With the Holiday Travel Season upon us, my thoughts wonder to what to pack for the train, plane or automobile trip ahead. But then, when packing for a trip I am always torn about what reading material to bring. In the past, I traveled Europe with one suitcase for clothes and one full of books. Read the review...

What a wonderful love story this is. It begins with love at first sight and takes the reader on a tumultuous trip tas the main characters find each other again. The characters are fascinating, good and bad, altruistic and selfish, they all seem interesting- people you would like to know! Read the review...

In most novels a surprise ending seems like a speedy exit- or a tricky re-interpretation of the truth as the reader has come to know it. Does the reader re-read? Or accept the clever twist that allows the ending? In this novel the stories that make up the eight primary books of the novel are as independent as short stories. Read the review...

I felt an instant connection with the title of Giulia Melucci’s recent book I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti . Not only do I often seek comfort in the form of calories, I’m pretty sure that spaghetti is proof of a benevolent Higher Power somewhere in the universe. Read the review...

Maria Laurino in her latest book, Old World Daughter, New World Mother: An Education in Love and Freedom seeks to reconcile “ two dominant, divergent traditions: a fatalistic Mediterranean culture in which familial dependence is prized and a ruggedly individualistic American culture that neglects its needy dependents, young and old.” Read the review...

When asked to review Annie Solomon’s latest work, One Deadly Sin (Forever Hachette Book Group; 0446178446), I was secretly pleased. It gave me a legit reason to indulge in the guilty pleasure of reading a romance novel. Read the review...

Whatever happened to the beguiling witches who took the fictional town of Eastwick by storm in John Updike's 1984 novel? In "The Widows of Eastwick," (Knopf Publishing, 978-0-307-26960-7) author John Updike provides those answers, but readers may wish their follow-up adventures were left to their imaginations. Read the review...

A man wanders his neighborhood, late at night and encounters another man, out walking his dog in the wee hours of the morning. The first tells the second he is suffering from writers block. The second says, let me tell you a story. So begins The Feast of Love by Charles Baxter. Read the review...

Set during a New England summer in Towne, Massachusettes, July and August introduces readers to Great-Aunt Lily, the maiden aunt of a varied family while letting the reader in on a family as they converge in Towne for the summer. Read the review...

Maria Galante, the heroine of Francesca Marciano’s novel, The End of Manners,is a food photographer made famous by a chance photograph that is nvited to join the famed gonzo journalist Imo Glass on a journey that takes them into Afghanistan in search of a story. Read the review...

Eating can be a sensuous experience. In Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love, Vapnyar's offers a collection of short stories about a group of immigrant New Yorkers that reveal their attitudes toward love and home through their relationship with food. Read the review...

What is it to be an Israeli immigrant to the United States as a young teenager? In Danit Brown's Ask for a Convertible Osnat, a thirteen year old with an Israeli mother and an American father is newly transplanted to Michigan. Read the review...

Julie Buxbaum’s The Opposite of Love is an exceptional first novel. The main character, Emily, is an ivy league educated New York lawyer with an attentive boyfriend, an absentee father, a deceased mother, and a supportive grandfather. Read the review...

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Palace of Illusions is the re-imagining of an Indian myth, the tale of The Marabharat, from the perspective of the Queen Panchaali. Panchaali was the wife of five Pandava brothers and led her husbands and country into a civil war. Read the review...

Shirley Abbott, in her 2008 novel, The Future of Love, combines modern dramatic fiction with an extended cast of characters living in Manhattan from 2001 to 2002. The falling of the World Trade Center serves as a life changing catalyst for some and allows others to more clearly define their feelings for their significant others.
Read the review...

Anyone who's had a fleeting moment of doubt regarding their choice in a partner will enjoy Emily Giffin's "Love the One You're With." Ellen Graham's life is on track in more ways than one. She followed her passion and makes a living as a prolific photographer in New York City. She recently married Andy, a successful, confident man who's easy on the eyes and is the brother of her best girlfriend, Margot. And, best of all, Andy absolutely adores Ellen. Read the review...

Dorothy Koomson’s, My Best Friend’s Girl, is an easy read. The writing is quick and accessible. It is a classic in the English modern farce style. The plot is the tale of the broken hearted Kamryn and how she learns to love again through the adoption of her dead best friend’s daughter. It is almost pulpy, in that the story includes cheating fiancés, childhood abuse, physical abuse, foster homes and cancer. Read the review...

Ha Jin’s A Free Life tells the story of Nan a Chinese academic, and immigrant, over twenty years in the United States. His is a success story, but he is personally unfulfilled. Ha Jin does not give the reader pat answers or mollifying plot leaps. The running theme of Nan’s detachment from China, his motherland, serves as a greater question. Are we, as individuals, what we have come from or what we make of ourselves?
Read the review...