reading Archives

Black Cake

Family Secrets and Heart Scars All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. ~ Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina Author: Charmaine Wilkerson Sometimes, the only thing left that can bring the broken back together is tragedy. This has proven true for estranged siblings Byron and Benny Bennett. Their father died years ago, and Benny refused to come to his funeral, cementing the family fracture. Now, their mother has passed suddenly, and Benny is back, confronting her brother and her past, trying to make sense of where it all fell apart. But it’s a past that neither [...]

Frances Carden2024-08-18T13:22:16-07:00August 18th, 2024|Tags: Black Cake, book review, fiction, read, reading|

Horse

Horse Racing, Freedom, and History Author: Geraldine Brooks What do a record-breaking thoroughbred; a dusty, forgotten skeleton in a museum’s storage; a discarded painting; a thesis about a young artist’s depiction of Black grooms pre-Civil War; and a young couple’s tumultuous interracial relationship have to do with each other? In Horse author Geraldine Brooks oscillates between the past and the present to bring readers an epic story about horses and the fraught racial history of Black trainers and grooms in America’s history of horse racing. It’s a story with a huge scope, ranging from present-day Australia to Kentucky in the 1850s, [...]

Frances Carden2024-08-17T11:00:36-07:00August 17th, 2024|Tags: book review, historical fiction, read, reading|

Mary

Perimenopause or Paranoia? Author: Nat Cassidy There’s a dead woman in the bathtub. This isn’t the first time, however, that Mary has seen death up close and personal. She sees it every time she looks in the mirror and her face begins to transform, to decay. She sees it when she looks at other women, their features shifting from alive to putrescent. This is only the latest in a series of gruesome hallucinations. But the doctor says it’s fine. Just perimenopause. Nothing to worry about. Comes along with the hot flashes. Mary is not convinced, but don’t you dare call her [...]

Frances Carden2024-08-15T16:58:06-07:00August 15th, 2024|Tags: book review, horror, read, reading|