Book reviews, new books, publishing news, book giveaways, and author interviews

Review: My Happy Life by Lydia Millet

Review: My Happy Life by Lydia Millet

If you're new here, why not subscribe to our email updates or follow us on Facebook? You can also add us to your Google Reader. Thanks for visiting! I purchased Lydia Millets'My Happy Life'some years ago on the strength of her book'Oh Pure and Radiant Heart, which I remember being a tremendous read. I wonder now whether Id feel the same way upon...

Review: Lord of Darkness by Elizabeth Hoyt

Review: Lord of Darkness by Elizabeth Hoyt

Whew, here I am, having emerged from air after slogging my way through Elizabeth Hoyts'Lord of Darkness, the latest in her Maiden Lane series. Though not a long novel, Lord of Darkness certainly feels it: I suspect that there might be some sort of time dilation powers hidden within its pages. Theres a reason that category romance novels tend to...

Book Review: The Sad Truth About Happiness by Anne Giardini

Book Review: The Sad Truth About Happiness by Anne Giardini

There are many kinds of bad novels. There are those that are simply bad for me, those that are deliciously terrible, and those that are merely dull and purposeless, warranting a why bother? response. But perhaps the very worst of these is the novel that is disappointing, the novel that has that potential to be so brilliant, but simply is not. Anne...

Memoirs as narratives and January First by Michael Schofield

Memoirs as narratives and January First by Michael Schofield

  Although I read 'January First late last year, its probably apt that its my first review for this new year. The books title is one of semantic multiplicity: it represents not only one familys efforts to put their troubled daughter January (Jani)s needs first, but also the sheer atypicality of January and her needs, as...

Dinner parties and Rick Riordans The Lost Hero

Dinner parties and Rick Riordan's The Lost Hero

  The other night I attended a Christmas dinner for fourteen people, only a handful of whom actually knew each other. We all know how these events play out: awkward introductions where people try to define their lives as concisely as possible so as not to bore the others, and yet verbosely enough that they might find something, anything in common so that...

Baked beans, flashbacks and The Self-Preservation Society by Kate Harrison

Baked beans, flashbacks and The Self-Preservation Society by Kate Harrison

As we speak my mother-in-law is planning for the apocalypse. Or, at least, three days worth of the apocalypse, which she is expecting to coincide (perhaps fittingly enough) with her husbands sixtieth birthday. Her laundry is a-glug with bottled water, her pantry stocked with starches galore, and shes planning on hitting the supermarket the...