From The Washington Post
Reviewed by Judy Budnitz
Does government-sanctioned suicide offer the same potential for satire as, say, the consumption of children? Possibly. One need only look to Kurt Vonnegut's story "Welcome to the Monkey House,"...
One of Dickens’ most enduringly popular stories is Oliver Twist, an early work published 1837-8. Like many of his later novels, its central theme is the hardship faced by the dispossessed and those of the outside of ‘polite’ society. Oliver...
Spanning twenty crucial years of American life, Mothers and Daughters is the story of four women, of different ages and very different temperaments, whose lives are linked closely by the threads of love. In a time of change and chaos, each of the...
Krystia’s family is hiding Jews from the invading Nazis, but the risks are immense. How much will she risk for her friends? A gripping story based on true events.
During the Soviet occupation of Ukraine during World War II, some of...
In 2001, a woman’s skeleton was found in the woods overlooking Montreal’s Royal Victoria Hospital. Despite an audit of the hospital’s patient records, a forensic reconstruction of the woman’s face, missing-person appeals, and DNA tests that...
It is the summer of 1997. In England, Alec Valentine is returning home to care for his ailing mother, Alice, a task that only reinforces his deep sense of inadequacy. In San Francisco, his older brother Larry prepares to come home as well, knowing...
Togo Tashimoto, captain of the Japanese submarine I-357 and a ruthless disciplinarian steeped in the samurai tradition; and John Barratt, captain of HMS Restless, haunted by his wife's death while a prisoner of the Japanese in Changi Jail; were two...
In this vivid and compelling novel, Tim Murphy follows a diverse set of characters whose fates intertwine in an iconic building in Manhattan’s East Village, the Christodora. The Christodora is home to Milly and Jared, a privileged young couple...
In subtle, sensuous prose, the stories in Sara Majka's debut collection explore distance in all its forms: the emotional spaces that open up between family members, friends, and lovers; the gaps that emerge between who we were and who we are; the...