Books & Bites: August 2023

Lionel Trilling said of Orwell's masterpiece, "1984 is a profound, terrifying, and wholly fascinating book. It is a fantasy of the political future, and like any such fantasy, serves its author as a magnifying device for an examination of the present."

By turns funny, wise and heartbreaking, this Irish Tales of the City is O'Carroll's second book in his Mrs. Browne trilogy. The story continues in 1973 with Agnes Browne at center stage. A widow raising six sons and a daughter, whom she refers to collectively as the "chisellers," she lives in public housing in inner-city Dublin.

The third installment of the Agnes Browne trilogy, in which O'Carroll follows the fortunes and foibles of the Dublin widow and her large brood all the way to Agnes's happy end.

The Mammy features pitch-perfect dialogue, lightning wit, and a host of colorful characters. Earthy and exuberant, the novel brilliantly captures the brash energy and cheerful irreverence of working-class Irish life.

As Thomas Jefferson's oldest daughter, Patsy becomes his helpmate, protector, and constant companion in the wake of her mother's death. She travels with him when he becomes American minister to France. It is in Paris that Patsy learns about her father's liaison with Sally Hemings, a slave girl her own age. Meanwhile, Patsy has fallen in love with her father's protégé William Short, a staunch abolitionist and ambitious diplomat. Her choices will follow her in the years to come, and as scandal, tragedy, and poverty threaten her family Patsy must decide how much she will sacrifice to protect her father's reputation.

A story inspired by the marriage between Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh

When the host is found dead at a card game, four investigators - including Poirot himself - look for clues as they set out to discover which guest is the killer.

A wrenching story about what it means to be the daughter of a demanding parent, a revelatory window into the impact of divorce, and a searching reflection on the nature of art and criticism, The Critic's Daughter is an unflinching account of loss and grief-and a radiant testament of forgiveness and love.

A rollicking murder mystery set in Gold Rush California, as two young prostitutes follow a trail of missing girls. Monterey, 1851

A reimagining of Charles Dickens’s “David Copperfield” set in the mountains of southern Appalachia.

A great journey in a borrowed van that's long on joy in a dark, dark world

A terrifying mix of fact and fancy. Well researched, written in literate style, it comes to grips with the forces of evil incarnate, and there are not many who will be unmoved.

Daunis, who is part Ojibwe, defers attending the University of Michigan to care for her mother and reluctantly becomes involved in the investigation of a series of drug-related deaths.

The first lady Eleanor Roosevelt and the civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune work together for justice and equality.

The turbulent romance of Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler is shaped by the ravages of the Civil War and Reconstruction.

Longlisted for the New American Voices Award • “This is a story with so many twists and turns I was riveted through the last page.”—Jodi Picoult

A former couple pretend to be together for the sake of their friends during their annual getaway in Maine.

A dazzling and heartfelt novel about the disorientation of grief, the hollowness of the American Dream, and the bravery of rebuilding one's identity, as the remaining daughter of a self-made Chinese-American dynasty sets off across the world to define herself in the wake of her beloved sister's death

Harlow Smith thought she had finally achieved the quiet life she wanted-a little bookstore on Cape Cod, an apartment in her grandpa's house, a more or less happily single life-when the biggest secret from her past walked into town and changed everything. A kid walks into your bookstore and says to you, Guess what? I'm your son.

The first Miss Marple mystery, one which tests all her powers of observation and deduction.

I loved hearing about colonial history from one of the nation's Founding MOTHERS. 4 Stars from Katie A

What might have happened during the 11 days in which a rising mystery author went missing in 1926.

Lehane ventures beyond his acclaimed private eye series with this emotionally wrenching crime drama about the effects of a savage killing on a tightly knit, blue-collar Boston neighborhood.

ack, terminally ill and preparing to say goodbye to his family, has a miraculous recovery after his wife is killed in a car accident and struggles to reunite his family at her childhood home on the South Carolina oceanfront.

two remarkable characters, Claire Beauchamp Randall and Jamie Fraser, in a spellbinding novel of passion and history that combines exhilarating adventure with a love story for the ages.

hen an elderly priest is murdered, the killer searches the victim so roughly that his already ragged cassock is torn in the process. What was the killer looking for? And what had a dying woman confided to the priest on her deathbed only hours earlier?

