Alice Hoffman’s novel,The World That We Knew, begins in the spring of 1941 in Berlin with the murder of Hanni Kohn’s husband Simon during a riot outside the Jewish hospital.

I recently accepted a challenge to write about a special birthday. I’m guessing the challenger pictured a big childhood party of some kind, but the challenger didn’t know Mama.

Jeri Watts begins her book, On Snowden Mountain, with her 12-year-old protagonist Ellen out of options since she had burned up every pot and pan and used up all the groceries and credit at the store

Pushing “send” is one of the great joys of a writer’s life and one of the few where she has a degree of control. I experienced that joy last night and thought I’d do an account of what happens before and what I expect will happen after that happy event – at least in this case. 

Susan Holt Kralovansky may have taken The Book That Jake Borrowed from personal experience. 

Roshani Chokski was a new name with young adult titles that were unfamiliar to me when I went to the Mississippi Book Festival, and there is a reason for that!

Petina Gappah’s novel,Out of Darkness, Shining Light, begins oddly with the death of David Livingstone, the great explorer missionary.

A recent short-lived energetic round of cleaning out and tossing turned up a favorite teaching memory.

I’m going to recommend something unusual, but then this is an unusual book. Before you begin, take a peek at the authors’ note at the end, and yes, I have the apostrophe in the right place.

I anticipated the blooming of my Asiatic lily this year, knowing it wasn’t an Easter lily and would come later.

A good read is a given when Kimberly Willis Holt produces a new book.

In a discussion with Peppermint Patty, Charlie Brown explains that security is sleeping in the back seat of the car at night riding home.

The beginning of The Yellow House: A Memoir takes the reader on a New Orleans map trip to find the house where the author grew up.

For the most part, I refrain from ranting on this blog, but I can’t let this issue go without speaking up. 

For an avid reader of a wide-ranging assortment of books, a good whodunit serves a role similar to an appetizer compared to an entrée reading of literary fiction or nonfiction, but who doesn’t love a good treat now and then?

Let’s just be honest and say that sometimes a word or two in the preacher’s sermon takes my mind far afield. This time the word was “fig.”

Four disparate characters populate Cara Wall’s debut novel, The Dearly Beloved, as co-equal protagonists. In the prologue, Charles Barrett has died after forty years ministering together with James MacNally.

Susan Orlean, an author I admire, passes along a piece of advice she received from a writer she admires in the July/August issue of Writer’s Digest. (I’ve found the writing community a congenial one in this way as they encourage and advise one another.)

Sleepovers don’t always come with a theme, but with two boys and two new picture books featuring green dinosaur pancakes that come to life at the hands of a magical grandmother, a theme happened.

When the University of Southern Mississippi OLLI group embarked on a two-hour tour of the Mississippi gulf coast aboard the Betsy Ann, comparisons to Gilligan’s Island ensued.