EFR REVIEWS

BOOK OF MADNESS & CURES   Dr. Gabriella Mondini, a strong-willed, young Venetian woman, has followed her father in the path of medicine. She possesses a singleminded passion for the art of physick, even though, in 1590, the male-dominated establishment is reluctant to accept a woman doctor. So when her father disappears on a mysterious journey, Gabriella's own status in the Venetian medical society is threatened. Her father has left clues -- beautiful, thoughtful, sometimes torrid, and often enigmatic letters from his travels as he researches his vast encyclopedia,  The Book of Diseases .  After ten years of missing his kindness, insight, and guidance, Gabriella decides to set off on a quest to find him -- a daunting journey that will take her through great university cities, centers of medicine, and remote villages across Europe. Despite setbacks, wary strangers, and the menaces of the road, the young doctor bravely follows the clues to her lost father, all while tak...

FUN HOME   CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED, NATIONAL BESTSELLER  Time Magazine #1 Book of the Year  •  National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist  •  Winner of the Stonewall Book Award  •    Double finalist for the Lambda Book Award  • Nominated for the  GLAAD Media Award Alison Bechdel’s groundbreaking, bestselling graphic memoir that charts her fraught relationship with her late father.  Distant and exacting, Bruce Bechdel was an English teacher and director of the town funeral home, which Alison and her family referred to as the "Fun Home." It was not until college that Alison, who had recently come out as a lesbian, discovered that her father was also gay. A few weeks after this revelation, he was dead, leaving a legacy of mystery for his daughter to resolve.   In her hands, personal history becomes a work of amazing subtlety and power, written with controlled force and enlivened with humor, rich literary allusion, and...

TIDEWATER BRIDE   Selah Hopewell seems to be the only woman in the Virginia colony who has no wish to wed. True, there are too many men and far too few women in James Towne. But Selah already has her hands full assisting her father in the family's shop. And now she is in charge of an incoming ship of tobacco brides who must be looked after as they sort through their many suitors.  Xander Renick is perhaps the most eligible tobacco lord in the settlement. His lands are vast, his crops are prized, and his position as a mediator between the colonists and the powerful Powhatan nation surrounding them makes him indispensable. But Xander is already wedded to his business and still grieves the loss of his wife, daughter of the Powhatan chief.  Can two fiercely independent people find happiness and fulfillment on their own? Or will they discover that what they've been missing in life has been right in front of them all along?  Bestselling and award-winning author Laura Frant...

When a terrible accident claims the life of Eleanor’s twin, her family is left in tatters, and her reality begins to unravel, dropping her in and out of unfamiliar worlds. When she returns to her own time and place, hours and days have flown by without her. One fateful day, Eleanor leaps from a cliff...and vanishes. In a strange in-between place, she meets a mysterious stranger who understands the weight of her family history: Eleanor’s twin wasn’t the only tragic loss. And unless Eleanor can master her strange new abilities, she may not be the last.   ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ This novel spans over a few generations, and it's not always immediately clear what's going on, so it make take a little while getting settled into the story. It did for me, at least. The story opens with Eleanor...the first, that is (there are two in this story). This first Eleanor is a competitive swimmer, now pregnant with her second child and struggling with some feelings of malaise within her domestic life. Though ...

  LOVE NOTE Focused on a career in medicine and not on romance, Willa Duvall is thrown slightly off course during the summer of 1865 when she discovers a never-opened love letter in a crack of her old writing desk. Compelled to find the passionate soul who penned it and the person who never received it, she takes a job as a nurse at the seaside estate of Crestwicke Manor.  Everyone at Crestwicke has feelings--mostly negative ones--about the man who wrote the letter, but he seems to have disappeared. With plenty of enticing clues but few answers, Willa's search becomes even more complicated when she misplaces the letter and it passes from person to person in the house, each finding a thrilling or disheartening message in its words.  Laced with mysteries large and small, this romantic Victorian-era tale of love lost, love deferred, and love found is sure to delight. ★ ★ ★ ★1/2 In the summer of 1865, medical student Willa Duvall, of Brighton, England, discovers an unopened l...

  WONDER SHOW Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, step inside Mosco’s Traveling Wonder Show, a menagerie of human curiosities and misfits guaranteed to astound and amaze! But perhaps the strangest act of Mosco’s display is Portia Remini, a normal among the freaks, on the run from McGreavy’s Home for Wayward Girls, where Mister watches and waits. He said he would always find Portia, that she could never leave. Free at last, Portia begins a new life on the bally, seeking answers about her father’s disappearance. Will she find him before Mister finds her? It’s a story for the ages, and like everyone who enters the Wonder Show, Portia will never be the same. ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ Not even gonna lie, definitely the cover that initially sucked me in... that, and me being a sucker for a story set in a circus community! Growing up in the 1920s-30s, Portia Remini, having been abandoned by her parents, is left in the care of her Aunt Sophia. By Portia's teen years, Sophia decides she's not equippe...

SMILE TRILOGY Smile The true story of how Raina severely injured her two front teeth when she was in the sixth grade, and the dental drama that followed! Sisters Raina can't wait to be a big sister. Amara is cute, but she's also cranky and mostly prefers to play by herself. Their relationship doesn't improve much over the years... can they figure out how to get along? Guts Raina has tummy trouble, and it seems to coincide with her worries about food, school, family, and changing friendships. A thoughtful, charming, and funny true story about growing up and gathering the courage to face -- and eventually conquer -- fear. ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ In this graphic memoir set in the early 90s in San Francisco, author Raina Telgemeier illustrates herself as a 6th grader who takes a bad fall (courtesy of a friend not paying attention) during a Girl Scouts meet-up one night. Raina ends up with two severely damaged front teeth. While her mom had been discussing the possibility of braces prior to t...