Book of the Dead

By Patricia Cornwell

Number 15 in the Kay Scarpetta series, in this book Dr. Kay Scarpetta has set up her own lab in South Carolina after the Florida deal went kaput. She is still being helped by ex-cop Pete Marino, ex-FBI Benton Wesley, her genius niece Lucy and her old secretary Rose. Kay is part of the investigation of the murder of a teen tennis star in Italy. As the investigation proceeds, Kay finds that the murder is linked to a local murder involving a little boy who was starved, abused and his body dumped in a swamp. The murders are also linked to loony shrink, Dr. Self, a woman who has a big grudge against Kay.
In this story, Benton has asked Kay to marry him and she has agreed. This sends Marino off the deep end and he starts hanging around with a very nasty woman who is a real bad influence on him. Lucy and Rose are both revealed to have tumors. Lucy's is not fatal but Rose has lung cancer. Kay is trying to make a new life for herself in Carolina but her hostile neighbors are not making it easy.
As I was reading this book, I found myself wondering why the "good guys" never seem to have a pleasant word to say to each other. They are always having to deal with hurt feelings and misunderstandings and everyone is continually saying and doing the wrong things. Kay, Lucy, Pete and Benton all seem miserably unhappy. The murderer is the only guy who is having any fun in this story and it is never explained just what his problem is and what his obsession with sand is about other than that he served in Iraq and was traumatized by it. The story is disjointed, shallow and once again the killer is linked to Kay personally, this time through that obnoxious pill from Kay's Florida days, Dr. Self and through Benton's boss.

I just can't recommend this book. I don't think Cornwell likes her characters anymore as she never lets them have a moment of peace or happiness. It appears Cornwell is going to replace the Marino character with the new character, the handyman and gardener, Bull. Lucy has a brain tumor and no compunctions about doing whatever is needed which may be her undoing. Rose is dying. Looks like the whole cast of characters is headed for a shake-up, which may be a good thing if it inspires the author to get back to the quality that this series used to have.

Review by Bruce Tierney in BookPage.

Cancer Vixen

By Marisa Acocella Marchetto

This book is called a "graphic novel" but it is the true account of Marisa's bout with breast cancer, presented in the form of a comic strip. Marisa was in her early 40s and newly engaged to her now husband, Silvano Marchetto, owner of New York restaurant DaSilvano. She discovered a small lump in her breast. She later went to the doctor (not because of the lump, though) and the doctor noticed the lump. At which point Marisa began her cancer journey.
Following Marisa's story gives a clear picture of the options available to women facing this disease. Marisa decided to have a lumpectomy followed by eight chemo treatments and radiation and five years of the drug tamoxifen. She details the misery of the treatments, which was pretty much what I feared they were. I didn't know that neulasta, the blood cell boosting drug they give cancer patients, had such nasty side effects. Apparently it makes you feel like you've been beaten up by a gang of thugs. Marisa, who had hoped to have children, finds out that while on tamoxifen, she should avoid becoming pregnant. By the time she gets off the drug, she will probably be too old to conceive. Plus one of her ovaries shut down during chemo.

Marisa still manages to remain upbeat most of the time and that is one of the best things about her book. While dealing with a disease that is a killer and also with the effects of September 11, 2001 (she wonders if she was exposed to some toxic agent then that may have caused her cancer), Marisa still tells her story with humor and insight. Her drawings of emaciated New York fashionistas are a hoot!
Lots of info is available about dealing with breast cancer. Marisa's graphic book presents the information in an upbeat and funny way. I enjoyed reading her story and sympathized very much with her struggle. And I also enjoyed the glimpse of her fast-paced New York lifestyle.

For another review of her book see the The Guardian.

Angle of Repose

By Wallace Stegner

This novel won the Pulitzer Prize for 1972.

Lyman Ward is a disabled older man, who, in order to occupy his time and also to help him understand himself and his family better, writes the life of his pioneering grandmother Susan. Lyman is divorced, his wife left him shortly after his surgery to removed his diseased leg. His wife left him for his surgeon and Lyman is understandably bitter. His son thinks Lyman should forgive and let the ex back into his life if for no other reason than that Lyman needs someone to look after him.
The grandmother, Susan, is a gentlewoman, raised on the East Coast and planning on a career as an artist/illustrator in the 19th century. She falls for an engineer from the far West, Oliver. Her friends fear she is throwing herself away when she marries Oliver Ward. Too bad for Susan that she enters her marriage with an unrealistic expectation of what their lives together will be. Susan thinks that she and Oliver will have to spend, at the most, ten years in the west, while Oliver makes his fortune. Then, as she sees it, they will move back east and take their place in the East Coast artistic, genteel society that Susan craves. But that doesn't happen.
Oliver goes from job to job, location to location, always chasing after the success that continually eludes him. At first, Susan goes happily along, but as the years pass she loses confidence in her husband. Her feelings become even more bleak as Oliver turns to alcohol to ease his disappointment and frustration. Feeling miserable, Susan becomes involved with her husband's friend and assistant, Frank.
The story weaves between that of Susan and her trials and that of her grandson, Lyman and his problems. Lyman looks at his grandmother's unhappiness and mistakes and tries to figure out what went wrong in his own marriage

The "angle of repose"is a geologic term, referring to the place where moving rock stops sliding downward, like in a rockslide. It is usually a precarious position, that the least change may cause to deteriorate. In Stegner's story it not only refers to a place of rest in the Ward's marriage, but also to the place of rest reached by Lyman in his slide downward in his life, his marriage and his illness. This is an interesting tale of two marriages in two different centuries, but concentrating mainly on Susan Ward. It is a rather long story but well worth the time it takes to read. Stegner based his story on the real life pioneer, Mary Hallock Foote. In fact, the letters in the story are taken from Foote's letters. Reading her letters made me want to read about her. Makes me wonder how closely Stegner's Susan Ward's life matched Foote's.

For two other reviews see ReadingGroupGuides and Grandpoohbah.

New Words:

Epicene: effeminate. "In the 1870s he was gentle, thoughtful, amusing, a spirit that glowed through a frail, almost epicene body.
Madrone: a plant, the arbutus. "In the night she may have heard the wind sighing under the eaves and creaking the stiff oaks and madrones on the hillside behind."
Charivari: shivaree. "'There was some talk about a charivari,' Oliver said. 'I gave them money for a couple barrels of beer. So now I'm going to take Sue home and barricade the doors.'"
Theodolite: a surveying instrument. "She could not bear to think of him down there in the blackness, dropping his thousand-foot plumb lines, gluing his eye to the theodolite eyepiece while an assistant held a candle close, and while the bob, suspended in water to make its motion minimal, moved in its deep orbit hundreds of feet below and the wire which was all he had to measure by shifted its hairbreadth left or right."
Tommyknockers: Welsh or Cornish version of a brownie or leprechaun. They live underground and wear miner's garb and are mischievous. "'Tommyknockers. Little people who go through the mine tapping at the timbering to make sure it's sound.'"
Wobblies: a Wobbly is a member of a union, the IWW, the Industrial Workers of the World. "I suggested the I.W.W. parallel to Ada, who being a miner's daughter knew about the Wobblies."
Argillaceous: soils which are predominantly clay or abounding in clays or claylike materials. "Decades later, over the mountain at Permanente, not too far from New Almaden, Henry Kaiser would make a very good thing indeed out of the argillaceous and calcareous that Oliver Ward forced into an insoluble marriage in the winter of 1877."
Proud flesh: the swollen tissue around a healing wound or ulcer. "Slack's, at the end of the steel, was as ugly as proud flesh, a gulch of shacks and tents and derailed cars, its one street a continuous mudhole, every square foot of flat ground cluttered with piles of ties, rails, logs, rusty Fresno scrapers, wagonbeds, spare wheels, barrels, lumber, coal."
Lacunae: gaps, blank spaces. "Mice have gnawed Grandmother's Leadville letters and created some historical lacunae."
Attenuated: weakened. "Anyway I'm not sure I could stand being attenuated in Mr. James's fashion. I was half glad he didn't appear, isn't it awful?"
Democrat wagon: a high, lightweight, horse-drawn wagon, usually having two seats. "Oliver met us with a democrat wagon at Kuna, the end of the line."
Meeching: Hiding; skulking; cowardly. "Vexed by the unpleasantness of her own laugh as much as by Mrs. Briscoe's absence, she looked over her shoulder, afraid that meeching pig-like presence might be behind her."
Fourierist phalansteries: Fourierism is a system for social reform advocated by Charles Fourier in the early 19th century, proposing that society be organized into small self-sustaining communal groups or phalanges. A phalanstery was the building designed by Fourier to house the community. See Wikipedia. "'Plato,' I said. 'In his fashion. Sir Thomas More, in his way. Coleridge, Melville, Samuel Butler, D.H. Lawrence, in their ways. Brook Farm and all the other Fourierist phalansteries. New Harmony, whether under the Rappites or the Owenites. The Icarians. Amana. Homestead. The Mennonites. The Amish. The Hutterites. The Shakers. The United Order of Zion. The Oneida Colony. Especially the Oneida Colony.'"

