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Churchill’s Citadel

Churchill’s Citadel, Chartwell and the Gatherings Before the Storm by Katherine Carter Do we really need another Winston Churchill book? Probably not, but author Katherine Carter, curator at Chartwell, takes […]

The Uncommon Reader

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett I love discovering an “old” book (nope, not Moby Dick), such as The Uncommon Reader, a novella about Queen Elizabeth II by the British […]

How to Choose a Murder Mystery

How to Choose a Murder Mystery Those of us who regularly read crime novels know that despite their down-market reputation, writing an engaging page-turner (I bow to you Michael Connelly) […]

A VoyageAround the Queen

A Voyage Around the Queen by Craig Brown Craig Brown’s unconventional biography of Queen Elizabeth II was a disappointment. By all accounts, QEII never said (publicly at least) anything interesting, […]

The Sisters

The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family by Mary S. Lovell I think I have written about the Mitfords before, but I cannot discuss sister biographies without reference to […]

The Silkworm

The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith a/k/a  J.K. Rowling BOOK 2 Yeah! Private investigator Cormoran Strike and his assistant Robin Ellacott are back—as I knew they would be. Galbraith’s first novel […]

The Siege

The Siege by Ben Macintyre On the morning of April 30, 1980, six heavily armed young Arab men stormed the Iranian Embassy in London and captured the twenty-six people on […]

Vengeance

Vengeance by Benjamin Black (Book 5) Another atmospheric, literary mystery from Benjamin Black, a/k/a John Banville, the Man Booker Prize-winning Irish novelist. Dour pathologist Quirke and his colleague Detective Inspector […]

A Death in the Small Hours

A Death in the Small Hours by Charles Finch (Book 6) In Finch’s latest novel featuring Victorian gentleman sleuth and Member of Parliament Charles Lenox, Lenox retreats to rural Somerset […]

Dr. Quirke Novels

Dr. Quirke Novels by Benjamin Black Another new to me is the series by Booker Award-winning novelist John Banville writing under the pen name Benjamin Black.  I’m not a huge […]

Detective Joe Sandilands

Detective Joe Sandilands Novels by Barbara Cleverly While in NYC I ran across the 8th novel in the Detective Joe Sandilands series by Barbara Cleverly (Strange Images of Death-yummy!)  How […]

Bring Up The Bodies

Bring Up The Bodies by Hilary Mantel (Book 2) I loved Bring Up The Bodies, the sequel to Wolf Hall, winner of the Man Booker Prize.  Plenty has been written […]

The Rosie Project

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion After many years of contented singledom, methodical professor of genetics Dr. Don Tillman decides he needs a wife. But rather than depend on traditional […]

The Road

The Road by Cormac McCarthy That I would recommend a novel about the end of the world by Cormac McCarthy surprises me too. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t consider a […]