Michael Connelly, a former Los Angeles Times reporter turned novelist, writes some of the most readable mysteries being published, and I thought this one of his best. It features his main series character, police detective Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch. (“Lincoln Lawyer” … Continue reading
This typically entertaining Discworld novel sends the elderly witches Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg, together with their younger colleague Magrat to a place rather like New Orleans to help a young woman rather like Cinderella avoid marrying a prince. Half … Continue reading
This is the first of a series of wild-west mysteries featuring Lucas Stanton, a guy who gambles for a living and pursues women as a hobby. He’s brave when necessary but otherwise has the good sense to avoid trouble, by … Continue reading
This was the first and best known of a series of adventure novels featuring a Scot named Richard Hannay. Buchan said he filled them with improbable events that readers could only just believe might happen. I’m reminded of The Adventures … Continue reading
In the late 1990s a writing student named Jim Butcher was urged by his teacher (author Deborah Chester) to set aside the medieval fantasies he’d been working on and try something in a modern setting. As Butcher said in a … Continue reading
A number of independent opinion polls conducted over the past several decades have noted a significant increase in the fraction of adult Americans who don’t consider themselves members of any religion. For example, in 2014 the nonreligious accounted for 21 … Continue reading
Alchemists influenced by eldritch forces discover the secret of making movies and this proves popular enough with the public that there are soon multiple movie factories grinding out product in a Holy Wood. Notorious Ank-Morpork sausage vendor Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler manages … Continue reading
Hawking, probably the most famous physicist since Einstein, offers an entertaining non-technical survey of cosmology and related areas of theoretical physics, a lot of it based on his own research. The book is over a decade old, but that’s recent … Continue reading
Stallznow, an Australian living in the U.S., has a linguistics PhD and a background in history and anthropology. She treats odd-sounding beliefs with respect but doesn’t hesitate to condemn — quite rightly, I’d say — groups that exploit or mistreat … Continue reading
The late Elmore Leonard wrote crime novels noted for their realistic dialog and interesting characters. This omnibus edition from The Library of America contains, as the volume’s title says, four novels from the 1970s, all fairly typical of Leonard’s work, … Continue reading