“Bloody Creek Murder” by Susan Clayton-Goldner #Mystery #BookReview #NewRelease

Bloody Creek Murder I’ve been following along the Winston Radhauser series since the beginning, and have been enjoying it more and more. In this, its sixth installment, the author does a particularly excellent job of combining mystery with family drama. The mixture both brings out the pathos of the interpersonal situation the characters find themselves […]

“Beyond Tula: A Soviet Pastoral” by Andrei Egunov-Nikolev

Fasten your seatbelts, Russianists: it’s about to get weird. Well, maybe no weirder than usual for literature of this period. Russian literature of the early 20th century was gloriously, insanely bizarre. Writers were flying their freak flag high, and reveling in it. “Beyond Tula” is a case in point. Although in fact, it’s no weirder […]

“Man and Horse” by John Egenes

I think most of us horse people have harbored fantasies of taking off across country on horseback. John Egenes actually did it. “Man and Horse” is the story, told by John himself, of how he, as a callow 24-year-old, and his Quarter Horse Gizmo, as an even more callow 4-year-old, rode from California to Virginia […]

Who Are You Reading? Plus My Own Reading Recommendations and This Week’s Giveaways

Hi All! The insistent barking coming in through my windows suggests that we are, in fact, in the dog days of summer. So if you’re caught up in one of the record-breaking heat waves washing over the planet right now and looking for some cool indoor reading, I’ve got a list of what I’ve read […]

“Some Fine Day” by Kat Ross

The popularity of post-apocalyptic fiction is an interesting facet of the current literary landscape. Why this? Why now? Some aspects of it are self-explanatory. It’s the perfect way to set the adolescents in a YA novel free from adult/parental restraints, in a kind of modern desert island scenario. In a time when desert islands are […]

“The Daemoniac” by Kat Ross

“The Daemoniac” is a venture into a new genre by epic fantasy author Kat Ross. It is, as it says in the subtitle, a Gaslamp Gothic story, meaning set in the late Victorian era. 1888, to be precise, shortly after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published “A Study in Scarlet,” and shortly before Jack the Ripper’s […]

Catch a Preview of the Next Giaco & Luca Story!

I hope everyone is staying cool! It’s that glorious time of year when the towels never dry unless you run the AC and a dehumidifier, and the bugs are out full force. Try to enjoy it, because you know a few months from now we’ll all be whining about the cold. Today seemed like an auspicious day […]

“Rock, Paper, Scissors, and Other Stories” by Maxim Osipov

In “Rock, Paper, Scissors,” we meet a new Russia: one that stands with one foot in the recent Soviet past, one foot in the more distant past of Pushkin and Lermontov, and, well, a third foot in the Millennial post-Soviet present. And maybe a fourth foot in the West. Like Chekhov (and Bulgakov), Maxim Osipov […]

“Convenience Store Woman” by Sayaka Murata #JapaneseLiterature #LiteraryFiction #Audiobook #LiteratureinTranslation

Convenience Store Woman I stumbled upon “Convenience Store Woman” while perusing audiobook deals. Since I’m always interested in finding new Asian authors to read/listen to, I snapped it up. And boy, am I glad I did so. “Convenience Store Woman” tells the story of Keiko Furukura, a woman who’s never managed to fit into society. […]

“The Budapest Artists’ Club” by Claire Doyle #BookReview #LiteraryFiction #Hungary #Budapest

The Budapest Artists’ Club “The Budapest Artists’ Club” takes place over two separate trips to Budapest, one on the brink of the new millennium, one almost twenty years later. In her first trip to Budapest, Laura loses her boyfriend but gains musical skills, and is caught up in a plot to switch out a viola […]

E. P. Clark: Author, Book Reviewer, and All-Around Literary Handiwoman

Month: July 2019