The Magicians, by Lev Grossman

The comparisons to Harry Potter are inevitable, but when Quentin Coldwater is recruited by Brakebills, a magical university hidden in upstate New York, he’s no wide-eyed eleven year old. Smart, anti-social, competitive, and melancholy, he’s designed his life to please Princeton’s admissions office. He took up performing magic tricks so that he could claim an [...]

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Angels of Destruction, by Keith Donohue

On a very cold January night, in a small Pennsylvania town, a nine-year-old girl with glasses shows up on the doorstep of Margaret Quinn. Margaret is a lonely widow whose only daughter, Erica, ran away from home as a teenager ten years earlier in 1975 with her boyfriend Wiley and hasn’t been seen in [...]

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The Shadow Speaker, by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu

It’s 2070, and we’re in next-generation West Africa. Fourteen-year old Ejii Ugabe has supernatural “shadow speaking” talents that she hasn’t fully grown into, not least because her power-hungry estranged father didn’t believe girls should be educated. Her world has already been through an enormous Change, resulting in an unpredictable mix of magical and physical laws, [...]

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The Quiet Girl, by Peter Høeg

Peter Høeg’s The Quiet Girl is one of the most interesting and complex books that I have recently read. Its twisting plot, multi-faceted characters, and elements of magical realism all require the reader to pay attention. It is attention well-rewarded though. Høeg writes beautiful sentences that resonate in the ear and on the tongue.
Probably best [...]

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Monsters of Templeton, by Lauren Groff

My friend and library colleague Christine recommended this book to me. I encouraged (i.e. hounded) her into writing the review.
Here’s what she had to say:
Willie Upton’s life is in shambles, so she’s going home. But going home to Templeton, New York brings bigger problems for Willie. On top of a few “small” dilemmas including [...]

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God Knows, by Joseph Heller

This week I’m looking at books that I think are worth rereading – and that I’ve reread more than once. These stand up to my tests, and I’ll try to articulate what it is I like about them. If any of them intrigue you, I hope you’ll give them a shot. [...]

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Aegypt, by John Crowley

Aegypt, by John Crowley, is my favorite book, ever. It has recently been repackaged and retitled as The Solitudes, but Williamsburg Regional Library has a copy of this 1987 novel with the original title.
Books within books, stories within stories, histories within histories. Is there one history of the world, or are there many? When scientists [...]

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The Sugar Queen, by Sarah Addison Allen

I enjoyed Sarah Addison Allen’s first book, Garden Spells, so I picked up her second title, The Sugar Queen, to see if it continued to delight with quirky characters and interesting plot lines. It does!

Josey Cirrini is trapped by guilt and fear in the house she has grown up in – torn between her sense [...]

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The Girl with No Shadow, by Joanne Harris

It’s four unkind years after the events of Chocolat, and the vivacious, nonconformist Vianne Rocher of Harris’s previous bestseller has fallen on hard times. Dressed in drab colors, suppressing her talent for magic, and worst of all, selling factory chocolates from her Montmartre storefront, she’s close to selling out for financial stability by marrying a [...]

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A Glastonbury Romance, by John Cowper Powys

One of the small sorrows of my life is that I’m unable to talk about my favorite novel with my friends. No one has read it. I have badgered any number of people into giving it a try, but most quit somewhere in the middle of the first paragraph.
Who can blame them? Just for openers, [...]

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