an international phenomenon, this dizzying, whip-smart novel blends crime, fantasy, sci-fi, and thriller as it plumbs the mysteries surrounding a Paris-New York flight. Who would we be if we had made different choices? Told that secret, left that […]
Review by Marc Murr “End the Occupation.” “End the Preoccupation.” At last, award-winning author Colum McCann blasts through the American media blackout Wall with this revealing masterpiece about the tragedy of the illegal Israeli Occupation of Palestine. It is “Occupation, humiliation, murder, torture.” Like the two birds depicted on its cover, this nonfiction account […]
Reviewed by Adrienne Murr “The Nickel Boys” is, in short, an outstanding investigation into the role of race and racial prejudice in the lives of young boys during the 1960s. We follow the story of Elwood Curtis, a black teenager in Tallahassee. With his sights set on attending college courses in his best suit, a […]
By Marc Murr This classic novel of African literature is the first in a trilogy that traces the colonization of Africa. Wrapped in rich mythology and delivered in a terse style, it unfolds in three levels of conflict. The universality of its appeal, however, is in the third, or macro, level – the individual versus […]
