Normally I'm totally opposed to the idea of someone taking over another author's characters. I wouldn't dream of reading one of the many Jane Austen sequels but I have to confess I thoroughly enjoyed a new Lord Peter Wimsey mystery by Jill Paton Walsh. The Attenbury Emeralds is a prequel of sorts to Lord Peter's […]
Are you always curious about what other people are reading? This month in Find Your Way to Your Next Great Read you can see award winning actor and Soulpepper Theatre Company founding member Martha Burns' list of favourite books. See if some of your favourites are there and find some suggestions for great reads. There's […]
Georgette Heyer has been dead for well over thirty years, her books have never been seriously reviewed, she never did any publicity or gave any interviews and yet we have to keep replacing our copies of her books at the library because they are so popular they wear out. She had her first novel published […]
Claire Shipley is a Life magazine photographer and single mother in post-Pearl Harbor New York City. She has a ten year old son but she's still grieving a daughter who died of septicemia at 3 years old. Claire's new assignment is to document some of the first penicillin trials at the Rockefeller Institute. Penicillin had […]
If you liked Casablanca, you will love Alan Furst's books. His heroes are always a bit reluctant but rise to the occasion when they need to. They are strong, intelligent, deeply moral (even if they don't always follow the letter of the law) and they fall for strong, intelligent and beautiful women. The books are […]
I am just back from a trip that started out wonderfully but ended with many delays and disruptions and I'm thinking that now that I'm finally home, I'll stay here for a while and only travel through fiction. Every book in Donna Leon's Commisario Brunetti mystery series is a trip to Venice without any possibility […]
Some of those who fought the hardest in the Second World War didn't carry guns or even leave home. They sat in cramped, overcrowded offices and let their imaginations run wild. Ewen Montagu was one of these. He and his colleague Charles Cholmondeley came up with the fantastical idea of using a dead body carrying […]
The dog is Dorothy, an aging dachshund beloved by her aging owners Ruth and Alex Cohen. They all live together in a fifth floor walkup in the East Village. The Cohens have come to realize that they won't be able to make it up those stairs for all that much longer and neither will Dorothy. […]
Have you ever wondered what you have to do to get into those American Ivy League colleges? This is fiction but Jean Hanff Korelitz who is married to the poet Paul Muldoon, a Princeton professor, worked for a while for the Princeton Office of Admission as an outside reader so she has the inside scoop. […]
Sometimes it seems that your choices in fiction are limited to beautifully written but serious (or outright depressing!) books or not terribly well written, fluffy books with happy endings. Major Pettigrew's Last Stand is both entertaining and satisfying. Major Pettigrew is a lonely widower spending his retirement in the lovely English village of Edgecombe St. […]