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 Avallon is where high society goes to see and be seen, and where the mountain sweetwater in the fountains and spas can wash away all…
Mary Stewart’s novels have a marvelous sense of place, and that is one of many reasons I enjoy reading them. They also tend to feature smart, independent women as heroines, which is another huge mark in their favor for me. With this month’s TBR theme of “Location, location, location,” I dove right into a Mary…
To this day, if you want a quickie divorce, you go to Reno. Six weeks of residency and bingo-bango: freedom. This is what our Depression-era heroines do in Six Weeks in Reno, hoping to divorce their lousy spouses and move on with their lives. It’s a very flawed book but parts of it do sing. …
On the heels of 2023’s Barbie movie comes Let’s Call Her Barbie, which takes a fictionalized look at Ruth Handler’s complicated rise to the top of and fall from the toymaking world, as well as the creation of the iconic doll. The novel is a fascinating and mainly factual story of the inner workings of…
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 been labeled a hunting accident—a stray bullet—but the story doesn’t sit right. Johnny’s camera and notebooks, essential to his work documenting rare owls in the…
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 Elsewhere during one of my Steals and Deals searches. At first, I didn’t recognize the title, but then I saw the original (and much better)…
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, witty, and intensely cerebral. Nope. The book is a slog—it’s dense, meandering, routinely pointless, and filled with characters who are, without exception, deeply unlikable. It…
Quinn by Sally Mandel was originally published in 1982, and it is set in 1964, so I guess that makes it, technically, an historical. I do know that I remember reading it in my teens, and it has remained a favorite of mine for decades. I decided to revisit it after an AAR discussion about…
Jackpot Summer is both funny and poignant – a wild and wooly story of four siblings who suddenly get it all and then realize you can’t buy love. The Jacobson siblings are living their very ordinary, messy lives when they receive a sudden financial windfall. Of meagre means, they grew up saving money and budgeting…
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 put this one down. The setup is irresistible: New York City’s fire department, especially after 9/11, is known for their heroism and skill and one…
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