BookBrowse Review:
There have been so many novels written about the lives of Eastern European Jews during World War II that I've sometimes wondered how an author can possibly find a way to put a unique twist on the subject. Yet, remarkably, Ramona Ausubel has done just that - authored a book about a well-known, well-documented point in history and made it completely original.

No One is Here Except All of Us doesn't, for the most part, read like...    Continue Reading

BookBrowse Review:
Oh sure, the life of a kitchen-maid was all about drudgery and humiliation, but Margaret Powell lets you know right away that there is more to her character than beaten-down servitude. On page three of her riveting, fresh-voiced, fast-paced memoir, she tells us that when she was little, her parents sent her and her siblings to Sunday school not because they were devout but because they needed the privacy for lovemaking - such was life in a...    Continue Reading

BookBrowse Review:
Novels set in foreign locales offer windows into other worlds; not the peek of a week-long vacation but something akin to a lived-in comfort. And setting a novel in Japan is, by nature, a world of contrast for western audiences.

Japan kept itself isolated from the western world until American gunboat diplomacy forced it open in the 1850s. It is in this time, before our "black ships" arrived and when Japan was struggling to maintain...    Continue Reading

BookBrowse Review:
I loved this book. If I'd read this book when I was 14, I would have written that with capital letters and exclamation points, the page soggy with tears. Remember when you could read a book and feel like it was written just for you? That the author was writing about your own private world, your singular thoughts, the startlingly originality of you and your friends? The feeling is absolutely thrilling, but it fades as we grow older and...    Continue Reading