Search Results for: pet

Burial Rites  Author: Hannah Kent   Reminiscent of Smilla’s Sense of Snow, by Peter Hoeg  Hannah Kent’s ephemeral novel about an Icelandic woman who is condemned to death for the murder of her lover and master proves stunningly beautiful amidst sorrow, anguish and the inhumanity shown to her protagonist.  Agnes Magnusdottir, the convicted woman, creates a collage of emotions and endears herself to the family she is placed with until she is executed.  Kent’s writing, illuminating, ... continue reading...

Things in Ditches Author: Jimmy Olsen   Olsen writes a mean, lean flying machine of a novel, with characters that stumble, bumble and philosophize as they search out their good and base thoughts, feelings and actions. Jimmy Olsen twangs his way in and out of Anne Tyler characters, Carl Hiaasen twists, and The Garden of Good and Evil suspense, and yet in every way his originality is his own.  An absolute phenomenon, Things in Ditches held me in thrall as Olsen’s main character, Dutch ... continue reading...

Not For Profit  Author: Glenn Shepard, MD   First Chapter:  James Patterson Wannabe. As I read:  good job, Dr. Shepard. With all the elements of staccato chapters, well prescribed plot, and a thrust of a few syringes and some meds, Shepard’s characters pop from the page.  Very nice debut novel, with pop goes the weasel ending! Dr. Scott James is a mess.  He’s a mere plastic surgeon charged with two murders.  Obsessed with orchids, James is simply not the murder type; but when ... continue reading...

Welcome Home Mama and Boris How a Sister’s Love Saved a Fallen Soldier’s Beloved Dogs A Reader’s Digest  Book by Carey Neesley with Michael Levin  Don’t read this book.  Don’t read this book – unless you have lots of tissue by your side.  We all hear about the war in Iraq constantly, and we feel blunted of emotion, for it is overwhelming.  If you are a mother, father, sister, relative, however, the death of your loved one is overwhelming in a different way – it brings the war and terror ... continue reading...

Shorecliff  Author: Ursula DeYoung   Coming of age has never been so difficult as for 13 year old Richard.  It is 1928, and Richard Killing’s family is traveling from New York to spend the summer with his extended family - aunts, uncles, cousins as Richard has no siblings - in the summer house Shorecliff on the coast of Maine.  His father, who terrifies Richard, is staying in New York, to Richard’s intense gratification, as he and his mother are very close.  The Hatfields, who  own the ... continue reading...