Death on the Edge by Sara Paretsky
I have to say this was fantastic! The only reason why I didn’t give it 5 stars is that I guessed what happened with the mystery about who wrote the essay. I loved the callback to a past case of VI’s and her annoying nemesis from that one popping up in this one (Marcena Love). In “Death on the Edge” VI gets involved in introducing Marcena to her old school in order to talk to a teacher who is concerned about an essay that was […]
This is a great novella from Joe Hart about two people who start starry eyed, like any other couple, but slowly grow apart. Set on the blustery Maine coast, Hart describes Jason and Delphi in a quaint home on the seashore, with the cold, dark ocean just beyond their doorstep. We see events through Jason’s eyes. A reluctant fisherman following in the steps of his father, Jason wants nothing more than to provide for his wife, Delphi, and build a family. But as Delphi becomes […]
This is a short story by Neil Gaiman. A dwarf comes seeking a man to act as a guide to a certain cave in the Black Mountains on the Misty Isle, a cave that is said to be full of gold for the taking. But that gold comes with a price. This is a story of travel and darkness and truth. Going the audiobook route is always a different experience than reading something, especially when the text is supplemented by illustrations, as this one […]
This is a short story set after the events of The Raven King, the fourth and final novel in The Raven Cycle.There will be spoilers for some of the plot in those books, so if you want to remain entirely unspoiled and haven’t yet read these excellent books, come back after you’ve caught up. Told in a somewhat disjointed and sometimes confusing way by Opal, the little dream creature created by Ronan, the readers get to see some of what is happening in the lives of Ronan […]
Ho Lin’s short story anthology was an interesting read. Each tale aimed to shed light on random moments from varying points of view. He pulls in the reader with unexpected juxtapositions of settings and tone. The collection exudes emotion as if the stories were collective memories meshed together. He rarely delves deep into any specific narratives. The stories bounced between Asia and American even within the same story. We meet an American ex-Pat in China, then a host of characters in San Francisco, while another […]
If you are or were an English major in college, then chances are that you have read a Flannery O’Connor short story, and double chances are that the short story in question was “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” arguably one of her finest (and I defend that argument, by the way). I’d also read “The River” and “The Life You Save May Be Your Own” (seriously, nobody does titles better than Flannery), but I knew she had a whole collection. I requested it […]
