Miriam Toews has this way of writing lines that are so beautiful that sometimes I have to close her books for a moment just to marvel at them. All My Puny Sorrowsis a book that is full of such moments; alternating equally between being eloquently wise, wickedly funny and jaggedly heartbreaking. In every one […]
By Mary Roach While there are plenty of books that cover the political and human impacts of war, we rarely see and examination of more unusual aspects of maintaining a military force. Grunt by Mary Roach isn’t about new guns and tanks, drones and missiles. This is the kind of stuff that most people don’t […]
The Wild Robot By Peter Brown Can a robot survive in the wilderness? Robot Roz must do exactly that when she discovers that she has washed up on the shore of a remote island. Although Roz has been programmed to know many things, she does not know how to survive in the outdoors. But Roz, […]
By Nancy FarmerIn a future world that feels very “old world”, the USA and Azatlán (formerly known as Mexico) have struck a deal to curb illegal immigration. Along the length of the border, a new country named Opium has been established. The thousands of miles of drug fields are owned by a handful of very […]
Marie Antoinette, Serial KillerBy Katie AlenderThe story opens in Paris, the apartment of a beautiful, 19 year old, up-and-coming French model, Gabrielle. She has just arrived home from a chic party and is getting ready for bed. Admiring herself in the mirror she notices a dark smudge on her arm. She tries to wash it […]
Boundless By Kathleen Winter When Kathleen Winter is offered a chance to journey through the relatively unknown waters of the Northwest Passage, she responds truthfully, “My bags are already packed.” As a writer, Winter is always ready to embark on a journey and she’s fascinated by the mysteries of the Arctic. In her memoir, Boundless, […]
Space CaseBy Stuart Gibbs Dashiell Gibson is only 12 years old, but he has the privilege of being one of the first people to live on the moon. Although that sounds exciting, life on the moon can be pretty boring. Seeing the same people and doing the same things every day can get tedious. And […]
by Gene Luen Yang, illustrated by Sonny LiewHank Chu goes about his life, like most young men in Chinatown. He spends his days working in his family’s store and his spare time playing mahjong with his father and his father’s friends. It’s a quiet life, and Hank enjoys it very much. His world turns a […]
Noggin By John Corey Whaley Imagine if you had a terminal illness. You knew you were going to die but doctors offered you a way out – sort of. What if they offered to cut off your head, freeze it, and reattach it to someone else’s healthy body as soon as the technology became available? […]
The Paris Wife Paula McLain The Paris Wife by Paula McLain, is a lilting story of the life of Ernest Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley Richardson. Written from Hadley’s perspective, we get an inside look to what it was like to be a woman in the 1920’s married to a chauvinistic, self-obsessed man who […]