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‘Feather Detective’ Gives Voice to One Woman’s Quiet Efforts

The cover for The Feather Detective, featuring an illustration of what appears to be a colorized and stylized version of the titular figure, Roxie Laybourne, with over a dozen trays of colorful and largely tropical bird specimens.

Roxie’s life is fascinating on its face, but Sweeney’s writing lets it shine with an effective choice of details and events to illustrate such an illustrious life.

‘The Unheld’ Blends Fear and Displacement in Weird West

The cover of The Unheld by Luke Larkin, featuring what appears to be a painting of a normal moose in rustic brown hues. The painting has been done in landscape but has been rotated 90 degrees to a portrait orientation.

In an atmosphere of one group of people pressing into the unknown and another group of people being forced from everything they’ve known, the shadows of the mountains and the expanse of the prairies can hold any number of bone-chilling things.

‘Hollow’ Full of Twists and Wise Restraint

Sullivan threads several tricky needles well in Brimstone Hollow, and that restraint helps her plot and characters shine.

‘Flower’ a Gripping, Sobering History

While the prose and structure is a nice read, there’s no making this subject matter go down easy. But then, forced family separation, rampant human rights violations, and elusive justice should never go down easy.

‘Race’ A Nail-Biting Cross-Country Roadtrip

The cover for Eric Moskowitz's debut, The Longest Hardest Race, featuring a colorized picture of two early Ford Model-Ts racing down a dirt road. The portrait of a fairly young Henry Ford is superimposed just beneath the title.

The Hardest, Longest Race at its core is about the struggle between the past and the future, between what’s true and what gets remembered.

‘Boomtown’ Juggles Loads of Stories

The cover of Joe Pappalardo's Boomtown, featuring an illustrated flame over a sepia-toned photo of crashed 1920s-era cars on a dirt city street.

Pappalardo took on quite a project in trying to tell the story of Borger’s hectic year, particularly his dedication to weaving together so many threads rather than focusing on a single character or sector.

The Past Feels Too Familiar in ‘Fear’

The cover of Fear and Fury, the center of which has what appears to be a black and white photo of protesters and counter protesters at a court hearing about the case; the photo has been shaded blue. The title and subtitle are in white text at the top against blocks of red and blue.

The ideas that led to the shooting and Goetz’s subsequent exoneration are still alive and well, and while it may not be easy, it’s crucial to understand and confront them.

Sherlock More Than a Role in ‘Final Problem’

The cover of The Final Problem, featuring a bold blue background reminiscent of the 1960s, with an illustration in white and red of a striped lounge chair on a balcony with a fedora, towel, and puddle of dripping blood on the railing.

In glamorous 1960 Europe, a chance encounter between those on both sides of the second world war, and Hollywood’s golden-age camera, makes for a deadly combination. That’s the setup in The Final Problem, the latest from Spanish writer Arturo Perez-Reverte, now translated into English by Frances Riddle. Ormond Basil, a one-time movie star now flirting withContinue reading “Sherlock More Than a Role in ‘Final Problem’”

In ‘Infamous,’ Minutiae Gives Meaning to Family Life

Painted portraits of five children peek out from torn antique-looking wallpaper with the title and author of the book in yellow cursive in the foreground.

The Gilberts and Thornwalk are fictional, but the equivalents in our own homes and families and lives aren’t. These bits and bobbles, these trinkets and signs of wear that mean nothing to anyone else and might not even mean a thing to ourselves but nevertheless bear aching witness to, well, life.

‘Little Bosses’ a Hard but Crucial Book for Understanding Today

Multi-level marketing companies haven’t had a good reputation for a while, and recent publications like Hey, Hun, a behind-the-curtain look at MLMs through the eyes of someone who was sucked in by one, or the 2018 podcast The Dream, which examines the promise and cost that many of these companies have on their supposed “consultants.”Continue reading “‘Little Bosses’ a Hard but Crucial Book for Understanding Today”