Book Reviews - Late Last Night Books

INTERVIEW WITH JUDITH FRANK, AUTHOR OF ALL I LOVE AND KNOW

7/4/14 – INTERVIEW WITH JUDITH FRANK, AUTHOR OF ALL I LOVE AND KNOW Judith Frank Author Photo

Ever since she sat beside me in 11th grade English class, I suspected that Judith Frank had something to tell the world – and the writing chops to tell it. Over the years Judy confirmed my suspicions repeatedly, winning prizes for her poignant poetry even back in high school and going on to become an author of both scholarly works and prize-winning fiction. If I had any lingering doubt, her new novel All I Love and Know, has shattered it.

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Re-reading Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Afraid my Kindle might run out of juice, I wanted a small book for backup for a recent flight and, because I wanted something light to carry, grabbed off my bookshelves the novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I’d read it at least three times over the years and thought I might be bored. Think again. Capote amazed me.

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Teen author Melanie Batchelor’s promising debut novel

6/7/14 — TEEN AUTHOR MELANIE BATCHELOR’S DEBUT NOVEL

There’s something special about discovering a young author who’s really good. You can savor that first book while looking forward to the next, knowing that chances are, each succeeding work will be even better than the last. So imagine the kick of discovering an impressive author who’s only sixteen. Remember Me, a young adult coming of age novel written in verse, was published last month by Bold Stroke Books. The author, Melanie Batchelor, is a high school junior, who actually penned the novel when she was fourteen.

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MAKING TIME FOR SERENDIPITY

6/4/14 – MAKING TIME FOR SERENDIPITY

Inexplicably, I found A.S.A. Harrison’s novel The Silent Wife, on my nightstand. Where did this book come from? Did my mother leave it for me? Did I buy it for a book club meeting I couldn’t attend and abandon it? I had no clue, but I picked it up and started reading.

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5-23-2014 Stolen Remains: A Lady of Ashes Mystery REVIEWED by Sonia Linebaugh

5-23-2014 A REVIEW OF CHRISTINE TRENT’S STOLEN REMAINS: A LADY OF ASHES MYSTERY

A lady undertaker, a summons from Queen Victoria, a questionable death, a grieving housekeeper, arguing relatives, a body gone missing. In this second of the Lady of Ashes mysteries, when Queen Victoria summons her, Mrs. Violet Harper can’t refuse. She leaves her ill mother, her harried father, and her beloved second husband on their own while she rushes to London to tend to a dead viscount whose burial must be delayed until the Queen gives permission. The Queen trusts Violet’s discretion because she was so very kind and helpful when Prince Albert died.

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Dave Barry, The Complete Guide to Guys

A HUMOROUS EXCERPT FROM DAVE BARRY’S THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO GUYS

At Three Editors Journal I read the excerpt below from Dave Barry’s The Complete Guide to Guys, immediately went to Amazon, read more, and bought the book. Here’s the excerpt from the Journal:

Let’s say a guy named Fred is attracted to a woman named Martha. He asks her out to a movie; she accepts; they have a pretty good time. A few nights later he asks her out to dinner, and again they enjoy themselves. They continue to see each other regularly, and after a while neither one of them is seeing anybody else.

And then, one evening when they’re driving home, a thought occurs to Martha, and, without really thinking, she says it aloud: “Do you realize that, as of tonight, we’ve been seeing each other for exactly six months?”

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The Hunting by Kerry Peresta: Review & Interview

5/7/14 — KERRY PERESTA’S THE HUNTING: HOW A GUY LEARNED TO LOVE CHICK LIT

When Pen-L Publishing offered a contract for my first novel, I went into high research mode, ordering a bunch of their books to see what they were like. I needed to know whether the books were well edited, well designed, and professionally produced. I also wanted to find out whether Pen-L’s stable of authors was any good; after all, I had a little of that natural insecurity, wondering how good could the company be if they wanted me.

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Author interview: John O’Hern, Sweetspot, Confessions of a Golfaholic

4/20/14 INTERVIEW WITH JOHN O’HERN, COMEDIAN, PLAYWRIGHT, AND AUTHOR OF THE LAUGH-OUT-LOUD FUNNY NOVEL SWEETSPOT, CONFESSIONS OF A GOLFAHOLIC

The International Network of Golf named Sweetspot its 2013 Outstanding Achiever, and the New England Golf Monthly said, “If you’re crazy about golf or you’re a golf widow, then you have to put the book Sweetspot, Confessions of a Golfaholic by John O’Hern on your must-read list.” Or if you just plain like to laugh, I say.

