Death on the Installment Plan Review

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(More customer reviews)'Death On The Installment Plan' is a raging animal of a novel that eclipses even Celine's own 'Journey' (though, it must be said, not by much). Structurally it's a shambles, but the unbelievable energy behind each & every sentence is enough to propel the reader straight through the 600-odd pages. What few of the other reviews have pointed out is how gut-bustingly funny this book is. A laugh a line with Celine and no mistake...More than that, 'Death...' contains absolutely the funniest sex scene ever written, bar none. While 'Journey' is tighter and harsher and the later works are more crazily surreal, 'Death...' is the shot of pure Celine that literature needed when it was first published and which the literate world could use another dose of now. And that's no Cambridge lie.

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Death on the Installment Plan is a companion volume to Louis-Ferinand Céline's earlier novel Journey to the End of Night.
Published in rapid succession in the middle 1930s, these two books shocked European literatue and world consciousness. Nominally fiction but more rightly called "creative confessions," they told of the author's childhood in excoriating Paris slums, of serves in the mud wastes of World War I and African jungles. Mixing unmitigated despair with Gargantuan comedy, they also created a new style, in which invective and obscenity were laced with phrases of unforgettable poetry. Céline's influence revolutionized the contemporary approach to fiction. Under a cloud for a period, his work is now acknowledged as the forerunner of today's "black humor."

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One Rough Man: A Pike Logan Thriller Review

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(More customer reviews)I am always intimidated to write book reviews simply because others before me sound like they are writing their thesis but One Rough Man deserves my time and energy on a review. I am more of an Emily Giffin kind of girl so this is my first fiction thriller novel. I heard Brad Taylor on a radio interview in Chicago and found him not only incredibly intelligent and knowledgeable about his content but I could also tell that he has a keen sense of humor. He was light hearted in a professional sort of way. That being said, I saw his book at the airport, bought it and then couldn't put it down. It's just really a good read. I don't have a thesaurus on hand to embellish my thoughts so just go with the fact that it's a darn good story that moves fast and keeps you entrenched with a lot of good details. Brad really has a knack with the details, especially when describing the bad guys which, as Americans, we all want a better idea about. Since he knows a thing or two about real bad guys, this makes the book all the more enjoyable. As I read it I pictured the author experiencing similar situations with similar people because, well, he actually has. Oh, and I also found little pieces of his humor in the book as well (something tells me that Brad once threw eggs at the principal's house too). I would really enjoy attending a lecture hosted by Mr. Taylor. I bet he is really, really captivating in person. This girlie girl is now a full fledged thriller fan. Thanks for the read Brad! When does book II come out? I am DYING for Pike and Jennifer to hook up!

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Vince Flynn and Brad Thor, move over: introducing a pulse-pounding new international thriller series by a former Delta Force commander. They call it the Taskforce. Their existence is as essential as it is illegal. Commissioned at the highest level of the U.S. government. Protected from the prying eyes of Congress and the media. Built around the top operators from across the clandestine, intelligence, and special forces landscape. Designed to operate outside the bounds of U.S. law. Trained to exist on the ragged edge of human capability. Pike Logan was the most successful operator on the Taskforce, his instincts and talents unrivaled-until personal tragedy permanently altered his outlook on the world. Pike knows what the rest of the country might not want to admit: The real threat isn't from any nation, any government, any terrorist group. The real threat is one or two men, controlled by ideology, operating independently, in possession of a powerful weapon. Buried in a stack of intercepted chatter is evidence of two such men. The transcripts are scheduled for analysis in three months. The attack is mere days away. It is their bad luck that they're about to cross paths with Pike Logan. And Pike Logan has nothing left to lose.

