The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

 First sentence:

"There was an old Jew who lived at the site of the old synagogue up on Chicken Hill in the town of Pottstown, Pa., and when Pennsylvania State Troopers found the skeleton at the bottom of an old well of Hayes Street, the old Jew's house was the first place they went to."

Description:

In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new housing development, the last thing they expected to uncover was a human skeleton. Who the skeleton was and how it got buried there were just two of the long-held secrets that had been kept for decades by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side, sharing ambitions and sorrows.

Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, which served he neighborhood's quirky collection of blacks and European immigrants, helped by her husband, Moshe, a Romanian-born theater owner who integrated he town's first dance hall. When the state came looking for a deaf black child, claiming the boy needed to be institutionalized, Chicken Hill's residents--roused by Chona's kindness and the courage of a local black worker named Nate Timblin--banded together to keep the boy safe.

As the novel unfolds, it becomes clear how much the people of Chicken Hill have to struggle to survive at the margins of white Christian America and how damaging bigotry, hypocrisy, and deceit can be to a community. When the truth is revealed about the skeleton, the boy, and the part the town's establishment played in both, McBride shows that it is love and community--heaven and earth--that ultimately sustains us." -- from the inside flap

My thoughts:

This is a very good book about community, compassion, strife and courage in facing adversity. I liked the characters - well most of them except for Doc and Gus Plizska. I especially liked Moshe and Chona and their relationship with Nate and Addie. I also liked how people worked together to help Dodo.

Date read: 4/26/2026
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 4*/5

ISBN-10: 0593422945
ISBN-13: 9780593422946
Imprint: Riverhead Books
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Year: 2023
# of pages: 381
Binding: Hardcover
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The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch

First sentence:

"At the height of the long wet summer of the Seventy-Seventh Year of Sendovani, the Thiefmaker of Camorr paid a sudden and unannounced visit to the Eyeless Priest at the Temple of Perelandro, desperately hoping to sell him the Lamora boy."

Description:

"An orphan's life is harsh—and often short—in the island city of Camorr, built on the ruins of a mysterious alien race. But born with a quick wit and a gift for thieving, Locke Lamora has dodged both death and slavery, only to fall into the hands of an eyeless priest known as Chains—a man who is neither blind nor a priest. A con artist of extraordinary talent, Chains passes his skills on to his carefully selected "family" of orphans—a group known as the Gentlemen Bastards. Under his tutelage, Locke grows to lead the Bastards, delightedly pulling off one outrageous confidence game after another. Soon he is infamous as the Thorn of Camorr, and no wealthy noble is safe from his sting. Passing themselves off as petty thieves, the brilliant Locke and his tightly knit band of light-fingered brothers have fooled even the criminal underworld's most feared ruler, Capa Barsavi. But there is someone in the shadows more powerful—and more ambitious—than Locke has yet imagined. Known as the Gray King, he is slowly killing Capa Barsavi's most trusted men—and using Locke as a pawn in his plot to take control of Camorr's underworld. With a bloody coup under way threatening to destroy everyone and everything that holds meaning in his mercenary life, Locke vows to beat the Gray King at his own brutal game—or die trying."

My thoughts:

I thoroughly enjoyed this book about Locke Lamora and his friends in the city of Camorr. Their con games become more elaborate and dangerous as the mysterious Grey King becomes more powerful. I look forward to reading the next book in the Gentleman Bastards series, Red Seas Under Red Skies.


Date read: 9/9/2025
Series: Gentleman Bastards, #1
Genre: Fantasy
Rating: 4*/5

ISBN-10: 055358894X
ISBN-13: 9780553588941
Imprint: Bantam Spectra
Publisher: Random House
Year: 2007
# of pages: 719
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
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Revisions of by Goodloe Byron

First sentence:

"The following passage he read aloud."

Description:

"Nathan First is a childlike biography, making barely enough from his writing to survive. His only source of contact with the outside world is his sister, whose recent marriage has left Nathan to his own devices. 

Moved by a paltry obituary that he reads in the paper, Nathan sets out to compose his masterpiece; a biography of an ordinary man. But this will be no ordinary book, as Nathan becomes increasingly ambitious, the project blossoms into a study of dark matter, and appears to contain the abandoned history of the world." -- from the back cover

My thoughts:

This is an interesting book about a man whose self-consciousness gets in the way of his work and relationships. I liked how Nathan wanted to write a biography, but not how he interacted with others.

Date read: 4/13/2025
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 4*/5

Publisher: Brown Paper Publishing
Year: 2009
# of pages: 238
Binding: Trade Paperback
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The Gravedigger's Daughter by Joyce Carol Oates

 First sentence:

"'In animal life the weak are quickly disposed of'"

Description:

"In 1936, the Schwarts, an immigrant family desperate to escape Nazi Germany, settle in a small town in upstate New York, where the father, a former high school teacher, is demeaned by the only job he can get: gravedigger and cemetery caretaker. After local prejudice and the family's own emotional frailty result in unspeakable tragedy, the gravedigger's daughter, Rebecca, begins her astonishing pilgrimage into America, an odyssey of erotic risk and imaginative daring, ingenious self-invention, and, in the end, a bittersweet--but very 'American'--triumph. 'You are born her, they will not hurt you'--so the grave digger has predicted for his daughter, which will turn out to be true.

