What makes us choose a particular book to read? The most obvious is that we read a review or a brief synopsis or the dust jacket plot description and it sounds like a story we’d enjoy. Or, it may be the author’s track record and that we’ve read other titles by him or her and liked them. For me with ...

Where does our sense of right and wrong come from? Do we develop our morality from our specific culture or religious teachings, or are there some universal facets to it that all of us, as humans, possess? And what do we even mean by the word “morality?” How can we define it in way that everyone can relate to when ...

Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief is, quite simply, a wonder. You’ll find yourself fascinated (perhaps unexpectedly) by all the twists and turns and divergent paths Orlean takes you on. Inspired by a small newspaper article she read about the arrest of four men (three Seminoles, one white) for the theft of rare orchids from a protected Florida swamp, in Orlean’s ...

When free books are offered to me, I almost always take them. Thus Three Junes came to me in a stack of books from a daughter who is moving. It’s a treat to come across a jewel of a book that I’ve never heard of and that’s been in circulation several years. The gold foil sticker on the cover caught ...

There are numerous elements at play in this page-turner novel about Nazi occupied France. In the tradition of All the Light We Cannot See and Suite Francaise we become immersed in the lives of ordinary French citizens who do extraordinary things when faced with horrifying challenges. That’s not to say that The Nightingale is as well written as the other ...

Whether you’re a Sherlock Holmes fan from the original books and short stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or perhaps from one of the many adaptations for the screen (both big and small), you’ve likely always been impressed by the detective’s mental acuity and uncanny abilities of observation. Holmes solves crimes other detectives give up on and points out faulty ...

With the publication of her third novel, The Goldfinch, which won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, Mississippian Donna Tartt’s place in literary history was assured. Her first book, The Secret History, is every bit as fascinating and has been hooking readers with its blend of chilling mystery and social commentary since its publication in 1992. Born in Greenwood and ...

This novel of the Great War tells a story of personal growth, sacrifice and family liaisons, but it also tells a not-so-well-known story of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps of World War I.  There are  accounts of battlefield medical care and surgery of that war that are often overlooked too. Field hospitals were a far cry from the advances that ...

As much as I enjoy reading books set in other countries and eras, in the spirit of variety I try to read some books set in this country and in a contemporary time period. A Gate at the Stairs takes place in a university town in Wisconsin and on a farm in a rural part of the state. It’s a ...

There’s a new cookbook on the scene and it’s an outstanding addition to any collection. It all started for cookbook author and blogger Mary Foreman with the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. At that time she was working in the corporate legal department of one of the Coast’s larger gaming companies. With the offices destroyed and the future on the Coast ...