A Cineaste’s Bookshelf
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REVIEW: THE GODDESS AND THE THIEF by Essie Fox
Taking cues from The Moonstone, Essie Fox’s newest book weaves colonialist India and Victorian spiritualism together into a riveting story. Our heroine, Alice Willoughby, has had the childhood that many British children must have in those days. She was born abroad in India, the daughter of an East India Company man and his English-born wife. Alice’s… Read More »
REVIEW: THE BIG BOOK OF CHRISTMAS MYSTERIES
EDITED by OTTO PENZLER Never was there a more apt title for a book than this. It is huge. Penzler, pulp and crime editor extraordinaire, has complied dozens of Yuletide stories into 650 pages of deliciously dastardly holiday cheer. He has categorized them into bunches like Traditional, Funny, Sherlockian, Pulpy, Uncanny, Modern, Scary and… Read More »
ACCENT: THE RAILWAYMAN'S POCKETBOOK
This book is such a treasure. Like many people, I have a nostalgia for vintage train travel (even though I never experienced it). I even got married at an old roundhouse. There is something very elemental about iron, steam, fire and coal getting you from one place to another. The Railwayman’s Pocketbook is a compendium… Read More »
Books for Christmas
Today I’d like to highlight a few books that I’ve read recently and can recommend as Christmas gifts for the reader on your list. SHADOW WOMAN: THE EXTRAORDINARY CAREER OF PAULINE BENTON by Grant Hayter-Menzies This is a warm, vivid biography of an unusual circumstance. Born to a wealthy and enlightened family in the late… Read More »
REVIEW: THE SECRET ROOMS by Catherine Bailey
The Secret Rooms are just that — large, separated and locked. Bailey, a writer researching something else entirely, stumbles upon a tightly-held secret at Belvoir Castle. The estate, which has been in the family for over five-centuries, was the setting for numerous pivotal events in British history. It also had its fair share of dastardly… Read More »
GIVEAWAY: CITY OF LOST DREAMS
GIVEAWAY! CITY OF LOST DREAMS picks up where City of Dark Magic left off and continues with the same cast of unforgettable and wildly-imaginative characters. Determined to find a cure for her gravely-ill friend Pollina, musicologist Sarah Weston heads to Vienna to track down what may be the last hope for the young prodigal pianist.… Read More »
ACCENT: LADY by Thomas Tryon
This is an engaging novel and rather unusual. In a way, it’s like a dark Pollyanna meets A Child’s Christmas in Wales. In the idyllic town of Pequot Landing, in rural New England, lives a woman named Lady Harleigh. She is the ubiquitous widow and local celebrity. She lives in a grand house overlooking the… Read More »
REVIEW: PINKERTON'S GREAT DETECTIVE by Beau Riffenburgh
The Pinkerton Agency has a grey and blurry past in the making of modern America. On the one hand they helped bring law, order and answers to a wild and unruly population that was ever-expanding. On the other, they were known to employ extreme tactics when accomplishing their mission. James McParland (sometimes McParlan) was no… Read More »
ACCENT: AIMLESS LOVE by Billy Collins
I am hardly unbiased when it comes to this poet. I’ve always admired Collins’s work, and became fully enamored of it when I heard him read some of his own poems on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion. Collins has a distinctive voice with a charming amount of sentiment, without being overly sentimental. Old Man Eating… Read More »
ACCENT: THE HUNTER and Other Stories by Dashiell Hammett
I am so pleased they have collected these stories. As a fan of The Thin Man I am always looking for good, noir-ish pulp to read. Sometimes Hammett’s work is dismissed as just that — pulp made for the masses. These stories prove it is more than that. Some are not only brilliant, but are years… Read More »
ACCENT: THE LUMINARIES by Eleanor Catton
This is a massive book — it clocks in at just under 900 pages — but you won’t notice it. It is so absorbing from the outset that you won’t realize you just devoured another 75 pages. On your lunch break. The story is deceptively simple. On the gold coast of New Zealand, a… Read More »
REVIEW: SEVEN DEADLIES by Gigi Levangie
Levangie has given us a fresh new voice in her narrator Perry Gonzales. The book is written as a college entrance essay (albeit a lengthy one). Perry, still in 8th grade, is the center of a bizarre hurricane. She is the recipient of a scholarship to a very exclusive and very expensive private academy. In… Read More »
ACCENT: THE BLACK SPIDER by Jeremias Gotthelf
Translated by Susan Bernofsky This short novel was first published in 1842, but it is still resonant today. Written under a pen name, the author takes up the cause of peasants’ rights against feudal dictatorship. But this is not a treatise. It is instead a carefully woven tale involving a wise grandfather, a bizarre… Read More »
ACCENT: THE SIXTH by Avery Hays
Aside from having a gorgeous cover, this book is full of lush prose. The heroine, Florbela Sarmentos, has moved from her native Portugal to pursue a career in art. She joins the bohemian lifestyle of 1900s Paris and immerses herself in the culture. Still, she is unable to forget the wrongfully-imprisoned father she left behind —… Read More »
ACCENT: BELLA WALLIS by Brian Thompson
The eponymous heroine is an unusually free-spirited widow in Victorian London. She assists those of the upper class in solving the mystery behind scandals. This lengthy tome is actually 4 separate novels. It’s dark, slightly underhanded, and good fun. Excerpt: Only two people from the breakfast table braved the weather. One of these was Mrs… Read More »