Laura

My Absolute Darling is very easy, and very hard, to read. It is the story of Turtle, who lives with her father, isolated on a wild stretch of the northern California coast. He trains her to navigate a... (Laura)

It's expensive being poor. The struggle for decent (often barely livable) housing is a full-time job, and even in a depressed city like Milwaukee holding on to the worst places to live, with no workin... (Laura)

Part sendup of the world of art collecting, part love story, and part art-theft mystery, The Improbability of Love is great fun. Opening with the daring theft of a painting from what was supposed to b... (Laura)

A Hanging at Cinder Bottom opens in the town of Keystone, West Virginia, in 1910, with Abe Baach, the town's most skilled card player, and Goldie Toothman, the graceful madam of the local brothel, hea... (Laura)

Harry Potter is a good guy, without question. So are Pippi, Percy, and (it seems) all the other heroes for middle readers. And the evil they fight is unequivocal too. So it's refreshing to read a stor... (Laura)

I admit that when I open a book and find it has no dialogue, I feel like I'm a sixth grader all over again, made to read A Tale of Two Cities against my will (it took me a long time to learn to love D... (Laura)

Johnson's debut novel starts like a (really well-written) sitcom, when four freshmen at "Berzerkeley" meet at a party: a white woman (who occasionally claims to be Native American) and three guys (a w... (Laura)