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Many books describe the problems of people with disabilities. Many others tell other people how to cope with them. Mark Haddon’s novel suggests what it’s like to be such a person. In The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Christopher Francis Boone compensates for his autism by solving…

One of the pleasures of reading is the surprise of discovering a new author. New to yourself, that is. Melanie Dobson was writing books long before I discovered The Winter Rose, a novel I chose randomly from a used bookstore. Hopping back and forth between the past and present, The…

Erik Larson has taken a risk in writing a book about Winston Churchill, already the subject of many biographies. In drawing on the diaries and correspondence of family members, personal aides and ministers, he sketches a gripping chronology of the Prime Minister’s first year in office, when Germany seemed poised…

Though I am not a fan of historical fiction, I cannot help admiring a novelist who backs up her narration with painstaking research. In Her Hidden Genius, Marie Benedict pays tribute to a forgotten scientist whose work laid the foundations of DNA research in post-War England. From the mid-1940s to the…

Miss Graham’s Cold War Cookbook contains all the ingredients of a good spy novel: dark secrets, furtive meetings, shadowy characters, perils and betrayals. But author Celia Rees blends in extras: coded messages hidden in food recipes, plus a haunting portrait of post-war Germany with its starving survivors, homeless refugees, and…

If Alice Feeney were an architect instead of a novelist, her buildings would be admirable for their craftsmanship. In Rock Paper Scissors, she has designed a three-story tale of a crumbling marriage. It combines suspense, a tangled love story, and philosophical musings that keep the reader involved all the way. Adam…

Daniel Alarcón’s novel is reminiscent of the movies Capote and Citizen Kane. In each case, the narrator is part of the story.  In a tantalizing extra twist, Alarcón conceals the narrator’s identity until late in the novel, as he pieces together witness accounts of this mournful saga of three actors…

Need to Know describes the birth of American intelligence-gathering operations during World War II. Historian Nicholas Reynolds goes into great detail about the many individuals and agencies who worked – sometimes together, often in opposition to one another – to create an international spy system similar to Great Britain’s MI6, which…

Ghosts haunt the house where sisters Ruth and Lucille find themselves all but abandoned in the impoverished town of Fingerbone. In this astonishingly rich novel, Marilynne Robinson brings all the forces of nature and yearnings into play, in language so descriptive and personal that one could spend hours savoring it.…

I seem to gravitate toward books about books. Several quite good ones have appeared recently. My latest discovery is about the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary, the cornerstone of words and their definitions. Before you nod off at the idea of reading a dictionary, be aware that this novel…