Inti, an expert on wolves, is part of a mission to re-introduce wolves to the Scottish Highlands. Opposition from farmers who fear the wolves will kill their livestock is fierce. But when a human turns up dead from what looks like a wolf attack, Inti desperately tries to save her beloved wolves along with her sanity. This is a suspenseful novel which touches on climate issues and violence against women. Great pacing and keeps you guessing.

Trust me when I tell you that you will not see the twists coming in this novel! It starts out as the story of Remy and Alicia, a couple who is obsessed with the social media posts of Jen, a woman who is a former co-worker of Remy‘s. A chance meeting leads to an awkward surfing trip with Jen and her friends. From there things get darker and stranger until we are in a straight up horror story. There is plenty of dark humor as well. A fun read!

This is a history of the history of the Alamo. It is a fascinating study of how the real facts of a disastrous battle were almost immediately distorted and used to recruit support for the continuing rebellion against Mexican rule in Texas. The story of the Alamo and its “heroes” has been mythologized by comics, tv and movies into a story of doomed patriots fighting in the name of freedom and American values. The real story is much darker.

This novel is based on the true story of the mother of Johannes Kepler, the great German astronomer and mathematician. Katharina Kepler was a herbalist who was accused of being a witch in 1615. Told from her point of view and that of her neighbor, who assisted in her case, it is an interesting case study of small town pettiness and gossip snowballing into absurd accusations but the book is somewhat slow and repetitive.

Every time I read a book that deals with slavery I go into it with some dread, knowing there‘s going to be horrible injustice and cruelty. This book has that, but it balances out with the portrayal of a truly unique and vulnerable set of characters in the Walker family, white landowners in Georgia , and brothers Prentiss and Landry, the newly freed slaves the Walkers hire to help with their field. An original take on Civil War fiction.

I liked the previous two books by Bohjalian, The Red Lotus and The Flight Attendant, better than this one. This one picks up toward the end but was a little drawn out. It is the story of an abused wife who seeks a divorce, only to become a victim of the town‘s superstitions and parochialism when she is accused of witchcraft. The descriptions of colonial life in early Boston were interesting and accurate but some of the chapters are repetitive.

A story of a Vietnamese mother and her two sons, who fled Vietnam in 1978 and ended up in New Orleans. The father doesn‘t make it out of Vietnam and the mother holds on to the hope that they will reunite one day. The book follows the three from their early struggles to adapt to their new life in the 80‘s, to 2005 and the arrival of Hurricane Katrina. A beautifully written book, told from the different perspectives of the three family members.

A sweeping, epic portrayal of New York City in the early 20th century, including several characters based on real historical figures, from Sigmund Freud to Tammany Hall‘s Big Tim Sullivan, to more unsavory characters like gangsters Gyp the Blood and Kid Twist. When Kid Twist impulsively slams Gyp the Blood over the head with a shovel and then falls in love with Gyp‘s sister, a seamstress in the Triangle Factory sweatshop, things get dicey!

A white family on vacation in a rental house is surprised when the black couple who owns the house shows up, claiming that some kind of blackout has occurred. Throughout the rest of the book a slow realization happens, that some unknown world-changing thing is happening. This book reminds me of an existentialist play where not much happens but a sense of dread hangs over everything and you leave the theater wondering what happened.

A fun book full of moments from the Beatles‘ amazing rise and fall in the 60‘s. The interesting thing about this book is that it focuses a lot on the people who came in contact with the Beatles and how their lives were changed, often for the worse, like the comedy duo who opened for them on Ed Sullivan or the drummer who replaced a sick Ringo on tour. The author is clearly not impressed with Yoko Ono, which is kind of hilarious at times.

A simple but fun little novel about a strange basement cafe in Japan where time-travel is possible. But there are rules. If you could go back in time and revisit a moment, even if it wouldn‘t change anything in the present, what would you do? Would there be a reason to go back? Four people find reasons to travel in time in this story. A quaint, feel-good novel which I wouldn‘t be surprised to see as a Netflix series sometime soon.

If you haven‘t read Tana French you are missing out. Her Dublin Murder Squad novels are great thrillers, as are her stand-alone books. She can be wordy at times, but I love her descriptions of the darker, more violent side of Ireland and it‘s people. This one gets off to a slow start but is still engaging, about an American ex-cop who retires to the Irish countryside only to have his peace disturbed by a desperate child and a missing brother.

A dark, Dickensian novel about Jimmy O‘Connor, a constable in Manchester who has been transferred from Dublin to investigate the Fenians, whose underground fight for Irish independence is causing bloodshed. When his nephew shows up unexpectedly and the Fenians bring an American Civil War vet over to start trouble, things get even bloodier. A tense, gritty thriller with lots of atmosphere. The ending is a bit of a shocker.