A Concise History of the Middle East

By Arthur Goldschmidt, Jr.

Arthur Goldschmidt, Jr. is a professor emeritus of Middle Eastern history at Penn State.

This book does not cover the ancient history of the Middle East. It starts with the era shortly before Muhammad and goes on from there. Like it says, it is a concise history, but still contains interesting details that help liven up what is basically a college text book for beginning students of Middle Eastern history. The author's style is very readable and his explanations some of the best and most clear that I have read. He lays out the history of this complex area simply and makes the connections apparent. This book gives the reader a really good, basic understanding of the region. I wouldn't mind having a copy of this book on my bookshelf.

Anansi Boys

By Neil Gaiman

This book is the sequel to American Gods but it stands on its own so it is not necessary to read the first to enjoy the second.

Fat Charlie Nancy has a problematic father. His dad is a joker, a fan of the practical joke. He made Fat Charlie's boyhood so embarrassing and painful that even though Fat Charlie is planning to get married he is not planning to invite his father. His father is the one who saddled him with the nickname Fat Charlie even though Fat Charlie isn't fat. When Fat Charlie hears that his father has died, he isn't exactly heartbroken. Still he goes to his dad's funeral and there he is told that his dad wasn't actually human. Fat Charlie's dad, Mr. Nancy, was a petty god, Anansi, the personification of spider, an African trickster god.
Seems like, back at the beginning, the animal god Tiger was in charge of all the stories. Tiger's stories are full of hunting, killing, blood and strife. Then Anansi gained custody of all the stories and stories became full of cunning and tricks and imagination instead. Tiger still wants to get the stories back and he hates Anansi.
Fat Charlie also finds out that he has a brother, Spider. Spider is everything that Fat Charlie is not. Spider has godly powers like their dad, Spider is cool, Spider is attractive, Spider gets everything he wants. Compared to Spider, Fat Charlie is a loser.
Spider shows up at Fat Charlie's and turns his life upside down. He gets Charlie in trouble at work and Charlie's nasty boss frames Charlie for the embezzlement the boss has been committing. Spider dates Charlie's girl and sleeps with her, something that she never let Charlie do.
Seeking to get Spider out of his life, Charlie makes a deal with the bird god and he gives her the bloodline of Anansi for her own. Foolishly he doesn't realize that this includes himself.
Charlie finds himself in jail for embezzlement and both Charlie and Spider are being attacked by hordes of birds every time they venture outside. A storm of birds swoops down on Spider and carries him off and he ends up being hunted by Tiger. It is up to Charlie to straighten out the mess, find his voice and discover what it means to be the son of the trickster god, Anansi.

This is meant to be a fun book, for the most part, and it is. Some of the funniest stuff is Charlie's comments about his girlfriend's mother. There are some folk stories featuring Anasi and Tiger which are pretty boring but I guess they are included to illustrate the two characters personalities and history. They might be interesting to people who like folk stories and mythology. The novel isn't all fun and games though. The part about Fat Charlie's murderous boss and Spider's struggles with the bird god and Tiger are pretty grim. Spider gets his tongue ripped out and is tied down for Tiger to kill. Despite these darker notes, this is a good, often funny and entertaining story, an enjoyable read.

Review by Kirkus Reviews.

New Word:
Lubricious: "Fat Charlie realized that he knew the man in his dream, knew him from somewhere, and he also realized that this would irritate him for the rest of the day if he let it, like a snag of dental floss caught between two teeth, or the precise difference between the words lubricious and lascivious, it would sit there, and it would irritate him."
Lubricious means offensively displaying or intended to arouse sexual desire; or having a smooth or slippery quality.

House Made of Dawn

N. Scott Momaday

This novel won the Pulitzer Prize for 1969.

After I finished reading this book, I thought to myself that many parts of it were like reading blank verse and that it seemed rather disjointed and without much of a plot. Then I read online that the book originally started out as poetry, then as short stories and finally it was all tied together in the form of a novel. So my impression of it was confirmed by the facts.

In the novel Abel has come home to the reservation to live with his grandfather in New Mexico after serving overseas in World War II. He is pretty much of an alcoholic. During the short time Abel is home, he kills an albino man who he believes is a witch. He is sent to prison (his time in prison is completely skipped over) and after getting out heads to Los Angeles. At first he gets a job, but loses it. He runs afoul of an abusive cop and gets the stuffing beaten out of him. He is found by a friend and taken to the hospital. When he leaves the hospital, he heads back home to the reservation just in time to take care of his grandfather who is dying. Tending to his grandfather and listening to him talk helps Abel reconnect with his spirituality.

Even though I am neither a fan of poetry or short stories, still I enjoyed reading this book. The descriptions of the landscape were wonderfully evocative. I lived in New Mexico for a few years and reading this novel brought the beautiful and stark vistas back almost as if I were there again. I also enjoyed reading about the ceremonies and the dances, especially the story of the peyote service at the Los Angeles church. I even enjoyed reading the poems and songs. I do wish I had a study guide when reading it as I didn't understand parts of the story, especially the business with the albino. Also, there are a lot of Indian or Spanish words in the story. Still, though a lot of it didn't make sense to me, I really liked it.

For a more thorough summary of House Made of Dawn see the article about it at Wikipedia.

Review from Kirkus Reviews.

New Words (not the foreign words):
Sacristan: the man in charge of the sacristy and the vessels and vestments. The sacristy is the room in which these items are stored.
Peneplain: A flat, featureless landscape formed by a long history of erosion. "He made camp that night far down the peneplain and saw the stars and heard the coyotes away by the river."

The Fellowship of the Talisman

By Clifford D. Simak

This story is set on an alternate Earth where it's the twentieth century, but people are still living like it was medieval times. Duncan Standish, son of a lord, is on a mission. An ancient manuscript has been found. This manuscript is a diary of the life of Jesus Christ, written in ancient Aramaic. This eyewitness account could be the definitive proof that Jesus Christ was a real person and could bring inspiration and comfort to a suffering world. The only person who can authenticate the diary is in Oxenford (Oxford) and Duncan takes on the task of conveying the diary to Oxenford. His mission is urgent as the expert is a very old man in poor health. Duncan sets forth with his friend Conrad, a guard dog, a war horse, and a little donkey to carry the pack.
In this alternate Earth, evil is on the rampage. A mysterious, malign group known as the Harriers is killing everyone, destroying the countryside and Duncan's path lies straight through their territory. The Harriers are strange monsters and hellish creatures who are not of Earth. Their presence on Earth is the reason mankind has not advanced.
Duncan and Conrad head for Oxenford, encountering many strange creatures and have many battles with the Harriers. They are helped out by creatures that normally wouldn't help humans, like Scratch the demon, Snoopy the goblin, Nan the banshee, who all hate the Harriers more than they hate humanity. Somehow, though often out-numbered they manage to prevail against the Harriers. Duncan believes that the magic talisman he found on their travels is protecting them against the Harriers. Perhaps the talisman holds the key to the destruction of the Harriers. Or perhaps not...

