Chester Himes published his hardboiled crime novel The Big Gold Dream more than sixty years ago, and, for a present-day reader, it is something of a time capsule. It depicts [...]

It’s been fifty years since Robert E. Toomey, Jr., published his first novel A World of Trouble in 1973. It was also his last. As I read the sci-fi adventure, [...]

Out of Cabrini is a crackerjack police novel that rises above its genre with a subtly nuanced and very human story of crime and punishment from the perspective of cops, [...]

There is no getting around it.  William Kent Krueger’s 2013 novel Ordinary Grace has been a huge bestseller for a decade. Not only that, but it’s been honored as a [...]

I read a paperback copy of David Hare’s 1995 play Skylight that I found in one of the dozens of free little book boxes scattered across the neighborhoods I frequent [...]

In Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry, Tom Kettle tells the nightmare story of his life in waves of ever-increasing pain, violence and abuse. It is a novel that features [...]

The enchanting image of a dancing woman on the cover of Gloria Fossi’s thickly illustrated 1989 Filippo Lippi is more ambiguous than it appears. Ribbons and linen skirts are tossed [...]

Anne Kraatz initially published her book Lace: History and Fashion in French in 1988 and then helped with the English version from Rizzoli the next year with a translation by [...]

“Look out! He’s got a daisy!” That’s what Moist von Lipwig shouts at one point in Terry Pratchett’s Making Money, his 36th Discworld novel, and, even as he does, Moist [...]