A Black woman who becomes one of the most powerful people in the art and book world is forced to hide her true identity.

A haunting tale of human resilience and hope in the face of unrelieved horror, Albert Camus' iconic novel about an epidemic ravaging the people of a North African coastal town is a classic of twentieth-century literature.

The drama of a U.S. missionary family in Africa during a war of decolonization. At its center is Nathan Price, a self-righteous Baptist minister who establishes a mission in a village in 1959 Belgian Congo. The resulting clash of cultures is seen through the eyes of his wife and his four daughters.

While war and the Great Flu ravages 1918 Dublin, three women help expectant mothers who have been quarantined in a hospital.

When Mary Anning uncovers an unusual fossilized skeleton in the cliffs near her home on the English coast, she sets the religious fathers on edge, the townspeople to vicious gossip, and the scientific world alight. Luckily, Mary finds an unlikely champion in prickly Elizabeth Philpot, and in the struggle to be recognized in the wider world, Mary and Elizabeth discover that friendship is their greatest ally.

A masterpiece of spellbinding suspense, where evil wears the most innocent face of all...

As World War II draws to a close, refugees try to escape the war's final dangers, only to find themselves aboard a ship with a target on its hull

As desegregation comes to Boston’s public schools, a young Black man is found dead and a woman searches for her missing daughter.

Fiona Davis transports us back to 1950s Manhattan and glamorous Radio City Music Hall in her thrilling new novel about a talented young Rockette and a mysterious bomber terrorizing New York City. New York City, 1956

In the course of one week, Henry Devereaux, Jr., a once-promising novelist and now the middle-aged chairman of a university English department in hilarious disarray, faces an angry colleague, a curvaceous adjunct trying to seduce him, and a goose on local television--all while coming to terms with his philandering father, the dereliction of his youthful promise, and the ominous failure of certain vital body functions.

Returning from a continental honeymoon with his new wife, Lady Jane, Lenox is asked by a colleague in Parliament to consult in the murder of a footman, bludgeoned to death with a brick. His investigation uncovers some unsettling facts about the family he served and a strange, second identity that the footman himself cultivated.

Lying in Wait Reclusive Sally Diamond causes outrage by trying to incinerate her dead father.

Jane Smiley's most famous novel--King Lear on an Iowa farm--which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992. A Thousand Acres spins the most fundamental themes of truth, justice, love, and pride into a universally acclaimed masterpiece

This book is all about sleights of mind, and revealing that the main character isn't who the reader thought it was is an incredible one. 5 stars from Dot V

Oliver Ryan, handsome, charismatic, and successful, has long been married to his devoted wife, Alice. Together they write and illustrate award-winning children's books; their life together one of enviable privilege and ease--until, one evening after a delightful dinner, Oliver delivers a blow to Alice that renders her unconscious, and subsequently beats her into a coma.

Angeline Boulley takes us back to Sugar Island in this high-stakes thriller about the power of discovering your stolen history.

In the Galapagos Islands, where Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection was formed, Diana finds herself examining her relationships, her choices, and herself-and wondering if when she goes home, she too will have evolved into someone completely different

n incandescent novel from one of our greatest living novelists (The Times) about the inheritance of trauma, wonder, and love across three generations of women.

Leo can’t remember what happened the night of the accident. All she knows is that she left the party with her older sister, Nina, and Nina’s boyfriend, East. And now Nina is dead, killed by a drunk driver and leaving Leo with a hole inside her that’s impossible to fill.

June Hayward, a struggling writer, must conceal the fact that she stole Athena Liu’s just-finished masterpiece after Liu’s sudden death.