Seventh Son by Orson Scott Card My rating: 2 of 5 stars Interesting but very slow going. This book is simply an introduction, but I expected (and wanted) a little more story instead of all backstory. The alternate American frontier is only slightly different from the real past, so it’s not a strange, new world […]
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Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron by Stephanie Barron My rating: 3 of 5 stars A truly sad beginning mars this otherwise typical Jane Austin mystery, as a major character from the series dies. But there is no dearth of other acquaintances (and suspects) to fill the story with soap-opera angst and over-the-top aristocratic
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A Beautiful Blue Death by Charles Finch My rating: 4 of 5 stars A very good Victorian mystery, flawed by patches of mundane domesticity. The protagonist is simply not very interesting, although he is certainly a good man, and has a fine supporting cast. What kept me going were the intricacies of the mystery itself,
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A Dog About Town by J.F. Englert My rating: 2 of 5 stars Entertainingly narrated by a canine companion whose mind is uncommonly like a human sleuth’s. Fun, but too outrageous a story even for animal lovers. Amazon.com link: A Dog About Town © Jan McClintock of We Need More Shelves
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I really have no clue why I find these so interesting, except that they combine adventure, archaeology and anthropology, chutzpah and nature — perhaps a combination I find irresistible. My favorite adventures in history from recent reads: A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza De Vaca, The Extraordinary Tale of a Shipwrecked Spaniard Who
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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon – This fictional account of an autistic teen in England out to solve a mystery tries a little too hard, but is still very entertaining and at times, very funny. The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam by Ann Marie Fleming – My
A Supremely Bad Idea: Three Mad Birders and Their Quest to See It All by Luke Dempsey This is a entertaining memoir of an ex-pat Brit who lives in New York City and discovers birding as an adult. ‘Aww, you say, sounds like a nice story,’ and it is. All is not rosy and cozy,
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A Full Dark House: A Bryant & May Mystery and Seventy-Seven Clocks: A Bryant & May Mystery, both by Christopher Fowler – the first and second in the series about London’s Peculiar Crimes Unit. The author uses an ingenious method of flashbacks and contemporary narrative in the first book to relate the unit’s first case
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