This is an exquisite debut novel with the mixed flavors of Amy Tan’s The Bonesetter’s Daughter, Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns, and even a taste of the powerful memoir Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. It is a story about culture clash, immigration, tradition, and love in all its many forms. Maryam Mazar is a middle-aged wife and mother, married to an Englishman, living in London and dreaming of her former life in Iran. Her beloved sister back home has just died and her teenaged […]
Treason and Syphilis During the 7-Years War
This is Gabaldon’s first book in a new trilogy following her highly successful Outlander series. The “Lord John” series is based on the relatively minor character from the Outlander books Lord John Grey, who is a young and fiercely patriotic military officer and second son of a wealthy and prestigious family. Lord John is also a secret homosexual, a practice which was seen as akin to treason in these tumultuous days of the Seven Years War between England and France, and which causes him no […]
Medical horrors on the eve of Hitler’s takeover
A murder mystery and quasi-historical novel in one, Grossman gives us Berlin on the verge of the Nazi takeover in 1932. A surgically altered corpse, missing sleepwalkers, a famous hypnotist and a Nazi doctor all enter the picture during the murder investigation undertaken by decorated German WWI veteran and celebrated homicide detective Willi Kraus. A widower with two sons, Kraus is also a Jew who is at first as blind to the ramifications of his investigation as he is to the rising tide of fascism. […]
Civil War Horror Up Close and Personal
You could describe Olmstead’s story about a boy and his horse as a “coming-of-age” tale only if you are as blinkered as those poor horses clopping thru the traffic along Central Park. Instead, this is a novel about war, and the horrors that war visits on populations, military and civilian alike. Our boy doesn’t so much grow up during this novel, as grow hard. It is 1863, and one day 14-year-old Robey Childs gets ordered by his mom, who supposedly has “the Sight,” to grab […]