web analytics

reviews

Faithful Place

A Past That Can't Stay Dead Author: Tana French Three books in to Tana French’s darkly elegant Dublin Murder Squad series and I am seriously hooked. There is a magic here, gritty and yet ephemeral at the same time. It’s something in the way French tells her stories, crafts her engagingly flawed characters, and follows the ebbtide of hope and despair that underpins even the most mundane of lives. Jaded detective Frank Mackey, head of the Undercover Squad and secondary character, read negative influencer in the previous book, The Likeness, gets his own starring role here. We follow Frank, known for his [...]

2020-01-02T19:50:07-07:00January 1st, 2020|Tags: |

War Before the War, The

Prelude to freedom... Author:  Andrew Delbanco Courage beyond belief.  Conventional accounts give most of the credit to President Lincoln and the doggedly determined abolitionists in the North.  But historian Andrew Delbanco makes a convincing argument that it was brave runaway slaves that were really the driving force that finally brought an end to slavery in the United States.  Their repeated escapes to freedom in the North frequently generated news and clogged the courts, keeping the abolitionist fires burning.  By distressing the northerners, many of whom would have just gone on ignoring slavery’s existence,  and by enraging the southerners, who wanted [...]

2020-01-02T19:43:58-07:00December 31st, 2019|Tags: |

Then She Was Gone

Secrets in Love, Secrets in Death Author: Lisa Jewell One bright fall day she is walking to the library, the world lying shimmering in front of her. And then . . . then she simply disappears. Left in the rubble is her mother, pining for the loss of her favorite daughter, the bright child with the good future. And from here comes divorce, estrangement, and an endless loop of unanswerable questions and horrific what-ifs. A future that is stuck in the past and so much resentment. A remaining daughter who won’t speak to her. A broken son with a weird [...]

2020-01-02T19:42:02-07:00December 27th, 2019|Tags: |
Go to Top