Sylvia Fox has been an operative with MI6 for years when, disillusioned and ready for change, she decides to retire to the Italian countryside to be closer to her sister and her family. It isn’t long before she is pulled into a local murder case and decides to use her particular set of skills to […]
Open Throat follows the adventures of a cougar in Los Angeles. Though they are elderly and prey on younger men, they are not the kind of cougar you might assume. The real P-22 puma lived in L.A.’s Griffith Park from 2012-2022, and author Henry Hoke has spun a colorful narrative based on sightings of the […]
The vampire in “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night” (2014) doesn’t seem to relish being a vampire. It seems she’d rather be listening to music, or eating hamburgers brought to her by cute boys. There are only three kills in the entire movie, two of them perpetrated against men mistreating women. In between these […]
As a lonely child, Lucy Hart tried to run away to Clock Island, the made-up world created by her favorite author Jack Masterson. As a struggling grown-up, Lucy is facing the hard truth that everything doesn’t always work out in the end, and even working hard and wishing with all her might will not get […]
Are you looking for a gooed popular science book? Slime: A Natural History by Susanne Wedlich, translated from German by Ayça Türkoğlu, oozes charm. The text touches on the biology of slime of all kinds, from organisms like slime molds to secretions like mucus, but doesn’t get mired in complex scientific details. The book also […]
Jumping between two time lines and following two woman, Rachel Hawkins “The Villa” is a richly detailed and mysterious rehashing of the infamous time that Mary Shelley spent in Geneva where she wrote the seminal “Frankenstein”. In 1974, Villa Aestas in Italy was called home by a group of rock stars, musicians, their tag-a-long friends, […]
It’s not easy to live up to this cover. If I were the author, Emilia Hart, I’d have been both ecstatic and terrified when the publisher first showed me the art for this novel. I mean, look at it! And I’m going to raise your expectations even more. It’s hard to believe this is a […]
This has been my year of reading books about shipwrecks. Boats stove by a whale, or a yarn recounted by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I’m here for it. The Wager, the latest book by David Grann, is a seaworthy addition to this run of dramatic, gnarly, narrative non-fiction. The year, 1741. The dream: win naval glory […]
Just in time for Shark Week. Have you read the book that started it all? Before the iconic movie there was this book published in 1974 and written by Peter Benchley. If you can get past the egregiously dated language and attitudes of the 1970s, this book makes entertaining beach reading or can help extend […]
Jay and Kinnu are a Ugandan couple of Indian descent living happily in Kampala with their daughter, Mina. In 1972, amid anti-Indian sentiment, Idi Amin orders all Indians out of the country, giving them 90 days to leave. Heartbroken, Jay, Kinnu, and Mina travel to England, and ultimately, a small town in Mississippi. Now present […]
