There is no introduction in Max Barry’s novel Lexicon. From page one where two men have inserted a needle into another man’s eye in an airport bathroom the reader is flung hard into a wholly different world. A compulsively readable, high speed, freakishly intelligent world. I read Lexicon during a 24-hour read-a-thon and it was the perfect novel for it because I didn’t want to ... Read More...
The Sleep Room
There is nothing more frightening than that which cannot be identified, no engine of fear more powerful than the unknown. It is 1955 and the psychiatric field is making its first foray into sleep as a treatment for extreme mental disorders like schizophrenia and bipolar. Dr. James Richardson has been studying the field and written a paper about it when he is summoned ... Read More...
Sandrine’s Case
In the early morning hours of November 15th a police officer is called to investigate a suicide in the small town of Coburn, Georgia. Sandrine Madison lies dead in her bed of an apparent drug overdose. There is no other trauma or indication of foul play but the officer gets a ‘feeling’ from the husband and that is how Samuel Madison comes to stand trial for the murder of his ... Read More...
The Light in the Ruins
The Light in the Ruins, Chris Bohjalian’s latest novel, is set at the Villa Chimera in Tuscany in 1943, a pastoral estate where the war is largely unseen. The Rosatis are a titled Italian family and while they have one son preparing for the Allied invasion in Sicily and another who works at a museum trying to control the flow of Italian art out of the country, their lives ... Read More...
The Shining Girls
There was a lot of buzz at Book Expo America about Lauren Beukes’s new novel, The Shining Girls, and for good reason. The most often heard synopsis I heard was “Time Traveler’s Wife meets Silence of the Lambs”. If you’re squeamish that may be all you need to know but if you can handle a serial killer who disembowels his victims, Beukes creates a creepy but compelling ... Read More...
Dark: The Angel’s Game
If you love to read then there is likely to be a time in which you find yourself reading a string of books that follow a similar theme or contain a singular element. A literary synchronicity, if you will. For me, this occurred several months ago and the reviews posted this week are of that time. The unintentional theme was darkness. Each of these three books is well written, ... Read More...
