The Used World.(Book review)
EXCELLENT
An unlikely triad.
The Used World Emporium, an antique and junk shop in Jonah,
Indiana, contains "the castoffs of countless lives"--as well
as three very much flesh-and-blood . . .
The Bad Girl.(Book review)
EXCELLENT
Boy meets girl ... you know the rest.
Ricardo is a good boy who falls hopelessly in love with a bad girl.
The story of Ricardo's enduring desire for "Lily," the
mysterious and sensual . . .
World Without End.(Book review)
EXCELLENT
Medieval life gets down and dirty.
In Kingsbridge, a market town in 14th-century England, Merthin and
Ralph (the sons of an impoverished knight), Caris (a merchant's
pretty daughter), . . .
The Pirate's Daughter.
EXCELLENT
A divided Jamaica.
In 1946, the charming Hollywood actor Errol Flynn capsized on the
Jamaican coast. Finding refuge from a sex scandal, he purchased Navy
Island and constructed a . . .
Hotel de Dream.
EXCELLENT
A New York Novel
Recreating Stephen Crane's last work.
In 1900, Stephen Crane, the author of The Red Badge of Courage
(1895), is dying from tuberculosis at the age of 28. At his . . .
The Uncommon Reader.
EXCELLENT
A tender send-up of Her Majesty
American presidents maintain a certain degree of faux literacy:
these days a published book, however manufactured, is nearly a
prerequisite for the . . .
Gentlemen of the Road.
EXCELLENT
Derring-do in a medieval Jewish kingdom.
In the 10th-century kingdom of Arran, flanked by the Black and the
Caspian seas in the Caucasus, two Jewish swords-for-hire--the . . .
Trespass.
EXCELLENT
The aftermath of war.
When NYU student Toby Dale introduces his girlfriend, Salome, to
his mother, things don't go well between the two women. Chloe
Dale's distrust of Salome deepens . . .
Caspian Rain.
EXCELLENT
Prerevolutionary Iran.
Bahar, a teenager from a poor Jewish family in Tehran during the
last years of the shah's reign, marries up after she meets the
wealthy Omid, the son of Jews . . .
Like You'd Understand, Anyway.
EXCELLENT
Misadventures around the world.
The 11 short stories in Jim Shepard's newest collection focus
on familial bonds ravaged by ill-advised ventures, catastrophic
miscalculations, and . . .
Fire in the Blood.
Not-so-idyllic village life.
EXCELLENT
When Irene Nemirovsky was composing Suite Francaise (CLASSIC
Selection July/Aug 2006) in 1940, two years before she died in
Auschwitz, she was also . . .
The Gathering.
EXCELLENT
* MAN BOOKER PRIZE, 2007
Making sense of tragedy.
Veronica Hegarty, one of 12 children, has distanced herself from
her past and her large Irish family by becoming a solidly . . .
The Elephanta Suite.
EXCELLENT
Three Novellas
In three very loosely connected novellas, Paul Theroux explores the
experience of American visitors to modern India. "Monkey Hill"
follows a wealthy, middleaged couple . . .
A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary For Lovers.(Book
review)
EXCELLENT
Love and language
When her newly prosperous parents send Zhuang Xiao Qiao
("Z" to those who can't pronounce her name) from China to
London, they intend for her to learn English. . . .
The Theory Of Clouds.(Book review)
EXCELLENT
Looking to the skies.
Parisian couturier and Hiroshima survivor Akira Kumo, owner of the
world's largest collection of books about clouds, hires Virginie
Latour to put his library in . . .
Cheating at Canasta.(Book review)
Stories from a living legend of letters.
A hit-and-run on a lonely road. A family farm partitioned into the
18 holes of a golf course. A childhood cruelty echoing into old age. A
21st-century . . .
New books guide.(LITERARY)
We read hundreds of book reviews each month to select the works to
include in each issue. We seek a balance among three categories:
highly-rated books that received many reviews, highlyrated books . . .
Richard Russo: the latest dispatch from upstate New York.
Richard Russo sets his latest novel in Thomaston, New York, where
the defunct tannery, once the lifeblood of the blue-collar town, has
poisoned the river and its citizenry. Lou C. "Lucy" Lynch . . .
Ha Jin: the National Book Award-winning author writes his first
"American" novel.
Ha Jin, author of the National Book Award- winning novel Waiting
(1999), has written his first "American" work. Though he had
moved to Boston in 1985, his writing remained focused on his . . .
Alternate history: What if Napoleon had won at Waterloo? What if
Hitler had never been born? If the South had won the Civil War,
While historians focus on what actually happened in the past,
authors who write alternate history explore what could have happened had
events taken just a slightly different turn and historical . . .
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