During our conversation on the eve of Rash’s trip to France for an Eco-Literature convention, where the theme was “Enchantment,” he tells me that “One thing that’s important for me in my work is to remind people that there is a natural world. It’s very easy to think we are […]
Read MoreContemporary
Summer Wings, April Tremblay
It’s the summer before Jessa’s senior year in high school, and she’s looking forward to spending time with her animals, best friend, and the boy she likes. When she has an unexpected encounter with the dark underside of her vegetarian society, she’s challenged to find the strength to speak for […]
Read MorePlease Don’t Paint Our Planet Pink!, Gregg Kleiner
What might happen if we could SEE carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? What if CO2 were, say, pink? In this engaging, funny, and highly timely book for children (and their adults!), a young boy whose parents named him Wilbur “in honor of that pig in Charlotte’s Web” discovers the power […]
Read MoreThe Lamentations of Zeno, Ilija Trojanow
The Lamentations of Zeno is an extraordinary evocation of the fragile and majestic wonders to be found at a far corner of the globe, written by a novelist who is a renowned travel writer. Poignant and playful, the novel recalls the experimentation of high-modernist fiction without compromising a limpid sense […]
Read MoreMy Last Continent, Midge Raymond
It is only at the end of the world—among the glacial mountains, cleaving icebergs, and frigid waters of Antarctica—where Deb Gardner and Keller Sullivan feel at home. For the few blissful weeks they spend each year studying the habits of emperor and Adélie penguins, Deb and Keller can escape the […]
Read MoreA Pale View of Hills, Kazuo Ishiguro
Kazuo Ishiguro’s first novel is one of my favorites: the tale of Etsuko, a Japanese woman living in the English countryside, unraveling the suicide of her eldest daughter. Woven throughout is another tale, set in a suburb of Nagasaki several years after the end of World War II: Etsuko, then […]
Read MoreThe True Deceiver, Tove Jansson
The lies we tell ourselves and the lies we tell others—is the subject of this, Tove Jansson’s most unnerving and unpredictable novel. Here Jansson takes a darker look at the subjects that animate the best of her work, from her sensitive tale of island life, The Summer Book, to her […]
Read MoreMarrow Island, Alexis M. Smith
Twenty years ago Lucie Bowen left Marrow Island; along with her mother, she fled the aftermath of an earthquake that compromised the local refinery, killing her father and ravaging the island’s environment. Now, Lucie’s childhood friend Kate is living within a mysterious group called Marrow Colony—a community that claims to […]
Read MoreWe Are Unprepared, Meg Little Reilly
Ash and Pia’s move from Brooklyn to the bucolic hills of Vermont was supposed to be a fresh start—a picturesque farmhouse, mindful lifestyle, maybe even children. But just three months in, news breaks of a devastating superstorm expected in the coming months. Fear of the impending disaster divides their tight-knit […]
Read MoreHeat and Light, Jennifer Haigh
To drill or not to drill? Prison guard Rich Devlin leases his mineral rights to finance his dream of farming. He doesn’t count on the truck traffic and nonstop noise, his brother’s skepticism or the paranoia of his wife, Shelby, who insists the water smells strange and is poisoning their […]
Read MoreA Cast of Falcons, Steve Burrows
In the case of bird-loving Dominic Jejeune – formerly of Canada, now of Norfolk, Britain – it’s to more birding. There’s murder in this book, but it’s really about the illicit trade in birds of prey. Burrows introduces Jejeune’s brother, who is on the run from a felony charge; Jejeune’s […]
Read MoreZero K, Don DeLillo
Don DeLillo’s seductive, spectacularly observed and brilliant new novel weighs the darkness of the world—terrorism, floods, fires, famine, plague—against the beauty and humanity of everyday life; love, awe, “the intimate touch of earth and sun.” -Goodreads. See reviews at the Telegraph, The Guardian, and The Scotsman. His latest novel, Zero […]
Read MoreThe Marshlanders Series, Annis Pratt
The Marshlanders is about the conflict between self-sustaining communities and their enemies, who are determined to drain their wetlands for agricultural development. Clare and William are adopted by marsh dwellers and coastal farmers after William’s father, a pharmacist, has been murdered and Clare has barely escaped with her life from […]
Read MoreThe Turtle of Oman, Naomi Shihab Nye
Aref Al-Amri does not want to leave Oman. He does not want to leave his elementary school, his friends, or his beloved grandfather, Siddi. He does not want to live in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where his parents will go to graduate school. His mother is desperate for him to pack […]
Read MoreGarapaima: A Monster Fish Novel, Mark Spitzer
A twenty-foot-long, mutated monster-fish is loose in Phantom Loon Lake, Ontario, thanks to a top secret government conspiracy to design a Freak Species of Mass Destruction! Crabby old angler Jack Nadler is thrown together with a whacko cast of cartoony characters, including the most grizzly professor to ever wrestle alligators, […]
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