Elizabeth's Books

There’s a lot to be said for books that play on the fears of having a child: who hasn’t wondered if their child, instead of being “good and happy” would end up evil?

How one feels about depression being personified by a large black dog that plagues Winston Churchill is likely dependent on how one feels about depression, dogs and the famous Prime Minister.

Commencement Commencement (Vintage Contemporaries) is an enjoyable jaunt through life in a women’s college and the years afterwards, until it goes completely off the rails.

In as much as The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie has problems – and it does – the verve of its main protagonist and backstory of the author makes up for it.

A pseudo-academic treatise disguised as a conversation between a man and his long-time mistress, The Mistress Contract is a book you'll either love, hate or go "what IS this?"

Take two sisters, the setting of Silicon Valley, a handkerchief-twisting “will they or won’t they romance?” and the mystery of a collection of cookbooks. Add a heaping cup of literary references and a dash of Judaism, and you have The Cookbook Collector: A Novel . 

Unfamiliar Fishes seems like it can't go wrong: after all, Sarah Vowell made me want to go visit sites of presidential assassinations.

There’s something for both mothers and children in Please Look After Mom : mothers will feel grateful they don’t have selfish children and children will be glad to not have a martyr for a mother.

There’s no doubt that Siddhartha Mukherjee absolutely deserved the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction. The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer is a brilliant history of cancer, and a book that will change the way you think about a far-too-common disease.