Month: October 2018

  • Murders and miracles

    Reviewed by Linda C. Brinson HOLY GHOST. By John Sandford. Penguin Audio. 10 hours; 8 CDs. Read by Eric Conger. $40. Also available in print from G.P. Putnam’s Sons. Virgil Flowers from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is back in one of his best novels yet. The setting is Wheatfield, Minn., a tiny, middle-of-nowhere…

  • Richard Russo, times two

    I don’t know when Bob Moyer finds time to read and  review books when he’s always traveling, playing pétanque and writing haiku, but I’m glad he does. Reviewed by Robert P. Moyer THE DESTINY THIEF:  Essays on Writing, Writers and Life. By Richard Russo. Knopf. 194 pages. Two for one. That’s what you get in…

  • The American dream – or nightmare?

    Reviewed by Linda C. Brinson LAKE SUCCESS. By Gary Shteyngart. Random House Audio. 13 ½ hours; 11 CDs. Read by Arthur Morey and Soneela Nankani. $40. Also available in print from Random House. Barry Cohen is a hedge-fund manager who oversees $2.4 billion in assets and lives the pampered, extravagant life of the .01 percent…

  • Dancing to a different beat

    I love most of Anne Tyler’s novels, but Bob Moyer thinks her books appeal to the bourgeoisie. He even singles me, his editor, out as part of that bourgeois fan club. My response would be, so what? I like Anne Tyler’s writing because yes, she writes about ordinary people, and in the end, there may…