Star Touched, by A.L. Kaplan
Blending Genres Review by Rea Keech Star Touched is a dystopian novel that takes place after a terrible Cataclysm has destroyed much of the country. It is also a fantasy novel in which some survivors of the Cataclysm have received magical powers. And it is a young...
August 29: How Kabir H. Jain Became a Deity, by Gandharva raja
Transfigurations Review by Rea Keech Set in Delhi from the years following Bush’s invasion of Iraq up to the middle of Obama’s first term as president, this novel depicts the philosophical development of Gora, an Indian university student who lives in times of...
Last of the Annamese, by Tom Glenn
Life Went On Review by Rea KeechAnybody who, like me, might want to know what it was like to live in South Vietnam in the last few months of the Saigon regime will find this novel riveting. Glenn shows what it was like for the Vietnamese and the remaining...
Oola, by Brittany Newell
Hipster Nonchalance Carried to Extremes Review by Tom Keech This book reminds me a lot of The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, except it’s better. There’s the same young male character who thinks and acts like a girl. The same absence of any apparent emotional connection...
The Vacationers, by Emma Straub
Review by Tom Keech An upper-middle-class Manhattan family vacations with two friends in Mallorca at a turning point in everyone’s domestic life. There is a lot of food shopping, cooking, eating, admiration of island vistas, swimming, sunning, sightseeing, and bad...
Lipsi’s Daughter, by Patty Apostolides
Ipatia's Choice Review by Rea Keech Lipsi’s Daughter gives us a picture of what life in Greece was like at the end of the 20th century for a girl raised in a family with conservative values. Ipatia conforms to the expectations of society without rebellion—except that...
Barefoot Beach, by Toby Devens
Chick Lit 101
Wilde Lake, by Laura Lippman
Failure to Jell Review by Tom Keech All of the ingredients are here – murder, rough sex, blackmail, compromised law enforcement officials, long-buried family secrets, betrayals, even Maryland local color – but to me it did not seem to jell into a credible...
No Portrait in the Gilded Frame, by Tudor Alexander
They Aren't All Just Gymnasts, You Know Review by Tom Keech This novel’s elegant prose beautifully mirrors Miri’s artistic eye for the colors and shapes of the natural world she sees in in her small-town life in war-torn, Holocaust-haunted and poverty-stricken 1950s...
Helena’s Choice, by Patty Apostolides
Immersed in Two Cultures Review by Rea Keech The story is set in England and Greece about five years after the Greek war of independence from the Ottoman Empire. Helena’s Greek mother is dead, and she has been raised as a proper English girl by her English father. But...
Campbell Ogilvy at the Battle of Arbroath, by Robert Nock
Clash of Clans Review by Rea Keech Tribal or clan warfare is still a major type of fighting that goes on in the world today. Campbell Ogilvy at the Battle of Arbroath is a historical novel depicting a feudal rivalry between clans in medieval Scotland. By examining the...
Mud, by E.J. Wenstrom
Longing for a Lost Faith Review by Rea Keech Mud is a dystopian fantasy apparently inspired by stories of descent into the underworld such as in the Orpheus myths and passages of the Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid, as well as stories of the fall from heaven as in the Old...
Provenance, by Donna Drew Sawyer
Passing Review by Rea Keech The cruelty and absurdity of racism in the American South haunts the lives of characters in Sawyer’s novel, which traces a family from the late 19th century through 1970. Hank, whose family lives on the “back side of town,” feels this...
True Death, by Dale E. Lehman
More Puzzle Than Mystery Review by Rea Keech True Death, on the surface, is a police investigation story, but it goes beyond that. The internal struggles and conflicts of the main characters become the focus of a story more about love, grief, compassion, and...
The Planck Factor, by Debbi Mack
Stories within Stories Review by Rea Keech What would it be like if a novel told the same story simultaneously in two versions with different sets of characters in different settings but with only somewhat different plots? The Planck Factor answers this question—with...
House Divided, by Peter Pollak
A Story Told at Arm's Length Review by Rea Keech The story of House Divided is carefully constructed. Recent terror attacks in the U.S. have led the President to call Leonard Robbins, a retired CIA operative, back into action. After an introduction to Robbins’s wife...
Up the Hill to Home, by Jennifer Bort Yacovissi
A Chronicle of Getting By Review by Rea Keech One reviewer aptly characterizes this enjoyable book as a “domestic historical novel.” The author uses diaries and letters to imagine the daily lives of her mother’s family from 1895 to1933 in Washington, D.C. The bulk of...