*** NOVEL: Sense and Sensibility AUTHOR: Jane Austen YEAR OF PUBLICATION: 1811 *** This one is truly a classic; if you haven’t read it, you are in for a treat, as it is one of the best debut novels ever written. (I’d put it up there with Jane Eyre and A Portrait of the Artist … Continue reading On Our Bookshelves – Sense and Sensibility →

Melanie Marks has done something that many people dream about; it is rather a comfort to me to see that it can, in fact, be done.

Guy Fraser-Sampson sent me an email after he’d read my review of his novel, Death in Profile. It was quite lovely to hear from him.

One of the most delightful things about this epistolary novel is that it wasn’t intended to be a novel at all.

*** NOVEL: Death in Profile AUTHOR: Guy Fraser-Sampson YEAR OF PUBLICATION: 2016 *** This is a murder mystery of the police procedural sub-genre. There seems to be a serial killer on the loose in London; five women have been raped and murdered, and the cops are baffled, as well as divided by internal politics and … Continue reading On Our Bookshelves – Death in Profile →

From writing jokes for Jay Leno to being the opening act for Stephen Colbert’s “The Late Show,” Mecurio is no stranger to TV or the stand-up world.

*** NOVEL: Dept. of Speculation AUTHOR: Jenny Offill YEAR OF PUBLICATION: 2014 *** This book isn’t a narrative, like most traditional novels.  It’s bits and pieces, fragments of writing, some only a sentence long, others several pages.  It’s arresting, right away, and starts to coalesce into a story, one that jumps around in time and switches from … Continue reading On Our Bookshelves – Dept. of Speculation – A Book Review →

I picked up this paperback, a mystery novel about a dead body found in an English country house, thinking it was going to be a cozy mystery.

This book is nothing if not elegant.

This book is the novelistic equivalent of a romantic comedy. A good one, though: Clueless or Notting Hill or When Harry Met Sally.