Book review: ‘You Always Come Back’
July Weaver has been living in Nashville as Jules Thomas, a country western singer/songwriter. She hasn’t been back to the small town in Georgia where she grew up since she ran from there nine years ago, but a call from her brother about another brother’s suicide attempt brings her back. July (all her siblings are named for the months they were born) left her home after her father, Harry, was convicted as the Pacific Lake Killer, a...
Book review of ‘Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman’
‘Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman’ by Lucy Worsley (2022, 415 pages, Genre: Biography) “Once I’ve been dead ten years, I’m sure no one will ever have heard of me.” This statement wouldn’t be nearly so ironic, had it not been uttered by one of the 20th century’s best-known authors: Agatha Christie. Even today, nearly half a century after her death, Christie is a household name. She has been identified by UNESCO as the world’s...
Book review: ‘Annihilation’ by Jeff VanderMeer
‘Annihilation,’ by Jeff VanderMeer (2014, 195 pages, Genre: Science Fiction / Horror) “’The map had been the first form of misdirection, for what is a map but a way of emphasizing some things and making other things invisible?’” This is an excerpt from the journal of the biologist, the otherwise unnamed main character in Jeff VanderMeer’s first installment of his Southern Reach trilogy. For over thirty years, a government agency...
Book review: ‘Manner of Death’ by Robin Cook
‘Manner of Death,’ by Robin Cook (2023, 337pages, genre: medical thriller) Dr. Jack Stapleton and NYC Chief Medical Examiner Laurie Montgomery are back with another chapter in the medical examiner’s office in NYC. What starts out as a simple way to interest a senior pathology resident in his required month of rotation at the office turns as the resident, looking to avoid actually attending autopsies, proposes a research project...
Book review: ‘The Chinese Shawl’
‘The Chinese Shawl’ By Patricia Wentworth (1943, 270 pages, genre: mystery) Laura Fane comes of age in England and inherits a property called the Priory. Her older cousin Agnes lives there, and Agnes wants to buy it from Laura. Agnes is a formidable woman and was once engaged to Laura’s father. Laura’s father broke the engagement in order to marry Laura’s mother. Agnes never married and has hung onto her heartbreak and anger....
