Edmund de Waal’s upcoming nonfiction title, The White Road: Journey Into an Obsession, is causing a flurry of excitement at my bookstore. Another blend of memoir and history with magnificent art at its center, it has customers placing pre-orders in anticipation of its November 10 on-sale date. While you wait, might we suggest some other …
Carol Cassella’s Gemini is a great mystery, leaving you wanting to know who left Jane Doe to die in a ditch. Through flashbacks, we find out more about the characters, little by little. Jam packed with medical terminology, this novel will make you actually want to go look up what the characters are talking about. …
I have not read much science fiction over the last 50+ years. I do read historical naval fiction (think Horatio Hornblower series or Alexander Kent‘s series). Recently I was told about David Weber’s series featuring Honor Harrington. I was told to expect naval fiction in space. This is the perfect description of On Basilisk Station, the first book …
A great German mystery recently discovered through a customer recommendation… It’s a dark novel set in a small town with lots of secrets that come bubbling to the surface when a local man found guilty of murdering two young women returns after having served his time. This is the fourth in the series but I …
It’s June and the weather here has been lovely–well, until today, which is cool and gray and occasionally rainy–and my thoughts have been on summertime. I don’t really do summertime things, being more of an indoors sort of person, but I like the idea of summertime things like gardening and barbecues and block parties and …
“This is a noir, psychological thriller set in the 1920s. Rose, a typist for the New York police department, falls under the spell of Odalie, the seductive, enigmatic, and somewhat shady other typist.” –Anne Wyckoff, Queen Anne Book Company, Seattle, WA If you’re on a suspenseful, twisty book kick after Gone Girl and The Girl …
I want to talk guilty pleasures, but I realized that I don’t feel guilty about anything that I read. The only time I feel guilty about books is when I waste time with a crappy book when I could be spending time with something awesome. But, there are books that other people try to make …
Jeff Shaara may be the best contemporary writer of military history written as fiction. I recently finished The Final Storm. This is the fourth book in Shaara’s World War II series. The first three books take readers from North Africa to VE Day. The Final Storm moves to the Pacific Theater. The first chapter or two briefly …
David Downing is a superstar writer of WWII spy fiction. I have already read and reviewed Zoo Station, the first book in the John Russell series. I recently finished book 2, Silesian Station. Time wise, it follows book 1 by a few weeks. It is early summer 1939. John and his 12-year-old son are returning to Germany …
I have read two previous John Wells’ thrillers, #2 and #5 in the series. Now I understand the series a whole lot better having just read #1, The Faithful Spy by New York Times writer Alex Berenson. I advise reading this series in proper sequence because there are events and relationships that are confusing if you do …
