Latest Reviews
At Northwick Author Development Academy, an elite incubator for the creative class, originality is both fetish and mandate. Its candidates arrive ravenous for distinction --- only to discover, after a year of carefully engineered “disorientation,” that their work has converged into something eerily uniform. When a student in the sophomore cohort, Carl Sample, announces his intention to provoke a stranger into punching him --- an act pitched as both personal exorcism and artistic experiment --- the action seems grotesque, comic and vaguely prophetic. Before Carl can enact his plan, another student is assaulted in town. This emerging crisis of coincidence binds the cohort in a tightening web of surveillance and mythmaking, as intention and event fall fatally out of sync.
In Dublin, as the 18th century nears its end, a young musical virtuoso comes of age. John Field is preternaturally gifted, and his family has visions of him becoming the next Mozart. His talent eventually takes him to Russia, where he becomes a famous pianist and composes dreamy, languorous melodies that enchant the night air. John calls them nocturnes, but the prodigy who immortalizes them is Chopin. Oceans away in Pondicherry, in French India, Adelaide Percheron is raised by her imperious, enterprising grandmother. Her cousins give her the name Percherette, an impish reminder that she is not one of the crowd. Without a connection to aristocracy or the luxury of riches, only marriage seems to offer prosperity --- until she sets her sights on a pianoforte.
In Victorian England, no woman --- not even a brilliant economist like Reina Martin --- is allowed to open her own bank account. Together with her mentor, the powerful banker William Farlow, Reina will build the first all-women’s bank, where women can manage their own financial security. But soon she is shocked to discover that her enigmatic butler, John Pembroke, is an undercover police detective. He’s been assigned to investigate Farlow, who’s suspected of financial crime on a scale so massive that it could destabilize the British economy. Pembroke needs Reina’s expertise for a high-stakes nighttime heist to obtain incriminating evidence. Now she faces the agonizing choice of betraying her mentor or turning her back on thousands of working-class families who stand to lose everything.
For 40 years, Peter King’s unmatched access, curiosity and passion have made him synonymous with the National Football League. He broke countless stories, giving us the human side of the sport and influencing countless reporters. Players trusted him; coaches and owners revealed information to him. He gathered it all into notebooks and columns that kept fans riveted. Now, in THE GAME, King has brought all his knowledge and insight together in one place to tell the story of the modern NFL as no one else could. Moving from the mid-1980s, when the league went head-to-head with baseball in popularity, to the present, when it dominates every other entertainment in America, King narrates the NFL’s explosive rise from the inside.
On the day Savannah Cody spots her first gray hair, she decides it’s time to murder the father of her only child. Edward “Nickel” Terhune is the getaway driver for the Brady Gang, one of the FBI’s most wanted criminals. Dragging her son, Alford, and her father, Wendell, a retired railroad detective, along for the quest, Savannah embarks to find the man she once loved and the nation now fears, journeying across an America transformed by the Great Depression. But Alford --- and soon, the FBI --- notices that the closer the family gets to Nickel, the less clear Savannah’s motivations seem to be. As the Brady Gang races to escape the law (or get rich trying), Nickel realizes he might not be able to outrun his mistakes.
In the fall of 2014, Deacon Ronnie Lastovica visited a women’s prison in Gatesville, Texas, and gave communion to the women on death row. Moved by the meeting, the Deacon vowed to return weekly, but he knew he couldn’t help these women alone. He called upon the Sisters of Mary Morning Star, a group of contemplative nuns in Waco, Texas, to visit the seven condemned women with him. What follows is an incredible story of a spiritual alliance between two groups of women who, though they couldn't seem more different, are living uniquely similar lives. Lawrence Wright takes us into the death row unit, laying bare their stories.
Whether it’s a local indie bookshop, an online mega-retailer or a chain bookstore, the place we buy books is an essential part of our reading lives. Bookstores connect books to potential buyers and convert idle browsers into committed readers. Yet, as historian Andrew Pettegree reveals, it took more than five centuries after Gutenberg for bookstores as we know them to emerge. THE BOOKSHOP tells a sweeping history of the bookstore. It celebrates the ingenuity of booksellers, from the smugglers who carried contraband books across borders, to the innovators who created the global distribution networks that define books and bookselling today.
Ivan is a solitary man in his 70s, set in his ways and haunted by the failures of his past. His daughter, Nina, is in the twilight of her 20s and has long kept a distance from her sentimental father. But when Ivan proposes a trip to Europe in hopes that it will bring them closer together, Nina reluctantly agrees. They meet at LAX, where their departure is delayed. And delayed again. And again. As the hours drag on, their sharp, caustic and wide-ranging conversation reveals a lifetime of misunderstandings, unhealed wounds and stubborn love. Soon more flights are canceled, security tightens, airport staff grow evasive, and it becomes clear to Ivan and Nina that something is wrong. At last, the surreal starts to overtake the mundane, and their need to escape --- and to protect each other --- turns increasingly urgent.
This time, reluctant lawyer Andy Carpenter is serious about retiring. But when the local newspaper asks him to participate in their Christmas spread of local celebrities and their dogs, he brings Tara along for the ride. When the photographer comes to take pictures of Andy and the dogs, he instead opens the door to Sharon Lowery, who devised the newspaper story just to get his attention and beg him for help. Her brother, Jon, is wanted for murder and is on the run. However, if Andy agrees to hear Jon out, he'll turn himself in with the hope that Andy will represent him and reunite him with his dog. Andy decides to help Jon and slowly uncovers a web of conspiracies. Determined to keep him out of jail, Andy gathers the crew to investigate.
Botswana sometimes feels like a small town, so when a client wanders into the detective agency, it comes as little surprise that Mma Ramotswe has met him once before. But Mr. B has not made the trip to Gaborone for pleasure. The animal rescue center he runs, Elephant Havens, is in peril. Someone in the surrounding villages is tarnishing its reputation, and Mr. B cannot fathom why. Determined as ever to aid a noble cause, Mma Ramotswe, her trusted associate Mma Makutsi, and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni travel to Maun to restore the community’s trust in the sanctuary. In navigating this precarious situation and others in THE BIG CATS DANCE PARTY, Mma Ramotswe and her associates once again must rely on their compassion, gentle humor and good sense to win the day.