This was an OK read. I got a rather tired of the endless battle scenes. I also didn't much care for the ending, it was a bit of a letdown. Other than that, it was an OK fantasy story.

Review from Kirkus Reviews.

Lifeguard

By James Patterson and Andrew Gross

Ned Kelly is sure that his luck has just turned from bad to good. He is in love with a lovely woman, Tess, and she loves him too. Plus Ned's friends have come to him for his help in pulling off a sweetheart of a heist that will net them each a million dollars. What could go wrong? Everything.
The million dollar deal turns out to be a setup and the only thing Ned's friends get is dead. Ned escapes their fate but learns that someone has murdered Tess. Now Ned finds himself the chief suspect in the failed heist, and the murders of his friends and of Tess. The cops are sure they are on the right track and that Ned Kelly is their man. However FBI agent Ellie Shurtleff thinks the heist was an inside job and that Ned and his gang were just patsies. Together Ellie and Ned work to figure out who was the brains behind the heist and why his friends were killed and if or how the murder of Tess figures into it all. And who is Dr. Gachet?

I read the condensed version of this novel and I think it must have left some important details out because I found the story confusing and hard to follow at times, especially towards the end as Kelly's search for the truth zeros in on the elusive Dr. Gachet. Other than that, it was an interesting story. Ned Kelly isn't really a criminal, but when his friends come to him with a million dollar sure thing, it is easy to see how he couldn't resist.

Review from Publishers Weekly.

Looking for Peyton Place

By Barbara Delinsky

What does Looking for Peyton Place have to do with the novel Peyton Place? Other than that it is set in a small New England town, not much. Peyton Place was an exposé of the secrets and scandals of life in a small town. The only scandal in Looking for Peyton Place is the mercury pollution and cover-up at the local mill. True, the heroine of this story likes to imagine that the author of Peyton Place, Grace Metalious, speaks to her and gives her advice. That is pretty much just a plot device to tie this story to the original novel.
In Looking for Peyton Place, the main character Annie Barnes believes, as does the whole town, that Metalious based her novel on their town. Annie believes her mother was the basis for the main character, Allison, in Peyton Place. Annie's mother settled down in her home town and raised three daughters, Annie, Phoebe and Sabina. Annie left home and became a writer and her two sisters stayed home. Sabina got married and works at the mill and Phoebe works at her mother's dress shop.
At the start of the novel, Annie comes home after her mother has died of a mysterious illness with symptoms similar to Parkinson's Disease. Annie finds out that her sister Phoebe is now afflicted with the same symptoms as their mother. She begins to suspect that some kind of toxic substance is at work when she discovers that many folks in town have gotten ill and some have died. Annie is pretty sure that the source of the pollution is the mill.
As she starts to investigate further, Annie runs into a lot of anger and resistance. The townsfolk are convinced that Annie is writing an exposé like Peyton Place. She is even threatened by the local police and runs afoul of Aidan, one of the sons of the mill owner. She had a bad experience with Aidan in the past. Nevertheless, she carries on the investigation, with the help of an unknown informant, whom she only knows as "True Blue".
Despite being stonewalled by most of the locals, Annie becomes convinced that mercury is the reason behind a lot of the illness in town. She also finds herself falling for one of the enemy, the mill owner's other son James. She really likes James, but is he involved in his family's cover-up of the mercury pollution at the mill? She wants to trust him but she finds it hard to believe he isn't one of the bad guys.

I didn't really care for this story. I thought it was predictable and dull. I didn't feel that the story really had much connection to its namesake and that the author just wanted to capitalize on the previous novel's notoriety.

Review from Publishers Weekly.

Teta, Mother, and Me

By Jean Said Makdisi

Makdisi takes a look at the history of the two most important women in her life, her grandmother and her mother. Makdisi is a Palestinian Christian who lived through the upheavals in Palestine, Lebanon and Egypt. Her grandmother was born in 1880 in Syria. Her father (Makdisi's great-grandfather) was an Arab Protestant minister in Syria. Previously the family had been Greek Orthodox Catholic but he was educated at a Protestant mission school and converted. Makdisi's grandmother and mother and Makdisi herself were all educated in Protestant mission schools. It is Makdisi's contention that the skills and values communicated to herself, her mother and grandmother were intended to created modern women of them and they succeeded in turning the three women into typical examples of modern middle class women. But Makdisi feels that they were alienated from the traditional Arab culture that, according to Makdisi, values women's place in society more than modern culture. She says that her mother and grandmother became isolated and redundant once their duties of childcare were over: "She existed in an empty, undefined space created by the new structure of society, and it was a space that provided little comfort or status for women who had no husband and no property. Teta [her grandmother] was dispossessed of the high status traditionally granted to Arab matriarchs precisely by that society which she had helped to form." She feels that the 'veil' of modesty taught to her as a child, was a "veil far darker and more impenetrable, and far more durable, than that outer cloth which covered the faces of ... Muslim girls..." She says the mission schools created a "system which repressed, rather than liberated, women..." Makdisi's mother also felt betrayed by the modern society that was supposed to make her life better, and that "Mother wrote grimly that she did not think her children had appreciated her hard work, her hospitality or her contributions to their lives." Somehow this is all the fault of a Western society imposed on Arab culture by the racist mission schools, according to Makdisi.

That Makdisi doesn't like the West or its values comes through pretty clearly. That is understandable, given that she is Palestinian. It is not a very balanced look at the effect of modernity on Middle Eastern women. Plus, it is just not a very interesting book. The writing is dry and dull and full of a lot of boring details, except about herself. Although she does talk about her childhood, Makdisi skims over her adult life. I found this book a chore to read and I was glad when I finally got through it.

For another review of the book, see Christianity Today.

The Confessions of Nat Turner

By William Styron

This novel won the Pulitzer Prize for 1968.

In 1831, a slave called Nat led a rebellion in Virginia. Nat and his followers killed 57 whites; men, women and children. Nat was an intelligent man who learned to read at time when it was forbidden to teach slaves to read. Nat was very religious and prayed and fasted in order to become closer to God. He experienced visions which he believed were God leading him to rise up against slavery. He was convinced that the whites needed to be slaughtered and that it was the only way to obtain his people's freedom from white oppression. Sadly, his failed rebellion resulted in the revenge killings of hundreds of innocent blacks and the enactment of even stricter rules against blacks in the South, freed men and slaves.
William Styron was born in Virginia not far from the site of the 1831 slave rebellion led by Nat Turner. I suppose he was aware of Nat from the early days of his life and it is not surprising that he decided to write this fictionalized account of Nat's life and the rebellion he masterminded. It was perhaps presumptuous of Styron though. At the time the novel was published, he was criticized and called a racists by many in the black community. They felt his portrayal of Nat distorted the motives that drove Nat to take the drastic steps that he did. After reading this novel and reading about Nat Turner, I think they are probably right. I don't think Styron really understood what drove Nat to rebellion. A lot of what he wrote about Nat comes off more as fiction than as fact, especially the stuff about Nat's fantasies about white women. Also Styron completely omits the fact that Nat was married. In the book, he paints Styron as a frustrated enamored man lusting after a white girl. This book does present the bare facts of the rebellion but it seems off base in its depiction of Nat. However, if you look at this novel as just a work of fiction, then it is pretty interesting.
Nat's rebellion is an important event in history and illuminates the desperation of people who feel they have been dealt with unfairly and unjustly and seek redress even to point of murder of the innocent and the not-so-innocent.

