Blog Category: all
Posted by JGranatino on Mon, Apr 23
Kit, the head librarian of the local library of Riverton, New Hampshire tries to drown herself in her work and avoid thinking about her life. When a 15 year old girl named Sunny is assigned to do community service at the library as a result of stealing a dictionary, life for the both of them begins to change for the better. Sunny's upbeat and curious personality helps Kit open up, along with another library user named Rusty. All three of them have their own troubles but together they are able...
Posted by JGranatino on Mon, Apr 23
Set in 1970s Johannesburg, this is a story of the apartheid era in South Africa. The novel is told through the point of view of a white child going on ten years old named Robin and a black woman named Beauty. Due to the set circumstances they're living under they shouldn't have crossed paths, but the events of their lives have brought them together. Robin becomes an orphan after her parents are killed on a night out due to the Soweto Uprising and she is sent to live with her aunt Edith...
Posted by JGranatino on Mon, Apr 23
Joanna Langley has returned to her ancestral home upon hearing of her estranged father’s death. Langley Hall was sold and turned into a boarding school after her mother died while her father retained a position as Art Master. While going through his few belongings, she finds a letter to Sofia, who risked her life to save her father after he was shot down in Italy during WWII, with references to the “beautiful boy” they hid from the Germans. With her future uncertain and intrigued by the...
Posted by JGranatino on Mon, Apr 23
What happens when a young man is caught between what is usually described as the "two sides" in the conflict between Israel and Palestine, between love of country and love for life and humanity, between faith and friendship? In lyrical prose and first person narration Sadness is a White Bird is constructed through memories and something like a confessional letter. We follow Jonathan, a 19 year old newly trained American-Israeli soldier in the IDF struggling with his place in this...
Posted by JGranatino on Mon, Apr 23
“But stories are like people, Atticus. Loving them doesn’t make them perfect. You try to cherish their virtues and overlook their flaws. The flaws are still there, though.”
Fans of Rhode Island horror writer H.P. Lovecraft may come to this book expecting uncanny, tentacled encounters with Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, and other extraterrestrial monstrosities, but the real horrors here are all too terrestrial: the horrors of racism and discrimination. Members of a black family living in the Jim Crow era...
Posted by JGranatino on Mon, Apr 23
In the 1980s, in rural upstate New York, three young teens are bound together for life by a terrible secret. Matthew is the leader, an edgy, brilliant, but troubled boy with an abusive home life; Patrick is shyer and more conventional, a born follower; and Hannah is an innocent girl whose crush on a “bad boy” leads her into places darker than she could have imagined. The story begins with a disturbing act of violence, then flashes forward to 2008. Hannah is a crime reporter married to Patrick,...
Posted by JGranatino on Wed, Apr 18
In an instant, the everyday life of Nora Nolan changes. She and her husband, Charlie, have raised their kids in a quiet cul-de-sac in bustling New York City. Nora loves her family, her demanding but rewarding job, her neighbors (well, most of them) and the city itself. They go to block barbecues and neighborhood parties, and even share the same handyman, Ricky. It’s been a life of privilege for the Nolans. One day a parking dispute between one of her most belligerent neighbors and Ricky becomes...
Posted by JGranatino on Tue, Apr 10
In this Glass Castle-esque memoir, Tara Westover delivers a compelling read that takes readers through her childhood growing up in rural Idaho with a survivalist family through her everyday struggles with her father and brother's mental illness and eventually her journey in obtaining her PhD from Cambridge University. While she received no formal education growing up, at age 17 Westover first set foot in a classroom at Brigham Young University. She details the balance she must find between the...
Posted by JGranatino on Mon, Apr 09
On the eve of her wedding to successful, handsome but possessive Zach, Clare unexpectedly changes her mind. A chance encounter with a kind, elderly visitor named Edith helps Clare put things into perspective, giving her the courage to walk away much to the relief of her friends and family. As she takes stock of her options, now wide open, she is contacted by Edith’s lawyer with news that she is the heir to Edith’s home in a lovely Delaware shore town once used as a boarding house, called Blue...
Posted by JGranatino on Fri, Apr 06
Cassie Bowden, a flight attendant currently on a layover in Dubai, wakes up with a horrific hangover from a long night of partying. As she turns to regard the sleeping man beside her, she realizes he’s been murdered and she’s covered with his blood. Did she do this during a blackout, and if not, who did and why had she been spared? And so the lies begin, for if she’s discovered, don’t they hang women in Dubai without due process? Cassie must find out why Alex was targeted, who knows about her...
