Chat Love

Chat Love, by Justine Faeth. When I get home, I walk into my apartment and head straight for my room. Without bothering to take off my coat or shoes, I grab my laptop and sit on the edge of my bed. I go to the Chat Love homepage and as soon as I log in, I see that I've received...

Read More

Guest Post: Tracy Beckerman, author of Lost in Suburbia

Tracy Beckerman's new book, Lost in Suburbia, will be in bookstores on April 2nd - check back on April 3rd for my review. Tracy has been kind enough to write a guest post for this blog. Tracy Beckerman For a dozen years while I was writing my newspaper column, I had to tell...

Read More

Walking Disaster

Walking Disaster, by Jamie McGuire. "It's not like that," Shepley said, exasperated. It's different with Mare. She's the one." "You know that after a couple of months?" I asked, dubious. "I knew it when I saw her." I shook my head. I hated it when he was like this. Unicorns...

Read More

Someday, Someday, Maybe

Someday, Someday, Maybe by Lauren Graham. I give the driver my address and though he grumbles about the distance to Brooklyn, he finally agrees to take me, and we race down Ninth Avenue. The neon signs that sometimes glare too loud and lonely seem somehow warm and friendly...

Read More

The Dream Merchant

The Dream Merchant, by Fred Waitzkin. Sometimes he implored her pitifully. Mara, I love you. I need you. She nodded his way but with an expression so coarse that she might have been a junkie or a whore. He shivered. He pushed back in the only way he knew. He tried to close the deal. He was sure that he could win her back with money, with glistening...

Read More

Review and CONTEST: Home Run

Home Run, by Travis Thrasher. The question is: the love or the dream. Cory knows they're a world apart. The dream of playing professional baseball isn't just an idea that's never going to happen. It's there. It's reality in his hands. It feels as real as holding a bat and...

Read More

A Shade of Vampire

A Shade of Vampire, by Bella Forrest. There was no way to predict what would happen to me after that night. During her better days, my mother already warned me about this. She said that I should expect life to dish out my own fair share of surprises. But Derek Novak was a...

Read More

If You Find Me

If You Find Me, by Emily Murdoch. Mama says no matter how poor folks are, whether you're a have, a have-not, or break your mama's back on the cracks in between, the world gives away the best stuff on the cheap. Like, the way the white-hot mornin' light dances in diamonds across...

Read More

The Storyteller

The Storyteller, by Jodi Picoult. I move around the kitchen, weaving from cabinet to shelf to pantry. I chop and mix bittersweet chocolate and ground cinnamon; I add a hint of vanilla. I create a small cavern as deep as my thumb in the knot of dough, and twist its limbs into...

Read More

Let's Pretend This Never Happened

Let's Pretend This Never Happened, by Jenny Lawson (The Bloggess). I sometimes wonder what it would have been like to have a childhood that was not like mine. I have no real frame of reference, but when I question strangers I've found that their childhood generally had much...

Read More