reviews

Webs we weave... Author:  Claudia Rowe It’s hoarding with a truly morbid twist.  If you’re a hoarder show enthusiast, you may think you’ve seen (and imagined smelling) it all, from piles of used adult diapers to carpets strewn with cat feces.  But there’s one thing those shows have never featured, a collection of human corpses.   In The Spider and the Fly, journalist Claudia Rowe tells of her unique relationship with a serial killer who hoarded his victims, stashing bodies wherever he could find some space. Waiting patiently... Between 1996 and 1998, twenty-something Kendall Francois hid the bodies of [...]

About Hope Author: Anthony Doerr About Grace is a strange novel, equal parts despair and hope. The narrative is encapsulated in a snow globe type of world where the liminalities of the weather supply the beauty and ferocity that the hopeless characters can only appreciate but never attain. In this beautiful but destructive world where the transformations of water mean everything, we meet David Winkler, who is not fluid but merely staid, half in fear, half in the hope that he can change his own oddly set fate. As a child Winkler would sometimes see things before they happened such as [...]

Of lost wives, liver problems, and phone sex Author: Taffy Brodesser-Akner Fleishman Is in Trouble is not your average novel about a midlife crisis. Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s blistering-yet-cheerful story blows apart the clichés and offers readers a sexy, intelligent, multi-layered, spectacularly messed-up look at a tattered marriage that may—or may not—be beyond repair. After fifteen years, Toby and Rachel have separated. They plan to get divorced, but it’s not as simple as that. Although they are polar opposites in temperament and personality, they're both Fleishmans—and they are both very much in trouble. Brodesser-Akner presents Toby’s perspective first, so our sympathies naturally [...]