Review from Kirkus Reviews.


New Words:
Quiddities: "'The essence -- that is, all the quiddities of detail are the same -- or at least I hope they are the same.'" Quiddity means the essence of a thing.
Casuistry: "'Merciful God in heaven, will such casuistry never end! Is not the handwriting on the wall?'" Casuistry means subtle but misleading reasoning.
Crepuscular: "I seemed to be walking alone at the edge of a swamp at nightfall, the light around me glimmering, crepuscular, touched with that greenish hue presaging the onslaught of a summer storm." Crepuscular means that time of day at dawn and twilight.
Majuscules: "'I stress and underline that word. I put that word in majuscules!'" Majuscules means capital letters.
Sedulous: "Though usually the sedulous snoop, I had paid no attention to the conversation, fascinated instead by Benjamin, wondering if this would be one of those evenings when he fell out of his chair." Sedulous means diligent.
Coffle: "The slave coffle had halted at the side of the road, not far below the clearing where the wagon trace began." Coffle means a line of slaves or prisoners chained together.
Calcimine: "I heard the ladder make a faint tap-tapping as they set it against the side of the house and quickly I tested it for balance, gripping it tight by a chest-high rung, then without a word began my climb up the side of the house, past the newly whitewashed clapboard timbers that hurt my eyes in a calcimine lunar glare." Calcimine means whitewash.

Heart of Stone

By C.E. Murphy

Margrit Knight is a young lawyer who likes to take chances. One chance she loves taking is going for a run through Central Park after dark. She is a fast, strong runner and she figures she can outrun any would be assailants. She is more than a little perturbed when a strange man has the audacity to speak to her as she is jogging. She then finds out that a man matching his description is a suspect in the murder of a woman in the park. He next approaches her at a dance club, startling her badly. But before she can summon help, he vanishes. The cops, including her on again, off again boyfriend Tony, can't figure out how he managed to get out of the club without appearing on the security cameras. Still at the club, after the police have left, the man, Alban Korund, again approaches her and claims that he was not the murderer and that he needs her help. Before he can say much more, Tony shows up and scares him off.
Margrit gets involved in a squatter case that sets a powerful man against her. This man sends an assassin after Margrit but Alban swoops in and rescues her. She is knocked out and Alban carries her off to his apartment. Once she awakens, he reveals the that he isn't human, he's a gargoyle. He can switch back and forth between looking human and looking stony. He's big and strong and fast and he has wings and can fly, but only at night. During daylight, he is changed to real stone and frozen that way till sundown. And he still wants Margrit's help in proving his innocence.
In the course of their investigation, Margrit learns that, before humankind, there were five races of beings; dragons, vampires, djinn, selkies, and gargoyles. These "old races" are all in decline because of humanity. In fact, the woman who brought the squatter case to Margrit is one of the old races, a selkie. The man who owns the building concerned turns out to be a vampire. His hired guns who tried to run over Margrit are a dragon and a djinn. Seems like there is a lot going on in New York that humans are completely unaware of.

A lot of this book didn't make much sense to me. Why would a powerful property owner bother to have some small-time lawyer killed just because she was trying to get an injunction against have an old building torn down? If big time developers killed everyone who sued them, the bodies would be knee deep. It was also rather contrived that Margrit would be approached by a selkie at the same time she was introduced to the gargoyle. Another thing that bothered me was that the sexual tension between Margrit and the gargoyle, Alban, is never resolved. I figure it is a hook to draw the reader into the second novel, House of Cards. Although there are few minor threads left hanging, the main one is that Alban and Margrit never get together, even though Margrit's tongue is practically dangling on her chest every time she and Alban are in the same room. I just didn't find this first book in this trilogy, titled The Negotiator, that interesting.

Review by Publishers Weekly.

A Thousand Splendid Suns

By Khaled Hosseini

Miriam is born in 1959 into a hard life in Afghanistan to a bitter and unhappy woman. Her mother is angry at Miriam's father, because, when she became pregnant, instead of marrying her, he set her up in a little hut on the edge of town. She and Miriam live as outcasts. Miriam's mother tries to teach her daughter the facts of life for women: "Like a compass needle that points north, a man's accusing finger always finds a woman. Always." And, "It's our lot in life, Miriam. Women like us. We endure. It's all we have." Despite this, Miriam loves her father desperately. When the Disney cartoon "Pinocchio" comes to town, Miriam wants to see it so badly she runs away from her mother and goes to her father's house in town. He refuses to see her and won't even open the door. She spends the night sitting in front of the door and in the morning she is taken home by her father's driver only to discover her mother has killed herself in her absence. Her mother was sure her daughter had abandoned her forever. Miriam's father finally takes her into his home, but only for a few weeks. He arranges for her to marry a shoemaker from Kabul. The shoemaker, Rasheed, is a widower and much older than Miriam. He wants to get married again because he wants a son. Miriam gets pregnant many times, but always miscarries. Her life with Rasheed is miserable. He blames her for the miscarriages and he beats and belittles her.
In the neighborhood where Miriam lives is a beautiful girl named Laila who has a crush on a boy, Tariq. Tariq's family leaves Kabul when the civil war makes life there dangerous. He says goodbye to Laila and they have intercourse. Laila's family also decides to leave, but are killed in a bomb blast. Laila survives and is taken in by Rasheed and Miriam.
Rasheed is lusting after Laila and wants her to marry him. Rasheed knows she is in love with Tariq so he arranges for a man to come and tell Laila that Tariq is dead. Laila has no one she can turn to and she knows she is carrying Tariq's baby. So she agrees to marry Rasheed. At first, she and Miriam don't get along because Miriam resents her. Laila gives birth to a baby girl and Rasheed is angry and disappointed.
Laila and Miriam become allies against Rasheed and they try to flee Kabul and escape his terrible abuse. They are caught and returned to him and he punishes them cruelly. Later, Laila finally gives birth to a boy, but Rasheed never forgives her for trying to escape him.
Hard times come and money is scarce. Rasheed forces Laila to put her little girl in an orphanage. This crushes Laila and Miriam, they both love the little girl dearly. Then one day, Tariq shows up, looking for Laila. Laila's son tattles to his father about Laila's male visitor and Rasheed goes ballistic. Laila and Miriam are in a fight for their lives.

I found this book very griping and well worth reading. It is a revealing look at life in Afghanistan in a society that views women as property whose only function is to produce and rear children. Although I was aware of the bare facts of life for women under the brutal and repressive Taliban, still it was fascinating reading about the lives of these two women. I really enjoyed this book.

For a more complete summary of the novel, visit Wikipedia.

Review by Natasha Walter in The Guardian:   https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/may/19/featuresreviews.guardianreview21.

The Fixer

By Bernard Malamud

This book won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1967.

