From this non-Japanese writer comes a collection of traditional Japanese ghost stories as colorful, enigmatic, and foreboding as the bookjacket’s cover art, which features a “Hell Courtesan.” Set in Tokyo, Boehm’s eight longish... Read More

Amanda Bahringer, the unsure seventeen-year-old main character of Bunting’s novel, is perhaps too easily summed up by her boarding school hallmaster as a “Triple burden. Parent ambition. Parent protection. Wanted another one.” Her... Read More

Champion, author of four other Bomber Hanson books, delivers an old-fashioned murder mystery complete with Las Vegas mobsters, a suspicious butler, and a “knockout” model named Cheryl Darling (a parody in itself). Cheryl has been... Read More

John Donne said, “No man is an island,” but Holm is one to refute that statement. His name means “small island” in Old Norse, and that fact fuels this essayist’s wayward journey to five physical islands-Iceland, Madagascar,... Read More

As she lay dying, Khatia Quigley’s mother gives Khatia a new name—the Chinese middle name of Wu Shan. This sets Khatia on a journey to define who and what she is, most evidently in terms of sexuality and race. The common “struggle... Read More

Dirk Arendt, the main character of Murray’s engaging historical adventure tale, shares a literary lineage with both Hawkeye from The Last of the Mohicans and Indiana Jones. This Cape Colony Dutchman is a scout too, with equal parts... Read More

Writing the lede (sic) to a review of this book is a daunting task when one considers the expertise of its author, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, columnist for the Boston Globe, and Professor Emeritus of English at the University of... Read More

Walther traces a triangle between America, England and France as passion and political intrigue arrive by land and sea to a world on the brink of the Revolutionary War. In an effort to avenge her parent’s death, whose ship was sunk by... Read More