Delivering Death
Julie Kramer

I just started Delivering Death, the most recent Riley Spartz mystery. It begins with Riley receiving a package in the mail of—teeth (and a foul odor). This series has been one of my favorites  and I'm a little sad that once I finish this one, I'll be caught up!

Overwhelmed: How to Work, Love & Play When No One Has Time
Brigid Schulte

I've been slowly enjoying this social science book about, well, being overwhelmed. The author is a journalist who decided to research why we're all so harried. This is the kind of non-fiction I love—lots of research and analysis in search of better understanding of the most interesting creatures I know, humans. I'm guardedly optimistic that perhaps this author can provide some hope. If you liked Susan Cain's Quiet or books by Malcolm Gladwell, this is a book you'll likely enjoy.

Fractured Land
Lisa Westberg Peters  

I've been delightfully surprised by what a genuinely enjoyable read this has been—who would think a combination of memoir and research into the oil industry could provide such a good read? The author is a sort of environmentalist who learns that she will someday inherit money, thanks to her family's stake in the oil industry. This puts her in an awkward moral position and she decides to tackle it by researching the oil industry. We're reading this for the Current Events book group. In April, we discussed the first half of the book and it provided the most interesting discussion we've had for that book group. In addition to the narrative, I am really enjoying the photographs in the book.

Shotgun Lovesongs
Nickolas Butler

I'm re-visiting Shotgun Lovesongs for the last Beagle Women's Book Group discussion for this year. I  love this story and its characters, so it's a welcome reunion. The fictional stories of four men and their lives/friendships over a number of years will hopefully spark some wonderful discussion for book group. The bulk of the novel is set in a small town in Wisconsin that I find easy to picture. Whether you were raised in a big city or small town, you'll likely identify with the ebb and flow of friendships. What I most love about this book is the author's themes about place.

Our Souls at Night
Kent Haruf

One of my favorite authors, Kent Haruf, recently died. A great gift to all of us who love his work is one last book, which will released on May 26th. A slim but powerful and affecting book, Our Souls at Night is set in Holt, Colorado, the location of all of Haruf’s fiction. Louis Walters is surprised by a visit from his neighbor, Addie Moore. Both lost their spouses years ago, and their children have moved out of town. The terrible loneliness Addie experiences at night causes her to make an unusual proposition to Louis. This bittersweet book follows Addie and Louis as they share their pasts and enjoy each other’s companionship through simple pleasures. You won’t want to miss this book.

All the Bright Places
Jennifer Niven

I encourage adults to occasionally read young adult (YA) literature for a number of reasons. It’s easy to recommend All the Bright Places because it’s such a great book. The main characters, Finch and Violet, meet on the ledge of the bell tower at school, and it’s a little ambiguous who saves whom. Soon after, they’re paired for a class project and grow into an unlikely friendship. Violet is grieving the death of her older sister in an accident for which Violet feels responsibility. Finch, who despises labels,  has been labeled a freak at school, a disappointment by his father, and a depressed kid by the school counselor. Sounds dark, doesn’t it? And yet it’s not, primarily because the characters, vividly drawn, are so appealing. This is a good book to share with the young people in your life, but it’s also a good book for adults to read and ponder. It’s the second book the Sister Wolf evening group will read this summer.

The Heart of Everything That Is
Bob Drury

Drury tells the riveting story of the Sioux warrior Red Cloud, the only Indian to defeat the United States Army in war. Red Cloud’s courage, wisdom, and skill as both a fighter and intelligent leader are masterfully presented. Also portrayed are other interesting individuals of the time, such as mountain man Jim Bridger, General Tecumseh Sherman and Crazy Horse.

Epitaph: A Novel of the O.K. Corral
Maria Doria Russell

Russel gives the reader a close look behind the mythology of events leading up to the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. The author develops believable people struggling with day to day problems. Their lives were changed dramatically by those few seconds of the famous gunfight. At the center of this story is Josephine Sarah Marcus, whose love for Wyatt Earp led her to create the legend that would forever glorify him.