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The Vaults Review

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(More customer reviews)Arthur Puskis has devoted his life to the Vaults, the repository of all the official records of The City at the height of its rough-and-tumble, pre-war days. The orderliness, the routine, the proven veracity of his work provides all his existence requires. Until the day he discovers a file has been duplicated.
Ethan Poole is a tough guy trying to redeem himself after a crooked career in the ring. Now a PI, he blackmails corrupt city leaders and loves a fiery union organizer.
Top newspaper reporter Francis Frings, paramour of nightclub singer extraordinaire Nora Aspen, hears from a top city leader who has had enough and is ready to sing.
This is the setup for Toby Ball's fabulous debut novel. The Vaults traces, in these three narratives, events set in motion by that duplicate file, a blackmail case and a corrupt official's decision to come clean. Combine them with a headstrong, flawed crook of a mayor and his efforts to get a group of Polish businessmen to sign a business contract, and the ensuing crosses, counter crosses, last-minute decisions and long-range plans result in an engrossing story that the original Warner Brothers should have had the chance to film in glorious black and white.
Ball keeps everything rolling in what could have been a tangled mess. Instead, the three storylines sometimes intersect, sometimes complement each other, to propel the action along. There are poignant moments and acts of great heroism, as well as sorrow and regret. To say more about actual plot points would give too much away, and each one is well worth discovering.
But suffice to say that Ball has not only a talented way with plot, but also with characterizations both starring and walk-on. The Vaults is a throwback to a time when snappy dialogue and personal stories combined to tell rich tales of winners and losers. The novel may remind readers at times of Jonathan Lethem and Loren Estleman, especially their Motherless Brooklyn, Chronic City and Gas City.
This is a rich story that has room for orphans, stone-cold killers with Achilles heels, loyal union strikers and unlikely farmers. It has the rich and the poor, the eccentric and salt of the earth. The Vaults also has the ability to turn philosophical and ask questions that go to the very heart of what each of the three protagonists holds most dear.
The only problem with finishing The Vaults is that I wish I hadn't even started it yet, so I could have the pleasure of discovering it all over again. It's that good.


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In a dystopian 1930s America, a chilling series of events leads three men down a path to uncover their city's darkest secret.At the height of the most corrupt administration in the City's history, a mysterious duplicate file is discovered deep within the Vaults---a cavernous hall containing all of the municipal criminal justice records of the last seventy years. From here, the story follows: Arthur Puskis, the Vault's sole, hermit-like archivist with an almost mystical faith in a system to which he has devoted his life; Frank Frings, a high-profile investigative journalist with a self-medicating reefer habit; and Ethan Poole, a socialist private eye with a penchant for blackmail. All three men will undertake their own investigations into the dark past and uncertain future of the City---calling into question whether their most basic beliefs can be maintained in a climate of overwhelming corruption and conspiracy

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The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong: The Autobiographical Writings of a Crown Princess of Eighteenth-Century Korea Review

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(More customer reviews)"The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong" is actually four different works written by one woman, a circumspect, scrupulous, unfortunate 18th Century Korean aristocrat. The memoirs are, successively, a family injunction, a memorial, a biography, and a historiography. At the center of the collection sits Hong Hyegyong and her husband, Crown Prince Sado. "The Memoirs" span the reigns of Yongjo, Chongjo, and Sunjo, and the careers of Lady Hyegyong's father, Hong Ponghan, and her older brothers.
Lady Hong Hyegyong was the wife of Crown Prince Sado, who in 1762, was ordered by his father, King Yongjo, to step into a rice chest, which was susequently bound and covered in sod. Crown Prince Sado had been punished by his father for a series of heinous murders caused by Sado's mental illness. Lady Hyegyong and her family, including her son, the future King Chongjo, then became the focal point of factional quarrels at court, each side using the execution of the Crown Prince, to its own political advantage.
Lady Hyegyong, in the first three memoirs, strives to defend her father and brothers against chages of treason and complicity in Sado's execution. The last memoir is a defense of her husband. All four are addressed to her grandson, King Sunjo, to restore the honor of her family.
Although Lady Hyegyong nor Haboush could ascertain the specific cause of Crown Prince Sado's illness, and Lady Hyegyong's anecdotal evidence is hardly scientific, I would like to offer ''hwabyong'', or, in Korean, ''fire disease'' or ''anger disease''. ''Hwabyong'', as offered by Alford in "Think No Evil: Korean Values In The Age Of Globalization" (see review), is ''...a unique Korean folk syndrome...'' characterized by ''...anxiety, panic,...and the suppression of anger...'' (p. 77). Korean fire disease's ''...symptoms reflect[s] the constraints of the culture: not just on the expression of of emotion, but the lack of opportunity...to change...''(p. 79). Only Crown Prince Sado,and the evidence offered in "The Memoir of 1805", can affirm this conjecture.
The last work, "The Memoir of 1805", is a brilliant psychological portrait of Crown Prince Sado. It is a revealing exercise in historical writing, and also reveals the mind of an extraordinary woman trying to understand some of the most harrowing personal tragedies any spouse or daughter might face.
"The Memoirs" can be compared to Lady Murasaki Shikibu's "The Tale of Genji", "Hamlet", and the lives of the Roman Emperors. One major failing of Haboush's''Introduction'' is, that she does not place the incidents in a broader historical and international context. But she does manage to argue against abridging and collecting each work into a longer historical novel. A broader focus would further aid in understanding Lady Hyegyong's dedication in defense of her brothers and father.
This is not only a valuable history, but it is also another demonstration of the narrative powers of Asian women authors operating in a patriarchical, almost misogynistic, culture.

