Set in Charleston, don’t let this book fool you. Islands isn’t really about the four couples that make up “The Scrubs,” all successful men and women in their early 40s or so who live and work in Charleston. Nor is it about the collection of houses they rotate through, from the Sullivan Island beach house […]
Fiction Book Review: Bookshop on the Corner by Jenny Colgan
In Jenny Colgan’s Bookshop on the Corner, we meet Nina, a librarian whose library in Birmingham, England is about to close for good. She’ll soon be out of a job and isn’t sure what to do. She already has a collection of books that is spilling out of the room she rents from a friend […]
Fiction Book Review: Transcription by Kate Atkinson
Transcription takes place in two different times in the main character’s life in London. After a small preface in 1981, the story picks up in 1950 at the start of the Cold War where we meet Juliet, the main character, who works at the BBC as a producer of a radio show for children. She […]
Fiction Book Review: The Day of the Storm by Rosamunde Pilcher
Rebecca is trying to establish a life in London. She works in a bookstore and has been furnishing her new apartment with second hand antiques, when she receives a letter summoning her to her mother’s bedside in Ibiza, Spain. Her mother’s inconsistent parenting and bohemian way of life has created a distance between the two […]
Fiction Book Review: The Summer House by Marcia Willett
Family secrets anyone? Sign me up. There are a few to uncover in The Summer House by Marcia Willett. Marcia Willett has written around a dozen books and they all revolve around families and relationships, often with family secrets. She is an English author. And this fact about her is probably my favorite – she […]
Fiction Book Review: An Unsuitable Match by Joanna Trollope
An Unsuitable Match is about what happens in a family when the mother, Rose, in her 60s, who has been divorced for seven years, falls in love with Tyler, a fellow student from high school. The novel takes place mostly in London with stops in New York City and San Francisco. Rose’s three grown children […]
Fiction Book Review: Scarlet Feather by Maeve Binchy
It is hard to pick a favorite book from among the wonderful books that the incomparable Maeve Binchy wrote. I could read them all, one after the other, and then upon finishing the lot, start over at the first one again. Reading her books is like having a picnic with your favorite foods in a […]