CROSSING THE WINE-DARK SEA: Journeys Through Ancient Literature, non-fiction from the translation giantess

CROSSING THE WINE-DARK SEA: Journeys Through Ancient Literature
EMILY WILSON
Liveright (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$18.99 ebook, preorder now for delivery 1 September 2026

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: "An enthralling and profoundly relevant book." —Salman Rushdie

"I adored reading these joyful, illuminating, and engrossing journeys through ancient literature." —Madeline Miller

From the most celebrated translator of our time comes a visionary exploration of how translation reshapes and enriches our understanding of the ancient world.

In this sharp and often entertaining tour through antiquity, Emily Wilson—whose renditions of Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad have captured a generation’s imagination—explores the complicated terrain of reading and writing about the ancient past. Drawing on twenty years of scholarship and teaching, Wilson explores the difficult choices that translators must make, the pleasures of finding new solutions to old problems, and the inevitable frustrations of never fully capturing what is in the original work.

Across chapters that range from the politics of Helen of Troy to the obscenities of Aristophanes, from Roman imitation of Greek models to contemporary debates over “foreignizing” and “domesticizing” styles, Wilson examines how modern norms of gender, sexuality, violence, humor, and power complicate our readings of ancient works, and how translation always risks denaturing what is unique and strange about the ancient world.

Brilliant, erudite, and yet accessible to readers with no classical background, Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea is at once an introduction to the wonders of Greek and Roman literature, a manifesto for the value of translation in a rapidly changing world, and an invitation to encounter ancient cultures anew.

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My Review: What I expected was more jabbing at Christopher Nolan for his 3.25/4 master's thesis on the subject of "How The Odyssey Reflects the 21st Century's Everlasting Love for Homeric Misogyny." I did not get that. What I did NOT expect was her comparing Aristophanes in translation to Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B in their "WAP" music video by saying "...his linguistic effects depend, like theirs, on the artful manipulation of rhythm and sound in words and imagery."

I seriously doubt her father, eminent Victorianist A.N. Wilson, would approve of his first-born child even knowing what any of that meant...I was, I confess, the mildest bit shocked. (I sat with flycatcher-mouth for five minutes.)

So, well, Author Emily Wilson does not travel by any more conventional a route here, discussing the weird and wonderful (except Lucretius, Satanic forefather of poetical obscurantism *ptooptoo*sign of the horns*) world of ancient imaginations as recorded in their stories than she did when she asked "tell me about a complicated man." And that decision has honestly received far, far more attention that it merited, mostly because it dares to be clear and to express an accurate assessment of the story that follows. I think her honesty in choosing the use of the word "slave" throughout her translation alone gives an excellent reason for the existence of this book.

The ancient world whose literature has made Author Emily's career was so incredibly unlike our own world that it seems to me the term "translation" is too mild, almost dismissive, when applied to the task of explanation and explication it masks. No basic assumptions are shared; no ideas about humanity, about the manner in which the world goes about its work, remains in common. What does remain in common is human nature, human emotions, humanness itself. Language and culture are not the same but the creatures creating them are.

I found the reading experience very illuminating. I will say that someone from the intellectual background, with the education, and leading the professorial life she has, is not going to come across as just folks or someone you'd meet in the canned food aisle of the Walmart. I would be shocked to see her in Walmart, given the scolding she dished out to Nolan for filming his beautiful-looking but brovian story in Western Sahara. Intersectionality is very much on ortholefty lines. I'm not knocking her! I too am more ortholefty than centrist, so yay...but it really shows. Not everyone will like it.

Not everyone should. I want Author Emily's brave new world with its people who are open to seeing the strangeness of the past clearly and honestly and still not Revering, not at all rejecting, its truth, to come to pass. Now I need to read Iliad to see what she does with Achilles and Patroclus.

I have high hopes. Among my higher hopes are that you'll pick up this tendentious work of recontextualization, recentering, and renewal of our human roots.

VONNEGUT’S WAR: The Making of Slaughterhouse-Five, fascinating story of a fascinating book's creation

VONNEGUT’S WAR: The Making of Slaughterhouse-Five
SUSAN FARRELL
Bloomsbury Academic (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$27.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: Banned, burned, and censored, Kurt Vonnegut's 1969 novel Slaughterhouse-Five is widely regarded as one of the greatest (and most controversial) novels of the twentieth century. Fusing vivid biography with popular history and close textual analysis, Vonnegut's War tells the fascinating story of the making of a modern classic and the writer that created it.

New archival discoveries and recently released oral histories give us the fullest account yet published of Vonnegut's real-life prisoner-of-war experiences at Stalag IV-B and Dresden, which heavily influenced Slaughterhouse-Five. A recently discovered trove of letters introduces us to his first wife, Jane Cox Vonnegut, and her influence on his writing. Along the way, we also encounter UFOs and aliens, grapple with the shadow cast by the Vietnam war, and unearth the stranger-than-fiction tale of David Irving's The Destruction of Dresden, the historical reference behind Vonnegut's writing about the Dresden firebombing.

This book sheds light on one of America's most beloved writers and explores how cultural forces helped to shape a modern masterpiece of storytelling.

Susan Farrell is a professor of American Literature at the College of Charleston. She has published two previous books on Vonnegut and founded the International Kurt Vonnegut Society.

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My Review: Billy Pilgrim shaped many an internal landscape after his appearance in 1969. My older sister encouraged me to read Slaughterhouse-Five when I was fourteen or so; I did, and was genuinely not the same person after the read. I've always been sure war and other kinds of industrial-scale killing were wrong, and tools of oppression and manipulation used by "Them" (the ever-shifting, always-there overclass) to ensure no individual of any class ever truly feels secure for very long. It read to my young self like the bravest kind of art, made to tell ugly truth in carefully crafted images. It was sublime. (I stand by my 2014 review.)

As a middle-aged man I read the story again, on the fortieth anniversary (more or less) of the first read. Same story, different reader, similar conclusion reached...though with nuances like a shocked certainty that Billy Pilgrim was Vonnegut's PTSD personified, that the entire exercise was a therapy session shaped into a narrative of brutal honesty and deep personal exposure underpinning artifice, maybe art, maybe just the complete relatability of honest, truthful self-examination made public.

