I was halfway through Zoje Stage's Dear Hanna before I realized it was a sequel to the electifying Baby Teeth. Dear Hanna grabbed me by the first page and easily can be a stand alone novel. However, to realize I was reading about a grownup version of the disturbed seven-year-old girl from Baby Teeth made it all the more compelling. Hanna is now twenty and working as a phlebotomist. Although she's very good at finding veins with needles and making it painless, Hanna do

If you're hankering for a soapy, scandalous, easy read, All the Little Houses by May Cobb will fit the bill. Aligning with Cobb's general style, her newest novel puts bad behavior right up there in importance with plot and character. 1980's Smalltown Texas: picture big hair, Madonna gloves and and neon. The story features competing Queen Bees and social climbers, adults and teens alike. Told from alternating points of view, readers get the lenses from both the superr

Will Dean states in the acknowledgements at the end of his tense thriller Adrift that the characters he wrote in the novel were incredibly real to him and that he hopes he did them justice. He adds that from the very beginning he was fearful for Peggy and Samson, both of the narrators. This is part of what makes Will Dean masterful at his craft - his investment into his characters. It shows. Drew and Peggy live on a houseboat on a canal in middle America with their t

This is the fourth in a string of funny books I've picked up quite inadvertantly, however joyously. Sandwich by Catherine Newman is a bitesize treat of a reading experience. Rocky is at a Cape Cod beach house for the week with her family. Her grown kids have joined her and her husband Nick, and her elderly parents will come halfway through the week as well. The title refers to Rocky's age, sandwiched right between her children and her parents. The protagonist