Someone was shot in the alley on my block last Sunday. He died of those gunshot wounds on Monday morning. He lived five doors down from me. My daughter heard the shots; we were home at the time. She thought it was just a car backfiring, since neither I nor […]
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 […]
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 […]
Cover of Snow Jenny Milchman Ballantine Books ISBN-10: 0345534212 —♦— Waking up one wintry morning in her old farmhouse nestled in the Adirondack Mountains of New York, Nora Hamilton instantly knows that something is wrong. When her fog of sleep clears, she finds her world is suddenly, irretrievably shattered: Her […]
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.