Twenty more years have passed. I'm not drawn to the text for another read, too few eyeblinks left to me and too much good stuff as yet unread. This book, telling the story of how Slaughterhouse-Five came to be over the course of more than twenty years in the eventful, interesting life of Kurt Vonnegut. It was a long-term, multi-partner effort to shape Vonnegut's trauma into the glittering form we possess now. Access to much material previously off-limits to researchers makes the role of Vonnegut's much-maligned first wife in shaping the narrative more evident. We all, in the twenty-first century, have a very, very different understanding of gender dynamics than was available to any but the most advanced academic thinkers during the years Vonnegut was composing Slaughterhouse-Five. His evident misogyny went well beyond the cultural norms of his era. It's not emphasized in the book nor is it glossed over; this is at heart an academic book, though, so it sticks to its lane more than a purely popular one would. As a factor in the creation of the work in question the reprehensible misogyny and abuse Vonnegut doled out are in the DNA of the story. It's discomfiting to read the clear-eyed portrait of Vonnegut in the throes of creation. Confronting the damage he (knowingly, deliberately) enacts on those around him is unpleasant, as I've grown my mind around the work he's done over the majority of my approaching seventy years on Earth. The older I get the more I realize how little has really changed since the men who wrote the "idol with legs of iron, and feet of clay" quote appearing in the Bible sharpened their styluses.

As Author Farrell's pursuit of the reality behind the making of Slaughterhouse-Five she does the hard work of giving perspective to the acts of its creation in the context of the times. Who was this WWII veteran trying to find perspective on his experiences reading, talking to, using as sounding boards? Could this specific novel have come to be in 1949, 1959, even 1965? I remember the ferment of those years, the way my older-than-most parents were constantly blindsided and upset by the world changing so much so fast...Vonnegut was younger than they were so I realized with a start in reading this book. It adds a piece to my vision of Slaughterhouse-Five that I'd never had. It takes reading a book written about a book getting written to bring perspective to my settled opinion of a story published almost sixty years ago. Do you need a better illustration of why reading, writing about reading, and close and careful analysis of stories are more important than ever in a world getting "AI" shoved down its throat?

What this read did for me it can do for you and for others. No "AI" (properly "LLM") can do what Author Farrell did here. Human brains make connections among data points derived from deep research. They're what creates the synthesis of information that synthetic entities steal to regurgitate to the uncritical as new and insightful ideas. It's true, they are new and insightful; but if you've read the stolen source material, you realize how the scam works. It's new to you, not freshly newly thought up. This is why controlling the world's IP is such an incredibly important part of the scam.

My proof is here, in this well-written, thoroughly researched story of the making of a story that defined the emotional state of a man, and thereafter of a generation.

IF THIS BE MAGIC: The Unlikely Art of Shakespeare in Translation, what a pleasure of a read

IF THIS BE MAGIC: The Unlikely Art of Shakespeare in Translation
DANIEL HAHN
Alfred A. Knopf (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, preorder now for delivery 21 April 2026

Rating: 4.8* of five

The Publisher Says: How does Shakespeare remain Shakespeare when every word is changed? In this playful, meditative exploration of translating the world’s most beloved playwright, Daniel Hahn guides us through the magic of bringing the Bard to a global audience.

Shakespeare may have breathed the air of sixteenth-century England, but today, all the world is his stage. Every year, millions of people, from Bogotá to Borneo, read Hamlet for the first time, thanks to the tireless work of translators. Drawing on the work of the very best of them, Hahn dives into the infinitesimally complicated ways the great playwright is reinvented and yet sounds, somehow, like himself—in Chinese, Dutch, Turkish, and more than a hundred other languages.

From word order, puns, and punctuation to metaphor, accent, and song, Shakespeare’s variety of genius presents an endless set of conundrums, among them: How does Romeo and Juliet’s love story unfold if their dialogue cannot form a sonnet (nor rhyme), as it does in the original? How can you form wordplay around the letter “I” and its sound if its meanings are not shared in other languages? These are just two out of millions of issues facing translators tasked with bringing Shakespeare to non-English languages, non-Shakespearean eras and cultures. To attempt such a feat, they must cut and add beats, maintain rhymes, adapt names and locations, and preserve meaning while not unilaterally prioritizing it, all while knowing that for each word, line, or scene they construct, another option is yet to be discovered.

Traveling the world, Hahn speaks to writers and actors engaging with Shakespeare’s work, sharing stories of his own. Hahn, whose great-grandfather produced one of Brazil’s earliest Shakespeare translations, emerges as a wise and enthusiastic guide, teacher, and sleuth. If This Be Magic does not require knowledge of any other language or more than a passing acquaintance with the Bard’s canon, but it draws out fascinating insights on both. As nerdy as they come (there is a chapter on commas), supremely readable, and funny throughout, this is a book for everyone and a fitting tribute to the Globe’s Bard.

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My Review: Translating words between languages, even ones that swim in the same linguistic rivers and in generally the same direction, is an exacting, laborious practice of alchemy. It recombines elements of the original material at specific temperatures (states of emotion) and adds/subtracts new substances (words in the translator's own language) and anneals the result in the great body of water that is the translation's target culture. What shape the new thing has, what its properties are, is now set and there for everyone to see.

Does it still resemble the original ideas put forth by William Shakespeare? Can it? Every word is new. Every sound is not early-modern English. But it's meant to be a work by Shakespeare available to someone from a culture the Bard of Stratford-on-Avon would not remotely recognize. Is it Shakespeare?

I was fascinated by the idea of this effort to contextualize the art of translation by viewing it through this very specific lens. A translator takes on a huge task every time they opt to make another artist's work over into words the original artist does not know. The decisions, the word-by-word consideration of connotations, denotations, cultural nuance, generational nuance...and that's just the words themselves, not the way these basic units of meaning interact with the plot, lead to possible subtexts that aren't in the original but certainly work in the gestalt of the particular story....

Why would you choose to do that work, let alone do it for a writer of international superstardom and with legions of self-appointed guardians of His Sacred Words/Ideas/Intentions? And then there's the small matter of how incredibly linguistically inventive, how unnervingly acutely emotionally observant the writer was...how to make that available in a tongue like German that's close to our English let alone, say Swahili?

I read this collection of case files Author Hahn, with his ancestral connection to a Shakespeare translator, created for us, in one sitting. It was a long day, interrupted for water coming in and going out and two sandwiches. It's not necessary to do that. It's not even particularly advisable as I came away with a distinctly overloaded spirit trying too hard to consolidate my feelings into my insights to be anything but restless for hours while trying to get to sleep. I dreamed of reading "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and its transformations, its miscommunications, its shape-shifting between farcical comedy and subtle elucidation of desire compressed into a sentence that seems to be more about etiquette violated than courtly power flouted...in Croatian (in the dream I understood it but in life not at all). It was still Shakespeare, only not in English that honestly needs footnotes and a glossary for my midcentury American brain to get the whole of it.

