Buckeye by Patrick Ryan is perfection. A Saga spanning from the 1940's through 1980, this all-encompassing look at two family's experiences in middle America from World War Two to the Vietnam war and beyond is not to be missed. This book will stay with me. Becky and Cal Jenkins marry at the start of the second world war when Cal is rejected from military service because of one leg being shorter than the other. This point is revisited as an identity-crisis that Cal t

Table for Two by Amor Towles is a collection of short stories that encompass Towles' signature style: subtle humor, charm, and action abound. The first unrelated half takes place in (or ending up in) New York and the second half follow Eve, the 1939 protagonist from Towles's Rules of Civility . At the end of that book readers learn she stays on the train from New York to L.A., instead of getting off to return to her parents in Indiana like was expected. The characters

Jar of Hearts by Jennifer Hillier packed just enough punch in the plot to keep me going. The characters were decently drawn (although recognizable) and the narrative came together nicely. Right up until the very end. At the start of the novel, Geo is at her own trial for being an accessory to a murder that happened fourteen years prior. The killer was her high school boyfriend, and the victim was Geo's best friend. Geo is sentenced to five years and right after she

Every once in a while, I discover an author who's new to me, and they become someone that will now always jump off the bookshelf. Abbi Waxman immediately won me over with Other's People's Houses . Her hilarious and whip-smart writing made me an instant fan. This story is about a neighborhood and the people that live there. As the title hints at, one can never tell what's going on behind closed doors. This becomes glaringly clear after Frances Bloom, the main charact