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Reviews by Cathryn Conroy

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A Piece of the World: A Novel
by Christina Baker Kline
Beautifully Haunting and Lyrical: A Must-Read (4/21/2023)
You know the painting. It's called "Christina's World." Painted by Andrew Wyeth, it depicts a young woman crawling up a hill toward a home. (Google it. You'll recognize it!) This magnificent book by Christina Baker Kline tells the story of Christina Olsen, the real-lifemore
Sacred Hearts: A Novel
by Sarah Dunant
Oooh! Oooh! I Loved This Book! (4/21/2023)
Oooh! Oooh! I loved this book! Set in 16th century Northern Italy, this is the story of a 16-year-old novice entering a convent--absolutely against her will. In this time, women of good birth had one of two choices: marry or become a nun. And neither one was really hermore
The House at Tyneford: A Novel
by Natasha Solomons
Excellent Book That Grabbed My Heart—And Wouldn't Let Go (4/21/2023)
This book grabbed my heart and wouldn't let go! By turns quite humorous and bring-out-a-tissue heartrending, this book by Natasha Solomons is the story of Elise Landau, a 19-year-old in Vienna, Austria in 1938. She has lived a life of luxury in an upper-class world. But hermore
Heads in Beds: A Reckless Memoir of Hotels, Hustles, and So-Called Hospitality
by Jacob Tomsky
Wait…WHAT?!? People Really Do THAT in Hotels? (4/21/2023)
If you plan on ever staying in a hotel again, read this book first. Author Jacob Tomsky, who has worked in a variety of jobs in two luxury hotels in New Orleans and New York City, gives the inside scoop on how to get the most from your stay. And while most of it is legal,more
Americanah
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
This Is a Book to Be Cherished (4/21/2023)
I just have to say this first: I LOVED this book! And I also have to say that it was a little out of my comfort zone. Written by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, this is a book about Nigeria. And Nigerians. And Nigerians who move to the United States. And England. And then movemore
Wishin' and Hopin': A Christmas Story
by Wally Lamb
Laugh, Love and Be Joyful! This Book Is Perfect (4/21/2023)
If you read this book in a public place, such as a crowded commuter train or on an airplane, beware! Parts of it are so laugh-out-loud funny that I had to stop reading to wipe the tears from my eyes.

Written by genius Wally Lamb, this is the story of Felix Funicello, who ismore
The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane
by Lisa See
Gripping and Endearing (and a Great Ending!) (4/21/2023)
This novel does what no other book I have read does: It is 75 percent (or so) fiction and 25 percent (or so) nonfiction. And it works! The story focuses on a Li-yan, a young Chinese woman from the minority Akha tribe in the mountains of Yunnan Province. She violates themore
In the Midst of Winter
by Isabel Allende
A Heartrending Tale for Our Times (4/21/2023)
A monster blizzard has shut down New York City in January 2016, and in the process three very different people are brought together—and their lives will forever change because of it. Their stories unfold: Evelyn, a 20-something undocumented immigrant who somehow survivedmore
A Land More Kind Than Home: A Novel
by Wiley Cash
All I Can Say Is This: Read It! (4/21/2023)
This book is intense. Very intense. I found I couldn't read it for more than an hour at a time because it just tore my heart in two. Masterfully written by Wiley Cash, this is the story of two brothers, Stump (Christopher) and Jess, who live on a tobacco farm in a valley ofmore
Clara and Mr. Tiffany: A Novel
by Susan Vreeland
Fascinating in Parts, Loses Its Oomph in Others (4/21/2023)
Colors. Lots of colors. Colors galore--from emerald green to peacock blue to daffodil yellow to ruby red. Author Susan Vreeland describes colors in this book, which is about Louis Comfort Tiffany, in a way that will make you almost see the colors pop off the page.

Tiffanymore
The Monsters of Templeton: A Novel
by Lauren Groff
Amazing, Creative and Original! A Perfect Novel (4/21/2023)
What an amazing, creative and outright original book! (And it was Lauren Groff's first novel, too.) This is a two-dimensional story; one part takes place in the present day, while the other takes place some 200 years ago.

Wilhelmina Sunshine Upton, who goes by Willie, is 28more
The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted: And Other Small Acts of Liberation
by Elizabeth Berg
Hilarious and Heartbreaking! A Must-Read (4/21/2023)
This is a book about food. More precisely, this is a book about eating food—or not eating it. It is a hymn to food. It is a testament to our relationship with food and how that relationship sometimes goes wrong. Very wrong. It is both hilarious and heartbreaking.

It is alsomore
Pachinko
by Min Jin Lee
Extraordinary Writing, Extraordinary Book (4/21/2023)
This four-generation family saga of poverty-stricken Koreans who are essentially forced in exile to Japan is everything a reader wants in a novel: characters so real they pop off the page, a plot that keeps you reading past your bedtime, and an ending that both breaks yourmore
The Ninth Hour: A Novel
by Alice McDermott
Powerful. Formidable. Astounding. Read It! (4/21/2023)
This is a wonderful story about life among the Irish-American Catholic community in New York City in the early 1900s. A nice little story. And then PUNCH! The last part of the book delivers such a powerful, unexpected and wholly formidable if not astounding ending that Imore
The Road from Gap Creek
by Robert Morgan
A Story of Family Love and Survival (4/21/2023)
This sequel to "Gap Creek" tells the story of Julie and Hank's marriage years after they moved away from Gap Creek. They are now the parents of four grown (or nearly grown) children, and the life they live is based in large part on what they can raise and grow on their farmmore
Columbine
by Dave Cullen
This Should Be Required Reading for Everyone (4/21/2023)
Breaking news! Oh, it's just another school shooting. How sad we can even think like that.

The notion that a child could procure guns and make bombs to take down his high school took on a whole new meaning when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold did the unthinkable at Columbinemore
An American Marriage
by Tayari Jones
A Love Story AND a Human Story (4/21/2023)
This is my favorite kind of book: long on characters and short on plot.

Expertly written by Tayari Jones, the book's characters are so real and so fully developed that they just pop off the page. The plot is heartbreaking: Celestial and Roy have a passionate and fierymore
Baker Towers
by Jennifer Haigh
A Powerful, Expertly Written Book That Will Transport You Back in Time (4/21/2023)
This book will transport you to the 1940s, '50s and '60s to the imagined—but, yet, oh so real—mining town of Bakerton, Pennsylvania where the good times come and go based on the coal industry. This is the story of the Novak family. He works in the coal mines, while shemore
City of Light
by Lauren Belfer
Secrets. Lies. Innuendoes. Betrayals. Oh, What a Delicious Book! (4/21/2023)
Secrets. Lies. Innuendoes. Betrayals. More secrets. A murder mystery. And great tragedy. Oh, and enough of a lesson on how electricity is generated from Niagara Falls that it (almost) masquerades as nonfiction. Written by Lauren Belfer, this is one of those utterlymore
Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II
by Liza Mundy
A Must-Read—But Not an Easy Read (4/21/2023)
What this book is: A prodigiously researched, well-written and cogent historical account of the heretofore unrecognized accomplishments of the so-called "code girls," the incredibly smart young women who successfully deciphered the coded secret messages sent by Japan andmore

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