The Book Club: A Read With Jenna title and a Denver author’s newest
THE LIFE CYCLE OF THE COMMON OCTOPUSBy Emma Knight Pamela Dorman Books pp Tough Luck by Sandra Dallas St Martin s Press Our plucky resilient inventive yet no-nonsense heroine is no angel yet seems to be protected by her own guardian angel Fourteen-year-old Haidie along with her younger brother sets off in from an Iowa orphanage to find the father who left them years before for the allure of Colorado gold mines Haidie encounters both kind souls and scoundrels on her journey with the bulk of the latter getting at least their comeuppance if not frontier justice Dallas displays her knack for capturing quaint th-century dialogue And while the locales of Denver Idaho Springs and Georgetown may all sound familiar to most of Coloradans the rough-and-tumble th-century towns depicted here will surprise plenty of Disclousure Sandra Dallas is a freelance book reviewer for The Denver Post stars out of Kathleen Lance Denver The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus by Emma Knight Pamela Dorman Books No octopi here Knight s debut novel features Penelope Winters a Canadian who travels to Edinburgh for university She connects with friends of her father and learns as much about family and sex as she does about her studies I enjoyed the witty and quick writing but the story seems more old-school than contemporary Yes people use chat apps but that s all that anchors this book to the th century The characters are compelling although a bit stereotyped Consider this a coming-of-age novel A Read with Jenna pick stars out of Neva Gronert Parker The Bookbinder of Jericho by Pip Williams Ballantine Books The Bookbinder of Jericho by Pip Williams Ballantine Books Young British twin sisters Peggy and Maude are working in a bookbindery during World War I Maude is autistic and displays echolalia the repetition of heard word fragments Peggy has given up her dream of higher tuition due to her commitment to Maude Later when she gets a full scholarship to Somerville she is torn between studying and her love for a Belgian soldier The book details the process of bookbinding from the girls side of the bookbindery Each section of the novel is formed by books including Shakespeare s England and Homeri that were bound at the time but not available to bulk people Several characters including Tilda Taylor from the author s earlier novel The Dictionary of Lost Words appear here and bring news of the war stars out of Diana Doner Lafayette Naked by David Sedaris Little Brown and Company Don t read a book by David Sedaris unless you re prepared for off-the-wall humor Not perpetually proper in content but forever hilarious this volume was written long enough ago that he doesn t reveal any of his more sensitive side which he s starting to do nowadays Still like any ground-breaking humorist much of his work is certainly grounded in sorrow and heart-wrenching perceptions But for years he disguised the origins of that pain like he does in these essays Unless you probe the roots of these pieces Dinah the Christmas Whore features his family cashing in on an event with a prostitute the eponymous Naked set in a nudist camp you might miss the original creative impulse In The Quad in which he becomes acquainted with and helpful to a severely handicapped female learner life might be mundane but with Sedaris never boring stars out of Bonnie McCune Denver bonniemccune com Trouble Island by Sharon Short Minotaur Books A faced-paced whodunnit with bodies falling left and right and theories piling up faster than the bodies No one can trust anyone else and with good reason in this tale based on the author s own family stories and the true histories of bootlegging fatal storms island life and more on Lake Erie stars out of Kathleen Lance Denver Subscribe to our weekly newsletter In The Know to get entertainment news sent straight to your inbox
