Julia Sneden

Nilla Childs has framed Puzzled: 100 pieces of Autism in what she terms the 8 steps to completing a jigsaw puzzle; and learning how to give up "what does not work." Megan Bergman’s fine, fine collection of short stories, Birds of a Lesser Paradise, have both moral profundity and light-hearted humor. If you're looking for the next big page-turner, you've found it in The Expats. Chris Pavone is a dab hand at both mayhem and domesticity, something unusual in the business of flash-and-dash spy novels.  more »

Daniel Handler specializes in a light-semi-irreverent tone that manages also to be perceptive and truthful, even as it entertains, in Why We Broke Up, a story of teenage love gone awry. Richard Morgan has crafted a story of the life of Daniel Boone in Boone, A Biography, to rival the best fiction, while demonstrating the most diligent scholarship and devotion to primary sources any reader could ask for. more »

Anyone who is interested in the history of the Mediterranean will find this book, with its detailed recounting of the political, economic, and religious power struggles during a period of about five hundred years (c. 1000 AD to the 1500’s), quite fascinating. So will anyone who has ever fallen in love with Venice, and has wondered about the history of that amazing, improbable city. more »

On those foggy days, I arrived at the bus stop very damp despite my jacket. My fine hair was plastered to my head, and my braids, having escaped from their soggy ribbons, began to unbraid themselves. I well remember the day my new red ribbons, the product of cheap, war-time dyes, got so fog-wet that the color ran, staining the ends of my blonde braids pink   more »