Dolly's Bookstore

Love is rarely neatly packaged.  Dexter and Emma meet on the last day of college in 1988, poised to launch into their own separate paths, but the brief romantic encounter starts a bond that ties them together, however slightly at times, over more than 20 years.

One Day looks at July 15th of each year of [...]

This is another one of those books you’ve heard of your entire life, but there are countless reasons this book is considered a “must read”.  When young Heathcliff, a child from the streets, is brought to live with the Earnshaws, he quickly forms a deep bond with young Catherine that will shape and destroy the lives of all [...]

Another book on my list of all-time favorites, Angle of Repose interweaves two compelling stories.  Lyman Ward, a wheelchair bound history professor, researches the often too “up close and personal” history of his grandmother.  The monumental difficulties of pioneering the American West, coping with a failing marriage and tragic personal lossbring Susan Ward’s life into [...]

This gentle, epistolary novel (a novel written as a series of letters) takes place in England just after WWII.  It is a collection of letters between a young journalist living in London and some quirky, endearing residents of Guernsey Island-one of Britians Channel Islands close to France-occupied by the Nazis during the war.  A delightful [...]

Ok, you’ve heard of this book your entire life.  If you haven’t read it, you should, that’s all there is to it.  Jane Eyre is an intricately woven, intriguing tale of a young woman whose life does not take the conventional nineteenth-century rosy English path.  Beautifully written, not sweet or sentimental, a masterpiece of British [...]

Mix one part British class distinction, two parts sweeping WWII romance, finish it with a huge helping of miscommunication and you end up with this astounding novel.  What is the nature of truth?  The impact of shame, the need to atone and be forgiven?  McEwan ponders these themes with an emotional intensity and gripping plot [...]

Winner of the Booker Prize and named on of “the best books of the past 25 years” by the London Observer, Disgrace is a heartbreaking novel about the search for grace and meaning set against the new realities of cultural change in South Africa.  An affair with a student leaves Professor David Lurie alone and [...]

Can isolation cause a change of heart?  Once love is lost can it be regained?  These are questions central to The Painted Veil, a novel about the young and charismatic Kitty Fane.  In order to avoid disgrace, Kitty accepts the proposal of Walter, a smitten bacteriologist stationed in China.  Upon their arrival, she meets Charlie, a charming goverment [...]

This story of Christopher Boone, a 15-year olf boy with Asperger’s syndrome, explores family, fear, mental disability, and divorce as well as the never ending complexities of love.  Haddon’s writing style is humorous and clever, but never ceases to draw the reader further into his mystery.

If you liked Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly [...]