The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares is a young adult novel that lives up to the hype that surrounds it.  It is the story of four girls who have been thrust together since birth and who believe that their strength comes from each other.  They are both right and wrong in that belief.The summer of... Continue Reading →

The Science of Sherlock Holmes by E. J. Wagner was not quite what I expected.  I expected the book to be tightly focused on the Sherlock Holmes stories and simply explain the forensics behind solving the crimes.  What this book is is much more.This book really is a history of the early days of criminal investigation, using Sherlock... Continue Reading →

Imagine that you are a Jew, affected by scleroderma, confined to a wheelchair, hoping that today won't be the day you die.  You are taken from your home to The Keep (F Paul Wilson) which is currently occupied by Nazi militia.  They are having a problem with something that goes bump in the night (and... Continue Reading →

You drove a stake through the vampire's heart and it died.  Again.  Unfortunately, the body did not turn to dust.  So much for easy clean-up.  Now you have a body that you need to dispose of.  That is the premise of Richard Laymon's novel Bite. Like any body disposal, things do not go smoothly.  A blown... Continue Reading →

Yes, Stephen King writes very long novels.  But he is also a master of the short story.  Night Shift is the first collection of shorts published by King.  Most of these stories were written before I was born.  They still work.This collection contains the short story that has kept me up more nights than any other... Continue Reading →

I was attempting to read most of what Francesca Lia Block wrote.  I am stopping with Weetzie Bat.My purpose in reading Block was to get an idea of what made a successful YA writer.  I think I get what makes her writing popular with certain readers.  I definitely get that it would never work for me. Block's... Continue Reading →

Tough Customer is one of Sandra Brown's recent novels.  It's a suspense novel (although this time I clearly saw the ending coming) with a hefty dose of romance thrown in.While I was slightly disappointed in the plot, Brown did something really interesting with the romance subplot.  Brown took the standard romance sequence of events and split... Continue Reading →

All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren is a political novel (though it's more about human relationships) set in the early 1900s.  It tells the story of one man's rise to political success and his ultimate demise.  But at it's heart, it's not about the politician at all. This story is told through the eyes... Continue Reading →

John Brockman (virtually) gathered a group of "great thinkers" and asked them a simple question: What do you believe that you cannot prove to be true?  The results are compiled in the book What We Believe But Cannot Prove.  It's a great question, even if it is scientifically wrong.  Science believes we can't prove anything, we... Continue Reading →

Belinda  is another Anne Rice novel written under the name Anne Rampling.  Again, this is not a vampire novel, which might be why the assumed name.  This novel also deals with some potentially controversial subject matter.  The main character, Jeremy, is a forty-something year-old man who falls in love with a sixteen year old girl. I had... Continue Reading →