Books High and Low

  I liked this book about a group of Chinese immigrants who struggle with life and love in New York's Chinatown. The story actually span...

  I really enjoyed the second novel of Agatha Christie's. It's the first of five books starring the characters Tommy and Tuppence. I...

  I enjoyed this celebrity memoir written by actor, director, and producer Griffin Dunne. It brought to life the crazy life of his parents a...

This is a good introduction to Edmund the Martyr, King of East Anglia until his death in 869. Edmund was killed by the Danes, reportedly tie...

  I enjoyed this collection of personal essays about West Virginia. Author Laura Jackson is a West Virginia native and writes lovingly about...

I really enjoyed this 1922 novel about four women who travel to Italy, renting an old castle for a month. All of the women are unhappy for d...

  Dear Evan Hansen is a musical that will be coming to Eisenhower Auditorium in April, so I thought I'd read the play before going to s...

  Devil is fine tells the story of a biracial man who has just lost his teenage son. He inherits a plot of land that was meant for his son ...

  This is a wonderful look at not only the relationship between Doris Kearns Goodwin and her husband, Richard (Dick) Goodwin, but also an in...

I really enjoyed this novel by Paul Auster, one of my favorite authors. The Brooklyn follies tells the story of a recently retired, divorce...

  This is a good introduction to the Plantagenet dynasty in Britain. It devotes a chapter to almost all of the kings from Henry II through H...

  I read what I thought was a lot of Agatha Christie mysteries when I was a teenager, probably a few dozen, but that's only a fraction o...

  This is the second book in a series of "how to" books by Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh that I've read; other book...

I was prepared to dislike Headshot because I really don't like boxing as a sport, but I was surprised by how engaging this book was. It...

  I really enjoyed this play about Beatrice and Benedick, Hero and Claudio. I read it in anticipation of seeing the play performed at Penn S...

In this family drama, author Terah Shelton Harris reveals the problems inherent in "heir property," which is land that has been in...

  I didn't realize when I began Trust Her that it is a sequel to Northern Spy , which I haven't read yet. I would have preferred to...

  This is a bit of escapist fiction featuring a group of Scotland Yard officers who are tasked with protecting the crown jewels when they...

  These are two novellas written by celebrated Hebrew novelist S.Y. Agnon, who was the recipient of the Nobel prize in Literature in 1966. B...

I'm a big fan of Tom Papa's standup, which led me to this book of essays. Papa is very funny, and the essays included here cover som...

I have to admit that I approached this book with some skepticism since I disliked her earlier book, Eileen . I'm sorry to say that I did...

  This is an edge-of-your-seat thriller that follows a young woman who's lost her husband and son in a car crash (although she swears sh...

  This was a really interesting book in which the author Lori Gottlieb, a therapist, writes about her own need for therapy when she experien...

I enjoyed this historical novel, based loosely on the two authors' family histories, that tells the story of a Jewish Northerner, Jacob ...

  I really liked this retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the enslaved man Jim's viewpoint. I found the story to be al...

  In the 19th century, women who wished to become doctors had limited opportunities to study because they were not welcome in most America...

  I have mixed feelings about this book. I like fantasy and time travel books, as well as historical fiction, so this book seemed like a pro...

  I really loved this novel by James McBride about a diverse collection of people living in Pottstown, Pennsylvania during the 1930s and 197...

  I have mixed feelings about this 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about a nerdy second-generation Dominican American man who is highly in...

  Moran’s (history and women’s studies, The Pennsylvania State University; Governing Bodies: American Politics and the Shaping of the Mode...