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Lady Hyegyong's memoirs, which recount the chilling murder of her husband by his father, is one of the best known and most popular classics of Korean literature. From 1795 until 1805 Lady Hyegyong composed this masterpiece, which depicts a court life whose drama and pathos is of Shakespearean proportions. Presented in its social, cultural, and historical contexts, this first complete English translation opens a door into a world teeming with conflicting passions, political intrigue, and the daily preoccupations of a deeply intelligent and articulate woman.JaHyun Kim Haboush's accurate, fluid translation captures the intimate and expressive voice of this consummate storyteller. The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong is a unique exploration of Korean selfhood and of how the genre of autobiography fared in premodern times.

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A Sport and a Pastime: A Novel Review

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(More customer reviews)A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter. North Point Press San Fransisco 1985
On the surface this is a love story. Phillip Dean, an American dropout from Yale, and Anne-Mari Costallat, a French shop girl, live and love, love, love... for several months in France. As the observer/narrator tells the story, one is never quite certain whether the narrative is an objective account of the life of Phillip and Anne-Mari or a fabricated wish fulfillment of a frustrated stymied paramour of the beautiful Claude Picquet. In the end it doesn't matter as the story ebbs and flows inexorably and smoothly through the shimmering French countryside to its tragic conclusion.
The writing is astounding. I stopped time and again to read and reread passages as the combinations of words and phrases evoked emotions and feelings that I thought not possible given the simplicity and directness of the words. There is a conciseness to both the story and the language. So much is said with so few words that one sometimes regrets that this parsimony of words brings the end too soon. I wanted the novel to continue so I might continue to savor this beautiful writing.
A wonderful novel that I will continue to read for years to come.

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"As nearly perfect as any American fiction I know," is how Reynolds Price (The New York Times) described this classic that has been a favorite of readers, both here and in Europe, for almost forty years. Set in provincial France in the 1960s, it is the intensely carnal story--part shocking reality, part feverish dream --of a love affair between a footloose Yale dropout and a young French girl. There is the seen and the unseen--and pages that burn with a rare intensity.

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A Mencken Chrestomathy: His Own Selection of His Choicest Writing Review

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(More customer reviews)I really like this book. Mencken's prose and unflinching attitude is like no other author I have read. I don't know if they used the middle finger in the early 1900s but if so, then HLM was its personification. If you were to tally his word usage in the book I believe "idiot", "imbecile", "buffoon", "moron" and "mountebank" would be near the top.
This book contains one of my favorite essay and the single biggest reason to own this book, his piece on the critical process. It's only a 10 page essay but it's probably the most eloquent. For whatever reason he put it around page 450, but I would recommend reading it first. It puts a reader in the right frame of mind for reading Mencken's essays. He explains a worthwhile critic is not so much concerned with truth or detail. Instead a truly great critic takes the target of the criticism and uses it to develop his own original ideas. It separates those who would just be archivists with those who would be artists. Clearly, Mencken was not concerned with the former, he was concerned with art and he was an artist.

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The American Experience (Prentice Hall Literature) Penguin Edition Grade 11 Review

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(More customer reviews)I was pleased with price and the amount of time in the shipping. Amazon did great. Unfortunitly, the book itself is rather boring.


