An alphabetical list of all of Carmen’s reviews. For a specific title, please use our search feature. Enjoy!

One True Loves by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Summary: In her twenties, Emma Blair marries her high school sweetheart, Jesse. They build a life for themselves, far away from the expectations of their parents and the people of their hometown in Massachusetts. They travel the world together, living life to the...

Paris Trout by Pete Dexter

Summary: A respected white citizen of Cotton Point, Georgia, Paris Trout is a shopkeeper, a money-lender, and a murderer of blacks. And his friends, family and foes do not realize the danger they face in a man who simply will not see his own guilt. My take: 2 looks ...

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

Summary: Jojo and his toddler sister, Kayla, live with their grandparents, Mam and Pop, and the occasional presence of their drug-addicted mother, Leonie, on a farm on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. Leonie is simultaneously tormented and comforted by visions of her...

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Summary: Set in the days of civilization's collapse, Station Eleven tells the story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity. One snowy...

Stop Everything!: Episode 99

In this episode, Carmen and Rachel talk about titles someone has told us to “Stop Everything and read!”, and how they turned out. Let us know if you’ve ever been faced with a “stop everything” book, and how it turned out for you. And remember, the acronym for “drop...

Ten Days in a Mad-House by Nellie Bly

Summary: In 1887, Nellie Bly accepted an assignment from publisher Joseph Pulitzer of the New York World and went undercover at the lunatic asylum on Blackwell Island, America's first municipal mental hospital. Calling herself "Nellie Brown," she was able to convince...

The Actor and the Housewife by Shannon Hale

Summary: Mormon housewife Becky Jack is seven months pregnant with her fourth child when she meets celebrity hearththrob Felix Callahan. Twelve hours, one elevator ride, and one alcohol-free dinner later, something has happened…though nothing has happened. It isn’t...

The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker

Summary: On a seemingly ordinary Saturday in a California suburb, Julia and her family awake to discover, along with the rest of the world, that the rotation of the earth has suddenly begun to slow. The days and nights grow longer and longer, gravity is affected, the...

The Art of Saying Goodbye by Ellen Bache

Summary: She was the thread that wove their tapestry together. With a group of women as diverse as the ladies from Brightwood Trace, you might not think them to be close. There's Julianne, a nurse with an unsettling psychic ability that allows her to literally feel...

The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai

Summary:   Lucy Hull, a children’s librarian in Hannibal, Missouri, finds herself both kidnapper and kidnapped when her favorite patron, ten-year-old Ian Drake, runs away from home. Ian needs Lucy’s help to smuggle books past his overbearing mother, who has...

The Call by Yannick Murphy

Summary: The warm, wry, and patient voice of a veterinarian father tells the heartfelt story of his young New England family enduring a moving trial of loyalty, hope, and faith after they are confronted with an unthinkable crisis.   My take: 5 looks   Originally...

The Christmas Box by Richard Paul Evans

Summary: "Whatever the reason, I find that with each passing Christmas the story of the Christmas box is told less and needed more. So I record it now for all future generations to accept or dismiss, as seems them good. As for me, I believe. And it is, after all, my...

The Christmas List by Richard Paul Evans

Summary: The New York Times bestselling author of The Christmas Box returns with a holiday novel of hope, love, and redemption. My take: 4 looks   Originally reviewed December 11, 2012 How is that for a short summary? ha! Here is my summary: James Kier is a ruthless...

The Christmas Train by David Baldacci

Summary: Disillusioned journalist Tom Langdon must get from Washington to L.A. in time for Christmas. Forced to take the train across the country because of a slight "misunderstanding" at airport security, he begins a journey of self-discovery and rude awakenings,...

The Cure by Athol Dickson

Summary: There's a small town in Maine where miracles are happening. In a last bid for survival, Riley sets out and soon finds himself in Dublin, Maine, a coastal village. This once-proud birthplace of mighty wooden ships, then is now suffocating underneath an...

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

Summary: At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate...

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

Summary: First published in 1959, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House has been hailed as a perfect work of unnerving terror. It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking...

The Henna Artist by Alka Joshi

Summary: Escaping from an abusive marriage, seventeen-year-old Lakshmi makes her way alone to the vibrant 1950s pink city of Jaipur. There she becomes the most highly requested henna artist—and confidante—to the wealthy women of the upper class. But trusted with the...

The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan

Summary: One last full moon — then it will all be over.Jacob Marlowe has lost the will to live. For two hundred years he has wandered the world, enslaved by his lunatic appetites and tormented by the memory of his first and most monstrous crime. Now, the last of his...

The Masterpiece by Fiona Davis

Summary: For the nearly nine million people who live in New York City, Grand Central Terminal is a crown jewel, a masterpiece of design. But for Clara Darden and Virginia Clay, it represents something quite different. For Clara, the terminal is the stepping stone to...