This is a political novel, detailing the imprisonment of a Jewish man wrongly accused of killing a boy. It is set in Russia in the early 1900s, shortly before the Russian revolution. It is a story of prejudice and antisemitism. It is also based on the true story of Menahem Mendel Beilis.
Beilis worked in a brickyard and he was a Jew, but not devout. He was accused of killing a boy in a ritual murder. Basically, the state had no case against him. As in Malamud's novel, the state decided to coerce a confession out of Beilis. To that end he was imprisoned in the worst conditions, treated inhumanely and accused of the most ridiculous crimes, all in an attempt to break his will and get him to confess to the murder rather than take the case to trial. The blatant antisemitism of the case attracted international attention and the outcry against the Russian regime helped bring Beilis to trial. He was acquitted and later immigrated to Palestine and then to the USA.
In Malamud's version, Beilis is Yakov Bok. Bok is also a non-devout Jew who works in a brickyard and he is accused of a murder he didn't commit. He is imprisoned for two years under terrible despicable conditions all to force him to confess to a crime he didn't commit. He knows he is innocent and he refuses to knuckle under. One reason he does this is because he wants to protect his people, the Jews: "So what can Yakov Bok do about it? All he can do is not make things worse. He's half a Jew himself, yet enough of one to protect them. After all, he knows the people; and he believes in their right to be Jews and live in the world like men. He is against those who are against them. He will protect them to the extent he can. This is his covenant with himself." Bok knows if he caves and signs the confession, it will be used as an excuse to attack and slaughter the Jews living in Russia.

This was a difficult novel to read. The antisemitism portrayed in it is disgusting and nauseating, especially as it is a true picture of antisemitism then and now. Bok spends two years locked away in solitary under horrible conditions. It was depressing to read about what he endured. I can't say I enjoyed the story and I especially didn't like its inconclusive ending. Still, I had never heard of Menahem Mendel Beilis, so in doing a little research for this review, I guess I learned about an important event in history.

For another review, see the NY Times review from 1966.

In a side note, I am currently reading the next Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Confessions of Nat Turner, a fictionalized account of a slave rebellion in Virginia in the 1830s. Malamud, in The Fixer has this to say about slavery: "There's something cursed, it seems to me, about a country where men have owned men as property." An interesting coincidence, I thought.

Something new: I thought I would list the words I came across with which I was not familiar. So here goes.

New Words

Meliorist: reformer. "That is how I feel, but having made that confession let me say, as you may have guessed, that I am something of a meliorist."

Peculating: embezzling. "He was arrested for peculating from official funds."

Shochet: a kosher animal slaughterer. "Before Yakov was permitted to leave the office, the Prosecuting Attorney, his face darkened by blood, reading from his notebook, asked the prisoner if he was related to Baal Shem Tov or Rabbi Zalman Schneur of Ladi, and whether there had ever been a shochet in his family."

Grave Surprise

By Charlaine Harris

The second in the new series by Harris, the first being Grave Secret.
Harper Connelly had the misfortune of being struck by lightning when she was fifteen. In addition to some debilitating physical side effects from the event such as headaches and weakness, Harper gained the ability to sense the presence of dead bodies and their cause of death. She now uses her ability to help the police and relatives of missing persons, assisted by her step-brother, Tolliver.
In this story, Harper is hired by a college professor to locate bodies in an old graveyard. The records for the graveyard had been long lost but were recently found. The professor, Clyde Nunley, wants to use the graveyard to prove that Harper is a fake. Too bad for the professor when she correctly locates and reveals the cause of death for each grave they look at. At the last grave, Harper senses the presence of two bodies, one of which is a little girl, a little girl who has been missing for almost two years, a little girl named Tabitha.
Harper already was familiar with this missing person. She was hired by the girl's family when Tabitha first went missing but Harper was unable to locate her at that time. Harper and her brother, Tolliver, get the creepy feeling that it is no coincidence that they were taken to the site of Tabitha's grave. What they have to try to figure out now is who gave their names to Nunley and how that person is connected to Tabitha's death. Things become even more dangerous when Harper finds a newly dead body in the same grave Tabitha had recently occupied.
Not only does Harper need to unravel the mystery surrounding Tabitha and her family but she also takes a closer look at her relationship with her stepbrother, Tolliver. And what about the new man in her life, the very pierced and telepathic Manfred, who seems like he would very much enjoy spending time with Harper.

This is only the second book by Harris that I have read and having started with the vampire series and not liking it that much, I didn't really expect much from this book. I am pleased to say that I enjoyed it very much and will look for others in the Harper Connelly series.

Review by Publishers Weekly:   https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-425-21203-5.

Definitely Dead

By Charlaine Harris

This is the sixth book in Charlaine's vampire series, but the first one I have read.
Sookie is a waitress who can read minds. Her ability has lead her into a life of danger and intrigue involving vampires, were-creatures, fairies, demons, witches and who knows what else.
In this story, Sookie has to go to New Orleans to deal with her dead cousin Hadley's affairs. She also investigates the circumstances that lead to Hadley's death. Hadley, by the way, was a vampire and the homosexual lover of the queen of the vampires of Louisiana. While in New Orleans, Sookie is required to attend a party given by the queen and her new husband, the vampire king of Arkansas. Sookie also has a hunky new boyfriend, a were-tiger named Quinn.
Here is a typical day in the life of Sookie: Meet your cousin's landlady and discover she is a witch. Find a dead body in your cousin's closet. Discover the body is actually not dead but is a newly-created vampire and he is just waking up very, very hungry. Get attacked and bitten by said vampire, who also turns out to be the missing employee of your new boyfriend. Go to the hospital to get bandaged up and find out your old boyfriend, Bill, only seduced you because he was ordered to by the queen of the vampires. Walk home from the hospital, leaving without seeing a doctor, and break in to your dead cousin's apartment because you don't have a key and are too upset to ask for help, and finally, wake up the next morning to find your fairy godmother is lying in your bed with you.
The story reminded me of Laurell K. Hamilton's work. She writes similar stuff. Except Charlaine's story doesn't have the graphic sex or quite as much mayhem as Hamilton's. Also, although I may not be remembering correctly, but I don't think Laurell has fairies or demons in her stories. But other than that, it was really similar.

The problem I had with the story, coming into it so far along in the series, was keeping track of all the characters and their relationship to Sookie. I picked up the book because it was recommended to me as a funny read. I didn't find it funny or even mildly amusing, so that was disappointing. Also, I am not a big fan of vampire fiction. But neither of those things are this novel's fault. Nevertheless, I  didn't really care for this story. I didn't hate it, but I won't be looking to read the first five books in the series.

Review from Publishers Weekly:   https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-441-01400-2.

The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter

This collection of stories won the Pulitzer Prize for 1966.

What a chore it was wading through this dismal collection of short stories and short novels. For the most part the stories are pretty depressing. I read fiction to be entertained. I was not entertained by any of these often grim stories. When it comes to grim reality, I have enough of that in real life. I don't need it in fiction too. I was not moved or touched or inspired or anything except relieved when I finally waded through the last depressing page. The only thing positive that I can say is that Porter paints a vivid scene.
I did come across a couple words I didn't know. One word was "pawky" as in "He went on in his pawky way trying to make clear to her his mystical faith..." According to what I found online, pawky means cunning, tricky. Another word was "quid" as in "He sat on the steps, shot his quid into the grass..." Quid means a chew of tobacco.
I also found a couple of interesting ideas in the stories, one in which she says, "And she brought it on herself by drinking lemon and salt to stop her periods when she wanted to go to dances." I had never heard of this before and I could find nothing online about using lemon and salt to stop menses.
The other strange idea is this one, "At Easter we ate only pork in contempt of the Jews..." Is this where the tradition of eating ham at Easter came from, to spite the non-pork-eating Jews? I had never heard this before and I couldn't find anything online to verify it.

If you enjoy wallowing in human misery, then you'll probably like the stories of Katherine Anne Porter.

