Plot summary (with spoilers): The second installment of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series picks up where the first one left off. Precious Ramotswe, proprietor of the only ladies’ detective agency in Botswana, continues to investigate cases while also preparing for her upcoming marriage to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, owner of a successful auto mechanic [...]
Plot summary (from the publisher): Patty and Walter Berglund were the new pioneers of old St. Paul—the gentrifiers, the hands-on parents, the avant-garde of the Whole Foods generation. Patty was the ideal sort of neighbor, who could tell you where to recycle your batteries and how to get the local cops to actually do their [...]
Plot synopsis (from the publisher): The lives of three strangers interconnect in unforeseen ways–and with unexpected consequences–in acclaimed author Dan Chaon’s gripping, brilliantly written new novel. Longing to get on with his life, Miles Cheshire nevertheless can’t stop searching for his troubled twin brother, Hayden, who has been missing for ten years. Hayden has covered [...]
Plot summary (with spoilers): This is the story of Hannah Gavener’s quest to find a man she can love and share her life with. It spans nearly fifteen years, beginning when Hannah was a teenager obsessed with the seemingly perfect dating lives of celebrities like Julia Roberts and Kiefer Sutherland, and jumps around to significant [...]
Plot summary (with spoilers): Web Goodhue is an ex-teacher turned slacker who lives and hangs out with best buddy Chev. It’s clear from other characters’ dialogue that Web has been through a highly traumatic event and probably suffers from some form of PTSD, but the author takes his sweet time revealing what happened. Meanwhile, Web [...]
Plot summary (with spoilers): This book centers on a small group of former high school classmates who gather together after 27 years to celebrate the wedding of two of them, Bill and Bridget. Bill and Bridget had been sweethearts back at Kidd Academy, and everyone thought they would stay together forever. But Bill ended up [...]
Plot summary (with spoilers): Tim and Kate Welch have been married for nine years, and have slipped into that comfortable routine (rut?) that so many young, haggard parents of two preschool-aged children find themselves in. They live in a tiny apartment in a nice neighborhood in Brooklyn, never have enough money for anything, don’t have [...]
Plot summary (with spoilers): South of Broad tells the story of a group of high school friends who reunite 20 years later in order to rescue one of the bunch who is missing in San Francisco. Things begin in the summer of 1969 when Leopold Bloom King (named after a character in Joyce’s Ulysses) meets [...]
Plot summary (with spoilers): One day while walking home from school in 1973, 14-year-old Susie Salmon is lured by neighbor Mr. Harvey into an underground den in a cornfield behind her house, where she is then raped before having her throat slashed. Susie tells the reader about this event even though she is already dead. [...]
Plot summary (with spoilers): Rowland Mahler runs College Sunrise, a mobile “finishing school” that relocates around Europe every year, with his wife Nina. This isn’t the kind of typical boarding school where students form secret societies, share acne lotion with their roommates, or have late-night discussions about the opposite sex. In fact, there are only [...]