Turning The Pages

Book: The Stormchasers Author: Jenna Blum Short Summary: Flashing back to two decades ago and resuming in the present, Stormchasers is a story of twins pulled together and torn apart by mental illness. Karena and her brother Charles are as close as twins can be, but Charles’ bipolar disorder pulls t

Book: Girl in Translation Author: Jean Kwok Short Summary: Kimberly Chang is an immigrant young girl who has come with her mother from Hong Kong to America. Living in poverty in the slums of Brooklyn, Kimberly has to work hard to keep up in school by learning better English and at the factory to hel

Title: Love and Other Impossible Pursuits Author: Ayelet Waldman Short Summary: Emilia is a young New York woman who married a co-worker, Jack, who left his wife to be with her. Along with the marriage comes Jack’s son, William. This child is a know-it-all who Emilia has a very difficult time dealin

Book: Half of a Yellow Sun Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Short Summary: In this story we follow several different characters leading up to and during the Biafran war in Nigeria. We are taken into the heart of the war and the devestation it causes all involved. The plot revolves around Ugwu, a hou

My cruise was fabulous! It was my first one and I can’t wait to have the opportunity to go on another one. Unfortunately, I didn’t get as much reading done as I would have liked. There was just so many things on the ship to do! I did get to spend some time in the [...]

Last weekend I got to experience the Printer’s Row Lit Fest here in Chicago. It is the biggest book fair in the midwest. I signed up to volunteer, although I did more shopping than volunteering! It really was a great festival with more books than I could have imagined. There were all sorts of author

Book: The Red Tent Author: Anita Diamant Short Summary: Dinah, the only daughter of biblical Jacob, is the narrator in this story. She tells the tale of the days of old through a woman’s perspective. With her birth mother Leah and three other “mothers” Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah she spent time in th

Book: The Girl Who Played With Fire Author: Stieg Larsson Short Summary: In his second installment of the Millenium trilogy, we are once again taken into the lives of Lisbeth Salander and Mikel Bloomkvist. Two of Mikel’s co-workers and friends are murdered right before a scandalous story they wrote

Book: What the Dead Know Author: Laura Lippman Short Summary: A woman who was in a hit and run accident claims to be Heather Bethany, one of the two Bethany sisters who disappeared from a shopping mall in Baltimore 30 years ago. Nobody can be sure she is, in fact, who she claims to be. The [...]