Book, Authors, Entertainment, More
When Dietrich Kalteis’ Zero Avenue came out in 2017, I remarked on The Rap Sheet that I’d once heard author Owen Laukannen describe Kalteis’ writing as being like “jazz on the page.” If you want to boil Kalteis’ work down very tightly,…
Chupacabra Meets Billy the Kid (University of Oklahoma Press) is the third installment in Rudolfo Anaya’s ChupaCabra series, following up on 2006’s Curse of the ChupaCabra and ChupaCabra and the Roswell UFO from 2008. The stalwart protagonist of the series, Rosa Medina,…
In a culture where fewer and fewer people are able to cook for themselves, cookbooks that can tackle simple food prep and make it easy are more and more important. In Sonja and Alex Overhiser’s Pretty Simple Cooking (DaCapo Longlife) food is…
Two new titles out from Orca Books are aimed at helping kids deal with grief and death, albeit in very different ways. In After Life: Ways We Think About Death, author Merrie-Ellen Wilcox demystifies many of the things our culture has thrown…
In honor of Leo Tolstoy’s 190th birthday, the New Yorker devoted a good chunk of real estate to Russian literature. Six (including Tolstoy) of the most memorable of Russian writers are looked at including a look at the making of War and…
Last year, I waxed poetic about Sam Wiebe’s sophomore novel, Invisible Dead, in The Rap Sheet’s Best of the Year feature. As I said then, in that book Wiebe worked with just about all of the tropes of crime fiction and…
A week before Bob Woodward’s Fear: Trump in the White House (Simon & Schuster) is due to drop, the book has reached the top spot on Amazon, while creating a storm on social media and in the news. Since the Washington Post…
Philip Pullman (The Golden Compass, His Dark Materials) spends some time at The Guardian this weekend, asking why we believe in magic. The result is beautiful. The universe of magic is a large place. It contains phenomena ranging from simple good luck…
That towering TBR pile next to your bed might help you live longer and better, that’s what experts are saying about all the books you’ve bought but haven’t yet gotten around to reading. From INC.: Lifelong learning will help you be happier,…
The iconic 60-plus year old New York weekly, The Village Voice, has ceased editorial operations. From The Columbia Journalism Review, who also broke the story: THE VILLAGE VOICE IS SUSPENDING ALL EDITORIAL CONTENT and will lay off half its staff effective immediately,…