A Scottish castle, birdwatching and finding one’s flock are at the center of the charming middle-grade novel Across the Pond by Joy McCullough (Blood Water Paint; A Field Guide to Getting Lost; Champ and Major: First Dogs). When Callie’s parents inherit a Scottish castle, she’s thrilled at the prospect of a fresh start. But Callie’s hopes of …
From Shelf Awareness for Readers November 15, 2019 On the last page of A Pilgrimage to Eternity, journalist Timothy Egan (The Immortal Irishman) reflects on his thousand-mile journey. “The Via Francigena is a trail of ideas, and it helps to walk with eyes open–otherwise you miss the bread crumbs of epiphany along the way.” Egan’s …
From Shelf Awareness for Readers November 15, 2019: Welcome to the small town of Odsburg, Wash., where mountain lions live in basements, a “strange skinless guy” hangs out in the town square, and a couple is so hungry they eat themselves, literally, out of house and home. Odsburg by Matt Tompkins (Souvenirs: And Other Stories), is narrated …
Bryce Andrews chronicles the life of a grizzly bear named Willie and her three cubs in Down From The Mountain: the Life and Death of a Grizzly Bear. Andrews, who works a ranch in Montana’s Mission Valley, reports first-hand about the encroachment of both man and bear on each other’s environments. Both a conservation polemic and …
From Shelf Awareness for Readers May 15, 2018; Chuck Palahniuk: ‘A Creature of Infinite Light & Love’ Chuck Palahniuk is the author of more than 17 fictional works, including Fight Club, Invisible Monsters, Rant and[…] Make Something Up. He lives in the Pacific Northwest. We talked with him recently about Adjustment Day (Norton, $26.95), his first novel in four years.What did you learn …
Domenico Starnone’s Ties is an expertly crafted short novel that is charmingly intimate, disarmingly chatty and laced with some walloping surprises. Its Italian publication so captivated Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri (whose memoir In Other Words documents her study of Italian) that she translated the novel into English, and superbly so. The novel is a meditation on love–what is …
Laurie Frankel writes novels, reads novels, teaches other people to write novels, and raises a small person who reads and would like someday to write novels in Seattle, Wash. In Frankel’s latest novel, This Is How It Always Is (Flatiron Books), the youngest of five boys decides he wants to be a girl, and his …