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Prentice Hall Literature, Penguin Edition (High School ©2007)
American Experience
Student Edition
Prentice Hall Literature, Penguin Edition (©2007) components for The American Experience.

Combining fresh, contemporary selections with classic favorites, this language arts program delivers explicit instruction within a student-friendly design to create the new standard for today's literature classroom.

Features and Benefits
Exclusive leveled selection pairings for differentiated instruction.
Focused instruction that ensures skills mastery.
Frequent, built-in progress monitoring to catch small learning problems before they become big ones.
Real authors who act as teaching partners to guide students through literary concepts.
More writing support than any other program, including practice in writing-on-demand—skills that students need for high-stakes tests.

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Hittite Warrior (Living History Library) Review

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(More customer reviews)The basic idea and plot of this book is really neat. The story is set in the Biblical time of the Judges before Israel had a king. We are introduced to a Hittite youth living in the Mediterranean about the time that Greeks, particularly those from Crete, were gaining ascendancy. The Hittites as a people are conquered and become fugitives. Our protagonist flees first to the Phoenicians and then into the hills of Judea, where he meets Deborah, the prophetess, and Berek, the Israelite general who is to defeat Sisera. He ends up fighting in the battle on the wrong side, but eventually marries a Israelite woman and settles down in the area.
On the way, we are introduced to all kinds of Hittite, Phoenician, Israelite, and Canaanite customs. We learn about their dress, their gods (particularly the dreadful Moloch), their methods of fighting, their habits of enslaving captive peoples, and so on. The book has obviously been carefully researched, and the plot is plausible and interesting.
I give the book three stars because the writing is terrible. The fact that the book is for children does not excuse this. Sentences are frequently awkward in construction, and the book reads like a first draft. For instance, the writer will say something like, "The warrior rushed towards me, and I hit him with a stick that I had picked up several moments ago before he attacked me." That's a paraphrase, but you see what I mean. Why on earth weren't we told about the stick BEFORE the warrior rushed towards him? It's as thought the writer just thought of the weapon, and instead of putting the event in it's proper place, she flings it in as an afterthought. This kind of sloppy editing occurs throughout the text. As imaginative fiction, it's great, but this book is NOT a good example for kids to follow in style, editing, or structure.

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In ca. 1200 B.C., Uriah the Hittite leaves his conquered homeland and, following his father's instruction, seeks refuge with an old family friend, eventually finding himself in a great battle between the Canaanite forces of Sisera and the Hebrew forces of Barak.

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Into the Forest: A Novel Review

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(More customer reviews)I'm a big fan of post holocaust fiction. I've read hundreds of stories over the past 40 years about Life after Doomsday. This is absolutely one of the best. It avoids the common assumptions of the genre. There is no sudden and dramatic change in the lives of the two young protagonists. There isn't an immediate awareness on the part of the community that something awful and terrifying is occurring. People don't suddenly go berserk. Marauding gangs of psychopaths don't appear out of nowhere to prey upon the vulnerability of their fellow citizens. Every character, every behavior, every reaction is believable and easily explained within the context of known human behavior. Everyone initially clings desperately to the belief that things haven't really changed, that the situation isn't that bad, that tomorrow, things will all return to normal. It's just a matter of holding on and continuing with their daily routines.
Hegland's placing of Nell and her sister Eva in a forest, far from the nearest town, was a brilliant device on many levels. Normally, doomsday writers place their protagonists right in the thick of things. They trap them in cities or situations where they can inflict upon them every supposedly predictable terror of life after the collapse, showing us clearly frightened people in clearly frightening times.
But Nell and Eva live in a quiet forest. The forest isn't just a location here. It's not there just to show us the girls' gardening skills or how to live a self-sufficient life. The forest is a major, living, breathing protagonist. Hegland renders it's character brilliantly. It is both serene and tumultuous, comforting and menancing, fiercely protective and neglectful. Placing Nell and her sister in this quiet, slow environment creates a constant sense of dread and tension in the story - what unknowable things are going on outside this ageless, unjudgmental sanctuary? What horrors are taking place? Are cities burning? Has the law of the jungle replaced the fragile contracts between people? Is inescapable death slowing overtaking mankind? Are all the horrors imaginable about to invade this oasis of calm, and when and how will they come? The little intrusions of the outside world that do occur are more terrifying as a result. The forest doesn't protect Nell and Eva from evil. It wreaks no havoc on transgressors, it passes no judgments, it doesn't change or adapt. "Bring it on" it seems to say. "I will not be changed. I will simply out last you, neutralize you with my steadfastness, absord your impact and accept it as part of my nature."
The forest is a sort of allegory for the the human spirit. Primieval, indestructable and unchanging, it survives despite the modern mistakes of humankind.
I disagree strongly with the reviewer who says this is not an inspirational story. It is a story filled with hope and promise. Strip away the false values, the intellectualism, the materialism and the intolerance that are so much a part of the modern human's psyche, and you are left with what got us this far to begin with, and what will save us in the end - a sense of beauty, perseverance, tolerance and acceptance of the world as it is.
It's a beautiful, poetically written story, and well worth a place on anyone's bookshelf.


