by Laurie Richards ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A
A stirring historical novel anchored by Richards’ acutely drawn female protagonist.
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A tragic dust blizzard begets life-altering changes for a Kansas schoolteacher and her family in Richards’ Depression-era debut.
1934 marks the third year of drought and failed crops on the Mason farm. Water is so scarce that each family member—gruff patriarch Cal; encouraging matriarch Rachel; wild-child Lily; and elder daughter Sarah, the book’s narrator—can only wash the dust from their hair once a month. (The rest of the time, Sarah reports, they have to “scratch it out and shake it out and comb it out.”) Nonetheless, the tight-knit family perseveres until a harsh dust blizzard sweeps through town. When the storm settles, Lily is nowhere to be found; Rachel, meanwhile, is discovered dead in the family barn, crushed by a fallen beam. Afterward, at the behest of her mother’s close friend Evelyn Loman, Sarah takes a teaching job in the nearby town of Cardinal, while her withdrawn father, unnerved by Lily’s disappearance, tends to the farm. In Cardinal, Sarah contends with townspeople whose “good intentions flew at me like crows pecking out my eyes.” Besides Evelyn, Cardinal’s mayor, there’s her husband, Al, Cardinal’s inept sheriff; the Rev. Palmer, a pious Bible thumper determined to sterilize women and children whose genes he deems unfit to pass on; and Emmett Diehl, the odious bank head who controls the Masons’ mortgage. When she isn’t facing off with Cardinal’s gossipy upper crust, Sarah bonds with Maxene, a kindly local looked down upon by the others for her perceived promiscuity. Gradually, Sarah’s time in Cardinal reveals not only the town’s sinister treatment of women like Maxene, but also several stunning truths about Sarah’s own family. Though the plot occasionally feels forced, there’s undeniable joy and pathos in watching Sarah navigate every twist. Richards consistently stays true to the character, whose battle with the expectations of womanhood yields some of the book’s most telling moments: “I didn’t want to wish [Al] good bye,” she thinks at one point. “Mom’s training got the better of me, though, and I waved and smiled until he was out of sight.”
A stirring historical novel anchored by Richards’ acutely drawn female protagonist.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Robinne Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 13, 2017
A fascinating, thought-provoking, genre-bending romantic read.
When Solène Marchand takes her 12-year-old daughter to a concert by the hottest boy band on the planet, she doesn't expect to fall in love with one of the singers.
Middle-aged art gallery owner Solène hasn’t dated since her divorce, but when her ex-husband buys their daughter and a group of her friends tickets to Vegas and a backstage concert experience, then backs out at the last minute, she steps in as escort. The five guys in the wildly popular English boy band August Moon appeal to women of all ages, but Hayes, the brains behind the group’s success, flirts with Solène at the concert meet and greet, invites them to a party after the show, then pursues her once she gets back to Los Angeles. He’s only 20 and he’s incredibly famous; his attention is flattering and heady. The two fall into an affair that’s supposed to be light and easy, but before long they can’t ignore their intense emotional attachment. Solène is hesitant to tell her daughter, but when she procrastinates, Isabelle learns about it through an online tabloid, which damages their relationship and leaves Solène open to censure from her ex. Then, once the affair goes viral, she experiences the darker side of Hayes’ fan base. What started out as a jaunty adventure turns into an emotionally fraught journey, and Solène must decide what she’s willing to risk for her happiness and what she won’t risk for her daughter’s. Actress Lee, who appeared in Fifty Shades Darker, debuts with a beautifully written novel that explores sex, love, romance, and fantasy in moving, insightful ways while also examining a woman’s struggle with aging and sexism, with a nod at the tension between celebrity and privacy.
A fascinating, thought-provoking, genre-bending romantic read.Pub Date: June 13, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-250-12590-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
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More About This Book
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
by Kathy Reichs ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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