A reread after many years, which holds up well. Not much style but a lot of substance—settlers fleeing a dying Earth emigrate across the stars to a planet in orbit around Rukbat. A story for our times for sure. Only—uh-oh—until…after they’ve landed and moved planetside they discover that an erratic body that transverses Rukbat’s solar…
What if FDR sent a twenty-one year old JFK to Europe on the very eve of World War II itself in order to find out if and how Hitler is smuggling money into the US to influence the next election? “I’ve been turning it over in my mind, Jack—this trip of yours,” the President was…
Read more To the Nazis, you’re just the American ambassador’s son. But to me, you’re a perfect spy.
My review: The twelfth in Martin Limón’s Sueño and Bascom series, featuring two CID agents in South Korea in the early 80s, and I think his best by far. Three GI’s have gone missing, all of whom have abused Korean women, and Command sends Sueño and Bascom to find them. It’s a solid whodunnit, a…
Read more I’d never known anyone who cared less about the opinions of others.
…Younger sons cannot marry where they like. …“Is this,” thought Elizabeth, “meant for me?” –Jane Austen At the time she had wondered whether the remark had held a warning and the suspicion had caused her some embarrassment which she had attempted to hide by turning the conversation into a pleasantry. But the memory of the…
Read more James obtrudes bloody murder into the pleasant, ordered world of Elizabeth and Darcy
I first read this book back in my teens, and I was in Hawaii recently and decided it was time to reread it. It has held up really well in the interim. Okay, Michener not the greatest master of the craft of writing, agreed, but he knows how to tell a story. Here he tells…
Read more Pake Kokua (Hawaiian for, roughly, Chinese Helper, which really ought to read Saint).
An oldie but a very goodie. The author of the beloved Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle children’s books (amazingly still in print, hallelujah) marries and follows her husband to a chicken ranch on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington state in the 1930s. She is not a happy farmer, and she writes of everything and everyone from Stove (number one on…
Here endeth Tanya Huff’s Torin Kerr series (5 books beginning with Valor’s Choice and continuing with her Peacekeeper trilogy, this one are being the last one (if you’ve read the books you’ll see what I did there). I envy you if you haven’t yet read them because you’re in for a real treat—these books are…
Read more Sector Center News ace reporter Presit a Tur de Valentrisy
Ruth, Dora, Alyce and Hank, four teens in Fairbanks and Southeast Alaska in 1965, are each stumbling through the aftermath of the loss of a parent or parents through death or divorce or negligence. The story is told in their alternating viewpoints, and the thing I liked most was the wealth of detail that comes…
Two thousand year-old druid Atticus O’Sullivan has relocated to present day Tempe, Arizona, in an attempt to avoid a centuries-in-the-making throw-down with his ancient enemy, Aenghus Óg, who wants Atticus’ sword and Atticus’ head, pretty much in that order. Smart dialogue, good action scenes, a series made for Jim Butcher fans. Of which I am…
Dana sez–I bought this when it was on special back in 2016, but you’ll do much better nowadays to forgo the collection in favor of downloading the individual titles. I still love Welcome to Temptation best, with Davy’s story, Faking It, a close second, but I want to single out two other novels in this…
Read more Min and Cal and their bumpy journey to love and happy ever after.