In The Gravedigger's Daughter, Oates has created a masterpiece of domestic yet mythic realism, at once emotionally engaging and intellectually provocative: an intimately observed testimony to the resilience of the individual to set beside such predecessors as The Falls, Blonde, and We Were the Mulvaneys." - from the inside flap

My thoughts:

This is a book that will probably stay with me for a long time. I admired Rebecca and the way she found strength and purpose in her life. Despite, or maybe, because of her early years, she made sure she was always there for her son, and, most importantly, knew when to drop back as he found his own way in the world. 

Date read: 4/4/2025
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 5*/5

ISBN-10: 0061236829
ISBN-13: 9780061236822
Imprint: Ecco
Publisher: HarperCollins
Year: 2013
# of pages: 582
Binding: Hardcover
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Pattern Recognition by William Gibson

First sentence:

"Five hours' New York jet lag and Cayce Pollard wakes in Camden Town to the dire and ever-circling wolves of disrupted circadian rhythm."

Description:

"We have no future because our present is too volatile. We have only risk management. The spinning of the given moment's scenarios. Pattern recognition. . .

Cayce Pollard is a new kind of prophet--a world-renowned 'coolhunter' who predicts the hottest trends. While in London to evaluate the redesign of a famous corporate logo, she's offered a different assignment: find the creator of the obscure, enigmatic video clips being uploaded on the Internet--footage that is generating massive underground buzz worldwide.

Still haunted by the memory of her missing father--a Cold war security guru who disappeared in downtown Manhattan on the morning of September 11, 2001--Cayce is soon traveling through parallel universes of marketing, globalization, and terror, heading always for the still point where the three converge. From London to Tokyo to Moscow, she follows the implications of a secret as disturbing--and compelling--as the twenty-first century promises to be. . ." -- inside the front cover

My thoughts:

This is an interesting book about finding meaning in the real and virtual worlds. Cayce Pollard navigates both worlds as she searches for the creator of a set of digital footage which may or may not be a finite piece of art. I look forward to reading the next book in the series, Spook Country.

Date read: 3/19/2025
Series: Blue Ant, #1
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 4*/5

ISBN-10: 0425192938
ISBN-13: 978042519293
Imprint: Berkley Publishing Group
Publisher: Penguin Group
Year: 2004 (this edition)
# of pages: 356
Binding: Trade Paperback
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High Tide in Tucson by Barbara Kingsolver

First sentence:

"A hermit crab lives in my house."

Description:

"Barbara Kingsolver has entertained and touched the lives of legions of readers with her critically acclaimed and bestselling novels The Bean Trees, Animal Dreams, and Pigs in Heaven.

In these twenty-five newly conceived essays, she returns once again to her favored literary terrain to explore the themes of family, community, and the natural world. With the eyes of a scientist and the vision of a poet, Kingsolver writes about notions as diverse as modern motherhood, the history of private property, and the suspended citizenship of humans in the animal kingdom. Her canny pursuit of meaning from an inscrutable world compels us to find instructions for life in surprising places: a museum of atomic bomb relics, a West African voodoo love charm, an iconographic family of paper dolls, the ethics of a wild pig who persistently invades a garden, a battle of wills with a two-year-old, or a troop of oysters who observe high tide in the middle of Illinois.

In sharing her thoughts about the urgent business of being alive, Kingsolver the essayist employs the same keen eyes, persuasive tongue, and understanding heart that characterize her acclaimed fiction."  -- from the inside flap

My thoughts:

I thoroughly enjoyed this memoir. Kingsolver gives the reader a glimpse into her life and the many aspects that inspire her writing. 

Date read: 2/17/2025
Genre: Memoir
Rating: 5*/5

ISBN-10: 0060172916
ISBN-13: 9780060172916
Publisher: HarperCollins
Year: 1995
# of pages: 270
Binding: Hardcover
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Claimed by Shadow by Karen Chance

First sentence:

"Any day that starts off in a demon-filled bar in a casino designed to look like Hell isn't likely to turn out well."

Description:

A recent legacy made Cassandra Palmer heir to the title of Pythia, the world's chief clairvoyant. It's a position that usually comes with years of training, but Cassie's circumstances are a little. . .unusual. And now she's stuck with a whopping amount of power that every vamp, Fey, and mage in town wants to monopolize or eradicate--and that she herself doesn't dare use.

What's more, she's just discovered that a certain arrogant master vampire has put a geis on her--a magical claim that warns off any would-be suitors, and might also explain the rather. . .intense attraction between them. But Cassie's had it with being jerked around, and anyone who tries it from now on is going to find out that she makes a very bad enemy. . .." -- from the back cover

My thoughts:

I enjoyed this paranormal romantic thriller. Cassandra's journey into the world of the Fey both physically and mentally kept my attention throughout. I look forward to reading the next book in the series, Embrace the Night.

Date read: 2/3/2025
Series: Cassandra Palmer, #2
Genre: Paranormal Fantasy
Rating: 4*/5

ISBN-10: 0451461525
ISBN-13: 9780451461520
Imprint: ROC
Publisher: New American Library
Year: 2007
# of pages: 374
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
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