Colin Dickey (Afterlives of the Saints) cites a statistic that 45 percent of Americans believe in ghosts, and 30 percent profess to have had firsthand encounters. Such undying fascination means there was no shortage of stories to choose from when Dickey spent several years traveling...
Mele, single mother of Ellie, joined the San Francisco Mother's Club (SFMC) to be matched with the perfect playgroup, something that never happened. Two years later, she's part of a rogue, "laughing, sh*t-talking, texting, even talking on the phone" fivesome that came together organically at...
Lucas and Katya spend a year in love as boarding school seniors and have a baby. Their parting leaves Lucas estranged throughout daughter Vera’s childhood; he eventually graduates to being a weekend dad. At 16, Vera goes to a party she shouldn’t have, which ends with...
*STARRED REVIEW Morbid fascination will keep listeners riveted to Jesse Ball’s (A Cure for Suicide) shocking new novel as teenager Lucia Stanton chronicles –with unnerving detachment – her troubled life through a collage of blunt paragraphs, random lists, outrageous predictions, and a "pamphlet" bearing the book's...
The third installment of the Hogarth Shakespeare series transfers the 16th-century comedy The Taming of the Shew, set in Padua, Italy, to a contemporary Baltimore neighborhood, otherwise known as beloved Pulitzer-Prized Anne Tyler-territory. The Bard's obdurate, would-be lovers Katherina and Petruchio become Kate Battista, a...
Talking about families can sometimes be daunting for kids, especially when you can't check off those expected, so-called "traditional" boxes on who's who of your bestest loved ones. Sitting in her classroom discussing "what we thought made our family special," one little girl is not...
While Pamela Erens might not yet be a household-name author, she’s hardly a stranger to literary recognition. Her 2007 debut, The Understory – about a solitary, unemployed lawyer who’s about to lose his home – was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the...
When Rashomon won the Venice Film Festival's Golden Lion in September 1950, the world embraced its director, Akira Kurosawa (1910–98), who quickly gained unrivaled prominence – Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg are a few of his self-declared disciples. Convinced “that Westerners...
*STARRED REVIEW Angela Duckworth (psychology, Univ. of Pennsylvania) grew up hearing, "You know, you're no genius!" from her own father; she didn't even qualify for the gifted and talented program in third grade. In 2013, the MacArthur Foundation overturned her father's judgment, awarding her one of...
*STARRED REVIEW At the risk of sounding utterly selfish, thank goodness Barbara Bradley Hagerty (Fingerprints of God) recovered from her excruciating throat injury to narrate her latest title. Her conspiratorial, gregarious recitation, a skill that clearly contributed to her two-decade, award-winning NPR career, instantly convinces listeners...
Four best friends are on the Cape Cod coast when a storm blows in, and suddenly one of them, Lorna, is gone. Lorna was Jackie's best friend, Finn's girlfriend, and Lucas's dream girl. Her body is never found, but a memorial is organized, and life...
Kate has always been a liar – out of necessity rather than malice. She's smart and savvy and knows how to be a good friend. She's also the best scholarship student Manhattan's tony Waverly School has ever had. Olivia, by contrast, has grown up with every...
Some time, somewhere, Little Town and Old Country are separated by borders and bombs. If Little Town is said to be filthy, broke, and run by ragtag criminals, Old Country is conformist, rich, and militaristic. Almost 15, cautious Little Towner Charlie Law stays relatively safe...
*STARRED REVIEW Beyoncé, J.K. Rowling, and Albert Einstein are examples of introverts who harnessed their "quiet power" to become iconic successes. Here Susan Cain offers an entertaining, illuminating adaptation of her adult bestseller, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, to help younger readers...
As today’s most prominent transgender teen, Jennings stepped into the national spotlight in 2007 at the age of 6 in a televised interview with Barbara Walters. In the almost-decade since, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) – psychology/psychiatry’s bible for identifying mental disorders...
Happy Back-to-School across these wide United States of America with this timely reminder that we are a nation of immigrants with histories and stories from somewhere else. Given some of the hot topics looming this election year, all parents, teachers, schools, libraries would do well to order...
When 11-year-old Azalea Morgan and her mother arrive in Paris Junction, Arkansas, in August 1952, her mother barely lasts a few minutes in her gossipy, small-town childhood home before she turns the car around, leaving her daughter behind to help her injured grandmother with her...
Thirty years before Brown v. Board of Education struck down segregation in public schools, a Chinese American family in the Mississippi Delta fought to continue their daughter’s education. On September 15, 1924, Rosedale School’s principal banned nine-and-a-half-year-old, straight-A student Martha Lum and her older sister...
