Book of the Week: ‘Manhattan Beach’
Manhattan BeachJennifer Egan2017, 438 pagesHistorical Fiction Twelve-year-old Anna Kerrigan has a special relationship with her father that she understands is markedly different than what she shares with her younger, disabled sister and her beautiful, tired mother. When she accompanies her father on one of his always-mysterious business outings and meets Dexter Styles at his Manhattan Beach home, she has a feeling that this meeting is...
Book of the Week: ‘Universal Harvester’
Universal HarvesterJohn Darniell2017, 214 pagesFiction John Darniell’s Universal Harvester largely follows Jeremy Heldt, a video store clerk living (resentfully) in the town of Nevada, Iowa, with his widowed father. What begins as a poetically humorous depiction of life as a twenty-something in the Midwest turns slowly into a dark gothic mystery novel when customers of the video store begin to complain about mysterious splices in the...
Book of the Week: ‘Young Men and Fire’
Young Men and Fire Norman Maclean 1992, 301 pages Nonfiction Winner of the 1992 National Book Critic Circle Award, Maclean’s Young Men and Fire is a gripping account of a terrible fire in 1949 that claimed the lives of 13 U.S. Forest Service smokejumpers. It starts with a lightning storm in the Montana wilderness and follows the brave young men that were sent to fight one of the fires left in the storm’s wake. What seems like an...
Book of the Week: ‘The Orkney Scroll’
The Orkney Scroll: An Archaeological MysteryLyn Hamilton2006, 261 pagesFiction/Mystery Toronto antiques dealer Lara McClintock is asked by a wealthy client to authenticate a rare Mackintosh writing cabinet (as in Glasgow’s famous architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh). Lara thinks it is genuine, but wants to do some research to make sure. But before she can do so, the client buys the piece. When later it appears to be a...
Book of the Week: ‘Temptation of Forgiveness’
The Temptation of ForgivenessDonna Leon2018, 300 pagesFiction/Mystery Commissario Guido Brunetti is asked by a colleague of his wife if he can help her. She thinks that her teenage son is using drugs, and buying them from someone near his school. A short time later this woman’s husband is attacked and he ends up in a coma in the hospital. Are the two events linked? Brunetti begins to investigate, but this tangled web of a tale leads...
