Tag: Books
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“The Lake Escape” by Jamie Day
“The Lake Escape” by Jamie Day is a summer book: something you can quickly pick up and read sitting in a beach chair and sipping iced tea, then promptly put it aside when a seagull tries to steal your snack. In the style of recently popular movies and novels, “rich people behaving badly”, the story…
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“The Bewitching” by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
The latest novel by Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a dark, atmospheric horror/mystery, consisting of three clearly defined storylines. Minerva, a young Mexican woman, is a student at a New England college, writing her thesis. It’s 1998, and strange things happen. She often feels a sense of foreboding, as if she has been watched. At one point,…
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“My Friends” by Fredrik Backman
What a great gift friendship is—for everybody but especially for teenagers in their formative years, when they search for understanding and acceptance, trying to find themselves and moving between excitement and depression, often in a single day. Fredrik Backman’s “My Friends” is a book about friendship that helps them accept that being different is okay.…
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“Twist” by Colum McCann
There is a picture described in Colum McCann’s “Twist”: a simple drawing made by children that shows a tiny ship at the top of the frame and the overwhelming depths of the ocean below, its waters changing from blue to black. The small ship carries a hook that extends to the bottom of the sea,…
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“Bad Nature” by Ariel Courage
Hester, the heroine of Ariel Courage’s debut novel “Bad Nature,” is a 40-year-old New York lawyer with no family and no friends, and to top it off, she is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Refusing the treatment, she instead decides to fulfill her goal, which she has been carrying for years, always sure that it will…
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“Something Rotten” by Andrew Lipstein
Cecilie and Reuben are a young, professional New York couple working in journalism. However, after Reuben has been canceled from his NPR job, Cecilie is now the sole breadwinner while Reuben stays home taking care of their firstborn. Neither one of them is particularly happy with the situation. Reuben fulfills his parental duties but doesn’t…
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“Hotel Lucky Seven” by Kotaro Isaka
Nanao, the unlucky assassin in the newest novel by Kotaro Isaka, is so unfortunate that, according to him, whenever he decides to go to a temple for ritual cleansing, the priest is sure to slip into the puddle of water and cancel the entire ceremony. However, the latest job seems simple–delivering a framed painting to…
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“Soft Core” by Brittany Newell
“Soft Core” by Brittany Newell is an unusual and enchanting novel. It reads almost like a memoir, a first-person account of a young woman’s time working as a stripper and later a dominatrix in San Francisco. Being a stripper is almost accidental; however, it puts her into a world of people who, for different reasons,…
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“Agnes Sharp and the Trip of a Lifetime” by Leonie Swann
I enjoyed reading the first book in the Agnes Sharp series and found the second one even better. The elderly residents of Sunset Hall – Agnes, Edwina, Bernadette, Charlie, Marshall, and Winston – go on vacation to a fancy, secluded Cornish hotel, partially because Edwina won a romantic gateway for two and everybody wants to…
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“Parade” by Rachel Cusk
“Parade” is the first book by Rachel Cusk that I read. I learned that the author is a well-known novelist with a unique style and fans who eagerly await her next book. Starting with this novel may not be the best way for me to explore Cusk’s work. On the plus side, after finishing “Parade,”…
Infinite Books 