-
Need Christmas spirit? Read (or listen to) this book
Talk about getting into the Christmas spirit: In the past couple of weeks, I’ve read two enjoyable novels in which a murder is committed at Christmastime in a large English country house where lots of people (i.e., suspects) are snowbound. Save from those details I’ve just listed, the two books could hardly be more different.…
-
Christmas reading arrives
For nine years now, Anne Perry has been writing a short novel for Christmas, drawing on her expert knowledge of Victorian England, as well as some of her familiar characters. For Perry’s many fans, the arrival of her latest holiday book is as much a herald of the season as the parade, the bell ringers…
-
Rita Mae rides again
The prolific author Rita Mae Brown now gives us a new book in her “canine mystery series” each fall, to tide us over while we wait for the new book in her Mrs. Murphy mystery series (feline and canine) to arrive in spring. By Linda Brinson MURDER UNLEASHED. By Rita Mae Brown. Ballantine Books. 267…
-
All aboard for a magical ride
Because I listen to audio books when I drive, I’ve developed a rating system that involves how far extra I’ll drive to keep listening to a book if I reach my destination in mid-chapter – or even mid-book. This one cost me a lot of extra miles and gas. But that investment paid off handsomely…
-
Brother, sisters, choices
Anne Barnhill, who has written a memoir about growing up with an autistic sister, reviews a fictional treatment of a similar family situation. (Congratulations to Anne, whose novel, AT THE MERCY OF THE QUEEN: A Novel of Anne Boleyn, Debut will be published by St. Martin’s Press in January!) By Anne Barnhill THE WAY THINGS…
-
No laughing matter
Bob Moyer takes a sobering look at a serious subject: humor in Nazi Germany, and what it tells us about that terrible time. By Robert Moyer DEAD FUNNY: Humor in Hitler’s Germany. By Rudolph Herzog. Translated by Jefferson Chase. Melville House. 256 pages. $26. It is unbelievable that Hitler was responsible for the deaths of…
-
Dangerous mountain
Remember Charles Frazier, the North Carolina writer who made a huge splash with his first novel, Cold Mountain, in 1997? Then word got out that he received a staggeringly large advance for his second novel, Thirteen Moons, nine years later. As a result, there was more media attention to the business of publishing his books…
-
A chorus of voices from our past
The saga of the Japanese “picture brides” who came from Japan to California after World War I is a sad chapter of American history that is unfamiliar to many of us. More of us know a little about the later internment of these women and their families, along with other Japanese Americans, during World War…
-
Madam India Black, at it again
If you enjoy reading fiction set in Victorian England, then give this India Black series a try. Dickens, of course, showed the chasm between rich and poor, and focused his literary light on the dark side of London inhabited by thieves and worse. Today, Anne Perry, in her two mystery series, does an eye-opening job…
-
A tale of truffles and troubles
While Bob Moyer was in Germany recently, he reviewed another in Martin Walker’s series of “mysteries of the French Countryside.” Go figure. By Robert Moyer BLACK DIAMOND. A Mystery of the French Countryside. By Martin Walker. Alfred A. Knopf. 298 pages. $24.95. Peril has appeared on the horizon of St. Denis, where Bruno is chief…