Bess Rahner met Ehrich Weiss the summer of 1894 at Coney Island where both were performers—she a singing and dancing girl and he doing an escape act with his brother. Little did she know that this brash, confident young man would become Harry Houdini and she would be his wife. Mrs. Houdini, by Victoria Kelly, looks not only their life together, from their beginnings in ... Read More...
Opening Belle
Maureen Sherry has a great premise in her new novel Opening Belle—taking the old-boy network theme and applying it to the 2007 financial sector shortly before its meltdown due to the irresponsible use of subprime mortgages to bolster investment banks’ profits. Belle is a smart savvy managing director on the trading desk of a large Wall Street investment firm. Thanks to ... Read More...
The Swans of Fifth Avenue
Once upon a time there was a group of very special women who lived in New York City. They were icons of fashion and social arbiters of everything that was right about high society. It was the 1950s and they were Babe Paley, Slim Keith, Gloria Guinness, Pamela Churchill, and Marella Agnelli and they were The Swans of Fifth Avenue. So named by the small, witty, ... Read More...
It’s Not You It’s Me: Mini-Reviews
Sometimes people say “It’s not you, it’s me” just to get out of a relationship but in the case of today’s books I really do believe they’re both good options—probably great for any number of readers. It may have been my mood, the color of the cover, the fact that’s it’s been raining for a month—who knows, but both are well-written on topics that will keep you reading. ... Read More...
The Hours Count
Lately, I’ve fallen into a literary rabbit hole of fiction about the 1950s, which is interesting as it’s a time period I’ve never paid much attention to, but is popping up all over the fictional world. The Hours Count is Jillian Cantor’s novel about one of America’s darkest times of political intrigue—when the hunt for Communists meant it seemed difficult to know who ... Read More...
Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights
Salman Rushdie is back with Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights, a story about the strangeness that resulted from a seam being opened between the world of humans and the world of the supernatural, as embodied by jinns and their female counterparts, jiniri. Of the jiniri there was none more powerful than the Lightning Princess, a spirit who back in the 1100s ... Read More...
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