Cascade by Maryanne O’Hara

October 11, 2013

I’d anticipated reading Cascade, because its central action is a source of sad fascination: the deliberate flooding of several small …

A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny

July 1, 2013

A Trick of the Light opens with a vernissage, the preview of an art exhibition before its formal opening. Patient, …

March 1, 2013

One bitter winter day back in the early 1980s, my boyfriend (now my husband) introduced me to the Isabella Stewart …

February 10, 2013

Thanks to Blizzard Nemo, I’ve had the opportunity to curl up with four books, bouncing back and forth as the …

January 14, 2013

My first books of the new year are detective novels in a series by Canadian writer Louise Penny. Some fictional …

August 10, 2012

I love how A.S. Byatt writes—and I haven’t read enough of her work, as a glance at her list of …

August 7, 2012

After stocking up on a hefty stack of gently-used books at the Quaker Book Sale last month, I re-assessed my …

May 28, 2012

Lisa See‘s previous novel, Shanghai Girls, followed the lives of sisters Pearl and May, first in China (racing to escape …

May 11, 2012

Author Karen Karbo knows her audience; she suggests that the reader either received this book as a gift or picked …