Dinosaur Summer is a coming-of-age story set in an alternate past after the two world wars. On a plateau in South America, dinosaurs still exist. In the 1920s, the creatures were captured and used in circuses. The top circus at the time was the Lothar Gluck Circus...
Give me a book about art and artists, and I’m a happy reader. I find Blue Ruin particularly interesting because it raises many questions about what art is, what it’s like to produce it, and how much of an artist’s life is performance. I'm still pondering it several...
Linda Moore has given readers another art heist thriller. As in her debut novel, Attribution, the art world becomes a dangerous place despite the supposed calm of museums and art galleries. Five Days in Bogotá is a pulsating thriller within the world of art, yet the...
Say My Name is an interesting blend of true crime fiction and somewhat autobiographical fiction. Clifford writes of an author who, post-divorce, has returned to his childhood home to teach a summer session at a local university. When the job falls through and two...
Normally, I avoid books by celebrities as I feel they have enough celebrity and media promotion without my adding to their aura. However, as the mother of a Black child who enjoys fantasy and science fiction, I read this anyway. I would rate this at 3.5 but rounded to...
With a teenager in the house for the first time in years, I am catching up on some young adult reading so we can talk about the books over the dinner table. Rick Riordan has been a long-term favorite in this household, so we were glad to discover a new-to-us book,...
Juris Ex Machina is a genre-bending science fiction thriller set in the distant future. The city of Arcadia exists under a dome, and all its functions are controlled by artificial intelligence. Computers have taken over so entirely that they are the “jury” that...
Virtuous Women is a complex novel of faith in a changing world. Hope Wagner is being raised in a fundamentally religious family. Her mother dies giving birth to her eleventh child, but the father refuses to seek medical attention, feeling both that physicians are...
I’ll be upfront and say I’m a long-time fan of Michael Crichton and the Jurassic Park series of books and movies. If you enjoy that sort of sci-fi/thriller, Extinction is the book for you. I read it in its entirety in one night. I simply couldn’t put it down. Erebus...
Having read most of Rick Riordan’s young adult series, I decided to switch to his adult mystery series which I started eons ago and enjoyed but somehow never finished. The Tres Navarre series includes seven books, Big Red Tequila, The Widower’s Two Step, The Last King...
In the Shadow of the Pyrenees is another of Kathryn Gauci’s impeccably researched historical fiction novels set during World War II. France has fallen to the Germans, and the Vichy government, headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain, is ruling in Germany’s name. The Maquis...
I have read all four books written by Roméo Dallaire, retired Canadian Lieutenant-General and Senator, (Shake Hands with the Devil; They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children; Waiting for First Light; and his newest, The Peace: A Warrior’s Journey. I find him to...
In the last year or two I’ve embarked on re-reading books by T.H. White that I read years ago as well as H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald, who turns to the guidance of T.H. White as she raises a goshawk. Long a King Arthur fan, I first read The Once and Future King (a...
All We Were Promised, a debut novel by Aston Lattimore, gives a different historical perspective on Philadelphia history. The book involves three young Black women in quite disparate levels of society. The main character, Charlotte, was named Carrie as a child and...
In Mia’s Journey, author Diane Byington creates a genre-bending novel combining science fiction, paranormal activity, and women’s fiction. Mia Gray took over her brother’s dream of becoming an astronaut after his death. She’s worked for years to be assigned to a...
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