"Sometimes war can set a woman free," declares Sofia Bottom's larger-than-life intelligentsia mother Clara. The fictional country of Elysia reveres the arts and has evolved beyond all that is ...
Read ReviewNovelist, essayist, and contributor to NPR's This American Life, Heather O'Neill is a literary powerhouse in Canada, where she was born and raised and lives today. Her debut novel Lullabies for ...
Read ArticleSeven-year-old Ellie, living in Tehran in the 1950s, has just lost her father. She and her single mother are forced to leave their lavish life behind and move to a tiny home downtown. Grieving her ...
Read ReviewIn the southwest of Iran lies a city called Abadan, over five hundred miles from the country's capital of Tehran, with a population of a little over 200,000. Despite its relatively quiet presence,...
Read ArticleJohn Ferguson is a principled man. But when, in 1843, those principles drive him to break from the established Church of Scotland, the evangelical minister soon finds himself a poor man, too. Stripped...
Read ReviewIn Clear, the third novel from Carys Davies, an impoverished presbyterian minister reluctantly takes part in the Highland Clearances, a series of mass evictions that took place in the north of ...
Read ArticlePermit me to break the fourth wall. Like any good reviewer, I aim to analyze a book dispassionately, on its own terms. But personally, the true sign of a powerful work of fiction is if I dream about ...
Read ReviewThe Dangers of Roundup Ready Seeds
In Louise Erdrich's novel The Mighty Red, a rural community in North Dakota grapples with common problems facing agricultural centers—the bankruptcy of small farms and resulting consolidation ...
Read ArticleIn the aftermath of the 1860 presidential election, the divided United States began to collapse as South Carolina seceded from the Union, followed by another six Southern states. Among the countless ...
Read ReviewAs Erik Larson recounts in The Demon of Unrest, the first shots of the American Civil War were fired on Fort Sumter, off the coast of South Carolina, at 4:30 a.m. on April 12th, 1861. Thirty-six hours...
Read ArticleElizabeth Strout's Tell Me Everything picks up where her previous book Lucy by the Sea (2022) left off. Author Lucy Barton is now living full-time with her ex-husband, William, in the small town of ...
Read ReviewIn Elizabeth Strout's novel Tell Me Everything, the author discusses the concept of the modern-day 'sin-eater.' In her interpretation, the term applies to a person who helps others unburden themselves...
Read ArticleSolve this clue:
and be entered to win...
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.