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A Silken Thread Review

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(More customer reviews)An Applause and A Standing ovation to Mrs. Jackson
*********I have to start out by saying even though I love Brenda Jackson's book series, this book was a breath of fresh air. It's a book from start to finish that doesn't come with a series, so this makes it a little different and exciting ( please note I love her series and not hating on them). She changes this book up a bit, the way she combines everyone, the way she involves everyone and the way she brought them together, now with saying that:*********The book was about Erica and Brian but ladies, while I love love love their story so many other individuals stole my heart in this book as well as the different story lines. The best way to describe it it's like Young & The Restless to the tenth level a very good soap opera and you know a soap opera includes the big dramas, the big lies, the big secrets and and who likes who from who doesn't like whomever etc, etc. With saying that, I had favorites at first, of couples through out the book but by the end they all made me love them more, I don't want to give away who ends up with who (but i will say this for one of the couples April and Griffin O.M.G that build up to their relationship, i though it was wonderful) but all their stories made you fell in love with them so much more.
PS: let's just say this, for Karen she makes the Joker who is a villain on batman seems more innocent like a saint.if you are a fan of Brenda Jackson then I think you would appreciate this book it's so different but yet has that familiar feel.
******************


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For Erica Sanders, finding a soul mate was the easy part. Brian Lawson is the man she wants, and everyone agrees they're the ideal couple. Almost everyone. The one exception is Erica's mother, Karen, who prefers her daughter marry another man. Karen even hires a private detective to investigate Brian, but the truth he uncovers is the last thing she expected-a devastating betrayal that rips both families apart.Convinced that her relationship can't be salvaged, Erica ends her engagement. Yet she has lingering doubts over her decision, especially once Brian's attractive single neighbor starts pursuing him. A chance meeting proves that the passion between Brian and Erica hasn't dimmed-but neither has the determination of others to keep them apart, or the shocking lengths Karen will go to in order to undermine her daughter's relationship.As secrets old and new are revealed, Erica and Brian find themselves caught between the bonds of the past and an uncertain future, each making painful discoveries about who to believe and trust. Masterfully told and laced with the sensuality and drama that Brenda Jackson does best, this is an unforgettable story of relationships at their most complex, and how hard it can be to choose between living separate lives-or holding fast when love hangs by a silken thread….

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I Knew You'd Be Lovely Review

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(More customer reviews)In high school and college English majors are often made to read the short story. I am grateful for this fact. "Parker's Back" by O'Conner, Faulkner's "Barn Burnings" and Miss Emily's Rose" are examples of the vignette medium that powerfully moved me. But, as a whole, for the past 50 years, I have mainly read novels, selfishly demanding more; more experience.; more in-depth character study; more profound connection. Alethea Black, the author of "I Knew You Would Be Lovely" brought me back to the pleasure of condensed brilliance. Thirteen vignettes of life are proffered in this short story collection; multiple insights into relationships with oneself, with friends, with family and with one's truths left me deeply stirred.Of course I had my favorites...."Mollusks Make A Comeback." Katie, a woman afraid to try for more spoke solemnly through humor and jarred an "aha moment" so profound in me I am still shaking. What more can you demand of a story? Other favorites...."Someday is Today," "The Summer Before" and "Good In A Crisis" All thirteen invoked emotions and understanding I didn't know myself capable of. What more can be asked of a well crafted tale?
Alethea Black talent lies in her balance, intuitiveness, tenderness, sarcastic wit, shock value, humor and compassion. How could I ask anything more from a genius wordsmith?
Read at your own risk knowing par writing will most probably not be enough for you again. When you read extraordinary it is hard to lower that bar back down.
Thanks, Ms. Black, for insights and inspirations into your stories conceptions and birth.
In homage to "We've Got a Great Future Behind" us I simply sing, "it's close enough to perfect for me."

