The Book Club: Futuristic “Wild Dark Shore,” “I Feel Bad About My Neck” and more

Editor s note The opinions of the smart well-read women in my Denver book club mean a lot and often determine what the rest of us choose to pile onto our bedside tables So we urged them and all Denver Post readers to share their mini-reviews with you Have any to offer Email bellis denverpost com Related Articles A photographic history of Five Points and other books for Coloradans The Book Club A Pulitzer winner a Wallace Stegner classic and more reader reviews The Book Club A spirited N M mystery America s first female astronauts and more The Book Club It Ends With Us source for film For Colorado readers When Cimarron Meant Wild and more regional books The Silence of the Choir by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr translated by Alison Anderson Europa Editions The Silence of the Choir by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr translated by Alison Anderson Europa Editions A small town in Sicily accepts several waves of immigrants largest part just now a group from Africa that landed on Sicily s coast This premise allows the author to examine immigration writ large from several angles the idealistic welcomers the indignant opponents and the impatient immigrants themselves Does the help offered veritably help Do the immigrants devour materials needed elsewhere What are the immigrants aspirations No simple or single answer A timely and thoughtful examination of an incendiary topic stars out of Kathleen Lance Denver Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy Flatiron Books Dominic Salt and his three children are the sole lingering humans on Shearwater a small subantarctic island where a seed bank is secured Then a woman washes up on their shore From the first page McConaghy creates an intriguing maelstrom of uncertainty We don t know if any character can be trusted to tell the truth Each of the five major characters is grieving in multiple procedures and that grief germinates secrets A sense of humming menace pervades Setting fiction is not a genre I find easy to read but McConaghy is a master who ignites both my intellect and emotions Her characters have great depth and credibility the wild settings are described with detail and delicacy that make her writing so beautiful Her passion for nature illuminates her writing McConaghy s plots are not optimistic but still somehow they are hopeful and leave me feeling enriched satisfied even inspired stars out of Neva Gronert Parker Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris Knopf Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris Knopf This account of the early days of the Bosnian War in Sarajevo is based on the author s own family s experiences there It depicts in a very human way the uncertainties indecisiveness and changes in everyday life as civil war initially looms and then arrives Societal norms and individual standards drift ever downward in response to growing shortages and the relentless random violence The black butterflies are the citizens dark nickname for the charred fragments of paper and books that float throughout the city after the National Library is bombed This frank and haunting book is a stark reminder of the human costs of war regardless of where it occurs and of human resilience Shortlisted for the Women s Prize for Fiction stars out of Kathleen Lance Denver I Feel Bad About My Neck And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman by Nora Ephron Knopf This collection of Ephron s majority hilarious essays was included at No on The Guardian s list of the best books of the st century in Her pieces are relatable to every woke female in the country She admits she s presumably the only young woman who inhabited the White House during Kennedy s tenure to escape without a romantic pass from the president She chronicles her amorous failures including marriages the dreadful consequences of aging losing hair apartment living in New York highly desirable and the scarcity of cabbage strudel in the city Ephron died at age in How can we figure out our contemporary society and the part all genders play in it without her stars out of Bonnie McCune Denver bonniemccune com Central Park West by James Comey Mysterious Press Remember Comey Yes the former director of the FBI He is the author of Central Park West a crime thriller published by the invariably reliable Mysterious Press Steeped in East Coast politics and Maf-eye ah crime families the story begins with the suicide of a disgraced former New York governor which surprisingly intersects with the long-running trial of a mob boss You may want to invite the very relatable trio of protagonists Nora Carleton Benny Dugan and Carmen Garcia to your Easter brunch stars out of Joanna Johnson Denver Subscribe to our weekly newsletter In The Know to get entertainment news sent straight to your inbox