Book review: Hour of the Witch — by Chris Bohjalian

(Doubleday Books) In a departure from his most recent bestselling books, Chris Bohjalian, lucky for us, a local to Addison County and a New York Times bestselling author, makes his return to historical fiction, and, even more fortunately, this much-anticipated excursion to Boston in the fine year of 1662 is immediately engrossing and hugely successful. Mary Deerfield, young, beautiful Mary, fairly recently landed in the colony, along with her family, merchants from England, has fewer choices in husbands in … (read more)

(Nancy Paulsen Books) Two children, in their house, and one inquires of the other, “Wonder walk?? which tells the reader, or listener, of this picture book, that a wonder walk is something they do with some frequency. Off they go, and on the walk they won … (read more)

(Harper) The adolescent brain is a marvel of biology, and understanding the pace of its growth is how this book begins to unravel why teens are “wired for risk.” Numerous studies have been done, not with actual teens (but with rats!) about the effects and … (read more)

(Algonquin Books) In their free Black community, rooted in still-rural Brooklyn in the days of Reconstruction following the Civil War, Libertie’s mother was a person of high regard, a Black female doctor, though with light skin; she was revered, respected … (read more)

(Scribner Book Company) Subtitled “Three Friends Who Fought for Abolition and Women’s Rights,” and written by author, journalist and current executive editor of the New Yorker, Dorothy Wickenden’s, “The Agitators” recounts the individual and shared life s … (read more)

(Forever) If you like cooking competitions and romantic comedy, you will love Farah Heron’s new romance. Reena Manji’s parents have done it again; they’ve arranged her marriage to her father’s newest hire, a “Good Muslim,” but the Nadim who moves in acros … (read more)

(Avid Reader Press) The story of Elena and Mauro, Colombians by birth and allegiance, and their family, children born in both Bogotá and the United States, is the story of emigration and immigration, of belonging and not belonging, of longing and loss. As … (read more)

(Scribner Book Company) Meet Vera, the oldest living survivor of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake — one of the worst and deadliest earthquakes in the history of the United States — who, having managed to escape her collapsed home with her sister, witness … (read more)

(Atlantic Monthly Press) “Endpapers,” a historical and literary narrative/memoir, written by Cornwall-based journalist Alexander Wolff, opens with an illustrated family tree and contains a liberally-distributed trove of family and archival photographs, bu … (read more)

(Viking Books for Young Readers) In David Arnold’s new young adult (that adults will also enjoy) post-apocalyptic survival story, a young woman and her dog set out on a quest, “roaming hillsides and ruined cities, foraging for supplies, operating on the f … (read more)

(Crown Publishing Group) Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Kolbert’s new book may have you shaking your head and chuckling, albeit grimly and under your breath. In the groundbreaking Silent Spring, Rachel Carson denounced the idea of the “control of … (read more)

(Doubleday Books) Mallory, three years into a “temporary” internship at Swansby’s, the smaller, disgruntled and forgotten tome akin to the Oxford English Dictionary, mainly fields vaguely threatening phone calls from an anonymous caller. David Swansby, he … (read more)

(Flatiron Books) When we first meet Bronte, an art student just landed in Evelyn Bay, a small coastal town on Tasmania off the southern coast of Australia, for the season, it’s incidental to Kieran’s story; Kieran, who has returned home after much time aw … (read more)

(Simon & Schuster) It is often said you can learn a lot by walking in someone else’s shoes, and this gifted writer, Nadia Owusu, winner of a Whiting Award, in this, her first book, allows you to do just that. This literary memoir reads almost like a novel … (read more)

(Custom House) When an unknown but interested party finds Howard Stovall Bennett III, living out his last days in a retirement home, and shows him an old photo, Ward, as he was known, is delighted to tell the story of the time he worked as a make-believe … (read more)