FullReviews Index

The Collected Works of Billy the Kid
"It began as a small flurry of poems" allegedly written by Billy the Kid, according to Michael Ondaatje's lyrical collage of poetry, photography, and fiction that make up this portrait of this Old West legend and his strained relationship with lawman, Pat Garrett. 'The Collected Works of Billy the Kid' was Ondaatje's first novel, originally published in 1970 to critical acclaim.

Flint & Silver: A Prequel to Treasure Island
'Flint and Silver' is the first in a series of prequels John Drake is planning to the much loved children's book 'Treasure Island.' This rollicking tale of pirates and buried treasure is not a children's book, however. Drake has penned a wonderful beginning to the story that is finished in Robert Louis Stevenson's 'Treasure Island,' but with an eye on the adult reader who perhaps still longs for adventure on the high seas.

Shanghai Girls
Opening in Shanghai in 1937 and ending some 20 years later in Los Angeles, Lisa See's 'Shanghai Girls' is themed around the duality between a reverence for tradition and the pull of the modern world.

The Women
T. C. Boyle reincarnates Frank Lloyd Wright in The Women, a richly imagined novel that tells the architect’s story through the lens of the women he loved. The story is told by Tadashi Sato, an apprentice to Wright.

The Dakota Cipher
In 1898 a Minnesota farmer of Norwegian descent found a stone covered in runes while clearing land. The translation indicated that eight Gotlanders and twenty-two Norwegians had traveled from Vinland on a voyage of acquisition. The year was 1362, long before Columbus never reached America. The authenticity of the stone has come under much controversy, some believing it to be real; others believing that Olaf Ohman, the farmer who discovered it, carved the runes himself.

World without End
Ken Follett is a master of the engaging tale, and in 'World Without End' there is plenty going on. If you liked 'The Pillars of the Earth,' you'll love this sequel. Follett is terrific at drawing characters who are compelling, funny, sexy, dramatic, and very human. Although the book is set in the fourteenth century, modern readers will immediately identify with the emotions and goals of its characters.

The Domino Men
'The Domino Men' is an indirect sequel to and superior to Barnes' 'The Somnambulist.' In that novel the Directorate was fighting sleepers put into place by the Russians. Here, the Directorate seems to be fighting the very Devil himself, or maybe it is on the side of the Devil, or maybe it is fighting the House of Windsor. One can never be too sure of anything when Barnes puts a hand to it.

The Given Day
September 1918. World War I is winding down, and some people are about to lose their jobs to the “more deserving” soldiers. The Great Influenza epidemic is expanding exponentially and killing indiscriminately. The Boston Red Sox, led by their great pitcher Babe Ruth, will defeat the Chicago Cubs 4 games to two. The Boston police are contemplating an historic strike, and everyone is looking for the “Red Menace” who, it is believed, will encourage unionization and blow up the city.

Arthur and George
The story of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a man of letters and the creator of Sherlock Holmes, and George Edalji, an unfortunate outsider unjustly imprisoned. In Arthur and George, Julian Barnes delivers a fictional retelling of a true story in which the lives of two most disparate individuals are surprisingly woven together.

Serena
Set in Waynesville, North Carolina during the depression, Ron Rash's novel 'Serena' traces the story of a wealthy lumber baron and his ruthlessly ambitious wife. Think Lady Macbeth in Appalachia.

The Plot Against America
In The Plot Against America by Philip Roth, isolationist Charles A. Lindbergh defeats incumbent Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election and negotiates a cordial "understanding" with Adolf Hitler, whose conquest of Europe and whose anti-Semitic policies he appears to accept without difficulty. Roth, recounts what it's like for families all over the U.S. during the menacing years of the Lindbergh presidency, when Jewish American citizens have every reason to expect the worst.

The System of the World (The Baroque Cycle Volume III)
Set in the early 18th century and featuring a diverse cast of characters that includes alchemists, mathematicians, thieves, pirates, and royalty, The System of the World follows Daniel Waterhouse to some of the most brilliant minds of the age, as he returns to England to repair the rift between Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Following Qucksilver and The Confusion, this third volume in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle wraps up an historical work of fiction of epic proportions.

Alexander and Alestria
In 'Alexander and Alestria,' Shan Sa weaves her own mythology in order to create the back story for Alestria, a woman warrior who in battle meets and falls in love with Alexander the Great, whose own mythology she expands upon.

