This week, we review All the Broken Places by John Boyne, "a cunning domestic drama with breathtaking plot twists," a companion of sorts to his bestselling The Boy in the Striped Pajamas; Peter Blauner's "gripping" novel Picture in the Sand, which uses the filming of The Ten Commandments in Egypt during political upheaval as a springboard to explore the relationship between a grandfather and grandson; and We Deserve Monuments, Jas Hammonds's "mysterious and romantic" YA debut, in which a young woman discovers decades of concealed truths in her mother's hometown in Georgia. Plus so much more!
In The Writer's Life, Blauner discusses the seeds of his ninth novel, Picture in the Sand, and the resonance between Egypt's 1950s uprising and the present-day unrest in the region. --Jennifer M. Brown, senior editor, Shelf Awareness