Historian Lyndal Roper published her biography Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet in 2016, but, even as it was going to press, she knew that there was more she had to address in the Protestant reformer’s life.  That was because of a book that had been written by Thomas Kaufmann, an expert in the Reformation and…

Carla Sawyer is a tall, smart-alecky 21-year-old who’s working for a landscaping company until she figures out what to do with her life. She’s on a job in one of the tonier areas of Marin County, north of San Francisco, at a not-terribly-toney, oddly put together home, somewhat isolated from any neighbors. Her client is…

The pain that S. Yarberry suffers as a transgender person is strikingly described in their new book of jagged, anguished poetry A Boy in the City.  It is pain set within the context of other, related emotional torment, including the end of a highly sensual, deeply physical, often confusing relationship with a girlfriend. “Inside your…

In a writing career that spanned much of the 20th century, Howard Fast wrote some 76 novels, roughly one a year, starting in 1933. To avoid flooding his own market, Fast used pseudonyms for about a third of the books — Behn Boruch three times and E. V. Cunningham 20 times.  The Boruch books were…

Margery Allingham’s 1931 mystery Police at the Funeral is a truly excellent example of the genre — briskly told, peopled with interesting characters, investigated by a quirky non-detective and concluded with an out-of-left-field solution that is both utterly surprising and utterly satisfying. It starts when, in London, a young woman named Joyce Blount approaches Albert…

The Horizon Book of Daily Life in Ancient Egypt by Lionel Casson is a fine book.  It’s just not what’s advertised. Or, at least, what I expected. Casson was a well-respected classicist, at the height of his career a half century ago when The Horizon Book of Daily Life in Ancient Egypt was published by…

Near the end of my hourlong walk around Graceland Cemetery the other day, I went past a stone obelisk, maybe 30 feet tall, and noticed this on the side: SANDRA E. RITTER NOV. 22, 1952 NOV. 27, 1952 SUSAN E. RITTER NOV. 22, 1952 The November date is what caught my attention first because I…

When last we saw Sammy Tiffin, he was the central character of Christopher Moore’s 2018 comic mystery-thriller-fantasy Noir which, as the name indicates, was a stab by Moore at writing like Raymond Chandler and Jim Thompson. Alas, as Moore acknowledged in an afterword, what resulted was more like “Damon Runyan meets Bugs Bunny,” something that…

At the start, Harry Angstrom, nicknamed Rabbit, is running away.  Later, he is running to — to the hospital.  At the end, he is running willy-nilly, without direction, into the unknown. His hands lift of their own and he feels the wind on his ears even before, his heels hitting heavily on the pavement at…