One of the things I’ve noticed since returning to the States after spending 10 years overseas is the increasing diversity of the population in general and of reading material in particular. This is such a positive trend and I’m really happy about it; in raising our kids to be aware of the world around them,…
Author Archives: Elizabeth
The Secret Life of a Fool: One Man’s Raw Journey from Shame to Grace
Secret Life of a Fool opens with a plane crash. Andrew Palau and his family were on their way to visit his inlaws in Jamaica (yeah, I know. Mine used to live in Hawaii, which was nice, but now they live in the California desert, a place without much in the way of ocean breezes…
Before the Poison
Chris Lowndes grew up in Yorkshire but left as a young man and moved to LA, where he had a successful career as a composer of music for films, what one character calls “the music no one listens to.” Now, aged about 60 and grieving the recent loss of his wife Laura to cancer, he’s…
Portrait of a Spy
Gabriel Allon is retired from the Israeli secret service, living in a small Cornish village, and restoring a Rembrandt. When he and Chiara (his drop-dead gorgeous wife, de rigeur for international spies) go up to London for a weekend to visit an art gallery, Gabriel sees a suicide bomber heading towards Covent Garden. He tries…
A Good American
A Good American follows the story of a family, from Frederick and Jette who immigrate from Germany in 1904, through their son Joseph and daughter Rosa, through James, the narrator, and his 3 brothers and their subsequent families. It spans close to 100 years of American history as played out in this particular family’s life,…
The Old Romantic
Ken is the sort of octogenarian—cranky, foul-mouthed, needy, crass, impossible—that makes your own father-in-law look not so bad. He’s certainly been more than bad enough for his son, Nick. 20 years ago Nick, then called Gary, shook the dust off his feet and departed for Cambridge University, leaving his parents and brother behind. Since then,…
Heft
Kel Keller will break your heart. The second of two narrators in Heft, Kel is a high school senior with a secret—his mother, who’s raised him single-handedly, is rarely able to leave the house. He often comes home to find her passed out on the floor, a bottle of alcohol nearby, and he has taken…
The Demi-Monde: Winter
In order to train young soldiers to fight in ever-shifting war zones, the American military has created a simulated world for them called the Demi-Monde. It is populated by Dupes, each of whom has a counterpart in our world. And not just any counter-part—the Demi-Monde contains Nazi generals, Rasputin, Alesteir Crowley (occult mastermind), Henry VIIIth,…
On Reading: Join the Bess Crawford Read Along
Raise your hand if you’ve been watching Downton Abbey! If you’re not, really seriously do (I hear the first season is on Netflix, and you can watch previous shows on www.pbs.org). It’s worth the hype, even though it’s a total soap. It’s a little odd for me to be caught up in a national phenomena….
A Heart for Freedom
It’s not that Chai Ling was ever a normal girl, but her childhood was unexceptional for its time and place—the daughter of two army doctors, growing up in China and learning early on to care for her siblings while her parents were away. She was always motivated and highly intelligent, and she won awards and…
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Jennifer Donovan
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