Book Review: Dancing Fish and Ammonites
/Long-time novelist Penelope Lively turns 80 - and turns to memoir-writing
Read MoreSexy Stendhal!
/Our book today is Le Rouge et le Noir, the great 1830 novel written by Marie-Henri Beyle under his world-famous pseudonym Stendhal. Actually, our book today is an English-language translation of Le Rouge et le Noir, and not just any translation, oh no! Our translation today is one I came across just recently (at my [...]
Read MoreBook Review: Raiders of the Nile
/In Alexandria as a young man, Gordianus the Finder gets caught up in an elaborate scheme to steal the corpse of Alexander the Great!
Read MoreDeath in the Ashes!
/Our book today is Death in the Ashes, a murder mystery by Albert Bell, the fourth in his delightful “Notebooks of Pliny the Younger” series starring, obviously, the famous first-century author and imperial kiss-up Pliny the Younger, here ably assisted (and mocked the whole time) by the even-more-famous historian Tacitus. Both of them are comparatively [...]
Read MoreBook Review: The Martian
/An unassuming botanist gets separated from his exploration team and finds himself stranded alone on Mars - and his survival rests entirely in his own hands.
Read MoreBook Review: Hundred Days
/The vivid story of the months when the long, slogging stalemate of the First World War exploded into violence
Read MoreIn Paperback: On Reading "The Grapes of Wrath"
/John Steinbeck's bestselling and universally-lauded novel gets a passionate and persuasive reading by a renowned Steinbeck scholar
Read MoreBook Review: Must Love Dukes
/The lovers in Elizabeth Michels' new novel get off to a rapturous, then a rocky start - and when next they meet, a year later, the real games begin
Read MoreBook Review: Much Ado About Jack
/A strong-willed countess and a dynamic sailor become Shakespearean-style star-crossed lovers in Christy English's latest novel
Read MoreBook Review: Romancing the Duke
/The daughter of a famous novelist has her own life take on a decidedly fairy-tale twist in Tessa Dare's new novel
Read MoreClassics Reissued: The Homesman
/A strong woman and a weak man must make a perilous journey from the Western frontier to the East Coast in Glendon Swarthout's newly-reissued classic novel
Read MoreBook Review: Like a Mighty Army
/Armies clash and the technological stakes are raised in the latest installment in David Weber's rip-roaring "Safehold" series
Read MoreKooks, Spooks, and Gadzooks in the Penny Press!
/Last week’s London Review of Books started out with a dollop of crazy and just kept barreling along! The nutty topping came first, from a letter-writer out of County Tipperary who felt the need to do a little proud confessing: I once sold a pigsty, which is now a disguised dwelling, and built a cabin [...]
Read MoreMystery Monday: The 12.30 from Croydon!
/Our book today is The 12.30 from Croydon, a 1934 thriller (its boring American title was Wilful and Premeditated) by Freeman Wills Crofts, who was both a member in good standing of the so-called Golden Age of Detective Fiction and also that much rarer bird, an Irishman with absolutely no ear for telling a good [...]
Read MoreBook Review: The Deliverance of Evil
/A young woman is murdered on the eve of Italy's tumultuous win in the 1982 World Cup - and then 24 years later, on the eve of another World Cup victory, more bodies start turning up, and it's up to one haunted, damaged cop to piece the mystery together (hint: it's not hooligans)
Read MoreBook Review: My Name is Resolute
/The life of one remarkable woman - told against the backdrop of American colonies boiling toward revolution - forms the narrative of Nancy Turner's sumptuously old-fashioned new historical novel
Read MoreWarm Winter Mornings in the Penny Press!
/It’s not often, especially nowadays, that the cover of The New Yorker is better than any of the contents of the issue, but that certainly happened last week. The issue had an infuriating piece by Tad Friend about a family of irresponsible Nantucket knuckleheads whose ordeal at sea only momentarily distracts the reader from [...]
Read MoreBook Review: James & Dolley Madison
/A new dual-biography of James Madison and his wife Dolley sees them through some of fledgling America's most trying times
Read More1812!
/Our book today is 1812, a meaty, fantastic 1996 historical novel by David Nevin, who wrote a string of first-rate books in the fifteen years before his death in 2011. 1812 is the dramatic story of fledgling America’s second fight with the British Empire, and it centers on President James Madison and his strong-willed wife [...]
Read MoreBook Review: Lincoln's Boys
/The image of Abraham Lincoln - the saintly, martyred Great Emancipator - is a permanent fixture of human culture … but a fascinating new book takes a detailed look at the men who carefully crafted that image
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