The City & the City China Miéville Del Rey Release Date: May 26, 2009 ISBN 978-0-345-49751-2 I enjoy exploring literary works whose titles have been short-listed for awards in my preferred genre; the Hugos and the Nebulas, the World Fantasy Awards. Doing so has led me to many talented authors […]
After Atlas Emma Newman Roc Release Date: November 8, 2016 ISBN 978-0-425282-40-3 Last year, Emma Newman’s novel, Planetfall, chronicled the aftermath of an interstellar expedition whose participants thought they had found the resting place of God. Led by the unshakable faith of the genius scientist known as the Pathfinder, a […]
Career of Evil Robert Galbraith Mulholland Books Release Date: October 20, 2015 ISBN 978-0-316-34993-2 Career of Evil, the third book in the crime thriller series starring private detective Cormoran Strike, is the grittiest one yet. It’s no wonder that author J.K. Rowling stuck to her non de plume of Robert […]
The Severed Streets Paul Cornell Tor Books Publication Date: May 20, 2014 ISBN 978-0-7653-3028-4 It’s modern day, London, summer, hot. The city is in the grips of social unrest: masked mobs march in protest of funding and service cuts while perceived graft and waste in government flows on unabated, the […]
I am currently reading The Severed Streets, sequel to Paul Cornell’s exemplary supernatural crime novel, London Falling, and the concept of ostentation came up for discussion (with author Neil Gaiman – who is a rather fateful fictional iteration of himself in the book – as the literary provocateur). Not the […]
Leaving Time Jodi Picoult Ballantine Books Release Date: October 14, 2014 ISBN 978-0-345-54492-6 Jodi Picoult is one of our greatest storytellers. She is able to conjure up characters that not only feel real, but who move about in their scripted days as though they were real, rather than some kind […]
The Cuckoo’s Calling Robert Galbraith Mulholland Books Release Date: April 30, 2013 ISBN 978-0-316-20684-6 I’ll admit it – I’m one of those superficial ne’r-do-wells who would not have read The Cuckoo’s Calling if word hadn’t gotten out that author Robert Galbraith was really J.K. Rowling (of the “Harry Potter” books […]
London Falling Paul Cornell Tor Books First Edition: April 13, 2013 ISBN: 978-0765330277 Two undercover officers, one a veteran, the other a rookie, at odds, suspicious of the other as far as techniques, motivations, loyalties. Add to that their abrasive, hard-nosed commander, who will battle for every inch even as […]
On this day, December 3, in 1857, Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, Imperial Russia (modern
Ukraine, then a part of Poland). While he settled in England and wrote in English, he always considered himself a Pole. Heart of Darkness, one of the most famous of his 20 novels (which explores colonialism and the attitudes regarding what constitutes a barbarian versus civilized society) is considered one of the best English novels of the 20th century, as is his novel Lord Jim, which chronicles a crew’s abandonment of its disabled ship. Conrad died in England in 1924 at age 66.