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Alethea Black's deeply moving and wholly original debut features a coterie of memorable characters who have reached emotional crossroads in their lives. Brimming with humor, irony, and insights about the unpredictable nature of life, the unbearable beauty of fate, and the power that one moment, or one decision, can have to transform us, I Knew You'd Be Lovely delivers that rare thing—stories with both an edge and a heart.

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Verdi Review

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(More customer reviews)Verdi is a young yellow python who doesn't understand why the adult (green) pythons are such killjoys. He is playful and daring, until he hurts himself doing a stunt. The older pythons help nurse him back to health, while Verdi learns that once they, too were young and wild like he was.
The book is marvelous. It is extremely readable for young (3 - 6) year olds, and the art work is beautiful, with vivid colors and expressive characters (even for a snake!). Best of all, the story line is appropriate, with a message that is easily understood (be yourself; we were all young once) without being preachy. A wonderful children's book.

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Hell at the Breech: A Novel Review

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(More customer reviews)In his highly praised short story collection, POACHERS, Alabama native Tom Franklin mined a neglected topic --- the modern South --- for narrative gold. He created vivid, visceral stories of present-day losers and rabble-rousers, and presented them as both regular frustrated humans and red-dirt legends.
Although his follow-up novel, HELL AT THE BREECH, is set more than 100 years in the past, Franklin's sensibility for gritty Southern realism remains in tact and in fact has become one of his defining traits as a regional author. Much like its predecessor, HELL AT THE BREECH refuses to romanticize the South, its inhabitants, or the violence they perpetrate, yet Franklin holds up his male characters as examples and exemplars of various strains of Southern masculinity, examining the morality of bloodshed in all its muscular complexity.
So many things work so well in this novel about a real-life gang war in rural Alabama that it's difficult to know which to praise first or foremost. Franklin's grasp of history is strong and confident; he ably recreates not just the language and the customs of turn-of-the-century Alabama, but also its lost landscape, a terrain that seems foreign at the turn of this century: "The woods were high all around, so green it felt almost cloudy, thrashers noisy in the bracken and sparrows flitting overhead, the ground slashed like paintbrush work with the shadow of pine needles."
Evoked in patient, sculpted sentences, the rough, unforgiving woods --- especially the impenetrable Bear Thicket that separates the city of Oak Grove from the uncivilized agrarian community of Mitcham Beat --- lend the story a sense of menace and mystery, and suggest an ever-changing world that seems impossibly vast. Introducing one of his main characters, a teenager named Mack Burke, Franklin writes that "the earth redefined itself around him, same as it had the day before and the day before that and as far back as his memory went, as if this dawn were no different than any other."
That dawn, however, is different for Mack: it's the first sunlight he sees after becoming a murderer, having accidentally shot a store owner named Arch Bedsole during a botched robbery. Arch was a prominent storeowner in Mitcham Beat, and his murder is locally assumed to be the work of city people trying to exert political power over the poor country farmers. In reaction, a group of Mitcham Beat farmers organize a gang called Hell-at-the-Breech to overthrow the city businessmen who hold liens on every crop in the area. Leading Hell-at-the-Breech is Quincy "Tooch" Bedsole, Arch's cousin and a deeply devious man who takes over Arch's store and indentures Mack to work as a stock boy.
As the Hell-at-the-Breech gang lash out at the farmers who won't join up and the city people who oppose them, Sheriff Billy Waite --- pushing 70 and nearing retirement --- tries to investigate, but finds only farmers too scared or too angry to take the law's side. Because he doesn't take immediate action, the townspeople see him as ineffectual, and because he drinks openly, they see him as a washed-up sot. But for Franklin, Waite's hesitation is a form of levelheaded mercy that few people in the novel possess or even recognize.
Waite's steady lawfulness and Tooch's manipulative lawlessness provide enough friction to ignite the forest between them, but for Franklin they represent nothing as simple as good and evil or right and wrong. HELL AT THE BREECH possesses a more complex morality: Franklin implies that hostility can be a useful tool but becomes evil when it is thoughtless and pointless, when men commit violence for its own sake. Both sides are depicted as righteous in their causes --- the Hell-at-the-Breech gang justified in its own push for independence, the city people merely protecting themselves from a threat --- but their violent actions are morally unpardonable. So many lives are lost, so many homes burned, so many farms destroyed, but nothing is won.
With HELL AT THE BREECH, Franklin lives up to the promise of POACHERS and establishes himself as an imaginative, intelligent, and important Southern writer. More importantly, he looks history dead in the eye and reveals how the Old South became the New South.
--- Reviewed by Stephen M. Deusner

