Leila & Khaled by Nyla Matuk

Anansi Review by Brian Tanguay Leila, a fifty-something woman from Montreal, is part of a delegation visiting Palestine, her first trip to her father’s homeland. Leila is unmarried, an academic…

The Keeper by Tana French

Penguin Review by Walter Cummins Although Tana French has won awards for crime fiction and mystery/thrillers, including an Edgar, The Keeper is little like our expectation of a mystery novel.…

Brawler by Lauren Groff

Riverhead Review by Walter Cummins The title of this collection is appropriate for each of its nine stories. In some literal brawls take place, the combatants physically scarred. In others…

Honeysuckle by Bar Fridman-Tell

Bloomsbury Review by Brian Tanguay Honeysuckle is one of the strangest novels I’ve read in a long while, and by strange I mean in the sense of unsettling and rarely…

A Place in the World by Bill Gaythwaite

Pittsburgh Review by David Starkey The most recent winner of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize, one of the premier awards for excellence in the short story, is Bill Gaythwaite, a…

Orlando: A Graphic Novel by Virginia Woolf and Susanne Kuhlendahl

Helvitiq Review by David Starkey Virginia Woolf’s Orlando: A Biography, a novel about a male Elizabethan aristocrat who, at the age of 100, turns into a woman, has inspired a…

The Body Builders by Albertine Clarke

Bloomsbury Review by Brian Tanguay Being thrust into a different place and time is one of the pleasures of reading fiction. Sometimes the place is inside the mind of a…

Vigil by George Saunders

Random House Review by Walter Cummins It’s the language and telling that makes Vigil such a pleasure to read. While the subject is death and the act of dying, the…

The Society by Karen Winn

Dutton Review by Walter Cummins While reading Karen Winn’s new novel, The Society, a vivid memory of a 1935 James Thurber cartoon kept popping into my head.  That one has…

Departure(s) by Julian Barnes

Knopf Review by Walter Cummins A significant pleasure of reading one of Julian Barnes many books is enjoying his verbal inventiveness and appreciating the workings of his mind. His deeper…