Cloud Cuckoo Land. It is literary fiction. It is historical fiction. It is contemporary fiction. It is science fiction. It is a masterpiece. Anthony Doerr, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2014 for his great World War II novel All the Light We Cannot See, has returned with an even better, more inventive creation. This genre-bending…
I now have read all three of Amor Towles’ novels, each published five years apart. The stories are as different as they can be, but all are gems in their own right. Towles’ newest, The Lincoln Highway, confirms to me that he is of one of the great novelists of our time. This road-trip tale,…
Charlie Gilmour finds himself an unwitting and, at first, unwilling caretaker of a bird in Featherhood: A Memoir of Two Fathers and a Magpie. He is gradually won over by the bird’s mischievous personality, and I dare you not to be charmed as well. The serendipitous timing of the magpie’s appearance in Charlie’s life also comes at a moment when he is rebuilding his relationship with his biological father and contemplating starting his own family. Read on to learn how Charlie’s journey through featherhood teaches him what it means to be a father.
Naomi Hirahara’s new historical thriller tells a riveting story about the Japanese community that settled in Chicago from the World War II internment camps. Hirahara is an award-winning mystery author and a former editor for the largest Japanese American newspaper in the United States. She drew on these talents to create Clark and Division, about…
I admit I am a bit of a chicken. I marvel at people who do scary things I never dream of doing. Bungie jumping. Going into space. Flying an airplane. It’s amazing I’m the daughter of a man who trained pilots how to fly in World War II. The beauty of books is that you…
