If you’re into John Grisham’s legal thrillers like I am, you might be curious about his first collection of novellas, “Sparring Partners.” I’ve been a fan of Grisham’s work for a while now, having read over a dozen of his books, but this collection didn’t quite hit the mark for me. The novellas in Sparring Partners all revolve around the theme of law, which is a common thread in Grisham’s writing and something I usually enjoy. In “Homecoming,” we follow Jake Brigance, a familiar character from Grisham’s previous novels, as he’s called upon to help his old friend Mack Stafford, a disgraced former attorney who disappeared with his clients’ money, […]
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November Reads – Lots to Enjoy
Here you go fellow travelers, the books I read in November. It’s a lighter list than is typical for me, but Thanksgiving with the family is a more about food and fun than reading, right? This month I discovered many new authors—Karin Slaughter, Sunjeev Sahota, Erin Bartels, Alison Gaylin, Steve Pope, Emma Brodie, David R. Boyd, and Adele Myers—the advantage of receiving advance reader copies. Some of them I will definitely read again, but there were a couple clunkers. Read on to find out which ones. The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray In her twenties, Belle da Costa Greene is hired by J. P. Morgan to […]
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The Judge’s List – Book Review
Lacy Stoltz is tired of her work for the Florida Board on Judicial Conduct and ready for a change. Then she meets a mysterious woman who is so frightened she uses several aliases. Jeri Crosby’s father was murdered twenty years earlier in a case that remains unsolved and that has grown stone cold. But Jeri has a suspect whom she has become obsessed with and has stalked for two decades. Along the way, she has discovered other victims. He is a sitting judge, which puts him in Lacy’s jurisdiction. He has a list, with the names of his victims and targets, all unsuspecting people unlucky enough to have crossed his […]
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The Best Mystery Novels of all Time
The Best Mystery Novels of All Time Gumshoes, investigators, flatfoots, private eyes, sleuths, G-men. There are plenty of names for detectives and plenty of ways they catch crooks in the written word and on the screen. I much prefer a mystery novel because I can envision the characters and settings rather than having them imagined for me. If you love to read this genre, too, you’re in good company. Most critics and scholars agree that the first modern mystery was penned by Edgar Allan Poe. His short story, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, was first published in the April 1841 issue of Graham’s Magazine. Nearly twenty years after Poe’s […]
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The Best Thrillers of All Time
If you’re anything like me, you appreciate a lot of different types of books. To help you land on some reads you may not have considered, I’ve put together a list of the best books of all time from various genres. I did exhaustive research to come up with the best of the best. What you’ll see comes from several sources and my own opinions. Just so you know, an author makes only one appearance on the list no matter how many outstanding books he or she has written, and some obvious choices aren’t here because they are on another genre’s list. The following list is in alphabetical order (the […]
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