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Book Review: Dislocation by Margaret Meyers

4/7/14 – BOOK REVIEW: DISLOCATION BY MARGARET MEYERS

With more than a million books published each year in the United States alone, it’s all too easy to overlook a wonderful author. Don’t do that to Margaret Meyers, whose new story collection, Dislocation, has just been published by Entasis Press.

Meyers’s multilayered stories are charming, insightful, and significant, with writing that’s filled with wit and humor. There’s no better way to capture the power of her prose than to quote it. Consider the opening of Doing Good:

“As the young black woman climbs into the front passenger seat of the VW Bug, Delia, crosslegged in the back, notes that her mother’s ears are still ripe-tomato red. Her mother speaks to the young woman in her calm, warm, Sunday-morning voice but those ears, generally very pale with tiny gold freckles, tell Delia that her mother is very far from calm.”

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IN PRAISE OF THE LONG NOVEL

4/4/14 – IN PRAISE OF THE LONG NOVEL

Pundits have it that the age of the long, rambling novel is over. Having just read two super long books with book clubs that couldn’t get enough of them, I beg to differ.

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Should only positive book reviews be published?

3/7/14 – IS THERE STILL A ROLE FOR THE NEGATIVE BOOK REVIEW?

The world of the book review is getting mighty hard to navigate. With more and more publications tightening their belts, eliminating book supplements, and pink slipping reviewers, serious literary criticism (think James Wood in the New Yorker or Dwight Garner in The New York Times) has become a very rare commodity. At the same time, online book review sites of widely varying quality are proliferating, with new ones popping up every day.

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REVIEW: THE DEATH LOTTERY BY GERALD M. WEINBERG

3/4/14 – REVIEW: THE DEATH LOTTERY BY GERALD M. WEINBERG

Full disclosure: I love books about serial killers. So I was destined to love The Death Lottery, Gerald M. Weinberg’s new novel about a serial killer randomly terrorizing Manhattan and a team of math geniuses determined to find a method to the madness.

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Stoning the Devil, Garry Craig Powell, book review and interview

2/20/14 STONING THE DEVIL, GARRY CRAIG POWELL, BOOK REVIEW AND INTERVIEW

Time and fortune happen to everyone. Before my other half, Todd, read Garry Craig Powell’s Stoning the Devil, I told Todd that when he finished I would want him to tell me if he could see any difference between Stoning the Devil and the novels on the New York Times notable books lists over the years. Because I can’t see any difference, in quality of writing or in the relevance and significance of topic.

Todd couldn’t see any difference, either.

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BOOK REVIEW: COBALT BLUE BY PEGGY PAYNE

2/10/14 BOOK REVIEW: COBALT BLUE BY PEGGY PAYNE

Cobalt Blue is a novel about sex, and then it’s not. If you’re looking for steamy sex scenes, you’ll find them here, but you’ll also find much more in the struggles of Andie Branson, a 38-year-old artist who is suddenly caught up in a puzzling chaos of inspiration and desire. Frustrated that her career is floundering (her most recent job includes the lowly work of napkin design), Andie’s interest in creating art is waning, so she’s surprised when an unexpected surge of pleasure grows into an urgent passion to paint. And so the journey begins.

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What Dickens Knew: The Importance of Character

2/4/14 WHAT DICKENS KNEW: THE IMPORTANCE OF CHARACTER

Near the beginning of Lloyd Jones’s Mister Pip, there is a delightful moment in which Mr. Watts tells his students that they will soon be meeting Mr. Charles Dickens of London, England. The students rarely see a white man in their isolated village in Papua New Guinea so they come back the next day with great expectations. Initially disappointed to learn the author has been dead for over a century, they quickly become enthralled as Mr. Watts starts reading Dickens’s last novel aloud.

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Stoner, John Williams’ overlooked gem of a novel

1/7/14 – STONER: IT’S TIME YOU READ THIS BOOK

A few months ago, the New Yorker reviewed Stoner under the headline, “The Greatest American Novel You’ve Never Heard Of.” It was a clever line, but after Britain’s Waterstones named it the Book of the Year for 2013—and with U.S. sales finally topping 100,000—it may no longer be true. Admittedly, it’s taken 48 years to get to this point and the novel is still far from a popular favorite, but it’s clearly beginning to get the attention it deserves.

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Edith Wharton’s Letters

12/7/13 — THE LETTERS OF EDITH WHARTON

When I was having trouble with the first chapter of a novel I was writing, a good friend and writing mentor suggested I take another look at Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth. Its first chapter is a classic; it not only draws you into the story but it also lays the groundwork and foreshadows everything that is to follow.

In fact, the opening was so good I couldn’t stop and quickly reread Wharton’s wonderful classic. But as I put it back on my shelf, my eye caught the volume next to it: The Letters of Edith Wharton, edited by her Pulitzer prize-winning biographer R.W.B. Lewis and his wife, Nancy Lewis. And what a marvelous treasure that turned out to be.

