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Quick Lit December 2016

Tyler is a prolific, Pulitzer-winning author; The New York Times calls this one of her best. I've been meaning to read Anne Tyler for years, and when podcast guest Rebecca Smith (Jane Austen's 5x great niece) said she thought Tyler should be recommended reading for Jane Austen fans, I finally took the plunge. This was a favorite on a recent What Should I Read Next? episode. An enjoyable read that wasn't anything like I expected, and was relatable in surprising ways.
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This is on the favorite-books-EVER lists of some of my favorite readers. It took me a hundred pages to get into it but once I did I couldn't wait to find out what would happen next. The New York Times Book Review calls this "A startling, engrossing, and moral work of fiction." Entertainment Weekly adds "Important novels leave deep cracks in our beliefs, our prejudices, and our blinders. The Sparrow is one of them."
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When J.T. Ellison joined the MMD Book Club to talk about reading and writing psychological thrillers, I read this in preparation. (J.T.'s best advice for thriller-loving readers: Stop looking for the twist!) I loved this series opener for her Dr. Samantha Owens series and read it in just one night, and when I finally figured out the mystery it wasn't at all what I expected.
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This was a fun, more-or-less lighthearted read about a Boston pastry chef who flees to the country after literally setting her workplace on fire with a flambéed dessert. Reviewers called this parts Jan Karon and parts Gilmore Girls. Perfect for fans of Jenny Colgan's <em>The Little Beach Street Bakery</em> or Laura Dave's <em>Eight Hundred Grapes</em>.
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When Gretchen Rubin was on What Should I Read Next, she talked me into this modern YA classic that had somehow never made it on my radar, despite being a National Book Award winner in 2008. This was a dark kind of fun, easy to read and hard to put down.  From the publisher: "When Evie's father returned home from World War II, the family fell back into its normal life pretty quickly. But when movie-star handsome Peter Coleridge, a young ex-GI who served in Joe's company in postwar Austria, shows up, Evie is suddenly caught in a complicated web of lies that she only slowly recognizes. She finds herself falling for Peter, ignoring the secrets that surround him . . . until a tragedy occurs that shatters her family and breaks her life in two."
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