Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
Fantasy is a genre I’ve rarely explored. Thanks to CBR, I grew more curious about it, so several years ago I went on a little spree and bought a pile of them. That’s how I came across Leigh Bardugo’s Six of Crows. Six of Crows reminded me of one of the only other fantasy books I’ve read, The Lies of Locke Lamora, in that it is a tale of a heist with a brilliant, complicated leader of a rough and tumble gang. Kaz is the […]
The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2024 by S.A. Cosby, Ed.
I read an S.A. Cosby book earlier this year and really liked it, so when I saw he edited The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2024 I grabbed it up. Cosby did a good job of picking the stories. Some of them are straightforward mysteries, some have ambiguous endings, some are gut-wrenching, like the last story in the collection which has a mother facing up to something terrible her teenaged son has done. Some stories are very dark, like the story where a young woman […]
Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh
I adored Allie Brosh’s Hyperbole and a Half blog, and especially resonated with her cartoons about depression. I picked up Solutions and Other Problems, her second book, in the hopes it would be just as funny and affecting. While it was both of these things at times, overall the book just wasn’t as strong as her previous work. The book is primarily about funny anecdotes, childhood stories, and wacky takes on things. To be honest, they felt kind of forced and not particularly humorous. They […]
A Rule Against Murder by Louise Penny
After wiping my emotional resources out with a book about the Native American genocide, I decided I needed a mystery to give myself a break from the emotional weight. Louise Penny’s A Rule Against Murder fit the bill. Quebec Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is celebrating his anniversary with his wife at a luxurious lodge edged by a lake deep in the forest. A family there is also having what appears to be an uncomfortable reunion. The Morrow matriarch is married to her second husband, and […]
American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World by David Standard
David Stannard’s American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World is a searing account of the Native American genocide perpetrated by Europeans in the Americas–Spain in South America and Anglo-Americans in the north. I felt so much grief and shame reading this book. The sheer destruction and rampant barbaric cruelty shown to the indigenous people of the Americas, and the staggering number of deaths is horrifying. Scholars generally agree that the indigenous population was somewhere between 75 to 100 million people, with 8 to 12 […]
Marple: Twelve New Mysteries by Various
I think I’ve read every Agatha Christie there is. I’m always hoping for an undiscovered book. So when I saw a collection of new Miss Marple stories I was quite excited. It turned out to be not a long-lost anthology, but stories written by modern authors as new Miss Marple mysteries. The mysteries featured stolen pearls, an academic murder, death on the high seas, a wedding interrupted by a poisoning, strange happenings on a languid vacation, a wealthy old duffer knocked off, a double murder, […]
