Set in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, Carnegie’s Maid tells the story of a lowly woman (Clara) of the 19th century that rose in power and prestige through determination, adaptation to the situation to take advantage of an opportunity that suddenly presented itself, and plain old hard work.…
Although not as good as Larson’s The Devil in the White City, Thunderstruck deals with a little known era, at least to this reader, Edwardian England before WWI. Besides mystery which drew me in, the science and history behind the beginnings of wireless communication pulled…
R.D. Grupa has written a thriller that ought to be read in one or two sittings to do the novel justice. I say this because of the number of plots and characters, two topics which will likely be unfamiliar to most readers—oil pipelines and…
I obtained an ARC of Katherine Reay’s The Brontё Plot through NetGalley because the title made me curious and because Bronte’s Plot was a book about books. As it turned out, The Brontё Plot captured my imagination for another reason, which goes hand in hand…
Bones of the Master is a biographical-autobiographical account of Crane’s travels with a monk who journeys back to Mongolia in the late 20th century. The monk’s exodus from China, nearly four decades earlier, during the 1960 Mao-ordered destruction of all things religious is but a mere fraction…
In the November 2014 issue of Vogue, there was a story about the unlikely but refreshing appointment of Benjamin Millepied by the Paris Opera Ballet’s as its new director. Millepied’s background reminded me of Tempesta’s Dream, written by Vincent B. LoCoco, and reviewed previously in…
Edith Wharton’s Age of Innocence is the story of an idealistic young man who finds that he is trapped by society’s conventions (1870’s N.Y upper crust). He marries not for love but because of convention. It reminded me of Upstairs, Downstairs and Downton Abby except…
In the recent past, the Asian empire, from China, to Thailand, to Malaysia, to Japan, to South Korea and finally to North Korea, to name a few of the countries, have been in the news. To understand, for example, what has led to the China- North…
Written by Joe Perrone, Jr., Escaping Innocence is the story of Dave, a high school graduate who is going through the growing pains associated with the flow of testosterone while in the presence of the opposite sex at times combined with the liberal imbibing of…
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