Jen B.

  • New Mystery, Suspense and Thrillers, and Horror

    2010 is a great year for mysteries! Several well-known and beloved mystery writers are publishing new series titles: Barbara Cleverly (Joe Sandilands), Frank Tallis (Max Liebermann), Donna Leon (Commissario Guido Brunetti), Jacqueline Winspear (Maisie Dobbs), Elizabeth George (Thomas Lynley) and Elizabeth Peters (Amelia Peabody), to name a few. If you haven’t yet discovered Alan Gordon’s 13th… Continue reading

  • New Horror to keep you awake at night

    Old-fashioned creepy Victorian horror sneaks up on you in the night, haunts your dreams and harasses you the next day. Recent novels guaranteed to do all three are John Harwood’s The Séance, Sarah Waters’s Little Stranger and John Langan’s Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters.  In Harwood’s tale, a young woman inherits the seedy mansion,… Continue reading

  • Through a child’s eyes

    If a child’s voice in an adult novel doesn’t ring true, it’s the worst sort of blasphemy: kids are about as real as it comes and it’s easy to spot a charlatan. But when I read a book that sounds like my inner child, or a childhood friend, I fall right in. For instance, the… Continue reading

  • Want to read more African American historical fiction?

    Once you read Nancy Rawles’ My Jim, a compelling slave story about Sadie (the wife of Huck Finn’s friend Jim), who chose to remain a slave and stay with her family on the plantation, you will likely want to read other stories like it: narratives that sweep you back in time and make you think.… Continue reading

  • Writers of the Harlem Renaissance, Part II

    Here is a continuation of the Writers of the Harlem Renaissance post from Tuesday:  Jessie Redmon Fauset Though she is not very well-known today, Fauset was, along with Zora Neale Hurston, one of the most prolific African America writers of the Harlem Renaissance. Two of her four novels, There is Confusion and Plum Bun: A… Continue reading

  • Writers of the Harlem Renaissance: Part 1

    The period between the 1920s and the beginning of World War II marked a blossoming of African American literature, especially in New York. Events that precipitated this period, now referred to as the Harlem Renaissance, included a widespread migration to northern cities by African Americans from the South; job and educational opportunities for African Americans;… Continue reading

  • Scaring me in 2008

    This year proves fertile ground for new kinds of horror — scary books that go beyond the splash-gore of Clive Barker or the pokey-fanged love of Tanya Huff and L.A. Banks. Even Stephen King is up to something new. Frankly, simply by his status as one of the most prolific horror writer in America, I… Continue reading

  • Fairy tales for grown ups

    Some stories we love hearing over and over again. Folktales told worldwide over the centuries have amazing similarities of theme, style and even in presentation. Some of the most dramatic fairy tales capture our hearts and imaginations even today. Sometimes authors re-imagine than old story from another perspective. At times authors prefer to write new… 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

  • 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

  • Book review: Dreamers of the Day by Mary Doria Russell

    Mary Doria Russell visits The Seattle Public Library this Thursday (March 20) to introduce her new book, Dreamers of the Day, to the delight of her many Seattle fans. Mary’s first book, The Sparrow, won the James Tiptree award in 1996 and the Arthur C. Clarke award in 1998, and still is in constant demand… Continue reading

  • The New Gothics: less romance, more horror

    Popular in the 1970s, gothic romance was defined by Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca: dark and stormy night, castle or manor house with frightened fleeing maiden in a nightgown on the book cover. Other popular authors in this genre included Anya Seton, Phyllis Whitney, Dorothy Eden and Victoria Holt. For the past two decades, fewer gothics have… Continue reading