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REVIEW: THE YONAHLOSSEE RIDING CAMP FOR GIRLS

11/10/13 BOOK REVIEW: THE YONAHLOSSEE RIDING CAMP FOR GIRLS BY ANTON DiSCLAFANI

I like a good mystery, especially a mystery embedded in a mainstream novel. So I was hooked when Anton DiSclafani started dropping hints of an unnamed “trouble” at home in the first chapter of her debut novel, The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls. The “trouble” is the reason fifteen-year-old Thea Atwell’s parents have sent her away from home in Florida to a boarding school where wealthy young women learn to be accomplished equestriennes in the mountains of North Carolina.

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10/26/2013 – Along the Watchtower

10/26/2013 – Along the Watchtower by David Litwack – a review

David Litwack says, “Nothing inspires his writing like the beautiful scenery of Cape Cod.” The chilled crash of the shore and the craggy trees of the Cape are starkly evident in the pages of Litwack’s Along the Watchtower. The atmosphere he creates by means of the Cape is just one of the many successful aspects of this novel.

Fredrick Williams is an Army Lieutenant leading his squad on a patrol in Iraq when he is gravely wounded. A man obsessed with the video game, World of Warcraft, Fredrick believes his distraction with the game is what diverted his attention and led to his injuries and the death of his closest friend, the man he calls archangel.

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Review of The Preservationist by Justin Kramon

10/23/13, Review of The Preservationist by Justin Kramon.

Justin Kramon’s book is just out. He says it’s “a psychological thriller, written as a tribute to some of the classic thrillers I love, from Hitchcock to Ruth Rendell to Stephen King to Patricia Highsmith to Henning Mankell.”

I don’t know the last time a had so much to say to a character while I was reading a book. Most often I was saying aloud: No! Don’t do it! Don’t go there!

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Review of Ron Cooper’s Purple Jesus

10/20/13 “Purple Jesus is so perfectly written, it’s exhilarating to read,” wrote Eric Miles Williamson in The Washington Post. “The publication of Purple Jesus is a literary event of the first magnitude.”

Ron Cooper’s Purple Jesus is the heartbreaking tale of a hapless, not always well-intentioned young man—Purvis—being led around by his penis and his penchant for fantasy by a young woman determined to escape the backwoods rural poverty that asthmatic Purvis lacks the self-esteem to ever really imagine himself escaping. The book is also the best explanation—illumination—I’ve seen of how some modern-life tragedies come into being, the kinds of fatal tragedies that leave all of us gawking at the TV news and saying, “Why would anyone do that? What was he thinking?”

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Washington Independent Review of Books’ Carolyn Sienkiewicz, Guest Blogger

First, let’s get this out the way: Stieg Larsson, Stieg Larsson, Stieg Larsson. There, I have evoked his name so no one can say I overlooked him.

Mr. Larsson’s successful works notwithstanding, everyone loves a good mystery and I’m no exception. Humans are hard-wired to try to solve puzzles and problems, a survival skill basic to understanding one another and trying to get along so we don’t kill each other.

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ICE WOMAN ASSIGNMENT REVIEWED BY S. LINEBAUGH

The Ice Woman Assignment by Austin S. Camacho has all the excitement and tension a reader of thrillers could want. Morgan Stark, a black, well-muscled former mercenary, is a partner in a security business with red-haired former jewel thief Felicity O’Brien. Their cunning opponent is Anaconda,

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Fantasy novel Juggler’s Blade, Rob Ross, review

9/20/13 – BOOK REVIEW OF ROB ROSS’s FANTASY NOVEL, JUGGLER’S BLADE

I usually don’t read fantasy but watched for Juggler’s Blade to be published because I knew it had won the fantasy silver prize in the Maryland Writers’ Association novel contest. Not only does the book jump off fast, but the beginning is worthy of literary fiction. The plight of Ian, the young protagonist, brings to mind Oliver Twist, Dickens’ lad born into a life of crime.

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Book Review: Washed in the Water by Nancy Hartney

9/7/13 – BOOK REVIEW: WASHED IN THE WATER BY NANCY HARTNEY

Nancy Hartney doesn’t just create a sense of place in her stories; she actually takes you there, lifting you out of your reading chair and virtually transporting you to the South as it was fifty years ago. In Washed in the Water, her debut collection of short stories, Hartney writes with such authority and realism about the white underbelly of the region during that era that she immediately establishes herself as an important new voice of the South, with a style and tone reminiscent of Carson McCullers, Erskine Caldwell, or Flannery O’Connor. You certainly don’t need to read the book jacket to know where Hartney comes from.

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