Beth McNeil

Two half sisters, an ocean and a world away, give birth to two completely different dynasties. Homegoing follows these families through interwoven tales of love, heartbreak, classism, racism and the struggle of identity, giving us snippets of lives that are at once beautiful in their complexity and unflinchingly real. Effia, known as the beauty, marries […]

  Fabiana Cabral

Greetings, humans. We have genre variety this month to keep your reading palate happy. Two novels, two biographies, a collection of essays about America’s most famous playwright, and a collection of sketches of some of the greatest writers working today: Books In Hand: Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life I excitedly impulse-bought Yanagihara’s book after hearing […]

  Fabiana Cabral

Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See Book one is this month’s selection for BU’s Core Curriculum alumni book club. We chose the book because we needed a pick that was fast and pleasurable, yet wouldn’t skimp on substance or intelligence. Doerr’s book is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, was a […]

  Theresa Perkins

“The dog did nothing in the night-time. That was the curious incident.” -Sherlock Holmes in Silver Blaze The novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon landed on my bookshelf back in 2003. As a junior in high school, Haddon’s fictional story of 15-year-old Christopher was unlike anything that I […]

  Fabiana Cabral

“How angry am I? You don’t want to know. Nobody wants to know about that.” It almost makes you regret knocking. Or was it she who knocked on your door? From the first line, we find ourselves wondering how to deal with the Woman Upstairs. We could keep ignoring her; we’re used to doing so. […]

  Tim Collins

I don’t often read classics, but when I do I’m pleasantly surprised. Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca  is the kind of classic novel that immediately appeals to me. It’s well known, but not too well known, and it has a female protagonist. It also has gothic appeal which I’m all for. So with all those things […]

  Brian Balduzzi

Sometimes, you want a little magic in your life.  Erin Morgenstern crafts a National Bestseller with her The Night Circus, chronicling a circus that arrives without warning.  Amidst the wonder of acrobatics, contortionist, tarot card readers, and kittens that jump through hoops, we follow two magicians raised almost since birth to compete in a mysterious […]

  Brian Balduzzi

With a Cape Cod vacation ahead of me, I browsed the bookstore for an equally satisfying beach read.  My eyes caught the title: The American Heiress.  Well, this book had everything that I wanted; it had historical romance, loads of money and class, and a smart writer with the brains and spunk to infuse in […]