And The Mountains Echoed
Khaled Hosseini

Having read The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, also by Hosseini, I’ve been looking forward to reading And The Mountains Echoed. At the heart of the book is the story of Abdullah and Pari, a brother and sister separated in childhood. The story spans generations and countries throughout the world. Family relationships, political situations, and decisions made for reasons both altruistic and self-serving make the story heart wrenching and compelling in turn. I found this story to be less gripping than Hosseini’s previous novels. That being said, it is a thought provoking look at human nature and helped me to better understand Afghanistan’s recent history. It will stay with me for a long time.

State of the Onion
Julie Hyzy

This is a fun mystery set in the White House kitchen. Olivia is hoping to get her dream job as executive chef.  She witnesses a murder and is the only one who can recognize the assassin. (She hit him with a frying pan!) The Secret Service, with Olivia's help, must find him before he strikes again. State dinner recipes are included at the end of the book.

Leaving Before the Rains Came
Alexandra Fuller

The author had eight novels rejected before she wrote a memoir of growing up in Africa with her eccentric family. The book, titled Don't Let's go to the Dogs Tonight, was a best seller. In her latest book, Alexandra writes of the disintegration of her marriage to the perfect man. Picking up the pieces of her life, she confronts tough questions about her past and her family still living in Africa. As the author matures in life,she matures as well as a writer. This is her best book yet.

The Dream Lover
Elizabeth Berg

This novel is the fictional account of the life of George Sand. She often wore men’s clothes, smoked cigars, traveled, and had two children and several lovers including Chopin. I was at Berg’s first reading the night before the book was released. She said she wrote it because she wanted to read it and couldn’t talk her friend Nancy Horan (Loving Frank’s author) into writing it. Berg spent two years on this book, partly to do the research but also because she wrote in a style that was consistent with the excerpts of Sand’s letters and books. Berg says she normally writes a novel “in 20 minutes.” This is a case where you can judge a book by its cover: it reads just the way it looks.

Special Topics in Calamity Physics
Marisha Pessl

This is a coming of age story about a precocious girl who travels with her vagabond professor father. The book is structured like a class, with a syllabus/contents page, chapters named after great books, and even a final exam. At first you are mainly aware of (and delighted by) the writing, with many evocative metaphors such as: "Nigel...spoke in hushed spurts (uncolored guppies darting through a tank) ... Milton spoke in a Southern accent so gooey and thick you could probably cut into it and spread it on dinner rolls." There is a heavy peppering of allusions and references, often cited in parentheses with dates and sometimes page numbers. But gradually the story takes over your attention: it has everything. You will not predict the ending, and you will care what it's going to be.

Orfeo: A Novel
Richard Powers

Orfeo takes you inside the head of a 70 year old man who is consumed by his passion to compose music, serious music that is not intended to please audiences but to live for the ages. His other interest, chemistry, gets him in trouble with Homeland Security. He panics and takes off across the country, reliving his past and resolving issues with his abandoned wife and daughter, his first lover, and his oldest friend. It isn’t a cheerful book, but I found the ending both surprising and full of redemption. Reading this made me look back at my own life as a series of different lives, of distinct chapters. This is a book for times when you want to be challenged.

The Goldfinch
Donna Tartt

The Goldfinch was the most absorbing read of the past year for me. I found the characters compelling and believable, and was lost in the world Tartt created. The story starts with a tragedy, and progresses with 13-year-old Theo Decker's odyssey to make sense of the event and to deal with his loss. We follow him into adulthood, and hard-won resolution. The book reminded me a little of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. This is the story of a child/young adult on a quest to process trauma through a variety of well-described landscapes populated with a variety of fascinating people. Both books took me back to some of my childhood favorites with their New York City settings and smart young characters with puzzles to solve. If you loved Harriet the Spy, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, and A Wrinkle in Time, you will enjoy this book. If those weren't your childhood favorites, perhaps it is the art history, or the crime drama, or the romance that will draw you in. The Goldfinch has all of that, and more.