Shattered Dreams: My LIfe as a Polygamist's Wife

By Irene Spencer

This is Irene's story of her experience as the second wife of a man who eventually had 10 wives. Both Irene and her husband were members of a fundamentalist Mormon sect that believes in the polygamy espoused by the founders of the Mormon religion. It is a pretty far-out doctrine which I find amazing that anyone would ever believe came from God and not from the unbridled lusts of a bunch of dirty old men. According to the author, Brigham Young claimed that there are spirits in the universe that need bodies to inhabit and that it is the duty of righteous men and women to provide these bodies and the best way to do that is through polygamy. They also were taught that men could become gods if they married at least two women (although seven or more is better) and had as many kids as possible. (Never mind that the ratio of men to women is about 50/50 so if one man has 10 wives then nine men must have none. Irene's man proves the ratio: he had 29 sons and 29 daughters.) As for the women, they could only become goddess if they help their man have as many wives and children as possible. They were also taught the "law of purity" that required abstinence from sexual relations before marriage and after becoming married during pregnancy, lactation, menses and after menopause. Of course the real reason for the purity law is to take some of the pressure off the man who is trying to service his herd of women and give him a break from his sexual duties. In Irene's case, she and her man only had sex to get her pregnant. She had thirteen kids with him and probably had sex with him less than thirty times in the more than two decades they were together.
Irene was raised in this strange sect and when she turned seventeen she decided she wanted to be a polygamist's wife. So she married her half-sister's husband. Right away she was miserable. Seems like her new man had neither the time or resources to spend on his new wife. Also the first wife didn't like sharing. But so what? That didn't stop him from going out and getting new wives over the course of the years. He ended up with 58 kids before he died at the age of 51. When I read he had died young, I figured it was from exhaustion. (It wasn't, he died in a car crash.)
This man dragged his wives and kids from place to place, from shack to shack, always short of money, making his families live on beans and little else, dozens of them crowded into one small house, living without electricity or indoor plumbing or even running water. Everyone worked like dogs trying to raise food and earn money to support the herd. It was never enough. Every time they would get a little ahead, he lead them off to another and usually worse place.
Even though Irene wanted to live the polygamous life, she found she didn't really have the temperament for it. She always felt neglected and very lonely. She longed for intimacy with her man and rarely got it. Every time he brought a new women into the herd, it tore Irene up. Her life was one of constant deprivation and labor and bearing so many babies nearly wrecked her health. She wanted to do what she thought was the right thing but she became so depressed she longed to die. Still, she stuck by him, even though, towards the end, she longed to escape.

This is an amazing story of Irene's journey through polygamy and fanatical religion and out to sanity and peace of mind and spirit. It is a story of love, hard work, endurance and survival. It is also an enlightening look at how people can be controlled and ruled by beliefs that seem silly to outsiders looking in. I felt sorry for Irene, but I couldn't help thinking that she only got what she wanted. She wasn't forced into polygamy. She saw how miserable it made her mother. She bought into the fantasy but she sure did bruise herself on the reality.

Review by Kirkus Reviews:   https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/irene-spencer/shattered-dreams-2/.

The Keepers of the House

By Shirley Ann Grau

This novel won the Pulitzer Prize for 1965.

The Howlands have lived and prospered in central Alabama since the early days of the 1800s. The first William Howland settled there and built his home. He was killed by Indians but his sons carried on after him. Eventually the Howlands ended up owning a lot of valuable land in the county and became one of the the wealthiest families in the area. As their fortunes grew so did their house.
Despite their prominence, the Howlands were not particularly well liked. The locals considered them a bit peculiar. The Howlands didn't flaunt their wealth and perhaps their neighbors didn't really understand just how much of the local economy depended on the well being of the Howland family's current representative, Abigail. But they are about to find out, because, in the words of Abigail at the start of the story, "I shall destroy as much as I have lost."
Abigail's grandfather, William, acquired a housekeeper after his wife died. The housekeeper, a mixed-race black woman named Margaret, became his mistress. Margaret and William had three children, Robert, Nina and Crissy. The eldest, Robert, is the same age as William's only grandchild, Abigail, who lives there also. All three of Margaret's kids look white and all three are sent away to school up north to give them the chance to live as white people. It is what their mother wanted for them. But being sent away like that causes some angry and hard feelings among the children.
Abigail grows up and marries John Tolliver, an ambitious man who wants a career in politics. He sees Abigail's wealth and prominence as a stepping stone to his career, although she does not believe this, despite her grandfather's warning. Tolliver is a bigot and a racist, or at least this is how he presents himself, because he knows that it is what will appeal to the racist and bigoted voters of the Alabama of that time (1950s-60s). He joins the KKK and the White Citizens Council. He is a smart politician and is zeroing in on the governorship when the family secret is leaked to the press by an angry and vengeful Robert: William Howland and Margaret were married, she wasn't his mistress, she was his wife. The instant Tolliver hears this news, he leaves Abigail and shortly files for divorce. His political career is now ruined and he no longer has any use for her and so he cuts out and heads back to his home town.
The county knew that Margaret's children were fathered by William and that was OK. But the idea that he actually married a black woman is not OK. Even though Margaret and William have been dead for years, still the mob must have its revenge and takes it out on the only Howland available, Abigail.

I found this to be a really interesting and engrossing story, although sad and depressing. This is not a happy tale, not at all. Margaret and William suffer because they cannot reveal their marriage or that their children are not illegitimate. The three mixed race kids suffer because they are sent away from their family. Abigail suffers when her marriage falls apart and she is forced to bear the brunt of the county's anger against her grandfather. No, it is not a happy tale but it was a fascinating read.

Review by Kirkus Reviews. 

Peyton Place

By Grace Metalious

This book came out in 1956, although it is set in the late 1930s & early 1940s. It was an exposé of small town life in New England. Set in the fictitious town of Peyton Place, it focuses mainly on three people, Constance MacKenzie and her daughter Allison and Selena Cross. Constance is a prosperous shopkeeper with a secret, a secret that is unknown even to her daughter, Allison. Constance was never married. Selena Cross has a secret too. She was impregnated by her stepfather and had an abortion performed by the local physician, secretly of course, since abortion was not legal then. Allison doesn't really have any secrets but she makes up for it by being ultra-sensitive. Allison is so sensitive that she has to spend a week in the hospital when she discovers the housekeeper's dead body hanging in Allison's closet. The housekeeper hung herself when she finally faced the fact that her husband raped her daughter, Selena.
Yes, Peyton Place is chock full of secrets. Like the boy who enjoys the frequent enemas that his loving mommy is pleased to administer. Like the old lady who enjoys peeping at her neighbors as the man gives oral sex to his pregnant wife in their backyard. Like the high school principal who forces sex on a reluctant Constance for her own good. Like the mill owner who blackmails his employees into backing him in civic matters like zoning and schools. Yes, Peyton Place is a nasty place, but I guess the point of the novel is that nasty as it is, it is pretty typical.
Peyton Place was a shocker in its day. It is still a good story, though it comes across now as a bit soapy. It touches on almost all the sins of modern life: incest, child abuse, teen sex, hypocrisy, alcohol abuse. About the only thing missing is drug abuse. Religion even comes in for a few whacks when a protestant minister reverts to the religion of his childhood, Catholicism. And the local Pentecostals mistake a raving drunk who wanders into their church meeting for a prophet speaking in tongues. (That was actually a pretty funny scene as was the scene with the drunks on a bender in the cellar.) At times, I found the book a little dull and I didn't care for the oh so sensitive Allison. But still I am glad I read it.

