reviews

13 Titillating Miss Marple Mysteries Author: Agatha Christie Driving home through a cold, blustery winter’s eve the grey horizon fading into night as the ice pelted against my hood, I kicked back and praised the traffic jam as Joan Hickson read The Tuesday Club Murders, a collection of thirteen Miss Marple short stories. Sitting around the fire after Sir Henry Clithering’s retirement from Scotland Yard the conversation turns to crime and murder and a challenge is issued. Each Tuesday one member of the gathering will relate a true mystery and the others will be compelled to use their wit and [...]

Migratory Mecca... Author:  Paul A. Johnsgard For most Americans, the state of Nebraska epitomizes the “flyover state”.  Whether traveling by jet or Interstate, the Cornhusker state is most often passed by on the way to more exotic locales.  But for those of an ornithological bent, Nebraska is a flyover state of a more attractive sort.  Smack dab in the middle of the Central Flyway, the state serves as a key stopover site for millions of migrating birds every spring and fall, providing an opportunity for gravitationally limited humans to observe one of North America’s most amazing natural spectacles.  Noted ornithologist [...]

Cornfield Heroics... Author:  Laurence Gonzales I must have been out to lunch in 1989.  Somehow, I missed all the news in July of that year when a 200 ton DC-10 jumbo jet came crashing to earth in a giant fireball in western Iowa.  Maybe the neighbor’s dog ate my newspaper or the MTV music videos that summer were too engrossing, but the catastrophic event left no traces on the neuronal substrate of this then twenty-something future book reviewer.   Apparently, I also missed the requisite TV movie, entitled Crash Landing: The Rescue of Flight 232, which aired in 1992 and starred [...]