Books & Authors

Expert Book Reviews, Recommendations, Author Biographies

Critical Consensus for 7/28: Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Played With Fire

thomas_b | July 28, 2009

Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Played With Fire is out today, following The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo as the second book in the late author’s  “Millenium” series. Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist are back at the center of the action, but this time a string of murders point to Salander as the suspect.  Blomkvist [...]

New Fiction for the Weekend

BNA_Daily | July 9, 2009

Tuesday was a big day for popular fiction, with new titles releasing from several best-selling authors.  From love stories and mysteries to murder at an Indian dinner party, there’s bound to be something you’ll enjoy on the New Release shelf this week.  See below for reviews of three of the week’s most buzzed about titles.
SIX [...]

Critical Consensus for 7/6: Jill Ciment’s Heroic Measures

BNA_Daily | July 6, 2009

With a title like Heroic Measures, you might expect an action/adventure epic, but Jill Ciment’s latest is a slim novel spanning one weekend in the life of an elderly couple and their dog.  Though a terrorist scare in New York City forms the story’s backdrop, the couple’s real problems involve selling the East Village apartment [...]

Critical Consensus for 6/29: Kate Christensen’s Trouble

BNA_Daily | June 29, 2009

In Trouble, Kate Christensen’s latest novel, 40-something Josie walks out of her life of marriage and motherhood to pursue the sexuality she forgot she had.  She joins her rocker friend Raquel for an escape to Mexico City, where debauchery and sexual re-awakening ensue.  Publishers Weekly calls Trouble a “slightly lesser work” than The Great Man, [...]

Critical Consensus for 6/22: The Angel’s Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

BNA_Daily | June 22, 2009

In 2004, Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s The Shadow of the Wind took off unexpectedly, soliciting rave reviews from critics and reaching bestseller status in several countries.  But Shadow was never supposed to stand alone - Zafon tells Amazon that he was “toying around with the idea of creating a fictional universe that would be articulated through [...]

Critical Consensus for 6/15: Kate Walbert’s A Short History of Women

BNA_Daily | June 15, 2009

Kate Walbert’s last novel, Our Kind, was a National Book Award nominee, and, from what critics are saying, her latest (out tomorrow) is of the same calibre.   A Short History of Women spans the last century, subtly exploring the oppression of women through five generations of a single family.  From a British suffragist to [...]

It’s Friday - Let’s Watch a Movie!

BNA_Daily | June 12, 2009

Books are no longer just words on a page as authors and publishers turn to video interviews and book trailers for promotion.  We’ve scoured the internet for interesting videos related to some of the books currently topping the New York Times bestseller lists.  From Mark Levin to Sarah Dessen, there’s something for everyone.
THE SCARECROW by [...]

Genre Links for 6/10: Teen Fiction - Not Just for Teens

BNA_Daily | June 10, 2009

Noticing the recent success of books like The Hunger Games and Wintergirls, the Wall Street Journal ran an article about trends in teen literature and hypothesized that teens “like a little madness, sadism and disease in the books they curl up with at night.”  The article goes on to say that these tough “issue” books [...]

Critical Consensus for 6/8: Ali Sethi’s The Wish Maker

BNA_Daily | June 8, 2009

Ali Sethi is the debut author of one of this summer’s IT books and is constantly compared to Khaled Hosseini.  Oh, and he’s only 24.  Out June 11th, The Wish Maker is the story of a Pakistani boy who, growing up in a home of outspoken women in the 1990s, offers an insider’s look into [...]

To Read, or Not To Read? This Week’s New Popular Fiction

BNA_Daily | June 5, 2009

From romance to science-fiction, publishers are bringing out the big guns just in time for summer.  The latest from Laurell K. Hamilton, Clive Cussler, and Alice Hoffman hit stores this week, and not all the reviews have been positive.  While die-hard fans of each author will probably be pleased, you may want to take a [...]