A Piece of Cake: A Memoir

By Cupcake Brown

When Cupcake Brown was 11 years old, she discovered her mother's dead body. Her mother had suffered a seizure and died during the night. After receiving this devastating blow, she and her brother were ripped away from the only father they had ever known and given over to a man they had never met, their biological father. This man wasted no time abandoning his two children to the foster care system, as he was only interested in gaining access to whatever funds they would receive from their mother's estate and from the Social Security system.
The home the children were placed in was abusive to say the least. It got so bad that Cupcake ran away, several times, only to be returned to the abusive foster family or placed in other foster families that were also abusive. Raped and sexually abused, Cupcake ended up on the street, surviving by prostitution, eating out of garbage cans and masking her pain with an escalating series of drugs and alcohol. During the course of her teen years, she joined the Crips gang in Los Angeles. After she was shot in a drive by, she left the gang, but continued to abuse any drug that came her way and supported her druggie lifestyle by stealing, prostitution and a series of jobs that she managed to hang onto despite her crumbling lifestyle. As she describes it, "After smoking crack or using various forms of speed all night, my heart would be beating so hard and so fast that it felt like it was going to (literally) explode. My eyes would be trying to see everything everywhere at once, and my body would be zooming. Because of these 'health reasons,' I allowed myself to drink in the mornings. And when I couldn't get away long enough to sneak a couple of drinks, I'd pop reds, T's, blues, or valium. Of course the downers and booze did what they were supposed to: calmed my body down, slowed my heart rate, and steadied my eyes. Problem was, they slowed everything down so much that I'd damn near fall asleep at my desk, in the bathroom, or wherever I happened to be when they kicked in. So to counteract the booze I'd toot some crank or pop some beauties or yellow jackets at lunch. They lifted me up and gave me the oomph I needed to make it through the afternoon."
Her drug and alcohol abuse got so bad she ended up sleeping behind a dumpster and turning tricks to earn the funds for her next hit. Then she caught a glimpse of her reflection in a gas station window and was shocked and alarmed by what she saw: "You look like one of those starving children in Africa, I told myself. Honestly, those children looked healthier than I did at that moment."
At this point she realized that if she didn't get some help she could soon be dead. She got herself checked into a hospital and entered a 12 step program. Using the daily meetings, her sponsor, and turning her life over to God, Cupcake turned her life around. Not only did she kick booze and drugs, she went to college and graduated with honors, moved on to law school and eventually became a lawyer.

This is an inspiring story that points out that it isn't the adversity that ruins a life, it's how one chooses to respond to it. Cupcake buried her grief and pain with drugs and alcohol and she was only able to truly live her life when she turned from chemical anesthesia and faced the brutal pain of her horrific past.

For another review of this story, check out Bookreporter.com

The Reivers

By William Faulkner

This novel won the Pulitzer Prize for 1963.

This is the story of a boy, a stolen car and a stolen racehorse. It is set in 1905 and the car in question belongs to the boy's grandfather. The grandfather's driver, Boon, takes advantage of his employer's absence and he sets out on a trip to Memphis and brings the grandfather's grandson, Lucius, along, as a kind of insurance, I guess. They also have a stowaway on board too. Hidden under a tarp is Ned, a family retainer.
Boon is bound for Memphis to visit a woman he likes who works in a bordello. Why Ned decided to come along isn't made clear until the very end of the story. Boon and Lucius are not there very long before they find out that Ned has sold the car in exchange for a racehorse, a stolen racehorse. This particular racehorse is famous for not liking to race. Ned explains that he can get the horse to run and win and with their winnings they will be able to buy back the car and get back home and maybe Lucius' grandfather won't put them in jail. Meanwhile, Lucius gets a thorough education in the facts of life that he later wishes he could unlearn, thanks partly to Otis, a creepy and nasty boy who is a guest at the bordello.
Lucius also is witness to the tempestuous relationship between Boon and Corrie, who is one of the bordello girls, and Butch, a corrupt official who also wants Corrie.

I hadn't read Faulkner before reading The Reivers. This story started out really hard to read, the style very dense and meandering and full of interjections. Fortunately, it becomes more readable before long. The details of the car/horse race swap went over my head, being very tangled and rather unlikely, as far as I could tell. I didn't really get that part of the story, maybe because I am not a gambler and I don't follow racing and I don't know anyone who does.
Other than that, it was an engaging story, often times amusing, and Lucius a likable kid and the stowaway, Ned, a fount of down home wisdom. It was a fun and sometimes scary trip back to the old south and the days of the "Jim Crow" laws.

Review by Jonathan Yardley in The Washington Post: "William Faulkner's Southern Draw: 'The Reivers'"

the hollow chocolate bunnies of the apocalypse

By Robert Rankin

This book was named SFX Magazine's best book of the year, according to the cover, and to quote the cover, SFX described the book as "unputdownable."
I found it very "putdownable." To begin with, I was just put off by the premise, a city of living toys and of nursery rhyme characters. But I kept up with the story because it had been recommended to me as a fun read. So a series of violent murders, described in loving detail, occur. One of the murders is presented as being gruesomely funny. I didn't think it funny, just gruesome. A hollow chocolate bunny is left at the scene of each murder. Maybe I missed it, but I never found where the significance of these bunnies is explained. True, there is a lot of nonsense in the book. One of the running jokes that is that one of the main characters, a toy bear, has no thumbs and it greatly inconveniences his life.
The two main characters are Jack, a young outsider just arrived in Toy City, and Eddie, the toy bear. Eddie is the associate of one Bill Winkie, who is a private detective. Winkie was paid to investigate the really nasty murder of Humpty Dumpty but Winkie has vanished. Eddie ropes Jack into helping him carry on the investigation but then the bodies start piling up, including Little Boy Blue and Mother Goose. Eddie and Jack realize they have a serial killer on their hands, a serial killer who is taking aim at all the big names of Toy City.

This book was an OK read. There is a lot of silly stuff in it that is supposed to be funny but I guess it just didn't appeal to me. I found the book kind of juvenile, except that the murders are just too gruesome to be appropriate for juvenile reading matter. I had never read any of this author's books before, but apparently he has published lots of novels. Maybe I just happened across a dud. It happens, even among the best writers.
If you are a fan of his works, then you would probably enjoy this story too.

Review from Publishers Weekly:   https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-575-07401-9.

The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years

By Bernard Lewis

Bernard Lewis is an authority on Islamic and Middle Eastern history and an Emeritus Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton. He has written several books about the Middle East and Islam.
As the title says, this book is a brief history of the Middle East from the beginnings of Christianity up to modern times. Written in 1994, it is now a tad dated. It is a comprehensive look at the history of a part of the world that is composed of many different peoples and cultures united under one religion, Islam. This is not to say that Islam is the only religion in the region but it certainly is the dominant one.

This book lays out a good overview of the area, discussing the different dynasties in brief and concentrating on the forces that drove the history of the area. Bernard Lewis is English born and bred and sometimes the language is a bit difficult. I had to keep a dictionary nearby to look up words at times. Some foreign words, Arabic and other terms, are used throughout. I would have preferred their English versions. Despite these quibbles, though, I found it a very well laid out, interconnected look at the history of this area of the world.

For a deeper review of this book, visit Daniel Pipes. Daniel Pipes is an author, historian and Middle East analyst.

Garden Spells

By Sarah Addison Allen

Sydney Waverley is in trouble and the only safe haven she can think of for herself and her young daughter Bay is back home in the little town she grew up in with her sister Claire and their grandmother. She shows up without warning expecting to find her grandmother, but instead finds Claire, her older sister with whom she has had a rather strained relationship. The grandmother has died and now Claire owns the old house with its very special garden, a garden filled with magical flowers and a cantankerous apple tree that likes to toss its apples at people.
Claire, a caterer, uses the magical flowers in her recipes. Sydney and Bay move in and try to fit into the town that Sydney fled when she was just a teen. With a little help from Claire, Sydney discovers that Claire is not the only sister with a special talent.

All throughout this story, I was struck by how much it resembled Alice Hoffman's novel, Practical Magic. Like the Hoffman story, Garden Spells features two very different sisters with special talents, one of whom is running away from an abusive man and, as in the Hoffman story, the man ends up dead, although his death is not shown in Allen's story. The fugitive sister seeks refuge back in their home town and turns to her more settled, calmer sister for help, another similarity. Practical Magic is the better book, I think, with more depth and a more complex and engrossing story than Garden Spells. This is not to say that Garden Spells is a bad book. It just suffers by comparison to Practical Magic. Even though it is a bit of a lightweight, I still enjoyed reading it and found it fun and engaging.

