Lee Cole’s debut novel, GROUNDSKEEPING, is a coming-of-age story about two lovers trying to navigate social and cultural differences during a time of great upheaval in American politics. Twenty-eight-year-old Owen returns home to rural Kentucky after a failed launch in Colorado and gets a job as a groundskeeper at a local college in exchange for …
From the award-winning author of WHEN THE EMPEROR WAS DIVINE and THE BHUDDA IN THE ATTIC, comes a slim, powerhouse of a novel about loss of identity. In shifting points of view, Julie Otsuka gives us an intuitive look at what it means to lose someone you love to dementia. Brilliant, reflective, compressed, nuanced, empathetic, …
In Stephen Harrigan’s big-hearted coming-of-age novel, LEOPARD IS LOOSE, five-year-old Grady’s tranquil world is upended when a leopard escapes from the nearby zoo. It’s 1952 and Grady and his 7-year-old brother Danny live with their widowed mother, Bethie, in a two-bedroom backyard apartment across a small patch of yard from her parents and siblings. For …
Dr. Sullivan’s work on behalf of addiction and treatment is remarkable and Opioid Reckoning offers a glimpse into the faces of the epidemic. With heart and soul and considerable scholarship, Sullivan has written a book that offers hope and help for anyone affected by addiction.
Chakrabarti has a keen sense of timing – oscillating the storyline backward and forward to reveal Jaryk’s motivation, his heart-wrenching past, and his fear of moving into a future as a sole survivor of the orphanage where his story began.
In her profoundly moving first novel, THE SEED KEEPER, Diane Wilson tells the story of Rosalie Iron Wing and her family’s struggle to preserve their cultural heritage. Flashing back and forth in time from Rosalie’s present day, to her early childhood, to the lives of her ancestors, Wilson reveals the devastation wreaked by white settlers …
Kathleen West, author of MINOR DRAMAS AND OTHER CATASTROPHES is back with a rollick through teenage angst and twenty-first century parenting in ARE WE THERE YET? Alice Sullivan has it all – two perfect children, a handsome and successful husband, and a booming interior design business – until suddenly, she doesn’t. In a conflagration of …
THE GREAT CIRCLE is a big book – not just because it is nearly 600 pages long – but because of the breadth of the subject matter – art, aviation, prohibition, noncomformity, war, isolation, connection – and the period it spans 1909-2014 – give or take a few decade gaps. There will be So. Much. To. Discuss. with your book group! Maggie Shipstead has a keen understanding of longing and what it means to be human.
Powerfully conveyed through shifting narratives, SEND FOR ME is not a lament, but rather an ode to family and a love that transcends time and place. I recommend SEND FOR ME for fans of Kristin Hannah and Geraldine Brooks. Listen to my interview with Lauren Fox on Superior Reads, May 27 at 7:00 pm.
I cannot recommend EARLY MORNING RISER enough. EARLY MORNING RISER brims with love and hope and humor. Heiny redefines family in this enchanting novel and I felt my heart lifted from the heaviness of the past year. Her characters are complex and quirky – they’re your mother, your brother, or your neighbor – they are just like all those complicated people you encounter on a daily basis. Whether you live in a small town, or your village of people is in a big city, you’ll recognize them and after reading EARLY MORNING RISER, you’ll find the things that may have previously annoyed you, endearing. Heiny is like that – through her lens, you’ll see things differently.
Superior Reads 