Author Archives: Bookworm
A mystery in paradise
The new novel The Dahlia Suite (Atria Books/Simon & Schuster, 2026) by Carinn Jade takes place on Beck Island in the Caribbean. Gabby, the concierge at the island’s most exclusive resort, and resort guests Paige, a frustrated writer, and Lindsay, … Continue reading
Catholic Social Teaching and the meaning of work
Burnout, low wages, gig labor, layoffs, and the struggle to balance purpose with pay have made many people questioning what work is, what it could be, and what it should be. Kate Ward, who earned a Ph.D. in theological ethics from … Continue reading
Believe
After a 30-year career in neonatal intensive care nursing, Brenda Sheridan, a 1989 Boston College graduate, wrote her first novel, A Better Sense of Being. In Sheridan’s story, Iris Macdonald moves from Manhattan to the Berkshires in the wake of … Continue reading
Coming to America
Early 20th-century America is seen through the eyes of immigrants in Adjacent to History, a book about author John Rilli’s family who came from Europe and settled in New York, Connecticut, and Philadelphia. Rilli’s ancestors left Sicily, Germanic Europe, and … Continue reading
Discovering home
In the award-winning picture book My Heart Speaks Kriolu (Denene Millner Books/Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2025), a grandfather talks of bringing his granddaughter to their ancestral home, Cabo Verde. But each time he urges the young girl … Continue reading
A modern retelling of ‘Persuasion’
Worse Than Strangers (Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster, 2026), a new book by 2019 Boston College graduate Kyleigh Leddy, is a modern retelling of Jane Austen’s Persuasion. Set on Nantucket, Worse Than Strangers is the story of Lily Gardner, unemployed and … Continue reading
The prosecutor and the madam
Bestselling authors Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray, have co-written a historical novel about a prosecutor and a madam who team up to bring down a notorious Mob boss in 1930s New York City. In A Pair of Aces (Penguin Random House/Berkley, … Continue reading
The myth of neutrality
In his new book The Opinionated University: Academic Freedom, Diversity, and the Myth of Neutrality in American Higher Education (University of Chicago Press, 2026), Boston College graduate Brian Soucek pushes against the tide of universities increasingly pledging to stay neutral … Continue reading
Art of school leadership
A new book aimed at improving K-12 school education by David Corvi, a leadership coach at Boston College’s Lynch Leadership Academy, advocates strengthening the everyday experience of every learner—instead of employing interventions or isolated strategies—through a reimagined instructional framework for … Continue reading