Extra special stuff today – the first review from my new associate reviewer, Christine Linial! She’s a long-time on-line pal who also loves books, and I am sharing some of my bounty with her (and getting more reviews on my pages at the same time). If you’re a baseball fan who loves intrigue, Hang A Crooked Number is your next… Read more
“We lusty bibliophiles know that reading, unlike just about anything else, is both good for you and loads of fun.” – Kevin Smokler The best thing about that quote is the phrase “lusty bibliophiles.” I adore it. I get so tired of book lovers being called bookworms or something similarly dismissive, as though we are beneath notice, holed up with a… Read more
Four Summoner’s Tales starts with an interesting premise. If you could truly raise people from the dead, of course, there would be people willing to pay you to do it, to bring their loved ones back. But wouldn’t there also be people willing to pay you not to do it? Could you blackmail that trophy wife, whose 90-year-old husband just left… Read more
Another new book for the shelves! This really stood out as soon as I saw the synopsis. It’s a story about friendship and the way your childhood friends stay with us, for better or worse – At the Bottom of Everything by Ben Dolnick. A stunning novel of friendship, guilt, and madness: two friends, torn apart by a terrible secret, and the… Read more
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. You know the rules: grab your current read, open to a random page and share a two sentence teaser with us (no spoilers!). Be sure to tell us about the book, so we can add it to our TBR list! This week, my teaser is from… Read more
Knowing what this book was about, I wasn’t expecting a happy ending. What surprised me was how often I was moved to tears by the sheer bravery and strength of the men in this novel. What kind of inner strength does it take to go out into what will likely be deadly conditions, risking your own life, to rescue a… Read more
“To prohibit the reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves.” – Claude Adrien Helvétius, French philosopher and author Well, you know which category I think they fall into. I have long thought that the people who want to ban books are cowards. They are parents afraid to explain things to their children, preachers… Read more
Okay, a special treat today! I’ve got an excerpt for you from Christopher Buehlman’s latest novel, The Necromancer’s House. This one sounds fabulous and today, you get a chance to read the Prologue. Andrew Ranulf Blankenship is a handsome, stylish nonconformist with wry wit, a classic Mustang, and a massive library. He is also a recovering alcoholic and a practicing warlock,… Read more
The easiest way to tell that Jo Nesbo is not an American author is that in the US, you could never get away with naming a character Harry Hole. That’s just one of the things I love about this series. Harry is such a great character, and I think Nesbo is a fabulous writer, so I was thrilled to get… Read more
It’s kind of a funny thing. When I was telling some bookish friends about The Man, one of them commented that they hate it when books break all “the rules” of time travel. Seems silly to me – how could time travel have rules? Sean Ferrell’s Man in the Empty Suit breaks all the rules of time travel and has some fun doing… Read more