Tag Archives: Ken

Some Luck by Jane Smiley

Posted on August 14, 2015 by bseat

Life on a farm in Iowa from 1920 to 1953 wouldn’t seem like a great topic for the first of three novels, but Jane Smiley proves that memorable characters, a deep understanding and appreciation for the rhythms and values of … Continue reading →

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Leaving Berlin by Joseph Kanon

Posted on August 7, 2015 by bseat

Alex Meier has made a devil’s bargain. In exchange for making the McCarthy Committee’s investigations into his youthful fling with communism before World War II go away, the CIA wants him to return to Berlin and act as their spy. … Continue reading →

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The Hour of the Cat by Peter Quinn

Posted on July 17, 2015 by bseat

It is 1939 and Fintan Dunn, is a PI, struggling to find work in New York City. He had a great lead on a divorce case; a woman wanted him to catch her husband in flagrante delicto in order to improve her … Continue reading →

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The Dealer and the Dead by Gerald Seymour

Posted on July 10, 2015 by bseat

The villagers knew that they could not survive if they didn’t get help. Their little town was in the path of the advancing Serbian paramilitary forces and the villagers knew only to well what happened to the inhabitants of the … Continue reading →

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The Bone Tree by Greg Iles

Posted on June 19, 2015 by bseat

In this second installment of a trilogy which began with Natchez Burning, Iles takes us deeper into the morass of racism, hatred, violence and corruption that lies underneath a thin veneer of southern gentility in Mississippi.  Penn Cage, who is now the … Continue reading →

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The Prophet by Michael Koryta

Posted on June 12, 2015 by bseat

Michael Koryta is one of a few writers who shifts from genre to genre even though it is considered career suicide to do so. Koryta however, seems to actually thrive on it!  Known as a crime/suspense novelist, Koryta shifted into … Continue reading →

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The Black Count: Glory Revolution Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss

Posted on May 29, 2015 by bseat

Sometimes fact is stranger than fiction and no where is that more thoroughly proven than in this book about the life of General Alex Dumas. Dumas was born in the Caribbean to a mulatto slave woman and a aristocratic Frenchman, … Continue reading →

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Heretics and Heroes: How Renaissance Artists and Reformation Priests Created Our World by Thomas Cahill

Posted on May 22, 2015 by bseat

Thomas Cahill plunges into the Renaissance and Reformation with the same curiosity and gift for making history come alive as in the previous books in his Hinges of History series.  This one is sixth in the series, coming after the … Continue reading →

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The Swimmer by Joakim Zander

Posted on April 24, 2015 by bseat

Damascus, 1980. Holding his feverish baby, a man watches from the upper story window as his wife gets into his car, on her way to get something for the baby’s fever. He knows that he will have to leave soon, … Continue reading →

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The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber

Posted on April 17, 2015 by bseat

As a daughter of missionaries I am always intrigued by how missionaries are portrayed in fiction. In general they don’t fair very well. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver is probably the most recent example of the missionary stereotype in … Continue reading →

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