Welcome to The Shore: a collection of small islands sticking out from the coast of Virginia into the Atlantic Ocean. Where clumps of evergreens meet wild ponies, oyster-shell roads, tumble-down houses, unwanted pregnancies, murder, storm-making and dark magic in the marshes. . . Situated off the coast of Virginia’s Chesapeake Bay, the group of READ MORE
Category: Fiction
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | LIFE AFTER LIFE – KATE ATKINSON
“Is there Life After Life, chance after chance to rewrite one’s destiny? That is the question posed by Atkinson’s tale and brought to life by the miracle of her talent.” —Toronto Star What if you had the chance to live your life again and again, until you finally got it right? During a snowstorm READ MORE
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | WE ARE ALL MADE OF MOLECULES – SUSIN NIELSEN
Thirteen-year-old Stewart is academically brilliant but socially clueless. Fourteen-year-old Ashley is the undisputed “It” girl in her class, but her grades stink. Their worlds are about to collide when Stewart and his dad move in with Ashley and her mom. Stewart is trying to be 89.9 percent happy about it, but Ashley is 110 READ MORE
RELEASE DAY REVIEW | BOO – NEIL SMITH
From Neil Smith, author of the award-winning, internationally acclaimed story collection Bang Crunch, comes a dark but whimsical debut novel about starting over in the afterlife in the vein of Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones. When Oliver “Boo” Dalrymple wakes up in heaven, the eighth-grade science geek thinks he died of a heart defect READ MORE
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | THE CHILDREN’S CRUSADE – ANN PACKER
From the New York Times bestselling, award-winning author of The Dive From Clausen’s Pier, a sweeping, masterful new novel that explores the secrets and desires, the remnant wounds and saving graces of one California family, over the course of five decades. Bill Blair finds the land by accident, three wooded acres in a rustic READ MORE
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | THE SWEETNESS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PIE – ALAN BRADLEY
Winner of the 2007 Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger A delightfully dark English mystery, featuring precocious young sleuth Flavia de Luce and her eccentric family. The summer of 1950 hasn’t offered up anything out of the ordinary for eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce: bicycle explorations around the village, keeping tabs on her neighbours, relentless battles READ MORE
BOOK REVIEW | NOTHING LIKE LOVE – SABRINA RAMNANAN
A sparkling, witty and confident debut from a rising Canadian star whose Trinidadian roots and riotous storytelling heritage inform her completely delightful novel. It is 1974 in the town of Chance, Trinidad–home to a colourful cast of cane farmers, rum-drinkers, scandal-mongers . . . and a bright 18-year-old schoolgirl named Vimla Narine. After passing READ MORE
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | GOD HELP THE CHILD – TONI MORRISON
The new novel from Nobel laureate Toni Morrison. Spare and unsparing, God Help the Child is a searing tale about the way childhood trauma shapes and misshapes the life of the adult. At the center: a woman who calls herself Bride, whose stunning blue-black skin is only one element of her beauty, her boldness READ MORE
BOOK REVIEW | BLOOD ON SNOW – JO NESBØ
From the internationally acclaimed author of the Harry Hole novels—a new, electrifying stand-alone thriller set in Oslo in the 1970s: the story of an unusually complicated contract killer—the perfectly sympathetic antihero—that is, as well, an edgy, almost lyrical meditation on death and love.This is the story of Olav: an extremely talented “fixer” whose unexpected READ MORE
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD – JENNIFER EGAN
Bennie is an aging former punk rocker and record executive. Sasha is the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Here Jennifer Egan brilliantly reveals their pasts, along with the inner lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect with theirs. With music pulsing on every page, A Visit from the Goon Squad READ MORE
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | SWAMPLANDIA! – KAREN RUSSELL
The Bigtree alligator wrestling dynasty is in decline — think Buddenbrooks set in the Florida Everglades — and Swamplandia!, their island home and gator-wrestling theme park, is swiftly being encroached upon by a sophisticated competitor known as the World of Darkness. Ava, a resourceful but terrified twelve year old, must manage seventy gators and READ MORE
RELEASE DAY REVIEW | SOMEONE IS WATCHING – JOY FIELDING
A fast-paced, intense psychological thriller from an international bestselling author–Rear Window meets The Silent Wife. Bailey has it all. At least, she had it all–a job she loved as a high-powered investigator in a top Miami law firm, a gorgeous condo in a stylish downtown high rise, a handsome boyfriend, a sizeable inheritance. A READ MORE
![THE SUNDAY [BOOK & MOVIE] REVIEW | THE DROP - DENNIS LEHANE](https://i0.wp.com/www.raincityreads.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/3228f-21920693.jpg?resize=265%2C350&ssl=1)
THE SUNDAY [BOOK & MOVIE] REVIEW | THE DROP – DENNIS LEHANE
Dennis Lehane returns to the streets of Mystic River with this love story wrapped in a crime story wrapped in a journey of faith—the basis for the major motion picture The Drop, from Fox Searchlight Pictures directed by Michaël Roskam, screenplay by Dennis Lehane, and starring Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace, and James Gandolfini.
RELEASE DAY REVIEW | HAUSFRAU – JILL ALEXANDER ESSBAUM
Anna Benz, an American in her late thirties, lives with her Swiss husband Bruno and their three young children in a postcard-perfect suburb of Zürich. Though she leads a comfortable, well-appointed life, Anna is falling apart inside. Adrift and increasingly unable to connect with the emotionally unavailable Bruno or even with her own thoughts and READ MORE
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | THE ART OF LAINEY – PAULA STOKES
Soccer star Lainey Mitchell is gearing up to spend an epic summer with her amazing boyfriend, Jason, when he suddenly breaks up with her—no reasons, no warning, and in public no less! Lainey is more than crushed, but with help from her friend Bianca, she resolves to do whatever it takes to get Jason back. READ MORE
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | THE HALF BROTHER – HOLLY LECRAW
A passionate, provocative story of complex family bonds and the search for identity set within the ivy-covered walls of a New England boarding school When Charlie Garrett arrives as a young teacher at the shabby-yet-genteel Abbott School, he finds a world steeped in privilege and tradition. Fresh out of college and barely older than READ MORE
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | ONE MORE THING – B.J. NOVAK
B.J. Novak’s One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories is an endlessly entertaining, surprisingly sensitive, and startlingly original debut that signals the arrival of a brilliant new voice in American fiction. A boy wins a $100,000 prize in a box of Frosted Flakes—only to discover how claiming the winnings might unravel his family. A READ MORE
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | A SPOOL OF BLUE THREAD – ANNE TYLER
From the beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning author–now in the fiftieth year of her remarkable career–a brilliantly observed, joyful and wrenching, funny and true new novel that reveals, as only she can, the very nature of a family’s life. “It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon.” This is the way Abby Whitshank always begins the story READ MORE