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Another Roadside Attraction Review

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(More customer reviews)This is my favorite book of all time. I think that the four main characters are absolutely perfect, the way they are written. You can't get more interesting and original. In fact, I consider Amanda to be the greatest fictional character I have ever read about in a novel. Just brilliantly written.
The dialogue is fantastic, and story line and description of the whole book is just perfect. The first time I read this book, I was sitting out front of one of my classrooms with about 15 minutes to kill, so I figured I'd start reading this book that a friend of mine loaned me. When I looked up at the clock after taking a break from the pages, I realized that it was 3 hours later. This book totally captivated me, and I think I have lent that same copy to at least 20 different people over the years, and every one of them agreed with a full heart.
It the single, greatest recommendation I have ever recieved. You have to read it!!!!! Thank you, Mr. Robbins for writing it. I'm totally serious.

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The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack (Burton & Swinburne in) Review

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(More customer reviews)Mark Hodder, please write more, ASAP!
Okay, moving on. The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack is currently my absolute favorite book of the year and is going to be a tough one to unseat. This mystery steampunk action/adventure alternate history story is tight. Hodder's writing style is crisp and even and easily navigated. Other than a few sections where I bogged down in the science-y alt. history stuff, I blew threw this like it was air. Burton and Swinburne feel authentic as characters and every surrounding aspect is put together in such a way that nothing seems totally out of place even if it obviously is.
What's even more impressive is how Hodder takes a cadre of authentic Victorian personas and blends them so well together, even if they never/rarely met in real life. I learned a lot about the characters both their real selves and alternate fictional selves, as well as the era since we see the diverging paths as one thing after another is affected by the decisions of others. Because decisions matter in this book so it's not just pulp fiction. There is a point to it, but I'll leave that for you to find out as you read. But other than there being a point, the book is all grand fun. Burton is swarthy enough to appeal to action/adventure types while also being a human being. And Swinburne, whom I now poetically seem to have developed a crush on, is a nice balancing character. He needs to live unlike Burton who seems to not need to live as much as he is throughout the book.
As far as plot goes, I could barely believe how well the loose ends were tied up in the end. Even some of the smaller details in the plotting and characterisation come to be important for the climax which is at times utterly surprising. As a standalone title, The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack is outstanding. I can only hope it serves as a platform for more Burton and Swinburne in the future. A Must Read book for any steampunk or alternate history reader.

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The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey Review

