The Great Mortality
Rating: The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time, by John Kelly. HarperCollins (2005), 356 pages. Thirty million people dead in Europe, a third of the Middle East wiped out, and China...
The Children’s Blizzard
Rating: The Children’s Blizzard, by David Laskin. HarperCollins (2004), 318 pages. From On the Banks of Plum Creek, by Laura Ingalls Wilder: “Then I’d better get the wood up before we go to town,” said Pa. “I don’t like the sound of that wind, and they tell...
Strength in What Remains
Rating: Strength in What Remains, by Tracy Kidder. Random House (2009), 277 pages. Kidder tells the story in Strength in What Remains of Deo, a young man from Burundi who survives the Hutu/Tutsi massacres in 1994 and arrives in New York City with only...
The Captured
Rating: The Captured: A True Story of Abduction by Indians on the Texas Frontier, by Scott Zesch. St. Martin’s Press (2004), 382 pages. This is a book about child abductions, perpetrated by the Native Americans against the settlers, in a very specific place...
A Land So Strange
Rating: A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca: The Extraordinary Tale of a Shipwrecked Spaniard Who Walked Across America in the Sixteenth Century, by Andres Resendez. Basic Books (2007), 326 pages. This is a must read for anybody with the...About Us
The Book Shark began as an independent book review website created by Cindy Pinto and Donna Long in 2002.
From the beginning our goal was not only to write great reviews, but also to recognize the most well-written books we read each year with an award...
Gustine Awards
The Gustine Awards were named in honor of the main character in one of our favorite books—The Dress Lodger, by Sheri Holman. Awards have been given out yearly since 2002 in three categories: fiction, nonfiction, and memoir...
Cover Art
A book’s cover is as important as the writing within it. We are aware that this may offend some authors who have toiled for years on their books and believe their words are the only thing that matters...
Reader Reviews
What’s the best or worst book you’ve ever read? What’s the most recent book that you’ve had a strong reaction to? Send us your thoughts, and we’ll post them in this spot.