Dark doesn’t even begin to describe Ottessa Moshfegh’s latest novel, “Death in Her Hands.” Try horrifying, macabre, fashionably self-referential and exceptionally well-written - a book, as the publisher’s blurb says, that asks us to consider how the stories we tell ourselves both reflect the truth and keep us blind to it. Plus, it’s got a great dog.
They say that the fruit seldom falls far from the tree. This was certainly true with the infamous Jeffrey Epstein, bogus billionaire, phoney philanthropist, suspected blackmailer, proven pedophile and supposed suicide.
I like to think of Stephen King as a high-paid starting pitcher. Between starts -- bestselling novels often thick enough to be doorstops -- he works in the bullpen, writing novellas. Over the years, many of those have been made into movies that are now essential parts of the King canon like "Stand By Me" and "Shawshank Redemption."
I wonder what the late, great spy novelist Charles McCarry would make of the COVID-19 outbreak and the Chinese connection, be it the Wuhan "wet markets" or the science labs near Wuhan. McCarry, who died last year at the age 88, set his 2013 novel "The Shanghai Factor" in China.
"The Moment of Tenderness" gifts readers with a new batch of stories from the late Madeleine L'Engle, beloved bestselling author of "A Wrinkle in Time."
In 1881, five Earp brothers gathered in hopes of finding their fortunes in Tombstone, Arizona, the last boomtown in what was still left of the untamed American West. They were relatively young men - Wyatt, the middle brother, just 31 - when they joined a growing community of shopkeepers, prospectors, gamblers, prostitutes, and rustlers drawn by a silver strike in the nearby Dragoon Mountains.
After publishing a big crime novel like "The Cartel," "The Force" and "The Border" every two years, Don Winslow decided to publish "Broken," a collection of five novellas and one short story. Inspired by the novella collections of Jim Harrison and Stephen King, Don Winslow sees the quick potential of selling the six stories to television and films.
"Simon the Fiddler" is the origin story of Simon Boudlin, a traveling musician who appears in Paulette Jiles' 2016 novel, the National Book Award finalist "News of the World."
Julia Spencer-Fleming makes a triumphant return to her series about Episcopal priest Clare Fergusson and her police chief husband, Russ Van Alstyne with "Hid From Our Eyes."
Meritocracy has taken quite a beating lately. Even as COVID-19 has reduced the global power elite to awkward Zoom chats and toilet paper humor, we are still not spared the obligatory weekly article about unfulfilled millennials, overburdened baby boomers, and failed promises to the best and brightest.
Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn only knew each other a short time before Cline's death at the age of 30, but the friendship formed between two trailblazers of country music is enough to fill a book.
Republican presidents have had constant difficulty in communicating their initiatives and accomplishments to the American people, due to an overwhelmingly hostile, activist and politically liberal/left press corps.
After more than 20 books, Anne Tyler still finds ways to challenge herself. Her new novel, "Redhead By the Side of the Road," is, of course, set in her longtime home of Baltimore and features the family and romantic entanglements and other narrative touches Tyler fans know well.
