If you enjoy books that can make you laugh out loud, The Flower Sisters should be on your Want to Read list! A wide assortment of interesting characters will keep you turning the pages.
The story centers around a true tragic event that occurred in the author's hometown fifty years ago. The characters are especially well drawn and make the book hard to put down. They range from an eccentric granny who runs a funeral home to her precocious but lovable granddaughter along with so many others too numerous to mention.
The ending is guaranteed to surprise you.
I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in a true story embellished with delightful characters.

Paper Names is an exceptionally well written novel that held my interest throughout. The story revolves around a Chinese immigrant family who left their home and jobs in China in hopes of a better life in the US. However Tony, the father sacrifices his good job as an engineer to serve as a doorman for an upscale hotel. He is declared a hero when he saves a resident from a violent attack.

The reader also follows his daughter, Tammy from the age of 9 until her graduation from Harvard and beyond. A lawyer named Oliver is another key figure in the story. The characters are well drawn and there's a surprise ending that I didn't see coming.

I would recommend this book to any reader who might enjoy an interesting fictional account of what immigrants to this country experience.

The year is 1982. The place is Ricksville,MS. The KKK is active and this story reflects the racial violence and also the non-acceptance of darker skinned blacks by those who could pass for whites.
Wade In The Water is a thought-provoking story about an unusual friendship between an 11 year black child and a white grad student who rents a house in a poor black neighborhood in order to research racism. Those wishing to read a good history based novel should find this book to be an interesting read.

Despite having to frequently check back to a 4-1/2 page listing of characters, this fascinating saga of Olga Romanov and her extended family held my interest throughout.
As the eldest of four daughters and one son, Olga (the last Grand Duchess), felt responsible for the various needs of the family, a job she did admirably. I feel that readers will empathize with Olga twice falling in love with men below her royal station thus negating her chance of marriage.
Readers should be prepared to accept the reality of the many hardships faced by Olga and the rest of the Tsar's family once the Revolution escalated and their lifestyle underwent a radical change.
Even if readers already know the tragic ending of the entire Romanov family, many of the events that take place beforehand abound in the chapters of this book.
I recommend this book to Russian history buffs plus anyone interested in learning more details about the Romanov family.

Imagine an historical novel in which you not only meet the four main protagonists but also the likes of Josephine Baker, Marcel Proust, Maurice Ravel, Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein. The author very cleverly weaves the lives of these celebrities into the lives of his main characters.
He first introduces the reader to an Armenian puppeteer Souren, then a French artist, Guillaume, a French journalist, Jean Paul, and the maid and confidante of Marcel Proust, Camille.
All of them end up involved with each other in some way and their stories are all confined to one day in Paris. I was amazed at how the author was able to connect their diverse lives and tell the story of each one searching for something lost.
I would recommend this book to anyone wanting to experience Paris through the eyes of four very different inhabitants and find themselves caught up in their emotions and life struggles.
I will definitely plan to look for more novels from this very talented author.

This book is not for everyone and at first I felt I wasn't going to like it myself but it soon started to draw me in and by the conclusion it had me in tears. It brings out a wide range of emotions as the reader follows the fascinating path of Denis Murphy, an OCD vulnerable young man whose guilt over a tragic accident has taken over his mind causing him to dwell in a strange world of hallucinations and isolation from others. You are introduced to an outlandish group of characters who inhabit his mind and terrorize his home but due to his mental illness, he accepts them as housemates and puts up with their antics. There is also a heartwarming love story involved and some good friends who believe in him. Thus, I ended up truly glad for having read this book and hope others will find it as powerful as I did.

This book, if made into a movie, would definitely receive an "R" rating due to the extreme violence and brutality the author presents as a true picture of the Russian Revolution of 1917. The entire Petrograd Army defects to the revolutionaries and terrorizes the police force. The mob violence directed against the police was especially difficult to read in view of the violence directed toward the police in our own country.

The thorough research by the author using excerpts from letters and diaries of eyewitnesses was amazing but I had to give up on referring to the numerous footnotes constantly cited in the text. My opinion is that I found much of it a bit dry compared to Larsen's writing in Dead Wake but if you like a well researched, lengthy book about this period in Russian history check this one out.

If you are not turned off by graphic descriptions of brutal and inhumane treatments suffered by inmates of mental institutions back in the 40s, this book is a powerful true account of Dr. Perry Baird's experiences in such places during treatment for his bipolar disorder. His daughter, Mimi, at age six, was informed that her father was "ill and away" and never saw him again until just before he died.
Dr. Baird was a brilliant, well respected Boston dermatologist before his illness landed him in a series of different asylums. He was able to document detailed descriptions of his treatments and the research he did into his own disease during these confinements and after 50 years his daughter obtained all his handwritten notes. She finally got to know her missing father through reading his own words and then writing this book.
It was shocking to read how mental patients were treated at a time before any helpful medications were discovered. Also the stigma of mental illness caused families to abandon them and pretend they did not even exist.

I found the book to be a fascinating journey through this doctor's life told by a daughter who only got to know her father's true story after his death in 1959.

The intriguing title motivated me to read this book as I was curious to discover its meaning. Fire does figure into the plot but not focused on arson or some other type of house fire as I had assumed. Instead the book deals with bigotry, fear mongering, political ambition and even the evil deeds of the Ku Klux Klan.

Farm country in 1950s Minnesota is the setting and the main characters and their relationships with each other are well drawn. The Norwegian Nelson family with a strictly religious mother in charge wants an arranged marriage between her daughter, Emmy, and the boy next door, Ambrose, who is 28 years old to Emmy's 18.
The two of them have been childhood pals despite the age difference but Emmy has doubts about the imminent marriage wishing to live a more independent, fulfilling life than that of a farmer's wife.

You will be surprised at the many secrets revealed concerning these families and the ending is the biggest surprise of all.

I recommend this book to any who like a good plot blended with the historical events of its time. Why not find out the meaning of the title and meet the rest of the cast of characters in this book by picking it up today!

The first chapter of Her immediately draws you into this suspenseful story of two very different women with a connection that goes back to their teenage years.

Nina, a local painter and Emma, a pregnant mother of a 2 year old, meet one another and ostensibly become friends but this is not a true friendship.

Nina recognizes Emma but because Emma has no clue who Nina is, Nina is able to work her way back into Emma's life and begins a series of cruel actions toward her former "friend" and her family.

There's an air of mystery throughout the story that keeps you reading to find out what happens next and why.

Unfortunately, at least for me, the ending leaves you hanging, wondering why the author didn't choose to come up with a better, more conclusive ending.

Thus, I enjoyed reading Her until the final paragraph. If you can accept the "write your own ending" aspect of Her, you will most likely enjoy this book.

Even if you've never been to Paris you will be instantly transported there while reading The Paris Apartment. You may even learn a bit of French as there are several French phrases sprinkled throughout the story-It can be fun trying to decipher them via context which is fairly easy to do.

You will meet a cast of interesting characters, both American and French, male and female. I felt the characters were very well-drawn by the author and blessed with clever dialogue as they interact with one another.

The two main female characters are born a century apart so that the personality of the one living in the 19th century is revealed through her detailed diary recounting her numerous trysts which might either scandalize you or delight you-probably both as the humor sometimes made me laugh out loud.

This reader enjoyed The Paris Apartment and highly recommends it as entertaining and also educational pertaining to art, antiques and the city of Paris itself.