Reviews

A friend of mine, who loves mysteries, recommended Evidence of Life by Barbara Taylor Sissel.  She said it is a book to put on my To Read list, but after reading the intriguing summary I gave it a higher priority and read it immediately. 

I've got a literary crush on Daniel Woodrell, who's the author of Winter's Bone and once lived right here in Johnson County, Kansas, before settling back down in his ancestral home in the Missouri Ozarks near the Arkansas border.

I was sitting on the patio of my favorite bakery on a drizzly Saturday morning, eating a croissant, when the woman doing a crossword next to me noticed the title of the book I was reading: Methland. "Excuse me," she said, "but can you tell me a little about that book?"

From the masculine equestrian outfits that made her Louis XV's favorite, to the regal counterrevolutionary gowns in green and violet that exposed her as an enemy of the state, Marie Antoinette's fashion statements were always unfailingly both fabulous and controversial. In Queen of Fashion, Caroline Weber paints a comprehensive portrait of the fashion icon, from Dauphine until death.

I like to think of myself as a modern woman -- cool, level-headed, doesn’t cry easily, likes Duran Duran, but not too much. 



Leave it to Rolling Stone editor Rob Sheffield and his ruminations on Pat Benatar, Whitney Houston, Sleater-Kinney and Pavement to make me cry like a baby. It also wreaked havoc on my bank account as I went on an iTunes downloading spree. Hanson's "MMMBop," anyone?

Coauthored by John Green and David Levithan, Will Grayson, Will Grayson follows the crossing paths of two high schoolers, who incidentally both happen to be named Will Grayson.

Seth Kincaid doesn’t remember he was married to beautiful and courageous Callie. He remembers everything from his tragic accident and the Civil War, but not her. He’s headed to Colorado where he grew up. And Callie is too.

In Love Comes Softly, Marty’s dreams of covered wagons, horses, and green pastures comes to a terrifying halt when her husband dies unexpectedly, leaving her alone on the frontier.

Amy Gallup has spent the last 20 or so years remembering her past with its joys and triumphs, teaching online writing classes, and writing in her notebook and her online blog.  But things are about to change: Amy falls in her backyard, hits her head, and is taken to the emergency room.   She comes home thinking that everything is normal, including a gigantic hea

Hilarious and honest, Dad Is Fat chronicles the difficult but joy-filled experience of raising five children in a two-bedroom walk-up in New York City.  Comedian Jim Gaffigan ranges from topics like disastrous