And then there's the end use of the translation. Sure, some will simply read it as texts, able to easily stop to find a dictionary, to indulge the idle whim of looking up a play's local-culture history. But lots more people will hear this translation enacted into a play. An actor, professional or amateur, will speak the translator's/Shakespeare's words. If you don't already know how very very different spoken words are from those marks on a page, read this sentence aloud. Does it still feel the same, is it easier to understand, harder to understand, are the words themselves familiar or weird, do you know from the look of the sentence how to say it out loud....

All these details are part of the art that a translator signs up to give their audience. It is even more difficult than writing one's own work! I kept wanting to know why these underpaid geniuses undertook such an immense task, knowing success will be not receiving death threats from Shakespeare stans. I don't really feel I got a satisfying answer though, most people just seem to think "well of course I'm going to climb Everest in these Jimmy Choos while wearing a ballgown from Gone with the Wind and carrying these kettlebells. Cat fur to make kitten britches!" So no full-five from me, but close, because the topic of translation is oddly greatly broadened by Author Hahn considering so deeply the ramifications of this extremely specific use of it. I might not feel I know why but I sure as hell know what the point of this labor is.

Spread the love. Share the joy. Commit to the communication of Art to everyone you can reach.

Author Hahn, I totally, bone deep, relate.

HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER, debut procedural with heart and edge

HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER
REBECCA PHILIPSON
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: This fresh debut thriller finds a Scotland Yard detective trying to find the author of a self-help book that promises quite literally to teach readers how to get away with murder, which seems to have inspired London's newest murderer.

Detective Inspector Samantha Hansen has been on leave for six months, recovering from a breakdown she suffered at work, but when a fourteen-year-old girl is murdered in a local park, Sam jumps at the chance to return to the job and prove that she's still got what it takes to be the Yard's most successful homicide detective. One of the cases only leads is a copy of a self-help book found in the victim's backpack called How To Get Away With Murder by a man named Denver Brady.

Brady claims to be the most successful serial killer of our time, which is why no one's ever heard of him. Chapter by chapter, he details his methodology and his past victims, and as Sam's investigation progresses and the details of the book go viral, Sam begins to suspect that there’s more to the author than what he’s revealed. But in order to find a killer and get justice for young Charlotte, Sam must learn to trust her instincts once again, before Denver Brady—or someone else—really does get away with murder.

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My Review: I'm going to get the mean bit over: thriller it ain't. Procedural plus PTSD it is. But that's on the publisher, not the author. The author, whose debut it is, did a decent job with the story, but needs some time to sand smoother edges onto her storytelling...quit hinting, either say or or skip it. And certainly cut it out after maybe twice, really that's where it stops being hinting and becomes annoying nudging.

So that's why it's a four-star read. I think as a debut, the ending crafted by Author Philipson is complex enough to show this is a very, very promising debut indeed. The story of a book within a book, a book by a mysterious author purporting to be a confession to his murders, and a clue in the murder of an obscenely young woman, can feel, well, artificial but Author Philipson dodged that trap deftly by interweaving Sam's...that's DI Samantha Hansen on introduction, Sam thereafter...recent issues around mental health into the investigation. It was quite well done. A detective who's a reader, who's been famed for her command of detail and pattern-matching, is suddenly fuzzy and afraid of the details she battened on becoming too triggering. It slows her down and speed is of the essence, does this portend her new future? Can she be successful in this new, possibly permanent, slow mode?

Questions that I suspect anyone who has had an external event alter their affect in the world can relate to.

On we go through a constructed maze, fair-play clues concealed well enough to make them niggle at the edges of awareness, and that ending I've already praised cause experienced mystery readers like me to pause and doff our invisible caps to Author Philipson. Her editor had a very good touch, I can't see obvious editorial alterations. I suspect the trainees Sam's lumbered with were once a lot more like props because they're not as well-rounded as they will be in future. (Do posh English people really join the police as often as they do in fiction?) I think a loot of the humor in the book is going to be a barrier for US readers. Or maybe not, now that I've typed the sentence...lots more of us are tuned in to UK slang and humor. It was fun to get chuckles in surprising places.

In my never-humble opinion, this is an auspicious debut. It portends an interesting writer's arrival onto a scene that's always stuffed with talent that goes nowhere fast for lack of that little spark, that addictive personal edge, that hooks the ma'at seeking series mystery addict coming back for more.

I think Author Philipson has that. Come find out if you agree.

The BOOKBINDER'S SECRET, debut historical mystery set in a biblioholic's fever dream

The BOOKBINDER'S SECRET
A.D. BELL
St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Every book tells a story. This one tells a secret.

A young bookbinder begins a hunt for the truth when a confession hidden beneath the binding of a burned book reveals a story of forbidden love, lost fortune, and murder.

Lilian ("Lily") Delaney, apprentice to a master bookbinder in Oxford in 1901, chafes at the confines of her life. She is trapped between the oppressiveness of her father’s failing bookshop and still being an apprentice in a man’s profession. But when she’s given a burned book during a visit to a collector, she finds, hidden beneath the binding, a fifty-year-old letter speaking of love, fortune, and murder.

Lily is pulled into the mystery of the young lovers, a story of forbidden love, and discovers there are more books and more hidden pages telling their story. Lilian becomes obsessed with the story but she is not the only one looking for the remaining books and what began as a diverting intrigue quickly becomes a very dangerous pursuit.

Lily's search leads her from the eccentric booksellers of London to the private libraries of unscrupulous collectors and the dusty archives of society papers, deep into the heart of the mystery. But with sinister forces closing in, willing to do anything for the books, Lilian’s world begins to fall apart and she must decide if uncovering the truth is worth the risk to her own life.

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My Review: I was suckered in by "forbidden love" in the description. It does not mean queer love. It means a girl of "gentle birth" (SOMEone's never been in a delivery room, there is not one single thing gentle about birth) falling for a lower-class boy, being thwarted in her desire for him, and the very tedious and predictable consequences thereof.

All of this features in the mystery the young bookbinder's apprentice is required to solve by her...compulsion, I guess...to have some control over something in her life. Her status as a 1901, so transition between Victorian and Edwardian, woman means she's hemmed in on all sides in spite of being her antiquarian-bookseller father's heir and an apprentice bookbinder of significant skill.

