Fiction

Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty

Liane Moriarty’s Here One Moment opens with a terrific premise. After an irksome delay on a flight from Hobart to Sydney, a middle-aged woman rises from her seat, walks the…

Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy

Charlotte McConaghy’s Wild Dark Shore is one of my favorite reads of the last few years. It is the third of three books by McConaghy; Once There Were Wolves is…

Heart the Lover

Lily King

At the start of Lily King’s Heart the Lover, a novel of three parts, our narrator is in her final year of college. While the school she attends is never…

The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey

(originally published on December 25, 2019) Despite being a family of non-believers, every year we pull out our holiday paraphernalia. We dress the tree, hanging with care the delicate glass…

The Everlasting

The Everlasting begins where it ends: beneath a yew tree. Its first chapter, The First Death of Una Everlasting, reads like a eulogy written for a nation’s best. We’re told…

The Art of the Lie

Set in the ruthless, chaotic heart of 1749 London, this historical thriller is a masterclass in deception, survival, and the art of the long con. Hannah Cole, newly widowed and…

Wild Dark Shore

Emily Dickinson wrote that hope was the thing with feathers. After reading Charlotte McConaghy’s phenomenal Wild Dark Shore, it seems to me that hope is a seed. I confess that,…

The Listeners

JANUARY 1942. THE AVALLON HOTEL AND SPA offers elegance and sophistication in an increasingly ugly world. Run with precision by June Hudson, the hotel’s West Virginia born-and-bred general manager, the…

A Sea of Unspoken Things

After 20 years away, James Golden returns to Hawthorne, a remote town nestled within Six Rivers National Forest, to settle the affairs of her twin brother, Johnny. His death has…

Elsewhere

In 2022, I was, in the best way, destroyed by Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. I thought it was my first experience with her fiction—until I came across…

Creation Lake

Rachel Kushner’s Creation Lake has been met with rapturous praise. It’s vital and profound, it consolidates Kushner’s status as one of finest novelists working in the English language, and daring,…

Devil’s Kitchen

I am new to Candice Fox’s writing, but after inhaling Devil’s Kitchen, I’ll be reading more of her work. I know this sounds like hyperbole but, truly, I could NOT…