Fiction

  • Unleash your inner librarian!

    What are the odds? The brand spanking new Library of Congress subject heading for “Public Libraries – California – anecdotes’” is getting quite a workout. In the past six months we have seen the publication of two humorous memoirs by librarians in the Los Angeles area: Don Borchert’s Free For All: Oddballs, Geeks and Gangstas… Continue reading

  • Metro Reads: Books spotted on local buses

    We’re always interested in what people are reading: We’re the ones on buses craning our necks to get a look at book titles and authors. Perhaps you’re the one maneuvering the book cover at the perfect covert angle to make us really work for our noseyness. Or perhaps, like us, you also notice what others… Continue reading

  • Cold War Graphic Novels

    The Cold War and the post-Cold War era gave authors and artists a lot of grist to mill.  While the novels and plays are famous and plentiful, there isn’t much in the way of graphic art that conveys the history of the time while also telling a great story.  Here are four graphic novels that tackle… Continue reading

  • Cozy up with a Northwest mystery author

    Seattle author Mary Daheim’s “Alpine” mystery series takes place in a gorgeous town in the Cascade Mountains where newspaper editor Emma Lord solves murders and still meets her weekly deadlines. Wondering where to start with this series? Daheim brilliantly titles these in alphabetical order, starting with The Alpine Advocate, The Alpine Betrayal and so on… Continue reading

  • When you can’t get enough … a trio of literary trilogies

    What if you love a book so much you can’t bear for it to end? There may be a solution: Read books that have a sequel or — even better — read a trilogy. One of the best known general fiction trilogies is Robertson Davies’ famous “Deptford Trilogy,” which focuses on Deptford, Ontario, and its inhabitants and… Continue reading

  • Parallel stories

    When Possession (A.S. Byatt) came out in 1990, readers of literary fiction swarmed libraries and bookstores to get copies of this story-within-a-story relating the modern day characters to famous people in the past. In Byatt’s tale, a scholar finds an old letter written by Randolph Ash, which leads him into delicious research that in turn… Continue reading

  • Demons Are a Ghouls Best Friend by Victoria Laurie

    When professional medium MJ Holliday hears that a boarding school in Upstate New York is being haunted by a terrifying phantom, she and her business partners rush out to banish the bad guy. With the help of the Lake Placid townsfolk and a friendly specter named Eric, MJ attempts to learn the truth about the… Continue reading

  • Cherry blossoms bloom herald the spring

    The appearance of cherry blossoms marks the arrival of spring in Japan, sending revelers of all ages outdoors to enjoy wine and picnic lunches under flowery pink canopies in the nation’s parks and orchards. One cannot delay cherry blossom viewing, or “hanami,” because the cherry blossom is like life: beautiful and tragically fleeting. In Seattle,… Continue reading

  • The Slaves of Solitude by Patrick Hamilton

    Hamilton’s best-known title is Hangover Square, but I think that the recently re-printed The Slaves of Solitude may be a better introduction to his genius to most readers, with its more measured, benevolent view of human folly and its sympathetic heroine — the sober, bewildered Miss Roach. Having fled the bombings, Roach returns from London each night to a boarding house in a quiet suburb where she… Continue reading

  • Tesla in the air!

    Every so often, someone will approach me at the library and ask for information about Nikola Tesla, often in the kind of knowing way that people ask about Bigfoot or aliens, rather than a scientist and inventor. Occasionally they’ll bend close and add in hushed tones that they want the straight dope about his death… Continue reading

  • Magical Realism, beyond Latin America.

    Authors such as Isabel Allende and Gabriel García Márquez are well known for their wonderful stories rich in metaphor and infused with a sense of magic. The titles below are similar in style, but are written by authors from cultures other than those of Central and South America. The Cloud Atlas by Liam Callanan. Louis… Continue reading

  • Cool women, hot mysteries

    The one thing these mysteries have in common: smart, independent, funny and resourceful women. These are today’s detectives — a little younger and a lot hipper than many of the sleuths you’ve met in long-running mystery series (you know, those series that have initials or numbers in their titles). If you’re looking for romantic suspense,… Continue reading

  • Pirates in Polite Society: Wharton’s Buccaneers

    An unfinished book by a favorite writer always raises questions: How would it have ended? How would the story have changed as the author developed the characters and explored their lives? If the author started out with a plan, would that have changed as the book progressed? Stories inspired by real people and events also… Continue reading

  • Medieval Mysteries of Britain.

    If you find secret corridors and hemlock poison more interesting than gunfire, you may enjoy this collection of mysteries set in medieval England, Scotland and Ireland. Each of the books listed below is one of a series that revolves around a particularly engaging sleuth for whom the plagues, politics, and superstitions of the medieval world… Continue reading

  • The War in Fiction, part 3: The Pacific

    A war is not one story, but many. Here are some novels that view the war through many eyes, reflecting the diverse experiences of civilians and soldiers around the world whose lives were drawn into the Second World War. The Cloud Atlas by Liam Callanan When Louis Belk is deployed to Alaska to head off and diffuse… Continue reading

  • Why I love ‘I Love You, Beth Cooper’

    I Love You, Beth Cooper by Larry Doyle is seriously the funniest book I’ve read in the last two years. During his graduation night speech, Denis Cooverman, valedictorian at Buffalo Grove High School, urges his fellow classmates to leave with no regrets for the things they wanted to say but could not. Our hero pauses… Continue reading

  • Four Books for a Desert Island

    If I’m ever really stranded on a desert island, the books I want to have with me must have titles like Raft Building for Dummies, 500 Ways to Cook Coconuts, Getting Along with Your Invisible Friends, and of course, How to Escape a Desert Island. For that desert island visit with a small working sailboat, I… Continue reading

  • Book review: The Sound of Us by Sarah Willis

    In The Sound of Us (by Sarah Willis), Alice Marlowe, an interpreter for the deaf, receives a phone call in the middle of the night that is clearly a wrong number. On the other end of the line is a six-year-old girl who is all alone and trying to reach her aunt. Alice knows she shouldn’t… Continue reading