She is, in other words, that most dangerous of people: One who knows just enough to know she is second-class by other people's designs. Those are the people who foment revolution, who commit violent crimes, who rise up for their own benefit. Lily's many steps above her peers because she's got a (failing?) business coming to her, she's learning a skilled trade, and by and large is left to her own devices to live her life as she sees fit.

Which leads me to that missing star. Lily has two suitors and pursues relationships with each unremarked on...in 1901. It's the unremarked on that is the bridge too far in straining my suspension of disbelief. She'd have A Reputation, be called names, be gossiped about. As we're never in the men's company for long enough to form our own opinion about them, at least the gossiping neighbors could've filled us in. Also, the mystery is set in 1851...how did it end? Why do I care if a mid-Victorian pairing gets consummated? For that matter, why does Lily, except to distract herself from the unsatisfying life she's leading?

I liked very much the bookbinding bits. I honestly got invested in Lily's struggles with discovering clues, being perfectly willing to lie and steal to acquire them; but also was sure this would not have gone unremarked in her small professional world. For all of my willingness to meet the book halfway, this was my quarter-star docking point. In the future installments of the series this is clearly meant to be I hope some judicious pruning will cut some redundancies, some peril will attach to Lily's unconventional lifestyle, and her men will either be more present or at least gossiped about.

WILD FOR AUSTEN: A Rebellious, Subversive, and Untamed Jane, excellent self-gifted read

WILD FOR AUSTEN: A Rebellious, Subversive, and Untamed Jane
DEVONEY LOOSER
St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$15.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Incisive, funny, and deeply-researched insights into the life, writing, and legacy of Jane Austen, by the preeminent scholar Devoney Looser.

Thieves! Spies! Abolitionists! Ghosts! If we ever truly believed Jane Austen to be a quiet spinster, scholar Devoney Looser puts that myth to rest at last in Wild for Austen. These, and many other events and characters, come to life throughout this rollicking book. Austen, we learn, was far wilder in her time than we’ve given her credit for, and Looser traces the fascinating and fantastical journey her legacy has taken over the past 250 years.

All six of Austen’s completed novels are examined here, and Looser uncovers striking new gems therein, as well as in Austen’s juvenilia, unfinished fiction, and even essays and poetry. Looser also takes on entirely new scholarship, writing about Austen’s relationship to the abolitionist movement and women’s suffrage. In examining the legacy of Austen’s works, Looser reveals the film adaptations that might have changed Hollywood history had they come to fruition, and tells extraordinary stories of ghost-sightings, Austen novels used as evidence in courts of law, and the eclectic members of the Austen extended family whose own outrageous lives seem wilder than fiction.

Written with warmth, humor, and remarkable details never before published, Wild for Austen is the ultimate tribute to Jane Austen.

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My Review: Over eleven hundred endnotes.

One thousand one hundred plus end notes.

I was very very shocked to see this in its glory inside a non-academic book, albeit one by an academic who has spent her career toiling in Austen's vineyard. It's clear from reading this work that Author Looser thinks about Austen very much in a framework. An academic, analytical approach to what I can only describe as a wildly partisan, excitedly appreciative paean to Austen for her 250th birthday (tomorrow as I post this review).

I was very entertained by the discussion of Austen's work in "Wild Writings" because I'm not an Austenite. There are so many reasons for that...I'm male, and men come off very poorly indeed, is not one. Most come down to the absence of my chemistry response going ping the way it does with Eliot or Trollope or Anna Katharine Green. It's weird, but there it is, and reading Author Looser's warbles of rapture makes me feel vicariously the heights of appreciation my more muted pleasure won't reach.

In the second section, I switched on fully, thoroughly enjoying Austen's fascinating family relations. It's a section very aptly titled "Fierce Family Ties." Fierce is a good descriptor! Abolitionists, suffragists (not the later versions, but advocating for general male enfranchisement), progressives of all stripes...Jane Austen, lady novelist, also had lady novelist cousins...no matter where one looks, one finds her situated amid those who want to change the status quo for what looks to my twenty-first century eyes like the better.

Part three is Jane's afterlife, her posthumous career as an ikon. Here I felt uninvolved,uninspired...it took me two weeks to read this section because y'all superfans, well, when I don't share an obsession it's hard to work up enthusiasm for it. It was informative but not about something I care to learn about. That's the missing half-star explained.

I'd recommend this read to the holiday-weary Austenite because it really situates y'all in a cultural mainstream that's brought huge joy to the world. Could anything be more apt for a self-gifted read?

ALL MY BONES, second bookseller/sleuth cozy mystery set in Georgia

ALL MY BONES (An Old Juniper Bookshop Mystery #2)
P. J. NELSON
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Madeline Brimley, new owner of a bookstore in a small Georgia town, finds herself playing sleuth when a friend is charged with the murder of a much-disliked woman.

Madeline Brimley recently inherited a bookstore in Enigma, Georgia, is embarking on her second career, after her first one (acting) founders upon the metaphorical rocks. Settling in, Madeline recruits her friend Gloria Coleman, the local Episcopal priest, to help her plant azaleas in the front yard of the old Victorian that houses the bookstore. Turning the soil, however, uncovers the body of one Beatrice Glassie, a troublesome woman who has been missing for the past six months.

When her friend Gloria is arrested for the murder, Madeline is determined to prove her innocence and, as she quickly finds out, there aren't many people in town who hadn't wanted to kill Bea Glassie at one point or another. And the very expensive and rare first edition of a particular volume of Grimm's Fairy Tales—ordered by the victim and her sister is somehow tied to the grim death. With the help of her not-quite-boyfriend, a local lawman, and her deceased aunt's best friend, Madeline plans to set a trap to catch the real murderer—before she becomes the next victim.

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My Review: BOOKED FOR MURDER is Author Nelson's debut bookseller/sleuth cozy mystery set in Georgia. Building on its very pleasant foundations, this tale of a local harpy-cum-harridan's unregretted death takes Madeline Brimley into dark corners of her newly-returned-to hometown. Her buddy Gloria, the Episcopalian priest, gets accused...not very convincingly...of the crime. Not so fast says our intrepid actress manquée-turned-bookseller, and swings into action.

I absolutely love that she used to babysit Billy, the guy now running for sheriff! I love the depth of field that is developed in this second entry in the series. Her interest in David, the local master gardener, is a relief...it's usually the lawman who gets involved with the amateur sleuth which...just no. It's an ethical violation that would get him bounced from his job and void his case investigations in reality. Of course, this isn't reality.

