Nerdy Apple Bottom

From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. Family tragedy is healed by domestic routine in this quiet, tender memoir. When his daughter Amy died suddenly at the age of 38 from an asymptomatic heart condition, journalist and novelist Rosen-blatt (Lapham Rising) and his wife moved into her house to help her husband care for their three young [...]

Amazon.com Review “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” Next to the exhortation at the beginning of Moby-Dick, “Call me Ishmael,” the first sentence of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice must be among the most quoted in literature. And [...]

From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. Freelance writer Walls doesn’t pull her punches. She opens her memoir by describing looking out the window of her taxi, wondering if she’s “overdressed for the evening” and spotting her mother on the sidewalk, “rooting through a Dumpster.” Walls’s parents—just two of the unforgettable characters in this excellent, unusual book—were [...]

From Publishers Weekly All former Jersey beauty queen Cece Caruso really wants to do is finish her biography of Erle Stanley Gardner, “creator of the brilliant, unflappable Perry Mason,” but in art journalist Kandel’s entertaining, often witty debut, she must contend with a few distractions, including murder. Once he became a famous writer, Gardner for [...]