Book Reviews
Then Like the Blind Man: Orbie’s Story
Orbie is a nine-year-old whose father died in a tragic incident at the steel mill where he worked, an incident blamed on a black worker’s carelessness. Read On
Americashire
Americashire is the story of an American woman married to a British man, who is persuaded to move to her husband’s country and finally ends up settling in a peaceful (but eccentrically British) village in the Cotswolds. Read On
Fireseed One
In the year 2089, global warming has split the world into three sections – the Arctic-area Ocean Dominion, the Land Dominion just to the south, and the dangerous, only somewhat habitable Hotzone, where going outside without a special suit leaves you burned beyond recognition. Read On
Martin McMillan and the Secret of the Ruby Elephant
Martin McMillan is excited to spend time with his friend Isabel, visiting Chicago six months after their adventure together in Peru. Read On
The Knighting of Sir Kaye
The Knighting of Sir Kaye is the charming beginning to a children’s series featuring boy knight Sir Kaye and his trusty squire, Reggie Stork (the narrator), in a kingdom that has fallen on difficult times since the death of its former king, a good and wise man. Read On
The Glister Journals: Bronze
Allison is starting high school in a new home and a new town, having moved from Los Angeles to the Sierra Nevada foothills. Read On
Final Payment
Kristy McCarthy, reporter at Tampa Herald, is investigating the death of Harry Dewars, the husband of the owner of the newspaper. Read On
Someone Else’s Fairytale
Chloe Winters is a 22-year-old senior and aspiring valedictorian at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque who is studying to be a forensic scientist. Read On
The Weldon File
The Weldon File begins with Morris Jackson Rives disclaiming responsibility for the hit-and-run killing of a Guatemalan gardener by his drunk, married lover, Karen Moore. Read On
Truth City
Truth City is a perfect world where the all-knowing Truth Machine keeps society safe and honest. Read On
Bliss: A Marriage Proposal for Charles Stephen Hughes
BLISS is a collection of poetry and short prose–romantic, erotic, sensual and affectionate–from one man to another, the love of his life. Read On
HAEE: The Cat with a Crooked Tail
Thhe simple but poignant story of Haee, a cat with a crooked tail, who lives a comfortable and worry-free life with his loving family. Read On
In a Small Town
IN A SMALL TOWN effectively reveals the grittiness of police life, conveying a special ability to separate the experiences on the job with personal emotions for the most part, that allows the policemen to do their job without falling apart. Read On
Time Donors Wanted
Jarvis Sloan is President of LifeSolutions, devoted to improving family life and sexual relations. Following the advice of a colleague and his extra-marital affair partner; he creates TimeDonors, a spin-off company that aims to more directly help failing marriages by using a new kind of server that leaves no electronic trail and all sexual hook ups between people stay anonymous. Read On
Comfortably Unaware
Comfortably Unaware maintains that our food choices are depleting our planet’s resources because “the major cause of biodiversity loss on our planet is from the livestock we raise for food and from overfishing of our oceans,” and calls for the consumer to be aware of the brainwashing by the media and become more educated on how to make choices that will save our planet. Read On
The Eden Prescription
The Eden Prescription is a tight and complex mystery thriller about the battle behind the race to find a cure for cancer. Read On
Sleeper’s Run
In this suspenseful, tightly written thriller, protagonist Eric Caine, an ex-Air Force Special Operations Command pararescuer is on the run, trying to find out who set him up to be the fall guy in an international assassination plot. Read On
The Angry Woman Suite
Frances Grayson never quite gets over been raised by the overbearing, obsessive and disturbed women in his family. His demons raise their ugly heads, especially with his stepdaughter Elyse who tries desperately to maintain a sense of ‘normalcy’ for herself and her young sister Bean. Read On
One Pink Line
One Pink Line is a beautifully written and well-crafted story about Sydney, a senior in College, who gets pregnant by someone other than the love of her life, but decides to keep her baby. Read On
Amo, Amas, Amat
Appropriately titled, Amo, Amas, Amat, which is the Latin conjugation of the verb to love, this book is about love triangles and connections in life and love. Read On
The Able Seaman’s Mate
Author William Cheevers provides a glimpse into America’s cultural history in this beautifully written tale about Irish immigrant James Patrick Delaney adjusting to life in America. Read On
Blood Porn
