Thursday, October 21, 2021

The Magician's Assistant by Ann Patchett

›
In The Magician’s Assistant , Ann Patchett tells a wonderful story of real life. She shows us love, cruelty, joy, grief, reinvention, and re...
Monday, October 11, 2021

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan

›
  Peter Frankopan, an Oxford historian, sweeps us through the last 2,000 years of world history, showing us how it looks from an Asian persp...
Thursday, September 9, 2021

The Last Report of the Miracles at Little No Horse, by Louise Erdrich

›
Biblical in nature and scope, The Last Report is replete with floods, snakes, sin, and forgiveness. Father Damien Modeste has lovingly ser...
Friday, August 13, 2021

Classic Restaurants of Des Moines and Their Recipes by Darcy Dougherty-Maulsby

›
I moved to Des Moines in 1970 and have always enjoyed eating out in Des Moines restaurants, so was very pleased to get a copy of Darcy Mauls...
Saturday, July 17, 2021

The Japanese Lover, by Isabel Allende

›
Isabel Allende’s novels often take place during a time of war and its aftermath when characters are forced to tap unknown reservoirs of stre...
Wednesday, July 7, 2021

Hamnet: A Novel of the Plague, by Maggie O’Farrell

›
As the author tells us in her opening   Historical Note : “In the 1580s, a couple living on Henley Street, Stratford, had three children: Su...
Tuesday, June 15, 2021

Who Ate the First Oyster? By Cody Cassidy

›
How did humans get the way we are? Pants-wearing, horseback-riding, disease-fighting jokesters, some of whom eat oysters? Cody Cassidy has a...