This Other Eden is a work of historical fiction based on the story of Malaga Island from the mid-1800s to 1912.

This Other Eden begins when Benjamin Honey, a former slave, shows up on an uninhabited Island with  “his wife, Patience, nee Raferty, a Galway girl, in 1793.”  The island was “hardly three hundred feet

“The postman had just dumped the mail on the ground at the foot of the mailbox.  My mother went to collect it…She flipped through the stack of envelopes…All very typical for early January.  Except for the postcard. ..What caught my mother’s attention right away was the handwriting, strange and awkward…Then she read the four names

“Be Mine” is a novel about finding contentment with age and dealing with loss. Richard Ford is one of my favorite authors, and his ability to address the struggles of life in a matter of fact and sometimes amusing way is on display in this sometimes uncomfortable and yet reassuring novel.

The novel begins with a

Tom Lake is a story of life’s winding roads, disappointments, and ultimate joys and beauty. “The past, were I to type it up, would look like a disaster, but regardless of how it ended we all had many good days. In that sense, the past is much like the present because the present — this

“I Have Some Questions For You” is a complex story about the murder of a teenager (Thalia) at a seemingly high end boarding school in 1995. The story is being told 23 years later by Bodie Kane, a graduate of the Boarding School and a roommate of the murdered student.

There is a lot going

The Rabbit Hutch is the story of lives gone awry in the depressed town of Vacca Vale, Indiana. In the past, the town had been completely dependent on Zorn Automobiles. “For decades, Zorn Automobiles was a miracle, a heartbeat, an empire…” And then the factories closed. “After 1963, Zorn, a superhero in previous generations—became the

“Shrines of Gaiety” is a raucous, action packed novel about a matriarch led family that owns numerous, very profitable nightclubs. The story takes place during a short period of time in 1926, after World War I, and begins when the matriarch, Nellie Coker, is being released from prison.

Nellie has six children who are more

“The Marriage Portrait” is a beautifully written piece of historical fiction revolving around the marriage of 13 year old (15 in the novel) Lucrezia di Cosimo de’Medici to Alfonso II d’Este, Duke of Ferrara in 1560.

The novel begins with 16 year old Lucrezia and her husband, not quite a year into their marriage, traveling

“Lessons” is a story of a life, its influences, its twists and turns and all of the changes that occur with the passage of time. The novel is pure Ian McEwan.

Roland Baines is the product of a complicated family life. Roland has a half-sister, Susan and a half brother, Henry, children from his mother’s

Lucy by the SeaLucy by the Sea is an amazing rumination on life during the COVID pandemic from the perspective of Elizabeth Strout’s well known character, Lucy Barton.

Lucy Barton is a famous novelist, recently widowed and living in the Manhattan apartment she shared with her New York Philharmonic cellist husband David. David has been gone for almost