As in the first book the suspense-meter's staying low. I'm not against that in a cozy mystery where we're reading for ma'at and vibes. The cast is developing nicely, their quirks settling in to a rhythm of believable traits by consistency of notice from the rest of the cast. (Nothing destroys an illusion faster than no one in town ever commenting on someone's weird little quirks, eg Philomena's sapphic relationship with the late Aunt Rose.) Madeline's first-person narrative voice is a high point in this series. I looked forward to spending time with her. That failed acting career has done its part in giving Madeline crime-sleuthing skills, like seriously good sight-reading of materials she's briefly shown or sees, and decent mimicry skills.

I don't think her concentration was ever that strong...imagine needing reminding that the point of uncovering something is to exonerate her jailed friend!...but I totally bought in to the resolution of the killing being rooted in old, deep, toxic hatred. Small towns are great at breeding that kind of proximity toxicity.

A wonderful way to feed your Kindle and your head in the down moments of the slide into the Yule celebration itself. Get the first one, too, but you needn't read it first if you're a cozy fan of long standing.

COMICS AND STUFF, subtle work about an unsubtle medium and its message

COMICS AND STUFF
HENRY JENKINS
NYU Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$34.00 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Considers how comics display our everyday stuff—junk drawers, bookshelves, attics—as a way into understanding how we represent ourselves now

For most of their history, comics were widely understood as disposable—you read them and discarded them, and the pulp paper they were printed on decomposed over time. Today, comic books have been rebranded as graphic novels—clothbound high-gloss volumes that can be purchased in bookstores, checked out of libraries, and displayed proudly on bookshelves. They are reviewed by serious critics and studied in university classrooms. A medium once considered trash has been transformed into a respectable, if not elite, genre.

While the American comics of the past were about hyperbolic battles between good and evil, most of today's graphic novels focus on everyday personal experiences. Contemporary culture is awash with stuff. They give vivid expression to a culture preoccupied with the processes of circulation and appraisal, accumulation and possession. By design, comics encourage the reader to scan the landscape, to pay attention to the physical objects that fill our lives and constitute our familiar surroundings. Because comics take place in a completely fabricated world, everything is there intentionally. Comics are stuff; comics tell stories about stuff; and they display stuff.

When we use the phrase "and stuff" in everyday speech, we often mean something vague, something like "etcetera." In this book, stuff refers not only to physical objects, but also to the emotions, sentimental attachments, and nostalgic longings that we express—or hold at bay—through our relationships with stuff.

In Comics and Stuff, his first solo authored book in over a decade, pioneering media scholar Henry Jenkins moves through anthropology, material culture, literary criticism, and art history to resituate comics in the cultural landscape. Through over one hundred full-color illustrations, using close readings of contemporary graphic novels, Jenkins explores how comics depict stuff and exposes the central role that stuff plays in how we curate our identities, sustain memory, and make meaning. Comics and Stuff presents an innovative new way of thinking about comics and graphic novels that will change how we think about our stuff and ourselves.

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My Review: Stuff is a nightmare. Stuff is all I got. Stuff...is. Dealing with stuff, yours. mine, or no one we know's, is a full time career.

Comic books are stuff. They're about stuff. They are, in short, great wats to explore stuff and its role in our lives.

A subtle person uses the medium to critique, analyze, and...sometimes...take to task the message and its architects. Henry Jenkins is subtle; he uses the medium to make plain what can easily fall outside the awareness of the consumer: This is a story, an entire social universe, construted around the Love of Stuff.

It seems harmless enough phrased that way. It's hard to see from inside the system what the system's designed to do. Like investigating the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics, the theory is as close to proof of intent as we'll get...we can't observe what is, by definition, outside the system we're working within to perform the measurement.

In other words, you can't see the nose on your face unless you're looking in a mirror (or its equivalent reflective surface). Henry Jenkins is offering that mirror.

Highly recommended for your graphic-novel readin' sophisticate.

A COMPLETE FICTION, even the title has sneaky, hidden levels!

A COMPLETE FICTION
R.L. MAIZES
Ig Publishing (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$18.95 all editions, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: With little evidence, would-be author P.J. Larkin serves a "nibble" on the trendy new social-media app Crave, accusing editor George Dunn of stealing the novel she submitted to him for publication. The nibble shoots to the top of the site's Popular Menu Items and before you can say "unpaid literary labor," George is embroiled in a scandal, his job and book deal in jeopardy. P.J.’s novel is snapped up amid the publicity, but has she revealed secrets belonging to her sister, Mia, in the book? Some diners on Crave think so and now it’s P.J.’s turn to feel the public’s scorn.

Told in the humorous vein of Where'd You Go, Bernadette?, A COMPLETE FICTION examines the very serious questions of who has a right to tell a story, and has cancel culture gone too far in our social media-drenched world.

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My Review: Bitterly funny takedown/send-up of the corrosive world-view promoted by the algorithms of "engagement" that tech scum have foisted on social media users.

A writer manquée takes umbrage at a writer-editor (dangerous combination) publishing a novel that she feels is closely based on her own rejected novel. She stirs up a firestorm of outrage by accusing the male editor of plagiarism. The entire little world of this (invented; also brilliant, someone get on developing this!) app erupts! The consequences are multivarious, and serious, for all concerned.

Using social media is something most of us do, in 2025 in the US anyway. We're increasingly dependent on it. Without it, stuck in a place I can't physically leave with any ease or comfort, I'd go insane from boredom. Yet I see frequent idiocy plagues run rife on many platforms, as well as the darker side of the world of these apps that spy on us via "cookies" and increasingly via "AI" moderation. It's a world run by algorithms. These do not, in and of themselves, present a problem; it's the scum that decide how the algorithms should be written that present an existential threat to civil discourse.

In the publishing industry, plagiarism accusations are taken very seriously. It's shocking to me that more of the opposition to "AI"'s rise isn't centered very publicly, very loudly, and outside industry circles around the reality that it's trained on plagiarized material. Nonetheless, the use of this colossal, often career-blemishing accusation as the basis of this tale is heartening. It is not a "yes he did it" or a "she made this accusation in bad faith" story. It really delves into the complicated reality of emotional reality not meshing with consensus reality. It offers a chance to examine how deeply the roots of creativity entwine with personal identity. How very toxic anything can become when it attacks, as you see it, the roots of your identity. How deeply unwise, how destructive, how of necessity unfair, it is for outsiders to take sides and form mobs about things they can't know in detail sufficient to warrant such partisanship.

