Stuck in the airport? Stuck with the in-laws? Feeling a bit murderous? Escape with this engrossing true (mainly unsolved) crime from Victorian England, with its roots in the American South. Florence Chandler, every inch the southern belle, took a steamer from New York to Liverpool in 1880. Her gold-digging mother planned to shop her on the…
ACCENT: MISSING REELS by Farran Smith Nehme
Nehme, author of the acclaimed classic film blog Self-Styled Siren, has written a novel. Drawing on her extensive and joyful knowledge of old Hollywood, and her actual time living in NYC in the 1980s, she created a naive but likeable protagonist in Ceinwen Reilly. Somewhat predictably, Ceinwen works at a vintage clothing shop and shares a…
BOOKS for October
OCTOBER The crows above the forest call; Tomorrow they may form and go. O hushed October morning mild, Begin the hours of this day slow. Make the day seem to us less brief. Hearts not averse to being beguiled, Beguile us in the way you know. from “October” by Robert Frost …
ACCENT: A Little Russian Collection
Gregory Maguire, best known for his Wicked books, is back with another revisionist fairy tale. This time, he weaves together classic Russian elements — Baba Yaga, Faberge eggs, endless train tracks, snow laden countryside — in this middle grade novel. Elena is a young girl who lives in a dying country town. There is no…
Crimes Dark & English
This is a brilliant behind-the-curtain novel. It pulls together known facts in such a way as to make it nearly believable. Here, the famous writer Thomas De Quincey (who wrote The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater) comes to life, along with his daughter in a dastardly mystery. When a series of murders starts to terrorize…