We love books!
THE HEAVEN & EARTH GROCERY STORE by James McBride is the best book I read last year! It’s that rare book that keeps you so intrigued and involved that you can’t put it down until it’s done, and then as you get closer to the final page, you want it to slow down. You don’t want it to end because you love the characters this author creates!
“As hard as he tried, he could not erase the memory of the woman with the shining black hair, sparkling eyes, easy laugh, and magic marbles; he could not forget the friend who thrust his finger out and held it in the dark like a beacon, all night till the sun came up. The memory of that finger, that one solitary white finger, reaching out in friendship and solidarity, shone in his memory like a bright, shining star.”
THE COVENANT OF WATER by Abraham Verghese
“A shimmering evocation of a bygone India and of the passage of time itself, The Covenant of Water is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, and a humbling testament to the difficulties undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today. It is one of the most masterful literary novels published in recent years.”
It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. If ever there was a story for our times, this is it. “Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit.“
There’s a lot of emotion packed inside this little book. “It is a hot summer in rural Ireland. A child is taken by her father to live with relatives on a farm, not knowing when or if she will be brought home again. In the Kinsellas’ house, she finds an affection and warmth she has not known and slowly, in their care, begins to blossom. But there is something unspoken in this new household—where everything is so well tended to—and this summer must soon come to an end.”
HARLEM SHUFFLE: A NOVEL by Colson Whitehead
This is my favorite Colson Whitehead book so far and the other two I’ve read both won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. I just loved the characters. “…this gloriously entertaining novel is “fast-paced, keen-eyed and very funny … about race, power and the history of Harlem all disguised as a thrill-ride crime novel.“ (San Francisco Chronicle).
ORDINARY GRACE: A NOVEL by William Kent Krueger
This one isn’t new but it’s really good! It won the presitigious Edgar Award for Best Novel in 2014. “Ordinary Grace is a brilliantly moving account of a boy standing at the door of his young manhood, trying to understand a world that seems to be falling apart around him. It is an unforgettable novel about discovering the terrible price of wisdom and the enduring grace of God.“
LUCY BY THE SEA: A NOVEL by Elizabeth Strout
This book may not be for everyone. Strout has won a Pulitzer Prize for Olive Kitteridge (which I loved), but my wife also read this and could not understand what I liked about it. It is set in the frantic, frightening beginnings of Covid, “a poignant, pitch-perfect novel about a divorced couple stuck together during lockdown—and the love, loss, despair, and hope that animate us even as the world seems to be falling apart.” (You may recall I also loved Oh William! so I am definitely a Strout fan.)
THE LOST KINGS: A NOVEL by Tyrell Johnson
This is just a good, old fashioned mystery story. It’s not literature and it’s not trying to be. “Twins Jeanie and Jamie King are inseparable. Stuck in a cabin in rural Washington with their alcoholic father, they cling to one another for safety and companionship. Until one night, when their father comes home covered in blood. The next day, he is gone … and so is Jamie.“
THE LAST THING HE TOLD ME: A NOVEL by Laura Dave
Another mystery story. This one is now an Apple + TV series starring Jennifer Garner. “Before Owen Michaels disappears, he smuggles a note to his beloved wife of one year: ‘Protect her’. Despite her confusion and fear, Hannah Hall knows exactly to whom the note refers—Owen’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Bailey. Hannah quickly realizes her husband isn’t who he said he was. And that Bailey just may hold the key to figuring out Owen’s true identity—and why he really disappeared.”