In this way, Author Maizes skewers our cultural moment's absence of perspective. She offers us alternating perspectives. She makes each writer take a turn in her narrative hot seat because "nobody's perfect" isn't a nostrum for defusing conflict by accident. In the end, however, I was enlightened by this technique more than I was drawn to invest in the characters by it. I had no sympathy for PJ and fairly little for George at any given moment, yet their imbroglio compelled my attention throughout the read.

So while I can't offer a full fifth star, I can say I was eager to come back to the read every time I had to put it down, and had the fun I badly needed while reading this pretty scathing story. No one, especially not the reader, comes out of this fight unscarred.

Very much a recommended read.

THE WORLDS OF JANE AUSTEN: The Influences and Inspiration Behind the Novels, celebrating 250 years of the beloved authoress

THE WORLDS OF JANE AUSTEN: The Influences and Inspiration Behind the Novels
HELENA KELLY
Frances Lincoln Ltd (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$35.00 any edition, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Explore the extraordinary life of Jane Austen in this fresh and engaging guide that reveals the real woman behind the beloved novels. Featuring expert insight, new research and over 150 photographs and illustrations, this is an essential companion for long-time admirers and first-time readers alike.

Despite the tranquil, even cosy, image of Austen and her work that still lingers in the popular imagination, her life in fact coincided with a period of intense, immense change, what is still sometimes called the Age of Revolutions. The American Revolutionary War began the year of her birth. By her eighth birthday, Britain had been forced to formally recognise the existence of the United States. The French Revolution broke out in 1789, when she was thirteen, and came close to her family: Austen’s cousin Eliza’s French husband died under the guillotine. When she was 22, there was an uprising in Ireland. All through Austen’s teenage years and her early adulthood, the old certainties were being subjected to challenge, new ideas were springing up—about democracy and freedom, about slavery, about poetry, about the position of women.

The Worlds of Jane Austen invites readers to see one of Britain’s most beloved authors in a completely new light. Far from the quiet world of country houses and tea parties, Austen lived through revolution, war and major social change, and her sharp, observant fiction reveals just how engaged she was with the issues of her time.

This lively and accessible guide features expert insight from bestselling author Helena Kelly alongside its over 150 photographs, artworks and illustrations that bring her world vividly to life.

Whether you are discovering Austen for the first time or returning to her novels with fresh eyes, The Worlds of Jane Austen is the perfect companion for curious readers, literature lovers and admirers of classic storytelling.

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My Review: Jane Austen's 250th birthday is 16 December 2025. If you're among her legions of fans, celebrate joyously; if you're like me (mildly interested, not much bothered to be pro or con), remember how many of your friends love her and her stories...and take this as your cue to add this book to their Yule gifts.

the table of contents...we're going a lot of places!

I'm pretty sure any Janeite would like this as a coffee-table book, as a conversation piece, an ornament...but it's definitely got more than slick prettiness at its heart.

chapter one's opening spread...you see where the book's headed

It's going to be a read, not just a look-and-lust, book, with information abour Austen, about the world around her, about the way she and her English people lived.

the French Revolution happened when Austen was thirteen

In bringing the times of Austen's life into focus, the text is maybe a bit less thrilling than the images, but that's an old guy with tons of history reading behind him. No matter your level of knowledge about the times, you'll find interesting nuggets and fun details to commit to memory. The images of Austen's more local sights are so deeply evocative as to be cultural icons in their own right.

the eternal, fixed image of "English countryside"...thanks in part to Austen

The author doesn't dwell on or avoid controversies rampant in Austen's time. It's astounding to me that we can criticize the decisions about what to write about made by a two-hundred-eight-years-dead woman without even slightly critiquing modern political figures' elisions and silences.

when many in Austen's circle profited from slavery, is it any wonder she kept quiet about it?

I don't think Austen was to be reasonably held to our standards not because she was Above Criticism as a Genius, but because we are not capable of understanding how it felt, what pressures there were on her to need to write for a wide audience as a woman in a terribly repressive patriarchal system. (And NO this not remotely similar to today's repressive patriarchal system any more than it is similar to Classical Athenian or Roman patriarchal systems. Every era has its own iteration of the same horrors.)

That she never addressed the widespread abolition movement even tangentially is not, to my mind at least, to be accounted a failure on her part. It was a choice made for her own reasons that you and I don't and can't know or feel. Your or my response to those things not discussed are our impositions onto a past we cannot reasonably judge.

We can, and should, judge the art; we can, and should, judge the artistry inspired in the centuries since her death. This overview-with-illustrations is a very good way to experience the roots of the culture's enduring love for All Things Austen.

a few images from films or shows inspired by the storyverse of Jane Austen

THE MYSTERY OF HENRI PICK, clever and fun, entertaining and sly

THE MYSTERY OF HENRI PICK
DAVID FOENKINOS (tr. Sam Taylor)
Pushkin Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: The delightful first title in a new collaboration with Channel 4's Walter Presents: a fast-paced comic mystery enriched by a deep love of books

In the small town of Crozon in Brittany, a library houses manuscripts that were rejected for publication: the faded dreams of aspiring writers. Visiting while on holiday, young editor Delphine Despero is thrilled to discover a novel so powerful that she feels compelled to bring it back to Paris to publish it. The book is a sensation, prompting fevered interest in the identity of its author—apparently one Henri Pick, a now-deceased pizza chef from Crozon. Sceptics cry that the whole thing is a hoax: how could this man have written such a masterpiece? An obstinate journalist, Jean-Michel Rouche, heads to Brittany to investigate.

By turns farcical and moving, The Mystery of Henri Pick is a fast-paced comic mystery enriched by a deep love of books—and of the authors who write them.

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My Review: I'm guessin' a majority of y'all don't know about Walter Presents (link above). It's presented on PBS in the US, which means it's hidden from most people most of the time. Hard to create a breakout hit in the media landscape we have; harder still to do it with subtitles.

Damn shame, that. I haven't seen the film of this story...ain't paying for Prime Video when they shove ads at me (now it's the US streamer as of 2025)...but as a very French story that isn't overtly snobby or très precieuse in its roots and branches, I'd like to see it have success commensurate with its quality.

