In Lambertville, Tenn., where the social highlight of the week is the high school football game, new girl Amanda Hardy immediately turns heads. She's barely figured out her class schedule before Grant, acting as a mouthpiece for his buddy Parker, is asking for her phone...
The story here is rather straightforward: a young boy is looking forward to a beach day with his family, but an incoming storm threatens to waylay the weekend plans. What makes this latest from author/illustrator Akiko Miyakoshi – her second translated title from one of Japan's award-winning children’s book creators published by...
As cranky and cynical as I can be – especially as an impatient reader, ahem – every once in a (long) while, I come across a title that gets me all choked up and sighing like a moony adolescent. Perhaps I'm going soft in old...
"A girl cannot be brave, or clever, or skilled as a boy can. If she is not good, she is nothing," an angry Reverend Erasmus Sunderly admonished his usually obedient 14-year-old-daughter, Faith. His words are harsh, but in Victorian England, not without societal support. He...
'The Translation of Love' seeks meaning amid the heartache of post-war Tokyo World War II is over, but the struggle to survive remains a daily battle for too many residents of 1947 Tokyo. Debut novelist Lynne Kutsukake gathers a remarkable cast from three countries in The...
When the usual bedtime fare doesn’t induce slumber, why not try an after-bedtime tale? Every parent will instantly recognize the angelic-toddler-turned-truculent-terror for whom sleep is just not a priority. Tonight, adorable, tiara-wearing Nina can’t sleep, not when there’s a party going on in her own house....
*STARRED REVIEW While the Titanic and Lusitania are both well-documented disasters, the single greatest tragedy in maritime history is the little-known 1945 sinking by Soviet torpedoes of the Wilhelm Gustloff, a German cruise liner that was supposed to ferry wartime personnel and refugees to safety. The...
"Nothing seemed amiss that first Sunday in December 1945." In California, 21-year-old Harry questions why his white employer is sending him home. His comment that he had nothing to do with Japan's bombing of Pearl Harbor gets him promptly fired. In Hiroshima, 4,000 miles away, 17-year-old...
*STARRED REVIEW When Connor's grandmother dies, she leaves his father a ring, a pair of pilot's wings, and a letter explaining that the man who raised Connor's father was not his biological father. With his father paralyzed by depression, Connor takes the two mementoes and the...
Divided into three sections – Homeless, Homeward, and Home –that converge in the titular "High Mountains of Portugal," three men epitomize the concepts after which the sections are named. Part 1's Tomás, grieving the loss of his lover and son, takes his uncle's automobile – one...
*STARRED REVIEW At 28, Sara Lindqvist has more literary friends than real. She arrives in Iowa from Sweden, expecting to spend a few weeks with Amy Harris, an older woman with whom she's exchanged three years of intimate letters and books. Alas, she's arrived too late:...
Although JFK’s tenure was only 1,036 days, his legacy hasn’t tarnished much. In this volume of the Presidential Powerhouses series, Rowell diverges from too many children’s titles that lionize the youngest-ever POTUS to offer a finely balanced biographical overview. While JFK’s achievements are many – the...
Sibling rivalry threatens to destroy the Fire Nation when a frustrated Zuko reveals the kemurikage leader on the first page: "I know that's you ...
The wife-and-husband team of Anna Kang and Christopher Weyant make a splash with their third gleeful collaboration. Meet Monty, a frog who has a secret to share with the reader: he is afraid of the water. Though he has managed to stay dry since his...
Even as Mercy Wong's father expects that she will marry the herbalist's son and be a "meek" wife, he also insists that she never stop learning because she must "be as smart as the white ghosts." In San Francisco's Chinatown in 1906, 15-year-old Mercy's graduation from...
Jung Yun’s Twitter profile reads: “Fiction writer. Late bloomer. Better late than never.” Indeed, more than four decades passed before she earned that “fiction writer” mantle, but clearly the careful gestation paid off. So wowed was Yun’s publisher, Picador, with her first novel that hundreds of...
*STARRED REVIEW Richard Chapman – husband, father, businessman – hosts a bachelor party in his Westchester, NY, home for his younger brother. Two strippers are hired to provide the expected entertainment, until the debauchery ends abruptly when the girls murder their bodyguards and flee. Richard must...
Four decades have passed since Amaterasu Takahashi lost her daughter and grandson in Nagasaki's atomic destruction. Now an octogenarian widow living in Philadelphia, she's shocked by the arrival of a disfigured stranger claiming to be that grandson. He brings letters from the past, as well as...
Barbara Thorson is most definitely not your average fifth-grader. She refuses to buy the "motivational speaking" going on in the front of the classroom on career day, quipping to the less-than-esteemed guest, "I already have a 'career,' thank you." Indeed, Barbara's calling is so much greater:...
*STARRED REVIEW In his sublime "foreword [that] might be better thought of as an afterword," physician and bestselling author Abraham Verghese reveals that he came to know Paul Kalanithi "most intimately when he'd ceased to be." That, too, is true of every listener here. Neurosurgeon Kalanithi died in...
