A sweltering August day, a stunning estate, and a crystalline pool, its pellucid water tinged red by Jay Gatsby’s blood. Shot once and now dead. We all know this is how The Great Gatsby ends but in Jillian Cantor’s Beautiful Little Fools, it’s just the beginning. Although the police have closed the case, Detective Frank Charles has been hired by an old friend of ... Read More...
Love & Saffron: A Novel
Seattle and Los Angeles, same coast but vastly different places, especially in the 1960s. Imogene Fortier writes a column known to readers in the Pacific Northwest so is surprised to not only get a fan letter, but a gift from a young woman in L.A. It’s a small packet of saffron with a recipe for mussels. This innocuous beginning leads to an impactful friendship in Kim Fay’s ... Read More...
The Tally Stick by Carl Nixon
The Chamberlains are beginning a new life in New Zealand, but before they do John Chamberlain decides they should explore the country. He sets off with his wife Julia, and their four children, Maurice, Katherine, Tommy, and baby Emma. After dinner in a local diner, they drive off in a pouring rain and disappear without a trace. The area they were in is rugged, undeveloped ... Read More...
My 6 Favorite Debuts of 2021
Happy Monday and welcome to my first yearend best-of lists. Today is a favorite category: best debuts. Finding new authors is one of my greatest reading pleasures and 2021 proved to be a very good year. Of all my reading, 38% was debut authors and of those debuts I rated 36% 3.5 stars or higher, with 3.5 being my baseline for a book I’d recommend to others. Finally, of ... Read More...
The Chosen and the Beautiful
Wouldn’t you know it—as soon as I post my overlooked books of 2021 another slips in under the wire. I finished The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo Wednesday morning after my post went live. This marvelous novel is a retelling of The Great Gatsby but from the perspective of Jordan Baker, seen in the original story mostly as Daisy Buchanan’s sidekick. Now, she is Asian and ... Read More...
The Island of Missing Trees
Cyprus is a country literally divided, right down to its capital. In 1960 when the British finally left they repeated their practice of leaving a political vacuum by not resolving issues between existing groups to ensure a peaceful transition. As a result, the island’s population, mixed between a Greek majority and a Turkish minority, lived with simmering resentments until the ... Read More...
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