The Yard Dog, by Sheldon Russell

1943.  A dreary Oklahoma town, where the Dust Bowl and Depression still hang heavily over the residents.  Hook Runyon is drifting from one drunken spree to the next, moving the old caboose where he lives when he wants some variety.  Hook, you see, is a yard dog – a railroad bull – ok, a guy [...]

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Ordinary Heroes, by Scott Turow

Turow is well-known for his legal thrillers, including Presumed Innocent, which I think paved the way for a new generation of legal writers, including John Grisham.  Although he hasn’t scored as big since, his character development, courtroom drama, and exploration of the legal personality of the fictional Kindle County keep his books selling and circulating.  [...]

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Hell, by Robert Olen Butler

Welcome to Hell. The toilets are backed up, a new Wal-Mart opened today, and the weather forecast calls for scattered sulfurous fiery storms. There are cockroaches everywhere, but no trees or animals (but they don’t deserve to be here, do they?). There are lots and lots and lots of people—Stalin and Hitler (no surprises there) and [...]

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The King’s Coat, by Dewey Lambdin

This is a good, rousing tale of sailing life in 1780. You will learn much about ships and how they work as well as battles of the time and the weapons used. Our “hero,” (and we use the word loosely) is a wild young fellow who suddenly finds himself in a new world. Think Horatio Hornblower, but [...]

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The Last Kingdom, by Bernard Cornwell

This is a fairly new series for Bernard Cornwell, who is already well-known for his 21-book Richard Sharpe series. Cornwell continues his great story-telling style but in a different time and place. Now we are in the year 866, on the northeast border of England, or Englaland as it was once called.
The Last Kingdom, the first book [...]

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Medicus, by Ruth Downie

Here is another story about the great Roman Empire interwoven with a murder mystery.  This is a fun, light read – and very enjoyable.
The year is 117 A.D., and expansionist Rome is dispatching the Army to the far reaches of its empire.  And so Gaius Petreius Ruso, a doctor with the 20th Legion, finds himself [...]

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SPQR: The King’s Gambit, by John Maddox Roberts

SPQR I: The King’s Gambit is an entertaining combination of murder mystery and light history lesson which takes us back to 44 B.C., to the bustling and powerful city of Rome.  The protagonist is Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger. As Head of the Commission of Twenty Six, his job is to solve the murders in his [...]

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My Sister’s Keeper, by Jodi Picoult

With every book she publishes, Jodi Picoult attracts new readers who go back to inhale her earlier works.  As hard as it is for us to satisfy the demand for her most recent title (at this writing, Handle With Care), we can’t even keep up with the demand for her books going all the way [...]

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The Foreign Correspondent, by Alan Furst

I really like the phrase “living forward into history,” partially because I coined it (I think), just after September 11.  To me, it means that at every great juncture in world events, no one standing at that juncture knows what is going to happen, how the whole thing will turn out, or even that they [...]

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Devil May Care, by Sebastian Faulks

Ian Fleming’s star rose when John F. Kennedy casually mentioned that he was reading one of the James Bond books.  Bond burned his way through 14 books, all of which became movies, before Fleming’s death in 1964.  Those movies, which departed the published canon in 1982’s Moonraker, have come to define James Bond’s image, despite [...]

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