This book calls itself a novel but it‘s really a mish mash of semi-autobiographical episodes from the author‘s love life, portraits of well-known friends, writing advice, and interesting facts and asides (often told through footnotes). Despite this haphazard structure, the book is highly entertaining, and of course Amis is a very witty and wise storyteller. The sections on the greatly-missed Christopher Hitchens make one mourn his loss again.

George Saunders, a national treasure and one of my favorite authors, takes 7 great Russian short stories and analyzes them with us in this book, which is like taking a writing course from George Saunders without paying tuition! How could anyone pass that up? If you love reading or writing or both, this is a wonderful book about what stories do to us and for us and how we might discover our own voice through our own writing and reading.

This was an interesting biography of Lincoln because it approaches his life in the context of the culture of America in the 19th century. The political atmosphere, the fads, the music, the literature and the major social issues of the time are all examined and shown to have influenced Lincoln‘s decisions throughout his life. Somewhat surprising to find that the level of political partisanship and even conspiracy theories was as bad as it is now.

This novel explores a theme common to Ishiguro‘s novels: What is it that makes us human? Klara is an Artificial Friend, or AF, who is purchased to be a companion to a sickly teenage girl in a future society where genetic modification to improve social status is now normal. Klara is clearly an empathetic being, but sees the world through the eyes of a robot and puzzles over certain human behaviors.

This is a sequel to a previous novel, The Sympathizer. The title character of that book was a Vietnamese Communist spy during the Vietnam War; a man with two minds, as he describes himself. This amazing but unreliable narrator returns in this novel and he is now an expatriate in Paris, selling heroin for The Boss, a gangster he met in a refugee camp. The books are great, but sometimes go on philosophical tangents which can slow the story.

This is a real eye-opener of a book, which redefines the centuries old system of racism and oppression in the United States as really a caste system like that found in India or Nazi Germany. Our caste system was simply determined by skin color rather than ethnicity or family name. This makes it all the more clear that accusations of “reverse racism” by white people are nonsense. “White privilege” is also obvious when put in this caste context.

This is the little known story of Maurice Wilson, a World War I vet who got the insane idea to fly a small biplane to the base of Mt. Everest and climb to the summit on his own, with almost no serious mountain climbing skills or equipment. The astonishing thing is how far he actually made it toward his goal. The guy is a footnote to the history of climbers of Everest, but the man is a fascinating combo of courage, naïveté and determination.

Ugh. I can‘t believe I read this whole novel. If the point of this book was to expose the narcissistic qualities of millennials who feel the need to post their every thought, then this book does so by tediously slogging through every thought that goes through this woman‘s mind. I decided I knew how it would end, but then thought, “It can‘t be that predictable!” And then I forced my way to the end and it was! It was that predictable! Ugh.

An endlessly interesting book describing four lost cites from ancient civilizations. These were some of the largest cities of their time, the equivalent of today‘s NYC or Paris, yet they vanished hundreds or even thousands of years ago. Fascinating details about all of the cities are given. I was particularly amazed by the discovery of Angkor‘s true size in Cambodia through the use of light-using radar called (of course) lidar.

This is a really fun book with a lot of real science. The author is kind of a nerd and the writing reflects that but if you liked The Martian you‘ll like this one. Microscopic aliens begin eating the sun basically and our main character travels to Tau Ceti, the one star that the aliens can‘t seem to eat, to find a solution. I won‘t spoil the rest but it‘s a great space adventure.

A great book that looks at the few behind-the-scenes heroes who knew COVID was coming and had the knowledge to do something, only to be prevented from doing so by the government and the cowards who run its institutions. If you‘re not an idiot and are interested in the truth about viruses and pandemics and science, read this book.

I had not heard of Sherry Turkle before I read this memoir, but she has been a leading expert in how computers and technology affect our ability to connect with each other for many years. This memoir describes her journey from childhood to Harvard and on to a distinguished career as a professor at MIT, all at a time when women had immense hurdles to overcome in order to be successful at schools like these. A very interesting person.

A thriller by the same author who wrote “You Should Have Known” which became the HBO series The Undoing. I enjoyed it, and there is a twist, sort of, but after reading it and watching the show based on her other book I‘m beginning to think the twist is usually the fact that the twist was staring you in the face all along and you knew it and you can‘t believe it when it turns out that you guessed it from the beginning.

An epic story of a female pilot who attempts to make a flight around the world from pole to pole in 1950. The flight is only a small part of the story though. The novel takes us through her life, from its strange and tragic beginnings, her life with her twin brother in Montana, her flying career during WWII, and on to the movie star who ends up playing her in the movie version of her life long after she has died.