Review of “Moral Combat: Good and Evil in World War II” by Michael Burleigh

Note: This review was written by my husband Jim. To some, it may seem oxymoronic to talk about morality and war in the same sentence, and yet each side in modern wars tends to think that it alone is on the side of God. Indeed, the Crusades, full of bloody cruelty, were a series of [...]

Review of “In Big Trouble” by Laura Lippman

In Big Trouble is the 4th book in the Tess Monaghan detective series. Tess, a Baltimore private investigator, receives a newspaper clipping in the mail showing a picture of her former boyfriend Crow under the headline “In Big Trouble.” She checks with Crow’s parents, and they affirm he is missing. They hire Tess to go [...]

Review of “Nothing Like You” by Lauren Strasnick

Sixteen year old Holly lost her mother six months previously to breast cancer, and never really dealt with the pain of having done so. There was fear as well: her mother was only forty-two: would Holly get breast cancer and die young also? Holly’s dad Jeff hasn’t been much help: he still hasn’t changed a [...]

Sunday Salon – What Is Erotic to Women Readers, or Why We Love Jack and Mr. Rochester

Mr. Rochester, is of course, the hero of Jane Eyre, and Jack is the hero of the Nadia Stafford series (Exit Strategy and Made to Be Broken, featuring an ex-cop who turned hit woman to help finance her nature lodge). These books feature women in love with Byronic heroes, and both have inspired many, many [...]

Review of “How to Talk to a Widower” by Jonathan Tropper

I love this author’s characters. They’re even more depressed and morose than I am, so I can laugh hysterically at them and feel superior. Yes, the main protagonist in each of Tropper’s books is very similar to each of the others, but one tends not to care, because this tragic, self-deprecating, apparently irresistible guy is [...]

Review of “Real Murders” by Charlaine Harris

And now for an exciting announcement: this is a Charlaine Harris book I didn’t much care for, AND, do not intend to continue with the Aurora Teagarden Mystery series! This was only Harris’s third book ever, and I think it’s clear she has not yet hit her stride. Aurora Teagarden (called Roe by everyone, which [...]

Review of “Cold Wind” by C. J. Box

This is the eleventh book in the Joe Pickett series. (The first novel featuring Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett was Open Season published in 2001.) Somehow I knew I would like this, but I resisted going back to the earlier books in the series so I could evaluate if it could be read as a [...]

Review of “Singing the Dogstar Blues” by Alison Goodman

Seventeen-year-old Joss Aaronson is a smart-mouthed rebellious teenager who just got enrolled in the time-travel program at the Centre for Neo-Historical Studies. She’s mostly a loner, because the others deride her for being a “comp-kid” – that is, she is a composite of various gene donors (although her mother swears she only used one father [...]

Review of “The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War” by James Bradley

Note: This review is by my husband Jim. This is the story of a top-secret meeting engineered by President Theodore Roosevelt that, inter alia, allowed the Japanese to expand into Korea. “With this betrayal,” Bradley writes, “Roosevelt had green-lighted Japanese imperialism on the Asian continent. Decades later, another Roosevelt would be forced to deal with [...]

Review of “Butcher’s Hill” by Laura Lippman

In Book Three of the Tess Monaghan Detective Series, twenty-nine year old Tess has finally opened her own office as a private investigator in the so-called “Butchers Hill” section of Baltimore. As its name suggests, Butchers Hill was once home to butchers and poultry preparers, but obviously the name also lends itself nicely to a [...]