neighbors

Alaska. I imagine it’s the most remote you can get while remaining on American soil. If you’ve ever wondered what it might be like to pack your bags and move there, save yourself the trip and read Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs first.

Lende, an obituary writer in the small town of Haines, brings her friends, family, and neighbors to life. And life is different there. Short growing seasons, the speed with which a “moose can turn a ten-year-old apple orchard into a few stumpy sticks or the way even a very young bear can rip the branches right off of a loaded cherry tree, not to

Close your eyes for a moment and remember the gang. You know, the one from your old neighborhood. Those kids you ran wild with when it was OK to be kids outdoors. Now imagine an act of violence by an unidentified assailant against one of those friends, and you’ve got M.O. Walsh’s My Sunshine Away.

I strongly identify with our narrator. He’s completely honest in his youthful self-absorption and total lack of insight. Alternately a suspect in the investigation, then absolved, a suspect once again, he himself never quite denies this guilt or claims innocence. And the struggle for truth is

Retired Army sniper Finn O'Donnell thinks he's buying a quiet little ranch near the sleepy little town of Burnt Boot, Texas. Near his family but far enough away that he can enjoy the peace, quiet and solitude after two tours in the Middle East. What Finn gets is a ranch right smack dab in the middle of two feuding Burnt Boot founding families whose shenanigans are always causing some uproar, a foul mouthed parrot, a tiny dog, an interfering bossy grandma and her busybody friends from town, and a ranch hand who hates ranching and her nephew who are trying to avoid witness protection. Not

I recall, as a fairly sheltered college student, traveling to New York City for the wedding of a distant relative. It hadn’t occurred to me that there could be neighborhoods in this crowded place of constant motion. When I supposed that it must get lonely living where you would never serendipitously bump into someone you knew, a cousin tried to set me straight by explaining that people frequent the same places and thus you would often encounter the same people. I don’t think I truly grasped what he was saying until reading The New Yorkers.

The inhabitants of a New York neighborhood, all with

I recall, as a fairly sheltered college student, traveling to New York City for the wedding of a distant relative. It hadn’t occurred to me that there could be neighborhoods in this crowded place of constant motion. When I supposed that it must get lonely living where you would never serendipitously bump into someone you knew, a cousin tried to set me straight by explaining that people frequent the same places and thus you would often encounter the same people. I don’t think I truly grasped what he was saying until reading The New Yorkers.

The inhabitants of a New York neighborhood, all with