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(More customer reviews)`Last Days' is the story of a ninety-one year old Black man named Ptolemy. He has dementia... of sorts. I'm sure most doctors would diagnose him as that, but I'm not as convinced. Seems to me this man had more life in his "last days" than most people do their seventy-one point seven years on this planet. Walter Mosley creates a beautiful story with some... provoking people. Ptolemy is a walking, dying encyclopedia of his Black experience. And many others as well. The man is dying, he knows he's dying, and he's OK with him dying. What hurts him most is that his mind is going away. His remaining family is like the rest of ours; some good, some bad, looking for a quick come up.
What happens, however, is what makes Walter Mosley one of the masters of this beloved craft. A mahogany colored beauty (Robyn) finds her way into the life of Ptolemy and she is one of the few bright lights to walk hand and hand with him in the end. While Robyn is his chaperone in "real life", the person that guides him is someone we never really meet. Leave it to Mr. Mosley to create a (ghost) character that is more powerful than the (live) characters. Coydog McCann is the character of whom I speak. He's a teacher, he's a guide, he's a mentor, and he's a friend. Together, Ptolemy and Coydog have a deep, deep friendship that borders on the strongest type of brotherly love. This bond grows stronger over the years and Coy needs Ptolemy to help him complete a mission of sorts when he dies, and Ptolemy needs Robyn to do the same.
To help with this Ptolemy chooses to be a guinea pig for an experimental drug that will help him be lucid his final days. In spite of his dementia, this man is far from crazy and the drug doesn't GIVE him clarity... it sharpens it. The name he gives to the doctor is classic. As with all of Mosley's novels the surrounding cast is splendid. Every single one. Even Alfred. This man can not miss. Thank you Walter for yet another.

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Open City: A Novel Review

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(More customer reviews)There is no reason to believe Teju Cole intended his debut novel to present a challenge to reviewers, but that is what "Open City" does. The only way a critic can genuinely convey the force of this book -- its full weight and effect -- is to break a covenant with the potential reader by entering the forbidden territory of the spoiler. But revealing the specific shock that hits you like a block of concrete when you reach the novel's final pages is something no responsible critic will do that.
Instead, you are apt to come across a positive review of "Open City" saying the novel is, in some non-specific way, a "tour de force." Another will cagily suggest something's amiss by labeling the story's narrator, Julius, a 32-year-old Nigerian-American who is completing a psychiatry fellowship in New York City, "an unreliable narrator." I will put it this way: what this enormously talented writer has succeeded in doing is crafting a multi-layered reading experience that you'll be dying to talk about with other readers.
Since Cole is a newcomer, critics are stepping over themselves trying to identify a comparable veteran. Which writer will Cole remind the reader of? Candidates are piling up. One is Joseph O'Neill, who, like Cole, is a writer of mixed parentage and hence multicultural perspective. O'Neill's 2008 novel, "Netherland," similarly explores themes of displacement and anxiety in post-9/11 New York City. Another is Zadie Smith, who, like Cole, unabashedly tackles matters of race, class, the immigrant experience, and the suppressed elements of history whose exposure is our moral duty.

W.G. Sebald is mentioned as well, presumably for his erudition and a shared style of writing that is slow and meditative, seemingly without much of a plot, and dependent on the cumulative accretion of observations. Cole, however, is not a formal innovator like Sebald, and the reader may be relieved to learn Cole is a conventional technician, using standard-length sentences, paragraphs, and chapters. Albert Camus' "The Stranger" also has been cited as a model. At first blush this makes some sense (Meursault and Julius are both protagonists of alienation). But my view is if Cole is following Camus, a stronger influence is "The Fall," with its restless, talkative confessor.
Another author I'd place on the list of comparables is Elizabeth Hardwick. Cole shares Hardwick's keen turn of mind, her love of music, and her unerring command of language. Cole today, as Hardwick two generations ago, feasts on the endless supply of attractions on the walkable streets of Manhattan. Both writers tune their ears to the innumerable personal stories waiting to be heard. (Cole has said he wanted "Open City" to show how New York City is "a space full of ghosts and unfinished psychological business.") Finally, like Cole, Hardwick showed no fear in letting autobiography undergird her fiction, notably in her New York novel, "Sleepless Nights."

And, to add one more plate to the table: I see resemblances to the methods of Roberto Bolano's "By Night in Chile." Although Bolano's short novel uncovers different sins and belongs to an earlier time of stress in a foreign nation, it shares with "Open City" a narrator prone to non-stop outpouring of stories, of exquisitely observed morsels of experience. Both narrators, it could be said, are engaged in a sort of "talking cure," on a path to revealed truth. In both novels, readers may find the meandering style frustrating. A stream of consciousness leaves some cold. Yet in each story it all adds up, at last, to form a devastating contemporary psychological portrait.
But enough. Let Teju Cole and "Open City" be what they want to be: each reader's own discovery.

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