Steve Donoghue’s posts from the original Open Letters Monthly Archives.
Our book today is 2005’s The Cold Dish, the first installment in Craig Johnson’s hugely successful series of mystery novels set in the fictional Absaroka County, Wyoming and starring laconic, leather-tough sheriff Walt Longmire and a terrifically engaging cast of supporting characters, from his long-time friend and Cheyenne saloon owner Henry Standing Bear to his […]
Read MoreThe world's smallest and busiest birds are the subject of a pretty new book
Read MoreIt’s a sad commentary on our relevance-obsessed and overcrowded society that the editorial Powers That Be at the National Geographic magazine probably didn’t hesitate for a moment before choosing the cover story for their May issue: the looming ecological crisis of mass-produced food supply. That article, by Jonathan Foley, is both fascinating and alarming … […]
Read MoreOur book today is Ben Pastor’s A Dark Song of Blood, her third murder mystery starring Nazi Wehrmacht officer Martin Bora (the first two were Lumen and Liar Moon). The book is out now in a very sturdy paperback from Bitter Lemon Press, and it makes for a very absorbing – although very dark – […]
Read MoreIn Elisabeth Gifford's impressive debut, two couples, separated by a century, each confront Scotland's legends of the seal-folk.
Read MoreThe famous clerical martyr to the Nazi regime is the subject of a powerful new biography
Read MoreThe notorious Duke Lacrosse rape case - and its tawdry aftermath - is the subject of a veteran journalist's big new book
Read MoreA fascinating new book looks at the long political and historical writings of the author of "The Prince"
Read MoreA splendidly brainy new intellectual biography gives us the mind-life of the great orator, writer, and parliamentarian Edmund Burke
Read MoreOur book today is Aldo Buzzi’s 1996 composite travel book Cechov a Sondrio e altri viaggi, brought out by Random House in a very good translation by Ann Goldstein and titled Journey to the Land of the Flies (poor Chekhov gets the heave-ho). Buzzi’s formal training was as an architect, but for most of his […]
Read MoreJane Austen's posthumous send-up of Gothic novels (and their breathless readers) gets a lavish annotated edition
Read MoreAs a reader who’s deeply interested in what other people – and especially young people – are reading and why, how could I not be fascinated by the teeming subset of YouTube known as BookTube? That’s the sprawling (and constantly growing) community of channels on YouTube devoted entirely to books – book reviews, book discussions, […]
Read MoreThrough the eyes of an assistant, a new novel by an American master shows us the life and torturous loves of the great Renaissance artist Donatello
Read MoreOur book today is 1991’s Death of the Duchess by Elizabeth Eyre, which is a pseudonym for the London writing team of Jill Staynes and Magaret Storey (both of which sound more like pseudonyms than “Elizabeth Eyre,” but then, what would I know of pseudonyms?). Death of the Duchess is a murder mystery set in […]
Read MoreOur book today is Thomas Costain’s magnificent 1958 volume The Three Edwards, the third in his “Pageant of England” series, this one centering on the reigns of Kings Edward I, II, and III and thus covering some of the most dramatic and vibrant years in English history. Costain – an old newspaperman from Canada who […]
Read MoreThe beautiful Galapagos islands - home to finches, tortoises, and active magma - are the subject of a delightful new study
Read MoreThe first and most famous serial killer of the modern era killed five women in 1888 London - but did Jack the Ripper's crimes start there? And did they end there? The two greatest "Ripperologists" make the case for a killer's forgotten victims
Read MoreMy favorite ironic, unintentional, sexist contrast of the month comes from the latest issue of GQ: quite by the random chance of advertising space, we get these two pictures side-by-side. On the one side, there’s a young woman who’s dementedly devoted to re-shaping her body into a living simulacrum of a Barbie doll, a self-mutilation GQ‘s […]
Read MoreThat sleek and elegant diving-bird, the double-crested cormorant, faces deep-seated prejudices - and disastrous legal measures - in North America, its ancestral home
Read MoreA fantastic British boarding-school novel from another age gets a pretty reprint
Read MoreThis is a place for all of my writing about books.