Save Yourself by Kelly Braffet Crown Publishing/Random House, $25.00, 310 pages ISBN 978-0-385-34734-1 There’s a saying my old Irish Grandmother repeated that goes like so: God made the countryside and man built the cities . . . but the devil made the small town. I’ve thought about that old saw over the years, and what I think she meant was this: in a small town everyone knows everyone else’s
The Shanghai Factor by Charles McCarry Mysterious Press-Grove/Atlantic, Inc., $26.00, 292 pages, ISBN 978-0-8021-2127-1 Here’s a true confession: I have been fascinated by spies, espionage and tradecraft ever since the 1950’s when I read that first issue of Mad Magazine and was introduced to the iconic Spy vs Spy cartoon strip with it’s two identical antagonists, battling to a constant and eternal draw. From then on, I have read
Red Moon by Benjamin Percy Grand Central Publishing/Hatchette Books Group, $25.99, 531 pages, ISBN 978-4-4555-0166-3 The topic this week is lycanthropy: the belief that humans can turn themselves into wolves, commonly known as werewolves. And let’s just suppose for a minute that werewolves weren’t the product of a deranged mind or a folk tale. Let’s suppose that werewolves (or lycans short for lycanthropes) live among us and have grown
Visitation Street by Ivy Pochoda A Dennis Lehane Book/Ecco/Harper Collins, $25.99, 304 pages, ISBN 978-0-06-224989-0 Across from lower Manhattan, on the eastern shore, at the mouth of the East River, is a run-down area of abandoned warehouses, discarded, dilapidated piers and muddy salt flat marshes that look out on the Buttermilk Channel, Governor’s Island, Ellis, Liberty and Staten Island, the upper bay, as well as the New Jersey shoreline
A Man Without Breath (Bernie Gunther) by Philip Kerr A Miriam Wood Book/Putnam/Penguin, $26.95, 465 pages, ISBN 978-0-399-16079-0 A nation without religion—that is like a man without breath.–Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany, 1933-45. He had total control of the press, radio and all aspects of German culture during that time. It was his job to make the Nazi Army look as good as possible, while at
The Light of the World by James Lee Burke Simon & Shuster, $27.99, 548 pages, ISBN 978-1-4767-1076-1 This week’s MBR is a review of an author I’ve admired and read diligently for the past twenty-some years . . . ever since I heard him interviewed by Terry Gross on National Public Radio one afternoon as I waited in the car. The author’s name is James Lee Burke. He’s been
Follow Her Home by Steph Cha Minotaur Books, $24.99, 278 pages, ISBN 978-1-250-00962-3 As regular readers of the Mysterious Book Report, know we work to search out and find debut mysteries written by first-time authors and grow as fans with them, rather than bowing and scraping at the feet of the mega-writers with seven or eight figure publishing contracts from the giants of the industry—although we do admit to
The Carrion Birds by Urban Waite Wm Morrow, $25.99, 265 pages, ISBN 978-0-06-221688-5 A lot of folks in America don’t seem to be aware of it, or maybe they just don’t care since it’s not on their front stoop, but a war unlike any we’ve ever had is raging inside our nation. It’s called the War on Drugs . . . and we’re losing it. Certain parts of our
The Son by Philipp Meyer ECCO, $27.99, 561 pages, ISBN 978-0-06-212039-7 If you’ve ever wished for a big, bold, sprawling novel filled with insight, history, a compelling and exciting story with plenty of action-driven plot, capped off by soaring prose with masterful as well as beautiful, always lyrical—to the point of being poetic—language, your wish has come true in the form of a great new novel from Philipp Meyer.
Transatlantic by Colum McCann Random House, $27.00, 304 pages, ISBN 978-1-4000-6959-0by Colum McCann Have you ever wondered about the word Genius? What is it exactly? Who determines it? Where can we find it, where does it come from and how will we know when we see it? These are just a few of the thoughts that come to mind when one thinks about the word and what it implies,