Straight Dick Francis “Straight” has always been one of my favorite Francis stories, and I’m not sure why. The main topic–gemstones–holds absolutely zero interest for me, and neither do the clever gadgets that the main character has to figure out. But maybe that’s why it’s interesting. The chances of me ever wearing lots of gems, […]
Read more "“Straight” by Dick Francis"Just Like the Bronte Sisters Laurel Osterkamp Jo Beth and Skylar are about as close as sisters can be, despite seeming complete opposites: Jo Beth is a daredevil ski racer, while Skylar loves to read. But then everything changes. I have a hard time summing up “Just Like the Bronte Sisters,” since, while it’s not […]
Read more "“Just Like the Bronte Sisters” by Laurel Osterkamp"The Fountain Boxed Set Ellison Blackburn I’ve enjoyed reading all three books in The Fountain trilogy, so I’m glad to see them all gathered together in this boxed set, which is definitely the convenient way to get them. The Fountain is a unique addition to the speculative fiction/technothriller genre, telling the story of two (very […]
Read more "The Fountain Boxed Set by Ellison Blackburn"A Hero of Our Time Mikhail Lermontov The first thing I ever read in Russian that was an actual piece of text and not an example sentence was a story about a young Russian officer who ends up amongst a household of smugglers and gets tricked by a pretty girl who, it turns out, is […]
Read more "“A Hero of Our Time” by Mikhail Lermontov"The Living Corpse Leo Tolstoy In 1900, more than 20 years after finishing his masterpiece “Anna Karenina,” Tolstoy returned to a character named Karenin in a troubled marriage, although this Karenin seems to have no blood relation to the original. Still, it’s a fascinating indication that, for all the dislike he felt for the novel […]
Read more "“The Living Corpse” by Leo Tolstoy"Strata Terry Pratchett Before there was the Discworld, there was “Strata,” the story of a company that builds planets. Including, it turns out, a strange flat planet out in the middle of nowhere… It’s a bit hard to review “Strata” in a meaningful way, because it both prefigures the Discworld novels, and stands in inevitable […]
Read more "“Strata” by Terry Pratchett"Under Orders Dick Francis As one of the last acts in the twilight of his career, Dick Francis took his favorite character, Sid Halley, out for one last race. Things have changed a bit since Sid Halley first appeared, back in 1965. As part of the time warp I mentioned in one of my earlier […]
Read more "“Under Orders” by Dick Francis"Come to Grief Dick Francis After an almost 20-year hiatus, Dick Francis returns to his favorite character Sid Halley in “Come to Grief.” Like the other Sid Halley stories, this one is dark and edgy even for a Dick Francis book, and like the other novels from the early 1990s, it features a particularly sadistic […]
Read more "“Come to Grief” by Dick Francis"For Kicks Dick Francis In “For Kicks” Francis continues to demonstrate the mastery of the horse-thriller genre he established in “Nerve.” Even more so than “Nerve,” “For Kicks” is slightly bizarre, unrealistic wish fulfillment, but that in no way diminishes its charm–in fact, it is one of the key factors in its charm. Who doesn’t […]
Read more "“For Kicks” by Dick Francis"Hadji Murad Delphi Classics edition, with portrait of Tolstoy Decades after his time in the Caucasus, and years after he had turned his back on writing the kind of fashionable, worldly novels that had propelled him to fame, Tolstoy took up his fiction-writing pen again in order to create “Hadji Murad,” often considered to be […]
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E. P. Clark: Author, Book Reviewer, and All-Around Literary Handiwoman 