Pantheon Archives - The Gilmore Guide to Books

The Body in Question

Catherine — Mon, 10 Jun 2019 07:50:33 +0000

Standard courtroom drama fiction has never been a favorite of mine, but I recently read two novels that put such an interesting spin on them I’m changing my mind a bit. I’m calling them ‘courtroom drama plus’ because both came at the genre from an unusual perspective. The first was Miracle Creek, which I loved […]

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The Other Americans: A Novel

Catherine — Wed, 03 Apr 2019 07:46:48 +0000

Late one evening, Driss, an older man, is hit and killed in a dark intersection near his restaurant in a small town in California. His death is at the center of Laila Lalami’s new novel, The Other Americans. She assembles Driss’s family, the police, a potential witness, and nearby business owners—each with their own perspective—and […]

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So Much Life Left Over

Catherine — Mon, 06 Aug 2018 07:35:15 +0000

Daniel, a young man in his early thirties, manages a tea plantation in Ceylon in the early 1920s. He moved there from England with his wife, Rosie, and daughter Esther, after his friend, another RAF pilot in the Great War, got him the job. It is a new start for them, not just because of […]

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December Library Checkout

Catherine — Fri, 30 Dec 2016 08:43:57 +0000

Happy last day of 2016! Suffice it to say I’m ready to wash my hands of this year. Actually, not the entire year. I had some great personal experiences earlier in 2016 but the second half has been draining and difficult. Like so many people I know, the election results have made staying positive challenging. […]

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How to Set a Fire and Why

Catherine — Tue, 05 Jul 2016 07:24:00 +0000

You may be wondering why I am giving you this account. Well, I don’t know really. A bunch of things happened and I’m just putting them in order. I’m doing it for myself. You are just a construction—you’re helping me to put things in order. You are my fictional audience and as such, I appreciate […]

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Version Control

Catherine — Fri, 26 Feb 2016 08:50:30 +0000

Author Dexter Palmer eases the reader into his new novel Version Control with an unspecified time in the future where we have cool things like cars that drive themselves so that even if your commute is an hour long you can either get work done or sleep. What’s not to love about that? Clothes […]

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The Stargazer’s Sister

Catherine — Mon, 18 Jan 2016 08:13:18 +0000

Much of Caroline Herschel’s life is spent alone with her angry, unhappy mother, working as little better than a slave for a woman who has never shown her any interest or kindness. As a young girl she contracted typhus but it is the 1700s and there is nothing to be done but hope she survives. […]

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The Household Spirit

Catherine — Wed, 17 Jun 2015 07:13:35 +0000

In The Household Spirit, on a rural road in upstate New York, there sit two identical houses inhabited by two people who are anything but identical. Howie Jeffries is fifty-years old and has lived alone in his house since he and his wife divorced twenty years ago. He is a man with a huge heart […]

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Emma: A Modern Retelling

Catherine — Mon, 13 Apr 2015 07:40:49 +0000

Alexander McCall Smith takes a turn at adapting Jane Austen in his newest novel, Emma: A Modern Retelling. Don’t call for the smelling salts diehard Austen fans, he does not commit the unpardonable sin of veering too far off course from her classic. Emma is still Emma as are all the other characters right […]

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The Moor’s Account

Catherine — Mon, 15 Sep 2014 07:04:18 +0000

And thus it was done. Of all the contracts I had signed, this was perhaps the only one my father could never have imagined me signing, for it traded what should never be traded. It delivered me into the unknown and erased my father’s name. I could not know that this was just the first […]

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