Patrick Reardon

When Edwin, the overking of Northumbre, hears that Hild, his niece and sometime advisor, is pregnant, he is not pleased.  He tells her several times that the baby she is [...]

The central murder in Agatha Christie’s 1936 Cards on the Table is an audacious act that takes place in a closed-door room where a table of bridge players are intent [...]

Andre Norton’s 1970 novel Ice Crown is an interesting mix of the genres of science fiction and historical fiction, with hints of others. In its way, the book encapsulates Norton’s [...]

First, there’s the question of whether John Milton’s epic, 10,565-line, blank-verse poem Paradise Lost is a religious book. Which seems odd since the poem, originally published in 1667, tells the [...]

Scott O’Dell’s 1970 spare, steady and poignant novel Sing Down the Moon has a happy ending, but it tells a tragic story. In the final pages of this story — [...]

The title of Jake Johnson’s latest book — Unstaged Grief: Musicals and Mourning in Midcentury America — is more than a bit jarring. It’s that part about “Musicals and Mourning” [...]

Early on, Robert Garland, a professor emeritus of the classics at Colgate University, lets the reader know his scholarly intentions for What to Expect When You’re Dead: An Ancient Tour [...]

When Lew Archer first sees Miranda, the daughter of the missing millionaire Ralph Sampson, he has her pegged: I watched her over my salmon mayonnaise; a tall girl whose movements [...]

Elmore Leonard was a fan of human nature. He didn’t think in terms of us-and-them. We’re all us, each with flaws and moments of beauty. How else could he write [...]

The seven guys who make up the Animals had been through a lot in Christopher Moore’s earlier goofy novels set in San Francisco Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story and You [...]