Twelve-year-old Ren is an orphan. He was pushed through the tiny gate at St. Anthony’s on a rainy night when he was just an infant and already his life had been more difficult than most: Ren was missing his left hand. Despite that dreadful beginning, Ren’s life seems steady enough. He has a roof over his head, food in his… Read more
City of Refuge is the story of two families in New Orleans, their love of the city and its culture, and the wrenching decisions they have to make in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. I am advising my dear friends in New Orleans not to read this book; for them, the pain is too close to the surface and some… Read more
Harry Sullivan reads renovations the way a fortune teller reads tea leaves: he can predict the course of your marriage by the tiles you’ve chosen for the master bath. At the end of a project, when he has been part of your family and had access to your most intimate spaces, he knows more about you than anyone else. In… Read more
Ever wonder where the phrase “getting laid” comes from? The answer might surprise you. Check the comments after this review for the answer. Sin in the Second City is the story of the Everleigh Sisters, who ran the most notorious brothel in Chicago in the 1890’s/early 1900’s. This was at a time when brothels were not exactly illegal: prostitution and… Read more
I’ve been reading a lot of short story collections lately, not my usual fare, but short stories are a good way to get a sense of a writer, seeing how he or she handles a number of different plotlines, looking at the way stories develop, the way characters are presented and the patterns that emerge over the course of the… Read more
In Eric Van Lustbader’s new novel, the President is an ultra-conservative, ultra-religious extremist, and he and his supporters are willing to do anything to keep a lock on the country, even if it means torturing their own citizens and forcing foreign governments to be complicit in their dirty deals. It’s a future that seems all too plausible in our current… Read more
I have long been a fan of John Sanford’s “Prey” series, featuring Lucas Davenport of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. In this book, Sanford focuses on a different member of the BCA, Virgil Flowers, with the same excellent results. Virgil arrives in the tiny town of Bluestem in a rush of rain and fire – he’s speeding through a… Read more
This is the second book of short stories I have reviewed recently, and certainly the one I enjoyed the most. This is Sana Krasikov’s first effort, and while it has its problems, it is a very promising beginning. Krasikov is a Russian writer and this collection of short stories is all about immigrants and their families and struggles. Some are… Read more
I try to find something good to say about every one of the books I review. There is usually a story, a turn of phrase, a plotline that intrigues me, so I can provide a little something positive. Not so here. The book should be titled Another Chapter, Another Hangover. In the first 50 pages of the book, Lawyer managers… Read more
The Watercooler Effect is a very timely piece of work. It is, after all, election season. My inbox has been overflowing with forwarded bits of political “information,” most of it nonsense. I’d always believed this was primarily designed to sway my vote one way or another, but it turns out there may be other forces at work. I was most… Read more