Skip to content

Monthly Archives: December 2012

Corpus Christmas

A mystery by Margaret Maron featuring NYPD detective Sigrid Harald.  A much disliked scholar in residence at the Erich Breul House in New York City is found dead.  I cared who did it mostly because the book distracted me.  But the end was a a let-down.  Art gallery owner and grandfather kills man in rage […]

Skipping Christmas

by John Grisham.  I actually don’t think I’ve ever read a Grisham mystery, but this short story about Luther and Nora Krank, who decide to just skip Christmas the year their daughter leaves for the Peace Corps in Peru, is hilarious and touching.  My only question is:  what’s up with the bearded guitar player named […]

Shadow On The Mountain

A middle-school fiction about a young boy working in the resistance in Norway after Nazi invasion.

The Secret Keeper

Kate Morton has written an engrossing fiction/mystery set in 1940s London and 2011 London.  Dorothy is an unhappy teenager looking for glamour and adventure; her daughter Laurel is, in 2011, trying to decipher the mystery of her mother’s life and the violent event she witnessed as a teenager.

The Casual Vacancy

J.K. Rowling’s first adult fiction.  So sad, so depressing, so broken.  The residents of the English town of Pagford are an unhappy lot.  Rowling is an amazing character builder.  Like we didn’t know that.  Write more, J.K.!