Review: Shellfish: The Cookbook by Karen Barnaby

March 30, 2008 admin 0

Today in January Magazine’s cookbook section, Linda L. Richards looks at Shellfish: The Cookbook by Karen Barnaby. Says Richards: The title of Karen Barnaby’s ninth cookbook puts me in mind of the first time I encountered this chef’s food. It was my first visit to Vancouver’s Fish House in Stanley Park and it was deep in the 1990s. In retrospect, at the time Barnaby could only have been executive chef there for a couple, three […]

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Book Obsessed

March 30, 2008 admin 0

Barnes & Noble continues its scattershot approach to enriching its retail site with content with a really good new addition, Book Obsessed. These are well-produced and interesting video segments on — as the name implies — readers who have heard the call of the book and gone beyond, putting together literary collections that would put the best endowed librarians quite to shame. B&N calls Book Obsessed “a mini-documentary series that travels the length and breadth […]

Review: Amelia Dee and the Peacock Lamp by Odo Hirsch

March 29, 2008 admin 0

Today in January Magazine’s children’s book section, Sue Bursztynski looks at Amelia Dee and the Peacock Lamp by Odo Hirsch. Says Bursztynski: Odo Hirsch’s books range from the Bartlett adventures, set in a sort of 18th century Europe, with imaginary countries, to the Hazel Green novels, centered around a block of flats in an imaginary city in an unnamed country, and the children who live there. Amelia Dee and the Peacock Lamp is closer to […]

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Author Snapshot: Rachel Cline

March 26, 2008 admin 0

Last month, we told you a bit about Rachel Cline’s journeyman’s eye and poet’s heart when the author’s second novel was published. My Liar (Random House), follows up 2004’s highly acclaimed What to Keep. The Los Angeles film community provides the backdrop for My Liar, and though this community is well rendered (it’s a world this author once inhabited) it really is just the setting. The real meat here comes through the relationships between women: […]

Review: Moonlight Downs by Adrian Hyland and The Fourth Man by K.O. Dahl

March 25, 2008 admin 0

Today in January Magazine’s crime fiction section, Stephen Miller looks at Moonlight Downs by Adrian Hyland and The Fourth Man by K.O. Dahl. Says Miller: In the international world of crime fiction, it seems that Australia and Norway have been chronically underrepresented. Debut author Adrian Hyland seeks to correct the Australian oversight with his new tale, Moonlight Downs. Hyland’s heroine is Emily Tempest, a half-Aboriginal roustabout, who has returned home to Moonlight Downs, her tribal […]

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New Today: Tales Before Narnia edited by Douglas A. Anderson

March 25, 2008 admin 0

In many respects, this seems like the collection that real SF/F aficionados — and those who love the history of the twinned genres — have been waiting for. Editor Douglas A. Anderson — a recognized expert on all things Hobbity — here takes on the very history and roots of the form. Tales Before Narnia: The Roots of Modern Fantasy and Science Fiction (Del Rey) explores the stories that fired C.S. Lewis, author of The […]

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Amber for Indies

March 23, 2008 admin 0

It still feels like a big, ol’ mostly empty warehouse space where much has been planned but little, thus far has had a chance to happen, but what Amber Square already has in place looks promising. AmberSquare.com has been created to help indie publishers reach a wider audience and to provide readers with a far greater choice; bringing to their attention books that they miss simply because the dominant industry leaders prefer populating shelf space […]

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Holiday Treats: Green & Black’s Chocolate Recipes

March 20, 2008 admin 1

Almost everyone knows that the true meaning of Easter is… chocolate. (If this interpretation shocks you, you’ve seriously come to the wrong place.) A lifetime of Easter Creme Eggs; of annual garden hunts for chocolate treats of various description; of family meals focused on all sorts of action, but hinged on a chocolate-laden dessert has taught many of us everything we need to know about Easter: the holiday is the celebration of spring in many […]

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Seeing Double

March 20, 2008 admin 0

Over at The Rap Sheet, my colleague J. Kingston Pierce is now almost two years into his amazing project tracking down copycat covers. In fact, I’d venture that no one can put a candle to his collection. As Pierce said in his first copycat covers piece back in May 2006: How many times have you spotted a novel or other book that duplicates the cover photo from a different work you have seen or read? […]

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Spilling the Five Secrets

March 19, 2008 admin 0

Suddenly, everything’s a bucket list. In fairness to him, author John Izzo might not merely be jumping on this bandwagon. As the author of Second Innocence and the co-author of Awakening Corporate Soul — bestsellers both — Izzo understands exactly the path you want to take. After all, as his bio tells us, he’s “spoken to over one million people on four continents about living more purposeful lives.” That’s a lot of speaking. A lot […]