fiction

Fiction: Investigating the Kennedy Assassination: Why Was Kennedy Killed? by Michael J. Deeb and Robert Lockwood Mills

August 25, 2024 admin 0

If there was ever a week where we had enough Kennedy, it was this one. With the son of a former presidential hopeful and the nephew of one of America’s best-loved presidents of all time making headlines for forging deals with political devils, it’s easy to say, “enough already” with the Kennedy’s. Yet, for all their faults, Michael J. Deeb and Robert Lockwood Mills can’t be called on the carpet for the timing of their […]

Rethinking the Classics

July 21, 2024 News Editor 0

Do you think you know what makes a classic novel… er… classic? The Washington Post thinks maybe we should think again. WaPo recently asked readers of their Book Club newsletter “which classic books are overrated and which unsung novels should be considered top-tier, we didn’t predict the level of enthusiasm that would accompany the responses”. Among those that some readers thought should get the toss were iconic books like J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the […]

Presumed Innocent an Apple TV+ Limited Series

June 24, 2024 Tony Buchsbaum 0

Opening statement: Presumed Innocent is a novel by Scott Turow, a blockbuster bestseller in the second half of 1987. It was about an attorney named Rusty Sabich who is accused of murdering his colleague, Carolyn Polhemus. Carolyn was also his lover, despite the fact that Rusty was married to Barbara and the father of their son. As the novel unfolds, battling lawyers and their motives are revealed, evidence is misplaced, colleagues betray one another, sex […]

2024 International Booker Prize Shortlist Announced

April 13, 2024 News Editor 0

The 2024 shortlist for the International Booker Prize was announced last week, introducing us to six books from around the globe that have been translated into English and published in the UK and/or Ireland. The prize recognizes the vital work of translators with the £50,000 prize money divided equally: £25,000 (about $31,000 US) for the author and £25,000 for the translator (or divided equally between multiple translators). In addition, there is a prize of £5,000 […]

Crime Fiction: Second Term by J.M. Adams

October 10, 2023 admin 1

This week it all feels a little on the nose, but this is early days in J.M. Adams’ career as a novelist. The ground covered in Second Term will feel less jolting in due course. This is the good stuff, even though the timing might be either not terrific or too terrific, depending on your perspective. It is September 2012. Cora Walker, a DIA defense operative, discovers a terrorist plot in Benghazi and jumps into […]

Fiction: Somebody’s Fool
by Richard Russo

July 26, 2023 J. Kingston Pierce 1

North Bath, the fictional upstate New York setting of Richard Russo’s “Fool” trilogy, seems to be finally and firmly on the skids in the brand-new novel Somebody’s Fool (Knopf). The town is slated for annexation by a wealthier, more liberal neighbor, Schuyler Springs. Even the local police station is being shuttered, its longtime chief, Douglas Raymer, surplussed to make room for his Black ex-employee and sometime-girlfriend, Charice Bond, at the helm of the Schuyler PD. […]

Fiction: The Ferryman by Justin Cronin

May 14, 2023 Tony Buchsbaum 0

There is so much to love about The Ferryman that I hardly know where to begin. Justin Cronin’s first novel since his amazing Passage trilogy is filled with unforgettable characters, twists galore, and plenty of gravitas and pathos to get your heart racing…and breaking. I’m hesitant to say too much because there are so many ideas in this book, and so many things to spoil. What I can say is that Cronin goes out of […]

Fiction: The Incredible Journey of Lacey Starr and Mabel Brown by Perry Dantes

February 1, 2023 admin 0

Perry Dantes was born in Aleksandrów Kujawski, Poland. His new book, The Incredible Journey of Lacey Starr and Mabel Brown is a gripping historical fiction that centers around two women, Lacey and Mabel, who set off in pursuit of stardom but when the Second World War begins, they find much more. The Incredible Journey of Lacey Starr and Mabel Brown is a historical novel about pre-World War II and the first two years of the […]

This Just In… Bane of All Things by Leo Valiquette

January 10, 2023 News Editor 0

In Bane of All Things we arrive to the Four Kingdoms. Here the Holy Clerisy preaches that the gods are dead, and prayer is the path to Hell. Anyone who defies doctrine is punished for heresy. But blind faith can damn a soul as surely as betrayal. One bitter winter’s night, Ryn Ruscroft, once sworn to serve as the Clerisy’s loyal soldier, finds himself torn between conscience and duty. Those slain include his best friend, […]

Fiction: The Acrobat by Edward J. Delaney

November 18, 2022 Tony Buchsbaum 0

Who doesn’t love Cary Grant? In comedies with Katharine Hepburn and thrillers directed by Alfred Hitchcock, Cary Grant was the man every woman wanted to sleep with and the man every man wanted to be. Handsome. Mannered. Glamorous. Even when his movies were in color, he was the epitome of classy black-and-white. But who was the Archie Leach behind Cary Grant? Who was the man behind the icon? The new book The Acrobat, by Edward […]