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards

Summary: Kim Edwards’ stunning family drama evokes the spirit of Sue Miller and Alice Sebold, articulating every mother’s silent fear: what would happen if you lost your child and she grew up without you? In 1964, when a blizzard forces Dr. David Henry to deliver his...

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

Summary: Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if...

The Myth of You & Me by Leah Stewart

Summary: When Cameron was fifteen, she and Sonia were best friends—so close it seemed nothing would ever come between them. Now Cameron is a twenty-nine-year-old research assistant with no meaningful ties to anyone except her aging boss, noted historian Oliver Doucet....

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Summary: The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves,...

The Passenger by Lisa Lutz

Summary: Forty-eight hours after leaving her husband’s body at the base of the stairs, Tanya Dubois cashes in her credit cards, dyes her hair brown, demands a new name from a shadowy voice over the phone, and flees town. It’s not the first time. She meets Blue, a...

The Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen

Summary: It’s the dubious distinction of thirty-year-old Willa Jackson to hail from a fine old Southern family of means that met with financial ruin generations ago. The Blue Ridge Madam—built by Willa’s great-great-grandfather during Walls of Water’s heyday, and once...

The Secret Lives of Dresses by Erin McKean

Summary: Dora has always taken the path of least resistance. She went to the college that offered her a scholarship, is majoring in "vagueness studies," and wears whatever shows the least dirt. She falls into a job at the college coffee shop, and a crush on her flirty...

The Silver Crown by Robert O’Brien

Summary: On her tenth birthday, Ellen wakes up to find a silver crown on her pillow; a few minutes later her house burns up, her parents disappear, and she is launched on an adventure involving a trek through the woods, a castle full of brainwashed captives, and the...

The Story Sisters by Alice Hoffman

Summary: The Story Sisters charts the lives of three sisters–Elv, Claire, and Meg. Each has a fate she must meet alone: one on a country road, one in the streets of Paris, and one in the corridors of her own imagination. Inhabiting their world are a charismatic man...

The Violets of March by Sarah Jio

Summary: In her twenties, Emily Wilson was on top of the world: she had a bestselling novel, a husband plucked from the pages of GQ, and a one-way ticket to happily ever after. Ten years later, the tide has turned on Emily's good fortune. So when her great-aunt Bee...

The Widower’s Tale by Julia Glass

Summary: In a historic farmhouse outside Boston, seventy-year-old Percy Darling is settling happily into retirement: reading novels, watching old movies, and swimming naked in his pond. His routines are disrupted, however, when he is persuaded to let a locally beloved...

There There by Tommy Orange

Summary: Tommy Orange's wondrous and shattering novel follows twelve characters from Native communities: all traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow, all connected to one another in ways they may not yet realize. Among them is Jacquie Red Feather, newly sober and trying...

Time and Again by Jack Finney

Summary: "Sleep. And when you awake everything you know of the twentieth century will be gone from your mind. Tonight is January 21, 1882. There are no such things as automobiles, no planes, computers, television. 'Nuclear' appears in no dictionary. You have never...

Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom

Summary: This true story about the love between a spiritual mentor and his pupil has soared to the bestseller list for many reasons. For starters: it reminds us of the affection and gratitude that many of us still feel for the significant mentors of our past. It also...

Tuscaloosa by W. Glasgow Phillips

Summary: They have one summer to find what was lost long ago. "Never settle for less than the truth," she told him. But when you don't even know your real name, the truth gets a little complicated. It can nestle so close to home it's hard to see. It can even flourish...

Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler

Summary: Kate Battista feels stuck. How did she end up running house and home for her eccentric scientist father and her uppity, pretty younger sister, Bunny? Plus, she’s always in trouble at work—her preschool charges adore her, but their parents don’t always...

Waking Gods by Sylvain Neuvel

Summary: As a child, Rose Franklin made an astonishing discovery: a giant metallic hand, buried deep within the earth. As an adult, she’s dedicated her brilliant scientific career to solving the mystery that began that fateful day: Why was a titanic robot of unknown...

White Oleander by Janet Fitch

Summary: Everywhere hailed as a novel of rare beauty and power, White Oleander tells the unforgettable story of Ingrid, a brilliant poet imprisoned for murder, and her daughter, Astrid, whose odyssey through a series of Los Angeles foster homes--each its own universe,...

Winkie by Clifford Chase

Summary: In Cliff Chase's scathingly funny and surprisingly humane debut novel, the zeitgeist assumes the form of a one-foot-tall ursine Everyman — a mild-mannered teddy bear named Winkie who finds himself on the wrong side of America's war on terror. After suffering...