Jennifer Matthews was a budding fashion designer brimming with great ideas about clothing. However, not having paid much attention to the business aspect of her new venture, she failed to launch several lines and ended up in major debt.
In the wake of World War I, the U.S. economy boomed, and bootleggers amassed fortunes during the Prohibition of the raucous Roaring Twenties. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s iconic portrayal of the Jazz Age (as it was also called), encapsulates the optimism and prosperity of this technologically advancing generation.
Charles Yu is lonely. More often that not, he’s completely tuned out of reality—usually because he’s set his time machine for Present-Indefinite, which means he cruises about in a box where there is no time. He passes years in what others see as only minutes.
Nicole Krauss’s Great House is intricately crafted, beautifully written, poignantly populated, and kind of plotless.
Great House presents the idea that your furniture—the enduring collection of things with which you surround yourself—defines you. The characters’ furniture even serves as parts of their identities and personalities. Each of the lonely, troubled narrators externalize and objectify the conflicts within and between themselves, placing parts of their souls in their belongings in order to transcend their humanity, like Voldemort and his horcruxes.
Julie and Michael Dunhill have it all: a gorgeous mansion in DC, a multi-million dollar business, co-ownership in the local basketball team. But everything they have fought for in life–the money, prestige, popularity–have only driven them further apart.
After being severely wounded in the last book, The Girl Who Played with Fire, Lisbeth Salander wakes up in the hospital with one hell of a headache—only to find that her assailant/father is recovering only a few doors down.
After firmly re-establishing himself as the fearless investigative journalist and publisher behind Millennium magazine—a publication once scorned for its inaccuracy that is now flying off newsstand shelves—Mikael Blomkvist is, once again, on top of his game. So when he is approached by Dag Svensson, a young man who has just spent years writing a dissertation on sex trafficking, Mikael is immediately taken by the idea of publishing Svensson’s controversial findings.
Mikael Blomkvist is a journalist and the publisher of Millennium magazine in Stockholm, Sweden. A year ago, he had everything going for him; he loved his job, and his oddly romantic relationship with his business partner and best friend Erika Berger had never been better.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn picks up where The Adventures of Tom Sawyer left off. The Widow Douglas adopts Huck, and he goes to live with her and her sister, Miss Watson. But Huck isn’t taking to his new life too well; though he wants to please the Widow, he finds himself making mistakes in his new life everywhere he turns.
Sebastian Junger’s War follows its famous author as he spends nearly a year in Afghanistan as a writer for Vanity Fair. He also captured his experience on on a small handheld camcorder, which was used to create 2010 documentary Restrepo with Tim Hetherington.
Heart of Darkness begins as a story among friends on a boat anchored on the River Thames. The narrator tells how Charles Marlow wonders aloud that nearby London, now the largest, most populous, and wealthiest city in the world, was once as dark and savage as Africa. Indeed, before the Roman conquest, London was “one of the dark places on earth,” Marlow tells his astonished companions.
Eliza Benedict leads a very normal life. She ought to; she’s worked hard enough for it. But there are some things Eliza can’t forget—and some things that she cannot leave behind.
Bo Forbes, a longtime therapist and also a yoga practitioner, struggled with the disconnect she saw between the physical and emotional therapy worlds. Often, she says, “we can feel, rather than think, the emotional experiences that heal us.” Instead of just talking through emotional patterns, she began introducing breathwork and restorative yoga poses into her clients’ therapy plans.
Eleonora Cohen is not like other little girls. First, there was her birth. During an agonizing labor, which Eleonora’s mother does not survive, a flock of unusually colored hoopoes begin roosting outside the Cohens’ door, and the flock stays to watch over the young girl’s life.
This first book in the Edge Chronicles begins with an atmospheric description of the world on the Edge. Twig, the main character, is a young boy who just never seems to fit in with the woodtrolls around him. Ostracized by his “peers,” Twig longs for acceptance.
Joe Abercrombie’s new fantasy novel The Heroes continues in the world set in The First Law Trilogy. This time, he takes us to a single battle fought between the comparatively modern Union and the barbarians of the North. The story is told from the perspective of three Union and three Northern characters who all fight in the battle one way or another. Like Abercrombie’s previous novel, Best Served Cold, a few familiar faces from the first trilogy appear.
Melody Schreiber 