Zone One, by Colson Whitehead

When is a bandwagon no longer a bandwagon? How about when a genuine author comes along, takes his place and kicks the crap back into the street?  The best I can tell from my own reading is that would leave three writers whose insight goes deeper than the mechanics of killing the undead.  The third, [...]

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The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver

There is no doubt that Barbara Kingsolver is one of the finest authors of our time, and The Lacuna upholds that reputation.  She explored issues of identity through myriad competing and complementing characters in her two best-known books, The Poisonwood Bible and Prodigal Summer.  Now, with The Lacuna, she offers two astonishingly well-realized characters whose [...]

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Flashman at the Charge, by George MacDonald Fraser

There’s never been an anti-hero quite so … heroic … as Harry Paget Flashman.   Cad, coward, spendthrift, popinjay, drunkard, turncoat, bully: all the things you’d normally avoid in the ordinary protagonist of your ordinary reading (and hopefully in your daily existence) are Flashman’s best features.  In his private memoirs (transcribed from his papers by [...]

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A Cast of Killers, by Sidney D. Kirkpatrick

In the preface to A Cast of Killers, Kirkpatrick describes how he set out to write a biography of Hollywood director King Vidor in the mid 1980s. As much material as he had to work with, given that Vidor had seemingly saved every scrap of paper he had ever amassed, Kirkpatrick found a significant dearth [...]

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The Gallery of Regrettable Food, by James Lileks

“Garnish with eggs; detonate; let congeal.” Ah, Thanksgiving. The joy of paging through one’s heirloom cookbooks, contemplating the treasured recipes of the past: the ginger-and-cardamom spiced cookies, the wholesome breads, the… cream of asparagus soup in lime gelatin with minted mayonnaise? Are you kidding me? If you’ve ever stared at the pages of old cookbooks [...]

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What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures, by Malcolm Gladwell

You may be familiar with Gladwell’s previous books, The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers; all on the best sellers lists.  What the Dog Saw is a collection of his articles from The New Yorker magazine over the past decade. The articles are not overly long, generally 20 pages or so, which is nice if you’re [...]

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Dogged Pursuit: My Year of Competing Dusty, the World’s Least Likely Agility Dog, by Robert Rodi

I don’t think I’d ever heard of dog agility before I scrolled through the library’s non-fiction ebook selections and saw Robert Rodi’s Dogged Pursuit: My Year of Competing Dusty, the World’s Least Likely Agility Dog. Dusty, a funny-looking, grayish Sheltie, looking happy and proud in mid-jump over a bar, was pictured on the book’s cover. [...]

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A Highland Christmas, by M. C. Beaton

I’ve happily plowed through the first fifteen titles in M.C. Beaton’s Hamish MacBeth series, and this Christmas special is the 16th. So far I’ve listened to all of them in audio format with the excellent Davina Porter narrating. A Highland Christmas does not appear to be available in audio format, however, so I took the [...]

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If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy-O, by Sharyn McCrumb

This first novel in Sharyn McCrumb’s Ballad series blends folk songs and the culture of the Appalachian region with a mystery. Folksinger Peggy Muryan has moved in the old Dandridge mansion.  She keeps to herself while settling into the house and writing new songs for her comeback.  The townfolk are curious about the new neighbor, [...]

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What Happens in London, by Julia Quinn

I don’t usually do this, but I jumped into the middle of a historical romance series when I picked up the audiobook of Julia Quinn’s What Happens in London.  I wanted something different to listen to during a trip, and the title’s play on “What happens in Vegas” caught my eye.  This is part two [...]

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Sex, Murder and a Double Latte, by Kyra Davis

Chick Lit meets mystery in Kyra Davis’s Sex, Murder and a Double Latte. Sophie Katz is a successful mystery writer living in San Francisco.  When the movie producer interested in filming her novel commits suicide, Sophie is the only one who sees a suspicious connection to a murder scene in his latest movie. After she receives [...]

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Animal Magnetism, by Jill Shalvis

I was looking for a quick, light read and was not disappointed in the contemporary romance Animal Magnetism by Jill Shalvis. Lilah Young runs a kennel in Sunshine, Idaho.  One morning after picking  up a duck, two puppies and a potbellied pig for boarding, she runs into tall, handsome, new-to-town Brady Miller.  Literally: she runs her jeep [...]

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Skellig, by David Almond

David Almond’s first book for young people is Skellig, which was written in the late 1990s.  I missed this when it first came out, but recently picked it up.  It wasn’t “edge of your seat” thrilling, but instead sweet and magical. I kept turning pages to see what would happen next. Michael has experienced a [...]

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Clay’s Quilt, by Silas House

In the prologue to Silas House’s 2001 debut novel, Clay’s Quilt, the reader is privy to the conversation of a carload of riders on an icy Appalachian mountain. The conditions are dangerous, but beyond that, there’s clearly something else causing tension. We jump forward fifteen years, and meet our protagonist, Clay Sizemore. He’s a young [...]

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So Brave, Young, and Handsome, by Leif Enger

The end of the early,  “wild” west has always been a great setting for stories, and Leif Enger’s second novel So Brave, Young, and Handsome adds to that tradition. It captures an exciting time when one generation, one way of life, was passing into the sunset, but another way of life was being born. It’s [...]

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Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline

Here’s a blast from the 1980s past, combined with a futuristic dystopia in a novel that’s just plain fun. Ernest Cline’s debut novel Ready Player One is set in a future where fuel shortages, wars, and corporate destruction have made real life miserable. The protagonist is Wade Watts, an Oklahoma City teenager whose real life [...]

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Noises Off, by Michael Frayn

To paraphrase my wife, the definition of a farce is a play with lots of doors to slam. The conceit of Michael Frayn’s classic Noises Off is such that the set not only has to have lots of doors, on two stories, but the action has to rotate between acts so that the audience can [...]

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Scorch City, by Toby Ball

Toby Ball is an author with a talent for finding today’s hot button issues in settings of the past. He writes a unique brand of thriller/mystery, set in an unnamed city in historical periods that closely mirror those of the United States, but that use original characters and an atmosphere that remains deliberately hazy, hallucinatory, [...]

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