-
Letters, love and life
A historical novel dealing with both World Wars, a sweet love story – Jessica Brockmole’s first novel is an engaging, light novel, a good pick for entertaining end-of-summer listening or reading. Reviewed by Linda C. Brinson LETTERS FROM SKYE. By Jessica Brockmole. Books on Tape (Random House). Read by Elle Newlands, Katy Townsend, Lincoln Hoppe,…
-
Love, war and murder
Chris Bohjalian is without a doubt one of the finest writers in America today. His novels are literary without pretension and compelling stories without unnecessary artifice. He writes about terrible events so that we comprehend their enormity without being blinded by our horror to their greater truths. Reviewed by Linda C. Brinson THE LIGHT IN…
-
Into the viper’s nest
Rarely is a history lesson as entertaining as in the Maggie Hope World War II novels. Here’s a review of the latest one, No. 3 in the series. Review by Linda C. Brinson HIS MAJESTY’S HOPE. By Susan Elia MacNeal. Bantam Trade Paperback Original. 354 pages. $15. Susan Elia MacNeal’s Maggie Hope novels just keep…
-
The prim, the proper, the depraved
Most of us know, through Charles Dickens or other sources, something of the seamy side of Victorian England and how difficult life was for the poor people of the day. Anne Perry’s two outstanding series of historical novels set in that period also shed light into some of the darker corners of life among the…
-
So you thought you knew the Lindbergh story
Redemption is sweet. For three years, I’ve had a novel by Melanie Benjamin on my office worktable and on my conscience. I loved her book Alice I Have Been, about the real Alice whom Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) wrote about in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. But I read it at an in-between time in…
-
All this and a mystery, too
Novel readers are well acquainted with the darker side of Victorian England, the often-wretched lives of the poor and society’s gaping inequalities. We also may have had literary glimpses into the lives and adventures of those in government and law-enforcement circles. Julia Stuart’s hilarious novel offers a look at a slice of Victorian life that…
-
Who’s dead, who’s missing?
By Linda C. Brinson I’ve read all Charles Todd’s books since that mother-son team’s first novel appeared in 1996. Now, we have the 15th in that first series (there’s now a Bess Crawford series as well). As with any series, some Inspector Ian Rutledge mysteries are better than others. But even those that might not…
-
The Third Reich and the power of fiction
Bob Moyer doesn’t throw glowing adjectives around lightly. If he calls a book “amazing,” it’s worth taking note. By Robert Moyer HHhH: A Novel. By Laurent Binet. Translated by Sam Taylor. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 327 pages. $26. The heated battle began shortly after World War II. As artists turned to the horrors of the…
-
Aesthetics vs. pragmatism – what really matters?
Bob Moyer is back, taking a thoughtful look at a novel that depicts the travails of Germans and others caught up in the horrors of the cataclysm that was World War II. By Robert Moyer THE LIFE OF OBJECTS. By Susanna Moore. Alfred A. Knopf. 240 pages. $25. Beatrice, a bright young Irish girl, yearns…