This fast-paced mystery begins with a missing person—Jeremy Young, a runaway from Maple Grove, an institution for juveniles who’ve run afoul of the law. Jeremy’s brother, Derek, sees him in a porn film and contacts detective Brad Frame and his side-kick, former probation officer Sharon Porter, for help in locating him. Read On
The Girl You Deserve
Edite Vidins, a woman of Latvian heritage raised in Australia, begins this compelling memoir with the disclosure that the love of her young life, a man named Warwick, has died of hypothermia after wandering out of a bar and into a blizzard. Read On
White Seed:The Untold Story of the Lost Colony of Roanoke
A group of settlers from England, organized by Sir Walter Raleigh, are charged with landing in the Chesapeake Bay area to establish a colony. A previous expedition in Roanoke ended badly after soldiers beheaded an Indian chief, accusing him of stealing an axe. But the subsequent trip goes awry when the pilot becomes more interested in chasing the Spanish bullion on their ships than completing his mission. Read On
Easy
Jackie has made the unfortunate decision of following her high school boyfriend, Kennedy to the state school he chose, rather than follow her talents to the first rate music university programs she could have gotten into. Thinking that their love would last—or at least continue on campus, Jackie is blindsided when she is promptly dumped by Kennedy and left in a place that she isn’t sure she should even be. Read On
Charlie Chan Meets Tom Swifty
This little book opens with Charlie Chan sitting on a bench talking to his friend Tom Swifty, who decides to make a list of the pearls of wisdom inspired by Chan’s life and experience as a famous detective. And so begins a list of Tom Swiftys, which the author quotes Wikipedia defining as: “a phrase in which a quoted sentence is linked by a pun to the manner in which it is attributed.” Read On
Wal-Mart’s Egonomics Always
The tale of how ADDvantage Media Group, Inc, (AMG) a vendor of shopping cart calculators, partnered with Wal-Mart and were systematically destroyed by the corporate mega-store through continual mishandlings, turnovers in high level associates who were working on the accounts and an overall attitude of greed and deception. Read On
Flat-Out Love
Flat-Out Love is a warm and witty novel of family love and dysfunction, deep heartache and raw vulnerability, with a bit of mystery and one whopping, knock-you-to-your-knees romance. Read On
Diary of a Mad Fat Girl
Ace’s troubles start when her beach trip falls through. Before she knows what’s happening, the sarcastic protagonist of “Diary of a Mad Fat Girl” finds one friend ensnared in a sex scandal and another friend has them spying on her dirt-bag husband. Read On
Second Sight: Views From An Eye Doctor’s Odyssey
With honesty, candor and a great sense of humor, David Paton MD, brings to the pages of his memoir the very essence of his journey though his life and career. Read On
A Secret of the Universe
In delving into the depths of human nature and rationality as few have before, A Secret of the Universe provides a new take on the battle between faith and skepticism for the post-9/11 world.
Able Was I
Able Was I begins by introducing us to Grey Tigrett, an American college student tooling around Italy for a summer before graduation. On the island of Elba (yes, Napoleon’s Elba) Grey, who came to the island with a longtime girlfriend, has a brief but significant amorous encounter with an Italian man named Antonio.
Julian Schnabel: Navigation Drawings
Essay by David Moos. Includes thirty-nine full color reproductions. Read On
The Flower Man’s Daughter
A skillfully crafted novel that recounts the C.I.A.-backed violent coup that toppled Chilean President Salvador Allende in 1973. Read On
Warhol from the Sonnaben Collection
This beautifully illustrated book includes essays by Picasso biographer John Richardson and leading Warhol scholar Brenda Richardson. Read On
Zeitoun
Eggers’s riveting nonfiction book, three years in the making, explores the protagonist’s roots in Syria, his marriage to Kathy–an American who converted to Islam–and their children, and the surreal atmosphere (in New Orleans and the United States generally) in which what happened to Abdulrahman Zeitoun was possible.
Reviewed by IR Staff Read On
Hymie and the Angel
A funny, phantasmagorical and spiritual look at loss, guilt, fear of death, and the will to live as experienced by a Jewish immigrant in Newark in 1933. Read On
Joy Writing
A how-to guide for aspiring writers that ends up containing none of the prescriptive rules and one-size-fits-all advice so often associated with the genre. Read On
The Skye in June
A beautifully written, convincing portrayal of a family, in which growth comes by squarely facing the past and accepting all of its truths. Read On
