I liked the idea of this book better than I liked the book itself. It’s set in 1950’s London, in a fictional shop called Bloomsbury Books. It centers around three women: Grace, who’s in an abusive marriage; Vivien, who longs to write and to manage the bookstore rather than merely stand at the cash register;…
Rules of Civility is the debut novel of Amor Towles, also widely known for his book A Gentleman in Moscow. The novel is set in New York City, beginning in the 1960s but then jumping back to the last night of 1937. It centers around Katie, a 25-year-old secretary who is out for New Year’s…
This year I’m joining in the fun at Wyrd & Wonder, a month long celebration of all things fantasy. Part of this event is that every Sunday, the hosts at There’s Always Room For One More, A Dance With Books , Dear Geek Place, The Book Nook, and Jorie Loves A Story post a Fantastic Five list. This…
This is the kind of historical novel I love – it’s a decades-spanning family saga that builds on the author’s own family history. In this debut novel, Fu tells a story that parallels that of her father, who is born in China during the Japanese War of Aggression in the 1940s and the Chinese Civil…
This is my second novel by Lisa See, and I felt they were similar in a lot of ways. Both Island of Sea Women and The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane are slow-paced multigenerational family dramas, that cover a primary character from childhood to old age. Both concentrate a great deal on history and culture. Both involve…
I wanted to like this book more than I did, and I almost didn’t finish it. But my book club had so many good things to say about it, I persevered — though I ended up with mixed feelings. The story is about Nahr, a woman living in solitary confinement in an Israeli prison. She…
This is a novella you won’t want to put down once you start. It’s about a couple of historic days in Edinburgh in 1566. Mary, Queen of Scots is in her castle at Holyrood and though she is beloved by her people, the kingdom is rife with religious conflicts and nobles scheming to take power.…
I love novels that are so steeped in history, they meld fiction and nonfiction. These are most often historical novels about real people who did noteworthy things, where the author builds the story around both fictional and nonfictional characters and dialogue. The best of these novels are deeply researched, and by the end I’ve experienced history in…
Dear Miss Kopp is the sixth book in the Kopp Sisters series by Amy Stewart, and I was thrilled to receive an advanced review copy from NetGalley. This is one of my favorite historical series, and if you haven’t read it, I strongly recommend picking up the first book, Girl Waits With Gun. What makes…
I loved this book. I already thought Schwab was great, but this book combines so many things I love – history, travel, France – and it’s really character/relationship driven. The story is complicated, and there were lots of times I found myself trying to poke holes in the logistics of it all. But it’s worth…
If you’re like me, the first time you knew anything about the 1921 Tulsa race riots – or race massacre – was this summer, when Trump scheduled a rally in Tulsa on June 19 (Juneteenth). Before that I was mostly unaware of this history. What happened in Tulsa is a perfect example of the way our…
I couldn’t be happier that Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet won this year’s Women’s Prize. I love O’Farrell but I worried that this book couldn’t live up to my expectations, after all the rave reviews. It absolutely did. Hamnet is about William Shakespeare, though he’s never actually named in the book. It’s 1596, and 11 year old Hamnet…
The Book Stop 