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Small packages – when less is more
So many of the audio books I “read” go on and on. That can be good if you want to get hooked into a book that will be with you for a while, say on a long road trip. But it’s refreshing to encounter a couple of novels that are more understated. Each of these…
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Where there’s Hope, there’s a good story
It’s always a pleasure when the latest installment in a good series arrives. Reviewed by Linda C. Brinson THE PRIME MINISTER’S SECRET AGENT. By Susan Elia MacNeal. Bantam Books. 301 pages. $15, paperback. Susan Elia MacNeal’s Maggie Hope series has become one of my favorites. In Maggie, MacNeal has created an intelligent, sensitive, complex heroine…
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Spies: gentleman and madam
Speaking of mysteries, foul deeds and intrigue: I seem to have missed book No. 3 in Carol K. Carr’s entertaining India Black series. My very strong clue was the arrival of what appears to be book No. 4 in my mailbox, listing the two previous novels I had read and reviewed (favorably, I might add),…
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Two treats from Anne Perry
I don’t know how Anne Perry does it. She keeps her two very good Victorian England series going, plus her annual Christmas novel and the occasional foray into some other historical territory. Here are brief reviews of her latest novels in the William Monk series (from late last year) and the Charlotte and Thomas Pitt…
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What an amazing life she led
Some books are entertaining but unapologetically superficial, a good read or listen but nothing more. That’s fine, and sometimes, that’s exactly what we want. Other books are richer and more complex, telling a good story, to be sure, but also offering layers of memorable information and insight. Such is the new novel by Elizabeth Gilbert.…
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Spinning a good tale
Before the textile mills came to my home state of North Carolina, they were major economic forces in New England. This fascinating historical novel by the author of The New York Times bestseller The Dressmaker is built around the true story of a murder at textile mill in Massachusetts that was one of the first…
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RLS and Fanny: A literary love story
I had begun to read this novel in print – and gotten thoroughly hooked on it – when two things happened: A copy of the audio version arrived, and I had to make a solo road trip. I switched to listening, and I can attest that whether read or heard, Nancy Horan’s new book is…
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A mothers’ pilgrimage
This year is the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I. I’ve long found the years during and after World War I particularly interesting. That’s been especially true for books set in England, where World War I profoundly changed so many things that British people had thought were constants in their world. I’ve…
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In tough times, loneliness and love
Jamie Ford, the son of a Chinese-American father, mines his heritage and the history of his hometown of Seattle well in his second novel. I have not read his debut novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, a love story about a Chinese American boy and a Japanese girl during the World War…