Plus it's set in Brittany, one of the more anti-Parisian-hegemony parts of France. Imagine Oregon versus California, or upstate New York versus NYC. That kind of underdog struggle ethos suffuses this entire story.

It's really a fascinating story about books that only exist as created by their authors...much in the spirit of The Brautigan Library, follow the link for their introduction and mission statement...and housed in a special collection located as far from the cultural hegemon that is Publishing in France. That alone would've made my ears prick up. Author Foenkinos has a couple books coming out at the end of October 2025 which I've written happy reviews for; this book has, I'm sad to say, languished unread and unreviewed because Reasons. Not good ones, but Reasons.

Fixing it now has been a real pleasure. Author Foenkinos via translator Sam Taylor has built a good take-down machine, skewering our need to see behind the scenes and dig up the dirt on every single damn thing in the world...no sense of "happy to have {thing}" survives the compulsion to find out what's wrong with it. When nothing's wrong with it, something wrong with that. Being pathologically in the know is not entirely new but has hit the gas hard this decade. As our journalist character Jean-Michel Rouche exemplifies, we want the stones turned and the tea spilled, and we want it NOW.

Using all of literary culture as his sources, Author Foenkinos has probably made a lot of us more aware than ever that the world of publishing, the world of literature, and the world of us readers who lap it all up aren't the same, but are all chock-a-block with the best, the most fun, the most amusing stories, and they're all served up on demand...what a glorious time to be alive! That is the light side to the darker one enumerated above. One necessitates the other at this moment in technological societal development.

The knowing nudges and the sly side-eye moments are all well thought out. I appreciated The author's explicit acknowledgment of midcentury monadnock Brautigan, whose work has maybe not aged that well; thinking of In Watermelon Sugar in particular. Nothing ages faster than Utopia...though it would've been nicer than the world we got. (Nineteen sixty-four, the one in that book, never felt as far away as it does now.) Reminders of the very French attitude of affection and respect for literature in A Novel Bookstore by Laurence Cossé abounded for me. It's the same playfully exaggerated attitude of piss-taking that unites them.

Plot developments aren't going to surprise anyone. You're reading this story to savor the soufflé not fill up on the steak. Everyone, Delphine the editor, Frédéric the novelist manqué, Jean-Michel mentioned above...all raise their piece of the froth high for you to delight in. It's light on suspense and filled with thousands of bubbles effervescing from the sense of fun underlying the project.

You know your own humor best. read a sample; if it doesn't hit, don't commit. It hit me just right, and right when I could use it most.

JESS ZAFARRIS' PAGE: USELESS ETYMOLOGY: Offbeat Word Origins for Curious Minds, & WORDS FROM HELL: Unearthing the Darkest Secrets of English Etymology

USELESS ETYMOLOGY: Offbeat Word Origins for Curious Minds
JESS ZAFARRIS
Chambers (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$10.99 ebook, preorder for delivery tomorrow

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: Did you know that an "astronaut" is literally a "star sailor," that a thesaurus is, in fact, a "treasure trove" of words, and that someone who is "sinister" is actually just "left-handed"?

Have you ever wondered why English isn't considered a Romance language if 60% of our words are Latin-derived?

Did Shakespeare really invent 1,700 words, and if not, why the heck do we say that he did?

Why is the English language stuffed with so many synonyms?

Let's be real: English can seem pretty bonkers. And, well, sometimes it is. But through thorough thought and a pinch of curiosity, method can be found within the madness of our modern tongue-even within the disparate pronunciation of the words "through," "thorough," and "thought."

Derived from Germanic, Romance, Hellenic, Semitic, African and Native American languages, English contains multitudes. It has been (and continues to be) transformed by war and conquest, art and literature, science and technology, love and hate, wit and whim.

Useless Etymology takes readers on a time-traveling adventure to unlock the beauty, wonder, and absurdity within our everyday words, how they came to be, and the unexpected ways their origins weave a global, cross-cultural labyrinth of meaning.

Filled with fun facts and delightful discoveries, this is an enlightening read for anyone who wants to know more about why the English language works the way that it does.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I hope all y'all will watch this Butter no Parsnips YouTube interview with Author Zafarris: https://youtu.be/tEzEk5S0vJ0?feature=shared and then subscribe to their show as well as Jess and Rob's wonderfully weird podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@WordsUnravelled

The idea of etymology is custom-designed by a benevolent divinity to deliver me huge honkin' blasts of dopamine. This iteration of a browser's book does it again. The sheer pleasure for me furtling through English's cupboards in search of something oddly shaped and weird-sounding...it is beyond the extent of my vocabulary even as turbocharged by this book to express it. Maybe a grawlix will help: #^&^!*@#

A word for a thing that takes the place of words unsayable is the true spirit-animal of the English language, that mugger of other cultures and languages. English is as shameless as a magpie, grabbing whatever shiny things it wants wherever they come from; or else English speakers invent them, there being a need thus an opening for English's anarchic, energetic absence of control to effloresce into a new shape. Some are nonce words, some neologisms, some start as one and become the other.

Anyone you know who loves to "well, actually" you is the audience for this book. Birthday, Yuletide, Father's Day, it's gonna make a hit. The serious etymologists are likely to enjoy the tone; the casual browsers will get chuckles as well as trivia; the pub quiz/trivia players should bee thrilled to have a new, authoritative source.

Get one for yourself, too, so you don't feel left out as the chuckles turn to cackles.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

WORDS FROM HELL: Unearthing the Darkest Secrets of English Etymology
JESS ZAFARRIS
Chambers (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$1.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: The English language is where words go to be tortured and mutilated into unrecognizable shadows of their former selves. It's where Latin, Greek, and Germanic roots are shredded apart and stitched unceremoniously back together with misunderstood snippets of languages snatched from the wreckage of conquest and colonialism. It wreaks merciless havoc upon grammar and spelling. It turns clinical terms into insults and children's tales into filthy euphemisms.

With an emphasis on understanding where the foulest words in the English language came from-and the disgusting and hilarious histories behind them-this book demonstrates the true filth of our everyday words. But this book is more than just a list of vulgar words and salacious slang. It's a thoughtful analysis of why we deem words as being inappropriate as well as revealing 'good words' that have surprisingly naughty origins.

Dirty-minded word nerds and lewd linguistics lovers will derive unadulterated pleasure in leering at the origins of swear words, sexual lingo, inappropriate idioms, violent vocabulary, and terminology for bodily functions—not to mention the unexpectedly foul origins of words you thought were perfectly innocent. If it's inappropriate, stomach-churning, uncomfortable, or offensive, this book reaches into the dark recesses of history and exposes them for all to see.

