Book cover of The Dovekeepers

Book description

The Dovekeepers is Alice Hoffman’s most ambitious and mesmerizing novel: “striking….Hoffman grounds her expansive, intricately woven, and deepest new novel in biblical history, with a devotion and seriousness of purpose” (Entertainment Weekly).

Nearly two thousand years ago, nine hundred Jews held out for months against armies of Romans on Masada,…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Dovekeepers as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

I cannot resist beautiful, elegant writing, and Hoffman achieves this every time. Set in the Old Testament on the refuge of Masada in Judea, you come to know the lives of four women intimately.

I love substantial, complicated narratives that bring you directly into people’s lives. Each woman is strong and steadfast in what they will do to survive and save their children in lives full of danger. It is a stunningly truthful story and one of my all-time favorite books.

From Diane's list on strong, persistent women.

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Book cover of Lake Song: A Novel in Stories

Lake Song by Lesley Pratt Bannatyne,

Selected by Deesha Philyaw as winner of the AWP Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction, Lake Song is set in the fictional town of Kinder Falls in New York’s Finger Lakes region. This novel in stories spans decades to plumb the complexities, violence, and compassion of small-town life as the…

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