Behind one of the best fiction book covers this year, Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson is a cozy tale–not of Olde England, but of an old Englishman who wants things to be as they’ve always been. In his way, however, Major Pettigrew is a maverick. The Major finds himself drawn to a beautiful widow [...]
Damn hot flashes. Belinda Marvel rolled over onto the empty Cheetos bag, causing orange dust to blow in her face. Her pajama pants pinched at the waist. Her stomach growled. She allowed her sock feet to flop to the floor, the motion propelling her to sit up. On the silent TV screen a skinny girl [...]
A smart, sexy detective; a case involving a mysterious, wealthy American and the Russian Mafia; danger, romance and pathos: it’s local, and our hero is a heroine. In a fast-paced detective novel, Human Cargo (2011) by Des Zamorano, gives us flashes of Dashiell Hammett with a style all her own. Instead of Sam Spade we have [...]
Fiction often gives us characters who lie, cheat, and commit murder to achieve their goals. Usually these nefarious types are presented as the villain. But in Kim Fay’s The Map of Lost Memories, our young, determined heroine, Irene Blum, will stop at nothing to claim the mysterious lost scrolls of the Khmer. It’s the mid-1920s [...]
Margaret Finnegan’s novel The Goddess Lounge turns Homer’s The Odyssey inside out. I know this not because I’ve read The Odyssey, but because I read its Wikipedia page. You don’t have to be familiar with Homer to laugh your way through Finnegan’s tale, but if you’re an Odyssey scholar (as is Finnegan), you’ll find her [...]
