If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need
Synopsis: Things can change in a second:The second Frankie Green gets that scholarship letter, he has his ticket out of Jamaica.The second his longtime crush, Leah, asks him on a date, he’s in trouble.The second his father gets shot, suddenly nothing else matters.And the second Frankie joins his uncle’s gang in exchange for paying for… Continue reading Review: Your Corner Dark by Desmond Hall
Synopsis: Still reeling from tragedy, Johnathan finds himself struggling to finish high school, help his single mother, spend time with his crush, and be the man of a house that he doesn't own. When life takes another turn, Johnathan is forced to grow up quickly and pay for university himself. Out of nowhere, he takes… Continue reading Review: Teen Aged by Jason Singh
Synopsis: The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Ten years later, one sister lives… Continue reading Review: The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
Synopsis: How do you honour blood and chosen kin with equal care? A groundbreaking memoir spanning nations, prairie punk scenes, and queer love stories, Lindsay Nixon’s nîtisânak is woven around grief over the loss of their mother. It also explores despair and healing through community and family, and being torn apart by the same. Using… Continue reading Review: nîtisânak by Lindsay Nixon
Synopsis: Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has borne the unthinkable and not gone mad, yet she is still held captive by memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. Meanwhile Sethe’s house has long been troubled… Continue reading Review: Beloved by Toni Morrison
Synopsis: Esther Greenwood is brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under—maybe for the last time. In her acclaimed and enduring masterwork, Sylvia Plath brilliantly draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that her insanity becomes palpably real, even rational—as accessible an experience as going to the movies. A deep penetration… Continue reading Review: The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
Synopsis: "In the four years before the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision, most women determined to get abortions had to subject themselves to the power of illegal, unregulated abortionists...But a Chicago woman who happened to stumble across a secret organization code-named 'Jane' had an alternative. Laura Kaplan, who joined Jane in 1971, has… Continue reading Review: The Story of Jane by Laura Kaplan
Synopsis: In the final days of December 2004, in a small rural village in Chechnya, eight-year-old Havaa hides in the woods when her father is abducted by Russian forces. Fearing for her life, she flees with their neighbor Akhmed—a failed physician—to the bombed-out hospital, where Sonja, the one remaining doctor, treats a steady stream of… Continue reading Review: A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra
Synopsis: Two half-sisters, Effia and Esi, are born into different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Englishman and lives in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle. Unbeknownst to Effia, her sister, Esi, is imprisoned beneath her in the castle's dungeons, sold with thousands of others into the Gold… Continue reading Review: Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
Synopsis: This is the story of a woman's struggle for independence. Helen "Graham" has returned to Wildfell Hall in flight from a disastrous marriage. Exiled to the desolate moorland mansion, she adopts an assumed name and earns her living as a painter. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was gifted to me by my best friend,… Continue reading Review: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
Synopsis: Years ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command. Starting with an odd assortment of marginalized youth—musicians, tattoo… Continue reading Review: House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
Synopsis: A team of researchers from a nearby university have set up a research station in a fictional outport in Newfoundland, studying the strange emergence of phosphorescent tides. And Vivienne, a young assistant, accidentally captures a creature unknown to science: a kind of fish, both sentient and distinctly female. As the project supervisor and lead… Continue reading Review: The Luminous Sea by Melissa Barbeau
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