My new therapist is sitting on the edge of my desk, legs crossed, head slightly bowed. His beady eyes peer at me through his black framed glasses as he holds a pen poised over his clipboard.

He’s three inches tall, made of molded plastic, and looks like a cross between Freud and Dr. Leo Marvin from the movie, “What About Bob?”

The ...Read more

(WARNING: Contains spoilers for "Immortal Longings" and "Vilest Things.")

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Explosive. Breathtaking. It all comes down to the wire in the action-packed conclusion to Chloe Gong’s "Flesh and False Gods" trilogy, "Eyes of Kings."

Inspired by Shakespeare’s "Antony and Cleopatra," the trilogy is set within the world of Talin, in which ...Read more

I was already a huge fan of Riley Sager before "The Unknown." I’ve read all of his previous best-selling thrillers and even got the opportunity to interview him once. So I was pretty sure right from the start this would be a good book. I just didn’t know it was going to be this good.

"The Unknown" is a wonderfully creepy, spooky and ...Read more

Next to Monopoly and Battleship, Get Grandma is one of the family’s favorite games. No rules, no limits, play as often as you wish, whenever and wherever you wish.

Years ago, both sons-in-laws began jumping out of closets when they realized I had a strong startle reflex and often screamed loud enough to pierce two time zones when surprised.

...Read more

For anyone who has ever closed the Book of Revelation feeling more confused than illuminated, Robert Charley‘s "The Feast of Trumpets: Blueprint to Revelation" offers a fresh lens, grounded in scholarship yet written with the warmth of a friend walking you through a subject he loves.

Charley’s central premise is elegantly simple and, once ...Read more

Rob Pilkenton, author of "Dad, Again," has written an unflinching, deeply honest account of what it actually takes for a man to become the father, husband and person he wishes he’d been the first time around. He does this without ever asking the reader to admire him for it.

The book’s structure alone tells you it was built with care. ...Read more

Five police cars with flashing lights blocked the southern portion of a major intersection. Broken glass, debris and twisted metal spread as far as the eye could see. Partial remains of a horribly disfigured SUV sat on a flat bed. A mangled sedan was on its side in the middle of the pavement.

News reports said an SUV with four passengers ran a ...Read more

We’ve all read a mystery featuring the dreaded curtain-twitcher, a beady eye sweeping the street, the busybody, the local gossip, the old lady asking too many pertinent questions for comfort. The nosy neighbor is instantly recognizable and integral to the mystery yet is often an overlooked character. They’re frequently the catalyst to the ...Read more

Author Erin Van Der Meer gained insider perspective and in-depth experience as a journalist, which served her well in writing the bitingly satirical debut novel, "The Scoop."

It’s an irresistible, stay-up-late, guilty reading pleasure about protagonist Frankie Miller, a recently unemployed journalist weighed down by multiple rejections from ...Read more

George Washington is literally in the “pages of history.” A book on the coffee table has money hanging out of it — not play money, real money, as in a $1 bill.

I know in an instant the book belongs to a 12-year-old granddaughter.

The girl is an avid reader. She won the “Reader Award” in her class three times last year which ...Read more

There’s a moment early in "Icefall" where an Alaska state trooper pulls open the door of a stranded Amazon delivery van and finds the driver catatonic, frozen in place with Sinatra still playing softly on the radio. It’s a small, eerie image, and it tells you everything about what this book does well: take something mundane, drop it into the...Read more

Girl begins to hate job.

Girl quits job.

Girl goes to college for the experience and degree she never had.

Girl matches wits with professor.

Girl and professor… might… like… each other?

Though this is an extremely simplified summary of "Extracurricular" by Rachel Lynn Solomon, if you’re interested in forbidden romance and age-gap ...Read more

Our nightly dinner routine goes like this: I cook dinner and the husband sets the table. Last night we had Panera napkins, the night before we had Subway napkins. We have a drawer full of cloth napkins, but he prefers to save those until we’ve used all the extras that fast food places stuff in the bag with our order.

Sometimes he goes to the ...Read more

When I set out to write "Wayward Girls," I was pulled into the Vietnam era. My childhood memories centered around the nightly news with Walter Cronkite. I wasn’t really focused on the texture of daily life during that seismic decade: the music, the grief, the quality of American restlessness and the way ordinary people were affected by the ...Read more

Decades ago, there was a story in Time magazine (Page 98, 1965) about a family who survived getting lost in the desert by drinking water from the car radiator and eating crayons. When that issue arrived at our house, my parents must have talked about the broken-down car, the 124-degree temperatures, and the way the kids buried themselves in the ...Read more

The start of the school year brings a familiar list of responsibilities for parents: buying school supplies, keeping track of forms, coordinating transportation and responding to a steady stream of emails from teachers and administrators.

Although many families strive to share these responsibilities, research has consistently found that mothers...Read more

Years ago, when women only a few years older than I am now announced they quit cooking, I silently judged them. I would think to myself, “How in the world do you just stop cooking?”

I get it now. They were tired — tired of chicken, tired of ground beef, tired of pork and tired of salad after salad after salad.

If a judge were to sentence...Read more

Grief does not always behave like an ending. Sometimes it acts more like a ride that refuses to stop: the same drops and turns, the same sickening return to the place where everything irrevocably changed.

In the latest entry to his “Life and Living” series, "Roller Coasters: The Life Kind," Joseph M. Lenard builds a short, intensely ...Read more

If "Murder at the Hotel Orient" were a film, it would be given an “R” if not an “NC-17” rating, as it is a quite naughty, although highly entertaining, murder mystery that would be unsuitable for church or library-based book clubs. The dedication attests to this:“For Mr. Husson, my fourth-grade teacher, who made me promise to dedicate ...Read more

We’ve hit a rough patch over mowing the lawn this summer. The husband is temporarily sidelined with a knee injury and I cheerfully and enthusiastically (a slight exaggeration) volunteered to do the mowing.

We are now engulfed in turf wars. My mowing abilities are under intense scrutiny. The man has high standards. I call him the Sodfather.

...Read more