Please welcome Taylor M. Polites, author of The Rebel Wife, which was just released on Tuesday!
One piece of Huntsville, Alabama that I have always carried with me is the beautiful, antebellum […]
Author Taylor M. Polites: Saturdays in the South
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami: Book Review
There’s a lot going on in this book. Basically, Toru Okada has just quit his job in Tokyo and all kinds of strange people enter and leave his life while all kinds of strange things happen to him. To say more would give away some things. I finished this book, put it down, and told […]
My Historical Fiction Reviewer Interview!
Jenny Q (the blogger behind Let Them Read Books) has started a new blog at It’s All In the Details. On this blog, she shares advice with writers of historical fiction. She interviews bloggers who read historical fiction in her regular feature, Reviewer Spotlight. My interview was posted today! Jenny had some great questions, so […]
Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes: Book Review
After many years vacationing in Italy, Frances Mayes and her–husband? I don’t think that’s ever clarified–decide to buy a home in Tuscany. They search for a while, but nothing really calls to them. Then they stumble upon a home called Bramasole in the town of Cortona. It’s a wreck, but they can’t get it out […]
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern: Book Review
“The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.” Two rival magicians agree to bind their students to a challenge. Hector will teach his daughter, Celia, and Alexander will teach a student of his own choosing. When the students are older, they will face each other […]
It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?
It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey. I didn’t post last week because I still hadn’t finished any books, but I did make some progress this week! Over the past two weeks I’ve Giveaway: Enter to win a signed ARC of The Gendarme by Mark T. Mustian (US only, […]
Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb: Book Review
This is a story told from many points of view. First is Zebulon Vance, the real life Civil War governor of North Carolina. We follow him from his days as a hotel porter fresh off the farm until his rise to governor. Next is Malinda Blalock, a tough mountain woman who follows her husband to […]
The Sweet Potato Queens’ First Big-Ass Novel by Jill Conner Browne: Book Review
Jill Conner Browne writes a fictional account of how the Sweet Potato Queens came into being and how they truly became queens through some terrible decisions and heartbreak. I absolutely loved the first section of this book. It was sheer perfection I tell you. It starts when the queens are in high school and haven’t […]
From a Whisper to a Scream by Charles de Lint: Book Review
A serial killer has been viciously murdering women in the Combat Zone, a seedy area of Newford. He makes a mistake when he kills a wealthy man’s daughter, apparently mistaking her for one of the prostitutes he normally targets. There’s a witness to this one too. He swears the killer stepped out of the side […]
The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson: Book Review
Chicago wins a bid to be the host of the World’s Fair in 1892, the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s discovery of America. The city’s top architects immediately swing into gear to make this a fair to remember. Paris had hosted a world’s fair a few years earlier and everyone said that it couldn’t be beaten. […]
Elliot and the Goblin War by Jennifer A. Nielsen: Book Review
Elliot somehow finds himself appointed King of the Brownies (not the kind you eat–the kind that likes to clean your house as you sleep. I’d be happy with either of them in my house). He first came to the Brownies’ attention after he saved one of them from some evil Goblins on Halloween night. That […]