How could a book-lover resist a mystery that revolves around the New York Public Library? This is a novel about collecting great books and antique maps, about family secrets and public images. I was caught up in the fabulous descriptions of the collections and their eccentric collectors. In fact, I found the books more interesting than the mystery. This is… Read more
Biker Poetry! I couldn’t pass this one up when Lisa Roe at OnlinePublicist offered it. I thought biker poetry has to be a bit like pirate poetry – wild and unruly and maybe just a bit romantic. There’s an outlaw aura about bikers, very much a mentality of being outsiders when it comes to regular society, a part of their… Read more
If you’re tired of the current glut of wimpy, sparkly-shiny vampires, this book is the perfect antidote. Del Toro’s vampires are brutal, disgusting, ravenous monsters. No romance here, folks. Ephraim Goodweather heads up the Canary Project, a “rapid-response team of field epidemiologists organized to detect and identify incipient biological threats.” These could be biological weapons, man-made outbreaks or naturally occurring… Read more
I received this book and read it last year, and somehow managed to overlook it when I was getting my reviews posted. I hope that readers won’t make the mistake of overlooking this book – I enjoyed this one very much. Mr. White’s Confession is the story of a series of murders in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1939. Dime-a-dance girls… Read more
Five years ago, Amy Dickinson was tapped to replace the late Ann Landers as advice columnist for the Chicago Tribune. (Ann Landers had taken over the job from Chicago nurse Ruth Crowley.) Her syndicated column appears daily in more than 150 newspaper and is read by more than 22 million people. You would expect a woman who gives advice to… Read more
I loved this book so much that I posted a pre-review review, urging you all to go out and buy the book. It has been a long time since a book made me want to shout out loud and dance around my hotel room, but this book did. It is the story of the survivors of the Go-Away War, a… Read more
This is one of those reviews that needs to percolate for a little while, but I wanted to give you just a taste of how I felt about this book: I was in bed, in my hotel, enjoying a quiet evening of reading. In the big climactic scene of this book, when a certain character (who must remain nameless in… Read more
The Spanish Bow is an amazing look at a tumultuous period in Spanish history. Feliu Delargo is a young man who always seems to profit from his tragedies. His father’s death brings him his first real treasure: a cello bow. Because of a hip injury during his birth, he cannot play his violin standing up, so he plays it sitting… Read more
I’m not sure what I did to get on Mesorah Publications’ mailing list, but boy, am I glad I did it! Back in December, I reviewed Kosher By Design Lightens Up! and shortly after that I received a new book from them, Crafting Jewish. It’s a lovely book and I have had a great time looking through it. I’m not… Read more
According to his bio, “Mathias B. Freese brings the weight of his twenty-five years of experience as a clinical social worker and psychotherapist into play as he demonstrates a vivid understand of – and compassion toward – the deviant and the damaged.” I’ve read since that he wrote about half of these stories before he began his career, but the… Read more