Review: American Dream Machine by Matthew Specktor

Early on in the powerful book, American Dream Machine, the twenty-something narrator Nate Rosenwald makes his intentions clear. "This story I have to tell doesn't have much to do with me," he says, "but it isn't about some bored actress and her existential crises, a troubled screenwriter who comes to his senses and hightails it back to Illinois. It's not about the vacuous horror of the California dream. It's something that could've happened anywhere else in the world, but instead settled, inexplicably, here."

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Review: Z A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Ann Fowler

When it comes to American literature's golden "it" couple, it was hard to tell if life imitated art or if it was the other way around. Scott Fitzgerald once said, "Sometimes, I don't know whether Zelda and I are real or whether we are characters from one of my own novels." The glamorous power couple that captured the public's imagination in the Jazz Age occupies center stage in Therese Ann Fowler's new book, simply called Z. Zelda narrates the heartbreaking love story, and while this is fiction, much of it stays true to the Fitzgeralds' real-life trajectory from a young couple madly in love, to their excesses, and eventual falls.

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Review: A Map of Tulsa by Benjamin Lytal

Jim Praley is not quite sure what to make of Tulsa, the city where he grew up, and went to high school; the city he was a little too eager to leave behind when he finally left for college. At the start of Benjamin Lytal's soulful debut, A Map of Tulsa, Jim has finished his first year of college and is back home in Tulsa for the summer. Already the prodigal son act is one marked with defeat – Jim only returns home because he didn't get a summer job with the campus newspaper. Never mind, he tells himself, he will set a systematic course of study over the summer, one that will leave him amply prepared to choose a major, come sophomore year. "I came back to Tulsa that summer for different reasons. To prove that it was empty. And in hopes that it was not," Jim says.

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Review: How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Mohsin Hamid

"There was a moment when anything was possible. And there will be a moment when nothing is possible. But in between we can create." It is this grand arc – one between life and death – that the talented Mohsin Hamid traverses in his compelling new novel, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia. The unnamed narrator, simply written as the second person "you," knows he has to "create" – a family, a business, a life – a life that moves him far beyond the restrictive confines of his poor village childhood.

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Review: Salt Sugar Fat by Michael Moss

I can see you rolling your eyes already. "Yes," you say, "I know that too much salt, sugar and fat are bad for me." After all, you've probably at least come across Michael Pollan's commandment: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." You don't really need to read another killjoy volume, you think. Well, think again. The absolutely brilliant Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us is a well-researched and well-reported book that despite its loaded subject, doesn't sound preachy and never wags its finger at you, the end-consumer.

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Review: All That Is by James Salter

The cinematic first chapter of James Salter's new book All That Is is set during World War II, during the Battle of Okinawa, when American forces were slowly "prying" many an island from the Japanese. The chapter serves as a perfect frame of reference for the three men who make up most of its narrative: there's dashing Kimmel who always boasts about his sexual exploits, pious Brownell, who's constantly embarrassed by details about Kimmel's escapades; and finally, Philip Bowman, a run-of-the-mill obedient deckhand who is diligent and does as he's told. While this first chapter is very unlike the rest of the novel, it serves to give us a sneak peek at the characters' personalities and discover how they change (or not) during the course of their lives. Soon the war ends, the camera zooms in and the rest of the book focuses mostly on Bowman as he returns home to the rest of his life.

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Review: Where'd Do You Go Bernadette? by Maria Semple

The good people of Seattle might find something "hinky" about Bernadette Fox, the protagonist in Maria Semple's Where'd You Go Bernadette? As the story opens, Bernadette is a stay-at-home mom, always hiding behind dark glasses. She hates to mingle with the parents at her daughter Bee's private school, refers to the pesky school moms as "gnats," can't stomach how parking in Seattle is an elaborate eight-step procedure – and she detests the five-way intersections the city seems to be full of.

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Review: The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout

Jim Praley is not quite sure what to make of Tulsa, the city where he grew up, and went to high school; the city he was a little too eager to leave behind when he finally left for college. At the start of Benjamin Lytal's soulful debut, A Map of Tulsa, Jim has finished his first year of college and is back home in Tulsa for the summer. Already the prodigal son act is one marked with defeat – Jim only returns home because he didn't get a summer job with the campus newspaper. Never mind, he tells himself, he will set a systematic course of study over the summer, one that will leave him amply prepared to choose a major, come sophomore year. "I came back to Tulsa that summer for different reasons. To prove that it was empty. And in hopes that it was not," Jim says.

Read the rest of my review at BookBrowse.com.