Dreams Underfoot by Charles de Lint: Book Review

“Every time it rains a ghost comes walking.” Dreams Underfoot introduced readers to de Lint’s fictional city of Newford. Magic is on the streets of Newford if you just know where to look for it. It’s usually in the most unexpected places. Man, I love the Newford books. This book started my re-read of them […]

Continue Reading

Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny: Book Review

This is a tough book to summarize. Let’s just say that Mr. Corey wakes up with amnesia after a nasty car crash and sets out to recover his memory and then to take back what he sees as his. Starting this was a leap of faith. Corey tells the story and since he doesn’t know […]

Continue Reading

Plant Life by Pamela Duncan: Book Review

Laurel Granger lived for her husband, Scott, then he left her for another woman. Depressed, rootless, and alone in Vegas, Laurel decides to head back home to Russell, North Carolina. Without telling her parents what happened, she moves in with them. Well, it becomes obvious that Laurel isn’t going back to Vegas and she needs […]

Continue Reading

The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif: Book Review

The Map of Love tells two stories. Primarily, it is about Anna Winterbourne, living in the early 1900s, and her fascination with Egypt. In the present, Isabel Parkman and Amal al-Ghamrawi have found a trunk of Anna’s journals and letters and set out to piece together her story, while living their own. The writing in […]

Continue Reading

The Fixer Upper by Mary Kay Andrews: Book Review

Dempsey Killebrew is having a very bad day. She and her handsome boss, Alex, are all over the evening news, smack in the center of a political scandal. They’re lobbyists accused of buying a Congressman’s votes with a vacation to the Bahamas and, um, hookers. Not the situation that a rising young lawyer wants to […]

Continue Reading

Fluke by Christopher Moore: Book Review

Nate Quinn has spent his entire professional career following humpback whales around the ocean, trying to find out exactly why the males sing. He’s currently in Hawaii, where the whales spend the winter, still researching. His world is rocked on the day that he is taking pictures of one singer and sees BITE ME clearly […]

Continue Reading

Moloka’i by Alan Brennert: Book Review

Seven-year-old Rachel Kalama is living in Honolulu in 1893. Her life is punctuated with a child’s hopes and dreams and drama. Her father is a sailor, and she loves it when he comes home on leave, mostly because she’s excited to see him, but also because she loves to hear his stories about the wider […]

Continue Reading

Kushiel’s Dart by Jacqueline Carey: Book Review

This started out a little slow for me. It dragged along for about the first 150 pages. Then the action started and I couldn’t put it down. To oversimplify the plot, this is the story of Phèdre, a masochist who sleeps with her patrons not only for money, but also for state secrets. So, there were […]

Continue Reading

Rising Tide by John M. Barry: Book Review

Telling the story of an epic flood of the Mississippi River in 1927, this book explores the early history of flood control efforts and a rivalry that made flood controls at the time practically a joke, the politics involved in decisions for handling the flood itself, the politics of disaster relief, and the impact of […]

Continue Reading

Without Reservations by Alice Steinbach: Book Review

Without Reservations by Alice Steinbach Book Cover

Journalist Alice Steinbach decided that she was going to take a break from the life she was living. She was happy, but she felt that she needed some time to get acquainted with herself now that her two sons were grown. So she planned an open-ended months-long trip to Europe. She had only the vaguest […]

Continue Reading

Daughter of the Blood by Anne Bishop: Book Review

In a society that seems to be loosely based on the habits of black widow spiders, the strong females have eliminated all but the weakest males and females, leaving only a few strong males to strengthen their bloodlines. This has been going on for centuries. But the coming of a female with power that has […]

Continue Reading