Hind’s Feet on High Places

“The Songs of Songs expresses the desire implanted in every human heart, to be reunited with God himself, and to know perfect and unbroken union with him. He has made us for himself, and our hearts can never know rest and perfect satisfaction until they find it in him.”—Hannah Hurnard, Hinds’ Feet on High Places. Over two million copies of Hinds’ Feet on High Places have been sold since Hannah Hurnard wrote it in 1955 following the death of her father. It takes its title from Habukkuk 3:19, “The Lord God is my strength, and he will make my feet like hinds’ feet, and he will make me to walk […]

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Beasts of a Little Land

“Life is only bearable because time makes you forget everything. But life is worthwhile because love makes you remember everything.”― Juhea Kim, Beasts of a Little Land. Juhea Kim’s first novel tells a story of friendship and forgiveness during Korea’s fight for independence. The novel begins in 1917, when a captive a Korean hunter saves a young Japanese officer from an attacking tiger. In an instant, their destinies are connected, laying the foundation for an intricate saga spanning five decades. Central to the narrative is Jade Ahn, a young girl from a poor rural family who is sold to Miss Silver’s courtesan school in Pyongyang. She forms a deep friendship with an […]

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Big Stone Gap

Nothing much happens in Big Stone Gap, Virginia. The highlight of 35-year-old Ave Maria Mulligan’s week is when the bookmobile comes to town. As the town pharmacist, she knows intimate details about the community; sometimes more than she cares to know. She’s a member of the volunteer rescue squad and leads the drama team. Imagine the excitement when Elizabeth Taylor and her husband, John Warner, come for a visit. Adriana Trigiani’s first novel concerns the family scandals that befall Ave Maria in this seemingly uneventful town. When the self-proclaimed spinster discovers a skeleton in her family’s closet, her quiet, conventional life is turned topsy-turvy. Greed, lust, and envy aren’t just […]

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Trust by Hernan Diaz

  Trust takes readers on a journey through the intricate world of high finance during the 1920s and 1930s in New York City. The book is about Andrew Bevel, a fictional financier who outsmarts the market just before the fateful stock market crash of 1929. When everyone else is losing their shirt, he converts his investments into cash mere weeks before the Great Depression hit. Author Hernan Diaz divided his book into four distinct sections, some of which worked better than others. First there is a short, unflattering novel written by author Harold Vanner about an investor named Benjamin Rask and his mentally ill wife. The character is obviously based […]

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The Light Pirate

  But here it was: happening more quickly than anyone had anticipated. Florida, returning to herself. Swamps that had been dredged and drained and developed reappeared, bubbling back up to the surface in parking lots and on highways and in gated neighborhoods. Sinkholes opened up and swallowed entire blocks whole. Houses and roads and crops disappeared into the edges of the ever- encroaching wild. The Light Pirate isn’t a book I would normally choose to read, but that’s the beauty of being in a book club… stepping outside one’s comfort zone. The only other dystopian books I’ve read are The Hunger Games and Divergent novels—this genre isn’t really my go-to. […]

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Black Cake

Eleanor Bennett left a puzzling inheritance for her children, Byron and Benny. It includes a note, a USB drive with an audio recording, and a traditional black cake from a family recipe found in the freezer. In her message, Eleanor shares the story of her life. In 1965, a young woman fleeing an arranged marriage and suspicion of murder disappears into the surf. Cutting all ties, she crosses oceans, reinvents herself, and makes heartbreaking choices to take control of her life hoping to reunite with her first love. Byron and Benny haven’t seen each other in years. Can they set aside their differences to deal with their mother’s hidden past? […]

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The Runaway Wife

Have you ever wanted to run away from home… as an adult? I must admit I’ve entertained the idea, but I am such a chicken! Who would rescue me when disaster strikes? What would I do with my little sweet little lap dog? One evening while mashing potatoes for dinner, Connie McColl decides she’s had enough. She’s tired of her husband’s constant rounds of golf, tired of her children expecting her to babysit their unruly kids at the drop of a hate, and. She’s tired of solving one family crisis after another. When is it her turn to live? So Connie packs a bag, gets in her little green car […]

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Hello Beautiful

Ann Napolitano, the brilliant writer behind Dear Edward (2020), has done it again with her latest novel, Hello Beautiful. While I normally steer clear of Oprah’s Book Club picks, Ann Napolitano is phenomenal, so I gave it a go. We meet William Waters as a young boy in a house silenced by tragedy. His parents can hardly look at him, so it’s a relief when he earns a scholarship to college far away from his childhood home. He soon meets Julia Padavano, an ambitious young woman. He is soon engulfed in her boisterous close-knit Italian family, and embraced by sisters Sylvie, a romantic bibliophile, Cecelia, an aspiring artist, and Emeline, […]

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Sisters of Night and Fog

“Like the devil, the Nazis know that to divide is to control and conquer.” ― Erika Robuck, Sisters of Night and Fog. Told in alternating chapters, Sisters of Night and Fog follows two very different women as they risk it all for the French Resistance. American Virginia d’Albert-Lake lives in France during the German occupation. She, her French husband, Philippe, and others work to save Allied pilots. Meanwhile, nineteen-year-old Englishwoman Violette Bushell marries French Legionnaire Étienne Szabo. When he leaves to fight the Germans in Egypt, she joins Winston Churchill’s Special Operations Executive and goes undercover in France. The two women meet when they are arrested and taken to Fresnes Prison near […]

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Demon Copperhead

“The wonder is that you could start life with nothing, end with nothing, and lose so much in between.”—Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead. This is my third book by Barbara Kingsolver. Prior to Demon Copperhead, her most famous book was probably The Poisonwood Bible, the story of a missionary family in the Belgian Congo in 1959. It’s a novel I’ll never forget. I also enjoyed Prodigal Summer, in which she uses her knowledge of nature to weave together three stories of life in Appalachia. Neither compares to sheer brilliance to Demon Copperhead. I know this will be one of my favorite reads of 2023—maybe ever. Barbara Kingsolver’s monumental historical novel about […]

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