No woman is ever ready to care for a sick parent or to watch her daughter grow up and live on her own. But in "Necessary Places", Anna Donoghue has to confront both inevitable realities at once. After enduring a quiet but emotionally... Read More

Few parasites are as ugly as the tapeworm, with its suckers and hooks, proglottids budding off its head and neck, and the ability to grow thirty-two feet long. But nobody could seriously expect anything that lives in the human intestine... Read More

Imagine being able to talk from the grave, reflecting on your behavior, your life, and your friends and family. This is the premise of Susan Hahn’s novel about a family of Hungarian Jewish immigrants who settle in Chicago and struggle... Read More

“Why it says to the world what the world wants to hear: that nothing goes better with depravity than vanity,” claims the narrator of "Persecution". Like the author’s debut, The Worst Intentions, the vanity of the Italian... Read More

"The Wayward Moon" is a magnificent piece of historical fiction and a startlingly beautiful portrayal of a strong woman in an era when women were expected to be only a man’s wife and mother to his children. In a mesmerizing voice,... Read More

Summer camps and boarding schools are ideal settings for fiction; the removal of parents from the equation expands the possibilities significantly. That’s Not a Feeling, by Dan Josefson, combines that isolated sense of setting—The... Read More

With a tsunami about to overrun their home, the islanders of East Pukapuka stand with hands linked, facing the end that their gods have created for them. But one small girl named Butter is missing, as she desperately tries to rescue the... Read More

It’s mid-August of 1953, and fourteen-year-old Larry Carstairs and friend and classmate Andy Dellums have just arrived at Boy Scout Camp Greavy, near Traverse City, Michigan. With any luck at all, Larry figures, he’ll get to stay an... Read More