From the author of Eva Luna, this epic novel is at the top of my list. It starts in Spain during Franco’s revolution and the exiles end up in Chile…. just read it – I think you’ll like it if you like multicultural or historical novels.

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Suffice it to say I liked this one better than a “A Gentleman in Moscow.” This is a totally different book in a different setting.
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I think I have found a new author in Jojo Moyes. I give it 4+1/2 stars. I was on vacation looking for something to read and picked this up. I was hooked from the beginning even thought I knew the ending was somewhat sad.
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This is the most delightful and unique novel I have read in a while. Don Tillman, a geneticist, is both a naïve yet sophisticated man who suffers from what appears to be Asperger’s. He tries so hard to understand and fit in the world but is baffled as to why humans are so irrational and emotional. His tendency is to over-analyze and categorize everything. Don is on a hilarious quest to find a wife through a scientific questionnaire that grows to 16 pages.
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Ok full confession here: I have YET to finish this excellent book. It is very long and detailed, whereas I was hoping – as someone raised overseas – for an interesting summary of the American Revolution No such luck. I’ve settled down for the long haul with this riveting, meticulously researched narrative.

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I thought I had read all of John Steinbeck’s books, but a friend recently gave me a copy of this series of short stories about fictional (?) people who settled in the Salinas Valley where the author grew up. The loosely related stories deal with the neighbors and ancestors from the mid 1800’s into the 1930’s. They are told by an omniscient narrator with a reoccurring theme of the conflict of the individualist. What can I say… a book by the great Steinbeck!
Set in Ireland in the 1980’s, it is the story of a coal merchant who discovers the rumors of Magdalen Laundry are true and he faces a moral dilemma.This was the perfect book to read during a busy season – only about 300 pages and her writing just flows. I loved the way she painted Ireland for the reader with nourishment like Ribena, soda bread and Marmite and Irish words and sayings. And the images: ” she keeled over on the cobblestones” ( a sudden death) and ” as dark as stout” a (murky river).

And one more I enjoyed to round them off: