About Book Marks
Recent Reviews
Anna Gazmarian
Positive Booklist Fans of Rachel Held Evans and Sarah Bessey will welcome this eloquent voice.
Susan Lieu
Positive Booklist Lieu’s achingly honest debut is a stirring addition to Vietnamese American memoirs that will resonate with anyone coping with loss.
Kit Frick
Positive Booklist An edge-of-your-seat suspense tale about sisters and secrets ... Illustrating the repercussions of choices, Frick leaves readers breathless.
Lauren Grodstein
Positive Booklist Adam must decide if he has the fortitude to pursue his own salvation or abandon those he cares about. Devotees of Holocaust fiction will appreciate this moving chronicle, a worthy tribute to those who fought to survive the unthinkable.
Kate Collins
Positive Booklist Fans of gothic fiction will appreciate this tale reminiscent of Ruth Ware’s Turn of the Key.
Victoria Kielland, trans. Damion Searls
Positive Booklist Kielland’s pithy tale lingers long after the reader is finished.
Andrew McCarthy
Positive Booklist McCarthy’s depiction of the rewarding endeavor of walking the Camino with his son is both worthwhile and entertaining.
Rainn Wilson
Positive Booklist Wilson’s wry wit and humorous comments punctuate snippets of wisdom from an array of clerics. This is entertaining and thought-provoking.
Cathleen Schine
Positive Booklist Historical and contemporary fiction collide satisfyingly ... Contrasting the wartime excesses in Hollywood with privation in Austria, Mamie and Julian liken COVID-era isolation to the sense of exile so many faced when they fled Europe. Schine’s admirers will be enthralled, as will fans of Nancy Thayer and Elin Hilderbrand.
Tanya Frank
Positive Booklist A recurring motif of elephant seals punctuates this crucial account, which will speak to other families caught between loved ones, mental illness, and society’s judgment.
Rachel Kapelke-Dale
Rave Booklist Kapelke-Dale’s...absorbing novel delves into the repercussions of sexual abuse, interspersing tantalizing extracts from Evie’s feminist fairy-tale retellings and fragments of Saskia’s teen years with present events that crescendo to a stunning conclusion.
Michelle Webster-Hein
Positive Booklist The narrators’ distinct voices complement this beautifully descriptive, character-driven work contemplating themes of change and doing the right thing.
Winnie M Li
Positive Booklist Writer, producer, and activist Li draws on her experience in the film industry to bring authenticity and raw honesty to her second novel, a timely page-turner that explores the emotional impact of sexual assault.
Katie Hafner
Positive Booklist ... a striking entry to relationship fiction that is timely and optimistic ... With beautifully rendered characters and rich language, this is a treat, especially for fans of Anne Tyler and Elizabeth Berg.
Sarah Stodola
Positive Booklist Stodola details both the disastrous effects of overdevelopment on multiple beachfront sites as well as hopeful instances of conservation, charting the steps needed to curtail the devastating consequences of unchecked development: difficult, expensive measures that may save a quite different beach resort for future generations. Avid travelers and environmentally conscious readers alike will appreciate this treatment.
Sally Denton
Rave Booklist No stranger to uncovering intrigues and distantly related to the principals in this account, Denton tackles drug cartels, convoluted governments, and a dizzying array of family entanglements, beginning with an unflinching examination of LDS history from its inception by Joseph Smith through its migration westward to Utah and the defection of fundamentalist members to Chihuahua, Mexico, when the official church leadership rejected the practices of polygamy and blood atonement...This is exhaustively researched and riveting.
Clare Mac Cumhaill
Positive Booklist An homage to four women friends whose collegiate lives benefited from the exodus of the generation of British men who traded academic dress for military uniforms during WWII ... Philosophy aficionados will relish the discussion.
Patrick Laurie
Positive Booklist [Laurie] writes lyrically about his small herd of Riggit cattle and his crops, their successful growth contrasted with his and his wife’s fertility struggles. Organized around a calendar year, the account brims with beautiful details of farm life, complemented perfectly by Sharon Tingey’s penciled illustrations. Narrated in Laurie’s Scottish voice, this paean to simpler times is reminiscent of James Herriot’s writings about Yorkshire and well worth a read.
Mitch Albom
Positive Booklist News reports chronicling the saga of the Grand Idea’s participants are interspersed among the chapters, adding a sense of realism to an ethereal narrative resounding with themes of loss, despair, and redemption. Albom’s many fans will welcome this return to his signature fiction, which is sure to garner new admirers, too.
Angel Khoury
Positive Booklist Khoury’s atmospheric depiction of her characters’ interwoven lives is beautifully rendered.
Janine Di Giovanni
Rave Booklist With a reporting career spanning three decades throughout the region, she writes with poignant authenticity as she weaves her own deeply personal faith experiences with those of a parade of Middle Eastern citizens who populate the history she recounts of Iraq, Gaza, Syria, and Egypt, places foundational to early Christianity ... Di Giovanni’s many interviews and own observations detail heartrending circumstances that have wreaked irreparable harm to families, towns, and countries ... Maps and an invaluable timeline complement the thoroughly documented text. Challenging but worth the effort, this will resonate with readers interested in gaining understanding of the land’s complex issues while grasping with the author for undiscovered solutions.
Mary Adkins
Positive Booklist ... a unique twist on a fish-out-of-water story ... Fans of Jojo Moyes and Sally Rooney will appreciate Adkins’ talent in weaving subtle events together to create complex characters whose persuasions evolve throughout.