Meredith Russo: Sharing Secrets Not until Meredith Russo was in her mid-20s did she finally begin "living as her true self." Russo--a transgender woman born and raised in Tennessee, and now the mother of two children--has an unforgettable, timely story to tell. Russo's protagonist in her...
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...
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...
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:...
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 ...
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...
*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...
*STARRED REVIEW Many years earlier, Lucy Barton spent two months in a hospital after a routine appendectomy; no one ever figured out what was wrong. She wakes one morning to find her mother sitting on her bed, arrived in Manhattan from their rural Illinois hometown. Too many...
“A house. A writing machine. …[And her] animals” are the “home” Sandra Cisneros needs to “feel like writing.” The MacArthur “Genius”-author of The House on Mango Street – one of those celebrated pivotal titles readers never forget – offers the “stories from my life [that]...
Thanks to his "fellow countryman," our peripatetic Turkey-bound Englishman, Mr. Smith, finds himself welcomed into a lavish Persian home. "I'm impressed, Boss," his guide and companion Ali remarks, "You sure know some powerful people." Momentarily glimpsed but intentionally hidden in the sprawling compound is Anis, the...
Sam, Samir, and Nina met in law school in Paris. Sam and Nina were lovers. While Sam was briefly away, Samir shared Nina's bed, after which Sam attempted suicide and won Nina back. Fast-forward almost two decades: Sam and Nina are poor and desperate but still...
Here’s a ‘did you know …?’-fact about the Smithsonian Museums … they’re all free, all the time. That’s not the case in many museums around the country, so the Smithsonian created Museum Day Live!, an annual event in which participating museums across the country open...
Alternate histories have been "a thing" for decades. Lauded titles are many, but World War II-related novels in which the so-called good guys don't win seem to have yielded quite a few bestsellers through the decades, including The Plot Against America by Philip Roth, Fatherland...
Linda Wallheim, who debuted in YA author Mette Ivie Harrison’s first adult title, The Bishop's Wife, returns to solve her second murder. For Linda, being a devout Mormon isn't a barrier to speaking her mind and demanding justice in the men-centric community in which being...
Ria Parker has avoided going home to Chicago for far too long, offering up convenient excuses about her demanding Bollywood career. With her beloved more-brother-than-cousin's impending wedding, Ria finally heads stateside from Mumbai to face the family. For 10 years, she's managed to avoid first-and-only-love Vikram,...
*STARRED REVIEW This is not your ordinary Hollywood memoir: no script doctor or publicist seems to have embellished or sanitized Tony/Emmy/Obie/Golden Globe-winning actress Mary-Louise Parker's first book. Written as a series of letters to almost three dozen "Mr."s both real and imagined, Parker's work captures past...
*STARRED REVIEW Set in remote 1970 Alaska, when indigenous communities still mourned losses that came with statehood in 1959, The Smell of Other People's Houses explores relationships that bind, falter, recover, and flourish. First-time novelist Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock introduces the distinct voices of four teenagers who, over...
