Lockdown blues getting you down? Does the TV news sound the same every day? Remember those years when you discovered how to escape with a good book? It could take you to exotic places, earlier times or new adventures. In The Turn of the Key, (Scout Press/ Simon & Schuster, …
According to the experts, social distancing is the only measure available to slow the spread of coronavirus until a vaccine is developed in a year or so. So many of us are stuck inside, and ought to remain until the pandemic subsides. For sure, we are sticking close to home. …
Winter is a wonderful time to curl up with a good book, especially well written works. Lately, I’ve been enjoying a 1941 anthology I became heir to: Great Short Novels, edited by Edward Weeks, a 1941 publication (Doubleday, Garden City Press), which has been passed along by my family ever …
Good reviews continue to arrive for Chicago’s Designs, the latest two from authoritative sources, encouraging our elves to keep the benefits flowing from the Greenskills workshop. James A. Cox, Editor-in-Chief, Midwest Book Review, Oregon, Wisc., wrote: A deftly scripted mystery with more unexpected twists and unanticipated turns than a Disney …
On Veterans Day, in this “year of the woman,” it’s important to remember that World War II was a turning point in American social history. Nineteen million women joined the workforce while their men were away in military service. They made uniforms, boots and K-rations; tanks, amphibious craft, jeeps, ships, …
A new Civil War novel by Ed Protzel inspired by the era’s white-hot passions evokes Margaret Mitchell’s classic tale, Gone with the Wind. Half-breed Seminole Durksen Hurst, a perpetual misfit and charlatan who must keep moving to avoid the victims of his schemes, tired of his game, returns to his …
Book Review: A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles. Encore publication,First posted, Oct. 28, 2017 Not only is this novel a good yarn, it is an epic. In the classical definition, an epic hero is the most significant man in his culture, in the most significant age, participating in the …
