Let me start by saying, I am a fan of Anne Tyler. If she writes it I will read it. Having said that, I am nearly always disappointed with her endings. So, why do I keep coming back? Because I believe her work. I know her characters, even if I don’t always like them, I [...]
Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel comes after her prize-winning Wolf Hall and I think it is just as good. While Wolf Hall followed Henry the VIII trying to legally get rid of his wife Katherine so he could marry Anne Boleyn, in this book Henry is tired of Anne and wants rid of [...]
Is there a reunion in your future? You might just enjoy the Deborah Kogan’s zany novel, The Red Book, focusing on the antics at a 20th anniversary re-union of the 1989 graduating class at Harvard. The book’s title comes from Harvard’s class reports that have been continuously published for each class prior to their every [...]
When Jesse Tadlock’s mother dies and leaves him a life insurance policy, he decides to leave his career in the Army to move back home to Louisiana. The local sheriff promises him a job and his old girlfriend is divorced and interested in going out with him again. Jesse takes his savings and buys himself [...]
Jo Nesbo calls Anne Holt, author of 1222, “the godmother of modern Norwegian crime fiction” and I know why! Her work is wonderful and I am so delighted that her Hanne Wilhelmsen detection novels are beginning to be translated into English. 1222 is the 3rd of the Wilhelmsen novels. The first two are being translated [...]
Vacation by Matthew Costello contains a common horror theme-disaster strikes and afterwards humans are only safe in small restricted areas around the country. In this case disaster was too much tinkering with and genetically modifying the nation’s food supply coupled with a massive drought. The results were that some citizens became “can-heads” who seek other [...]
It’s Thelma & Louise…in book form! Delia Ephron’s The Lion is In is a chick-lit ‘on the road’ story. Two best friends from childhood, Lana and Tracee, flee Baltimore in Lana’s beloved yellow Mustang. Tracee is wearing a wedding dress. They are joined by 50-year old Rita, who they meet walking down a rural highway, [...]
Creepers by David Morrell won the 2005 Bram Stoker award for horror and I have just now read it. It’s a pretty good book about a group of urban explorers (creepers) who search for old abandoned buildings to illegally enter and look through. In this story the group targets a closed hotel in Asbury Park. [...]
I frequently enjoy novels in which literary figures appear. Such is The Neruda Case, by Roberto Ampuero. Pablo Neruda, beloved Chilean poet, womanizer, and Nobel Laureate, cajoles a neighbor, Cayetano Brule, to become a private detective and solve a mystery deeply hidden in Neruda’s personal life. To add to the literary ambience, Neruda insists that [...]
It’s hard to think of a more stellar master of the British police procedural than Peter Robinson and his Inspector Banks series. But there is so much more to Robinson’s work, than his series titles. Nowhere is that more obvious, than in his latest page-turner, Before the Poison. Set in Yorkshire, this mystery follows Hollywood [...]