Book reviews of new and old, local, national and international books. Anything goes.
MacKenzie Goes Adventuring by J.L. Baumann and illustrated by Gabriel Roman is an adorable children’s book set in singsong verse with delightful illustrations. An adventure begins when little MacKenzie and her friend fail to heed the warnings of their teacher and instead take a different path home. Post Mortem Publications, Inc. | March 7, 2017 |…
The Last Werewolf is a work of fiction by Glen Duncan. The author takes the well-known werewolf origin story and breathes new life into it. Duncan creates a narrator who the reader should by all counts feel nothing but disdain for. He is after all a werewolf who eats people. But Duncan injects an element…
A Gathering of Shadows is V.E. Schwab’s second book in the Shades of Magic series which features several alternate versions of London with varying degrees of magic and special magicians with one black eye who are the only ones able to walk between worlds. Tor Books | January 17, 2017 (first published February 23, 2016)…
Forget about Waldo. Finding an elusive Yeti is much more exciting. Bigfoot Visits the Big Cities of the World is a soon-to-be-released picture book for children with full-page, busy drawings in which to find numerous items including Bigfoot and his footprint. Little Fox | February 13, 2018 | Hardcover | 48 pp There is only…
A Darker Shade of Magic is the first in V.E. Schwab’s Shades of Magic series and was a Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Fantasy in 2015. The full trilogy is out and available and remains extremely popular with the adult and young adult fantasy readers. In short, this is another “hype” series I had to…
Garden of her Heart is an exceptional historical romance that goes far beyond the typical affairs and courtship central to most romance plots, delving into a difficult subject matter in American history: the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Garden of her Heart is the first in Shanna Hatfield’s Hearts of the War…
The Financial Lives of Poets is a work of fiction that follows our main character Matt through the current downward spiral that is his life. He is days away from losing his house (unbeknownst to his unassuming family), suddenly aware of his wife’s sudden disinterest in their marriage, jobless and living with his father who…
Norse mythology, originally told from ancient texts such as the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda, has been the source of inspiration for many modern and classic novels such as J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and other books in this world, Rick Riorden’s Magnus Chase series, and Neil Gaiman’s own American…
The Book of Strange New Things is a microscopic look at two people, a husband and wife, who separately bear witness to the end of the world and the birth of another. With interstellar distance between them, faith and devotion are pushed to the limits. In this science-fiction novel, humanity is cast as the main…
Justice is a look at major political philosophies from the greats, written by an American political philosopher and government professor at Harvard. He explains the views of Aristotle, Kant and Rawls in relation to issues dealt with in America today such as abortion, inequality, restitution, and affirmative action. Naturally, he injects his own philosophies and…