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The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo
Tom Reiss’s childhood fascination with the novels of Alexandre Dumas led him to read Dumas’s memoirs. He was blown away by the superhero-like adventures of Dumas’s father and determined to uncover his...
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Muck City
Bryan Mealer’s exploration of football and poverty in one small Florida town brings to mind other books about high school sports, such as Friday Night Lights and Michael D’Orso’s Eagle Blue. You...
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January First
Michael Schofield’s nonfiction account of his daughter’s schizophrenia has similar appeal to titles that have drawn teen readers in the past. Think Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen, Prozac Nation by...
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Damaged Young Women
I’m very excited to introduce today’s novels, all three centered on emotionally damaged young women, and two of which are debuts that earn starred reviews from us. I read the two debuts–Panopticon and...
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Nonfiction Roundup
Our first review today is an account of the happenings at Memorial Hospital in New Orleans during the five days after Hurricane Katrina. I will let you read the review for the details, but keep in mind...
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Family, for Better or Worse
Today we review three very different novels about families, none of them easy. The families, that is! Koren Zailckas is well-known for her memoir Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood (Viking, 2005)....
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Serious Business
Gah! The end of the year approaches, and we still have several 2013 titles to recommend, so forgive me if today’s novels are a bit less thematically similar than usual. With that said, all three of...
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Women at War
Two highly recommended historical novels today. I Shall Be Near to You is, at its heart, a compelling love story. It features a strong heroine, so in love with her husband that she disguises herself as...
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The Martian
I feel like we’re in the middle of a 6-part series on science fiction here on AB4T, but there really was no intention behind it. These are the books and reviews in front of us! Today I present The...
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Two Books That Probe the Darkness Beneath
Today we look at two books that take very different looks at the dark secrets we keep. In Bittersweet, Miranda Beverly-Whittemore’s plays up the skeletons in the closets of the wealthy Winslow family...
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Fabulous Debuts
It’s the end of August, and we still have quite a few reviews of summer books to share with you. So don’t let this somewhat clumsy grouping at all diminish your regard for the following three debut...
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Funny Celebrity Memoirs
Need I say more? I’m not sure I need to. We all know that teens love humorous books, and both of these also fall in the category of books that are very fun to browse through. Brief excerpts from...
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Social Justice and Inequality
Two passionate nonfiction books top our week. Just Mercy is a memoir by Bryan Stevenson, a lawyer and activist, which focuses on his work as a co-founder of the Equal Justice Initiative–”a private,...
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Erik Larson tackles World War I
Erik Larson has another best-seller on his hands, this time illuminating a sea disaster to rival the Titanic. Of course, it’s much more than that. The sinking of the Lusitania was man-made, and pushed...
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