Category: Book Reviews
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Summer Book Club with My Daughters
Summer is my very favorite season. Life slows down and our busy, strict schedules tend to disappear. And what does this mean for us and our families? More free time. And what does more free time mean? More time to relax and read books! Summer reading is the best! It’s always been important to me…
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The Sinking City
LET’S GET EXCITED ABOUT THIS BOOK! Venice is a carnival of opposites, and Liona Carvatti thinks she understands it all: canal and palace, magician and merchant, plague and pantomime. As a patrician’s daughter, Liona enjoys the sparkling life of a noble family – although she would prefer to be tending to her flowers than practicing…
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After the Flood
LET’S GET EXCITED ABOUT THIS BOOK! A little more than a century from now, our world has been transformed. Rising floodwaters have obliterated America’s landscape, leaving nothing but an archipelago of mountaintop colonies surrounded by a deep expanse of open water. Stubbornly independent Myra and her precocious seven-year-old daughter, Pearl, fish from their small boat,…
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Dry
LET’S GET EXCITED ABOUT THIS BOOK! The drought in California has been going on for a while now. Everyone’s life has become an endless list of don’ts; don’t water the lawn, don’t fill up your pool, don’t take long showers. Until the taps run dry. Suddenly Alyssa’s quiet suburban street spirals into a war zone…
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The Trouble with Goats and Sheep
LET’S GET EXCITED ABOUT THIS BOOK! England, 1976. Mrs. Creasy is missing and the avenue is alive with whispers. The neighbors blame her sudden disappearance on the heat wave, but ten-year-olds Grace and Tilly aren’t convinced. As the summer shimmers on, the girls decide to take matters into their own hands. Inspired by the local…
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Where the Wind Leads
LET’S GET EXCITED ABOUT THIS BOOK! Vinh Chung was born in South Vietnam, just eight months after it fell to the communists in 1975. His family was wealthy, controlling a rice-milling empire worth millions; but within months of the communist takeover, the Chungs lost everything and were reduced to abject poverty. Knowing their children would…
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Where the Lost Wander
LET’S GET EXCITED ABOUT THIS BOOK! Naomi May never expected to be widowed at twenty. Eager to leave her grief behind, she sets off with her family for a life out West. On the trail, she forms an instant connection with John Lowry, a half-Pawnee man straddling two worlds and a stranger in both. But…
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Spinning Silver
LET’S GET EXCITED ABOUT THIS BOOK! Miryem is the daughter of a moneylender, but her father’s inability to collect his debts has left his family on the edge of poverty – until Miryem take matters into her own hands. Hardening her heart, the young woman sets out to claim what is owed and soon gains…
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Funny in Farsi
LET’S GET EXCITED ABOUT THIS BOOK! In 1972, when she was seven years old, Firoozeh and her family moved from Iran to Southern California. They had no firsthand knowledge of this country beyond Firoozeh’s father’s glowing memories of his graduate school years here. In a series of heartwarming, laugh-out-loud stories, “Funny in Farsi” chronicles the…
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The Ten Thousand Doors of January
LET’S GET EXCITED ABOUT THIS BOOK! Set in the early 20th century, “The Ten Thousand Doors of January” features a book within a book, hidden doors that move between worlds, villains with evil plans, and a wise, bookish girl named January. January is a mixed-race girl living in a vast estate filled with eccentric items…
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