The most famous true crime novel of all time and one of the first non-fiction novels ever written; In Cold Blood is the bestseller that haunted its author long after he finished writing it. On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by […]
Tag: american lit
Looking Forward: July 2020
Another month, another set of books to brighten my life – that’s what I always say. Wherever my 2020 summer is spent, I’ll at least have some fresh pages to keep me company. The Cold Vanish: Seeking the Missing in North America’s Wildlands by Jon Billman These are the stories that defy conventional logic. The […]
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
A first novel by an unknown writer, it remained on the bestseller list for sixteen weeks, won the National Book Award for fiction, and established Ralph Ellison as one of the key writers of the century. The nameless narrator of the novel describes growing up in a black community in the South, attending a Negro […]
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time, Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world’s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous firebombing of Dresden, Billy Pilgrim’s odyssey through time reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what […]
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Beloved is one of the few stories that shook me. Maybe it’s because of the heightened awareness I have right now on the struggles and emotions tearing through our communities. But these aren’t new. The social issues being brought to the American attention have been woven in our culture for a very, very long time. […]
W&C: Miracle Creek by Angie Kim
Miracle Creek gripped me. I tore through its pages in just a few days. When I got to the acknowledgements and read that this was Kim’s first novel, I was shocked. My husband asked me to lie. Not a big lie. He probably didn’t even consider it a lie, and neither did I, at first […]
American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins
También de este lado hay sueños. On this side, too, there are dreams. Lydia Quixano Pérez lives in the Mexican city of Acapulco. She runs a bookstore. She has a son, Luca, the lover of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while there are cracks beginning to show in Acapulco […]