Beside A Burning Sea
It's 1942. A U.S. hospital ship is torpedoed and sunk by a Japanese plane somewhere in the South Pacific and the survivors, including a wounded Japanese prisoner and two ship's nurses he saved, make it to a deserted island. Beside a Burning Sea, John Shors' ('Beneath a Marble Sky') second novel, finds the nine castaways playing out a story of love and hate against the backdrop of war.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
"The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" (2000) won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, was nominated for numerous other literary awards, and is widely considered to be Michael Chabon's best work to date. It is the story of two young Jewish cousins whose meeting in 1939 ignites a luminous career in comic books at a time in history when the art form exploded in American popular culture.

Gentlemen of the Road
Originally titled Jews with Swords, Michael Chabon's Gentlemen of the Road is a slender novel full of history and the flowery language of historical writing. It is also full of wonderful illustrations by Gary Gianni, creator of the syndicated newspaper comic strip, Prince Valiant.

The Somnambulist
In the first paragraph of Jonathan Barnes' "The Somnambulist" the omniscient narrator suggests that nothing is as it seems, that perhaps this is a phantasmagoric imagination, a conceit of illusion, "a book with no literary merit whatsoever. It is a lurid piece of nonsense, convoluted, implausible, people by unconvincing characters, written in drearily pedestrian prose, frequently ridiculous and willfully bizarre." The narrator is exactly right.

John: A Novel
In the years following the death of Jesus Christ, John the Apostle, now a frail, blind old man, lives in forced exile on the desolate island of Patmos with a small group of his disciples. Based on actual historical events—John is at once an ambitious and provocative reimagining of the last surviving apostle and a powerful look at faith and how it lives and dies in the hearts of men.

The Pillars of the Earth
The Pillars of the Earth sweeps through four decades of 12th Century England drawing the reader into the raw, flamboyant middle ages. It is a shining saga of good and evil, treachery and intrigue, violence and beauty. Not-so-noble knights, righteous heroes, valiant heroines and both virtuous and immoral men of God highlight this story. They manipulate, and are in turn manipulated by, the political turmoil and unrest between the reigns of Henry I and Henry II.

Human Traces
Human Traces by Sebastian Faulks begins in Brittany where a young, poor boy somehow passes his medical exams and goes to Paris, where he attends the lectures of Charcot, the Parisian neurologist who set the world on its head in the 1870s. With a friend, he sets up a clinic in the mysterious mountain district of Carinthia in south-east Austria.

Peony in Love
Writing an historical novel is easy. Pick a time, setting, and characters. Be sure that characters are realistic and they act according to their milieu, never inconsistent in dress, action, or speech. Avoid anachronisms. Somehow, on this bed of raw facts, one must create a story imbued with life and authenticity, with characters who live in our imagination. Lisa See has done this in "Peony in Love," blending historical facts with the spiritual life of 17th Century China.

House of Meetings
House of Meetings is a love story, gothic in timbre and triangular in shape. In 1946, two brothers and a Jewish girl fall into alignment in pogrom-poised Moscow. The fraternal conflict then marinates in Norlag, a slave-labor camp above the Arctic Circle, where a tryst in the coveted House of Meetings will haunt all three lovers long after the brothers are released. And for the narrator, the sole survivor, the reverberations continue into the new century.

On Agate Hill
On her thirteenth birthday, Molly, an orphaned daughter of a Confederate soldier, writes in her diary "I know I am a spitfire and a burden. I do not care. For evil or good this is my own true life and I WILL have it. I will." Molly keeps her diary amidst her "box of phenomena," containing "letters, poems, songs, court records, marbles, rocks, dolls, and bones, some human," and it is through the precocious orphan's writing that Lee Smith artfully reveals her life On Agate Hill.

Thirteen Moons
Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain was a huge success - a National Book Award winner that was made into a blockbuster movie. Readers have waited a decade for Frazier's second novel, and it is finally here. In Thirteen Moons, an historical fiction set in the mid-19th century, protagonist Will Cooper recalls his adventures amidst the Cherokee at a Smoky Mountain trading post.

The Interpretation of Murder
Inspired by Sigmund Freud's only visit to America, The Interpretation of Murder is an intricate tale of murder and the mind's most dangerous mysteries. It unfurls on a sweltering August evening in 1909 as Freud disembarks from the steamship George Washington, accompanied by Carl Jung, his rival and protégé. Across town, in an opulent apartment high above the city, a stunning young woman is found dangling from a chandelier—whipped, mutilated, and strangled.

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