Publishers Weekly review: https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-553-80548-2.

The Edge of Sadness

By Edwin O'Connor

Pulitzer Prize Winner Fiction 1962

This novel was considered to be a shocker in its time, debunking the myth of the, to quote from Loyola Press, "super-competent and authoritarian but lovable leader, the wise counselor, gregarious extrovert, and heroic celibate (who could nevertheless flirt with the ladies)."
This is the story of Father Hugh Kennedy who grew up in an Irish Catholic parish and was lucky enough to serve in a similar parish in the same town when he was a young priest. While he was thus employed, his father became ill with cancer. As he watched his father waste away in pain and suffering, Father Hugh became more and more distressed. After his father finally died, Father Hugh found refuge from his pain in the bottle.
At first, he was able to control his drinking, but eventually he ended up in rehab. After rehab, he went back to work but soon found himself back in trouble with alcohol. This time he went to the rehab center for almost four years, learning to deal with his depression and his alcoholism.
Eventually he had to leave rehab and get back to work. His bishop kindly gave him charge of a quiet, run-down parish in the poor part of his home town. Father Hugh settles in and basically just hides, letting most of the parish work rest on the shoulders of his young curate.
Bursting upon this quiet scene one day is an old acquaintance from his previous life, Charlie Carmody. Old Charlie is not a nice fellow, in fact, Father Hugh's father described him thus, "As fine a man as ever robbed the helpless." Father Hugh naturally wonders this unpleasant old man wants from him as Charlie insists Father Hugh attend Charlie's upcoming birthday party. Father Hugh agrees to attend, even though he inwardly quails at seeing again all his old friends from before. And so Father Hugh reestablishes contact with Carmody family and in the process finds himself.

This is quiet story of a priest finally coming to terms with his own lack of commitment and it is a strangely engrossing and ultimately compelling read. Father Hugh discovers that his best friend John, who is also a priest, is suffering with a terrible crisis of faith. This forces Father Hugh to look at the reality of his own life, coming to a better understanding of how he has failed in his own commitment to his role as a priest and pastor.

Review by Kirkus Reviews.

Iran Awakening

By Shirin Ebadi

Shirin Ebadi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 for her work for children's and women's rights. She is the first Iranian to receive this award and the first Muslim woman to receive it.
Iran Awakening is about her experiences with the repressive revolutionary religious government that took over Iran after the overthrow of the Shah.
Initially, Ebadi supported the movement to overthrow the Shah because his government was corrupt and repressive and not democratic. She fancied that the new regime would be more democratic than the old. She soon discovered how mistaken she was. As she says, "It took scarcely a month for me to realize that, in fact, I had willingly and enthusiastically participated in my own demise. I was a woman and this revolution's victory demanded my defeat."
Shirin Ebadi before the revolution was a law judge, presiding over a court room. After the revolution, she was only permitted to be a law clerk as a woman was not deemed fit to be a judge. She tries to conform but eventually leaves the court to move into private practice. Her focus becomes abused children and women who have no one to defend them or stand up for their rights in this cruel, male-dominated society that the revolution has created and sustains.
The main problem with the revolution in Iran and in all fundamentalist Islamic societies is their desire to enforce an outdated, centuries-old legal code based on a macho, tribal culture that views women and children as the property of the men in their lives. As Shirin says, "The laws, in short, turned the clock back fourteen hundred years, to the early days of Islam's spread, the days when stoning women for adultery and chopping off the hands of thieves were considered appropriate sentences."
Shirin takes on the cases of abused children and women and of the other victims of the regime. She brings these cases to public notice and comes under the hateful gaze of the government fanatics. She lives knowing that her life is in danger and that she could be killed or locked up at any time, as has happened to so many who have spoken out. Indeed she discovers in government transcript between a government minister and a death squad member that she is reviewing for a legal case that she is on the list of people to be killed: "The next person to be killed is Shirin Ebadi."
After decades of living under a religion-dominated government, Ebadi has come to believe that democracy will only be achieved when religion and government are completely separate. As she says, since the Islamic Republic considers their interpretations of Islam to be divinely inspired and nonnegotiable, how can tolerance and an appreciation of inalienable human rights ever be guaranteed under such a system? The only solution is to separate the two.
Despite the overbearing tactics of the Islamic government in Iran, Ebadi continues to believe that "an interpretation of Islam that is in harmony with equality and democracy is an authentic expression of faith." She also believes that change will come to Iran eventually, even if it takes decades.
At the end of the book she warns the US that using strong arm tactics against Iran will only backfire because it will serve to strengthen the regime's hand against any dissidents and prompt Iranians to stand behind their government out of defensive nationalism.

An interesting look at life inside Iran in the decades following the Islamic Revolution, Ebadi's book is informative, compelling, engrossing and well worth reading.

Review from Kirkus Reviews:   https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/shirin-ebadi/iran-awakening/.

Lethal Guardian

By M. William Phelps

What one wouldn't do to protect an innocent child. Beth Ann Carpenter was willing to end a life to save her little niece, Rebecca, from Rebecca's abusive step-father, Buzz Clinton. Beth Ann vamped her besotted boss, Haiman Clein, not only into finding a hitman but also paying the hitman's fee. All Beth Ann had to do was provide a photo of the intended victim, Buzz Clinton.
This tale of love turned to obsession (the obsession of Beth Ann for her little niece, Rebecca, and the obsession of Haiman Clein for Beth Ann) really starts with the Carpenter family. As the author says, in the Carpenter family, Beth Ann could do no wrong and her sister, Kim, could do no right in their parent's eyes. So when Kim gave birth to a girl with developmental problems, of course her parents stepped in to care for the baby since Kim was a loser who was, according to them, an unfit mother. Kim, not known for her strong character, let them run roughshod over her and she pretty much surrendered her responsibilities to her parents and her sister, Beth Ann.
The picture changed when Kim met Anson "Buzz" Clinton. Buzz provided the backbone that Kim lacked. With his encouragement, Kim moved to bring Rebecca back into her life and home, igniting a custody fight with her parents & Beth Ann who were now not only trumpeting Kim's unfitness but also claiming that Buzz was abusing both Kim and Rebecca. This despite repeated investigations into the abuse allegations that never revealed any trace of abuse.
The Carpenters were further alarmed when they found out that Buzz was planning to move Kim and the kids to Arizona, a long ways from Connecticut and a state where grandparent's rights didn't weigh much with the courts.
Not only is this case interesting because of the desperation of the Carpenters to protect Rebecca from a person they saw as an abuser, but also because of Beth Ann's involvement of Haiman Clein. Haiman Clein was completely enamored of Beth Ann, a young, pretty lawyer who had recently started working at Clein's law firm. Clein was not the upstanding citizen he appeared to be at first glance. An officer of the court he may have been but he lived as though laws were for everyone but himself. Embezzling clients' monies, abusing legal medications and using illegal drugs, involved in wife-swapping and other sexual shenanigans, Haiman Clein was quite a piece of work. It is not surprising that when Beth Ann suggested that Buzz Clinton should be taken out that Haiman Clein was all for it. He even had the perfect guy to go to for it, his drug dealer, Mark Despres.
This is a riveting tale, one that almost makes one believe in fate. So many times in this story, if one person would have stood up and said, "Enough!" then maybe Buzz Clinton wouldn't have been shot to death and left to lay on the highway. The author presents the case clearly and tells the tale of the untimely end of Buzz Clinton in such a way that leaves little doubt that justice was served when Beth Ann Carpenter, Haiman Clein and Mark Despres received their sentences for murder.

Review from True Crime Book Review:   http://truecrimebookreviews.blogspot.com/2009/03/lethal-guardian-by-mwilliam-phelps.html.