True to the Chambers brand, this book combines humour, scholarly research and a beautiful design. It is a book to enjoy, collect and revisit time and time again.

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My Review: If you can't instantly see the appeal of this book, it is not for you.

Also, why the fuck is your prissy, pursey-mouthed self reading my reviews?

BAD INDIANS BOOK CLUB: Reading at the Edge of a Thousand Worlds, taking back control of the narrative never went down easier

BAD INDIANS BOOK CLUB: Reading at the Edge of a Thousand Worlds
PATTY KRAWEC (foreword by Omar El Akkad)
Broadleaf Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$27.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Bad Indians Book Club continues the conversation Anishinaabe writer Patty Krawec started in Becoming Kin, inviting readers to question the stories of settler colonialism and discover the rich worlds created by Indigenous voices.

"A fascinating advanced seminar about how to think, read, think about reading, and think about Indigenous lives."—Booklist, starred review

In this powerful reframing of the stories that make us, Anishinaabe writer Patty Krawec leads us into the borderlands of history, science, memoir, and fiction to ask: What worlds do books written by marginalized people describe and invite us to inhabit?

When a friend asked what books could help them understand Indigenous lives, Patty Krawec, author of Becoming Kin, gave them a list. This list became a book club and then a podcast about a year of Indigenous reading, and then this book. The writers in Bad Indians Book Club refuse to let dominant stories displace their own and resist the way wemitigoozhiwag—European settlers—craft the prevailing narrative and decide who they are.

In Bad Indians Book Club, we examine works about history, science, and gender as well as fiction, all written from the perspective of "Bad Indians"—marginalized writers whose refusal to comply with dominant narratives opens up new worlds. Interlacing chapters with short stories about Deer Woman, who is on her own journey to decide who she is, Krawec leads us into a place of wisdom and medicine where the stories of marginalized writers help us imagine other ways of seeing the world. As Krawec did for her friend, she recommends a list of books to fill in the gaps on our own bookshelves and in our understanding.

Becoming Kin, which novelist Omar El Akkad called a "searing spear of light," led readers to talk back to the histories they had received. Now, in Bad Indians Book Club comes a potent challenge to all the stories settler colonialism tells—stories that erase and appropriate, deny and deflect. Following Deer Woman, who is shaped by the profuse artistry of Krawec, we enter the multiple worlds Indigenous and other subaltern stories create. Together we venture to the edges of worlds waiting to be born.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: The structure of the book makes me think these were written as essays, turned into chapters, and not very thoroughly combed through to make sure reduplicative information was minimized or eliminated.

That said, every chapter is cram-jam full of information new to me, or so distant from my ROM that I needed to dig for it in RAM. I came away very much better informed, educated, and energized. Fortunately, there are footnotes galore to keep me supplied in rabbit-hole bait. Yay. *note to self check data usage*

The character Kwe/Deer Woman as our guide and cicerone is a polarizing addition to the non-fiction nature of the book. Quite sensible in my opinion, as being taught something I'm totally unfamiliar with is always easier for me to contextualize and absorb if there is a person teaching me. I think I might have been okay with just Author Krawec...but this way I felt I was listening in and learning more through it.

In a time that feels to me like it is celebrating smallness, valorizing exclusion, and weaponizing authority structures, reading Bad Indians Book Club gave me the feeling of learning while resisting these things I emphatically do not support. I will warn my fellow biblioholics that this is going to be a TBR-fattening read. Big time.

But worth it to discover new storytelling. I think you will agree.

MRS. CHRISTIE AT THE MYSTERY GUILD LIBRARY (Mrs. Christie #1), new cozy-mystery series with literary ghost-sleuth

MRS. CHRISTIE AT THE MYSTERY GUILD LIBRARY (Mrs. Christie #1)
AMANDA CHAPMAN
Berkley Books /Berkley Prime Crime (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Book conservator Tory Van Dyne and a woman claiming to be Agatha Christie on holiday from the Great Beyond join forces to catch a killer in this spirited mystery from Amanda Chapman.

Tory Van Dyne is the most down-to-earth member of a decidedly eccentric old-money New York family. For one thing, as book conservator at Manhattan’s Mystery Guild Library, she actually has a job. Plus, she’s left up-town society behind for a quiet life downtown. So she’s not thrilled when she discovers a woman in the library’s Christie Room who calmly introduces herself as Agatha Christie, politely requests a cocktail and announces she’s there to help solve a murder—that has not yet happened.

But as soon as Tory determines that this is just a fairly nutty Christie fangirl, her socialite/actress cousin Nicola gets caught up in the suspicious death of her less-than-lovable talent agent. Nic, as always, looks to Tory for help. Tory, in turn, looks to Mrs. Christie. The woman, whoever or whatever she is, clearly knows her stuff when it comes to crime.

Aided by a found family of unlikely sleuths—including a snarky librarian, an eleven-year-old computer whiz, and an NYPD detective with terrible taste in suits—Tory and the woman claiming to be her very much deceased literary idol begin to unravel the twists and turns of a murderer’s devious mind. Because, in the immortal words of Miss Jane Marple, “murder is never simple.”

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My Review: Need a puzzle to solve to see summer out? Something with just enough unreality to feel low-stakes and just enough emotional reality to make investing in it worth your time?

Berkley Books' Prime Crime imprint gotcha covered with Amanda Chapman's first offering.

I expected to be politely dismissive of this first in a proposed series by Amy Pershing's alter ego. I haven't read her other cozy series. I don't think I will because there's cozy, then there's so cozy you can't breathe, like an oppressively crowded Victorian living room. That's Cape Cod to me, where her other series is set.

I'll take Manhattan.

It's fun to find the call-outs to Christie's works scattered around, and it's fun...to my surprise...to have Dame Agatha just appear out of nowhere to work with Tory on solving what they know is a murder but are having trouble convincing others has that feel to it. For that matter how Tory becomes convinced that Dame Agatha is who she says she is gets handled the same way: tough and disbelieving attitude at first, then it just is part of reality in the story. In my own experience that's exactly how the unthinkable, the unbelievable, gets trojan-horsed into becoming the way things are. It's very much helped along in this narrative by the fact that Dame Agatha is only seen inside the library setting, not out wandering the Village.

It did not escape my notice that the first-person narrator, Tory, has the unbelievably cush life she has because she's a nepo baby. It's not really made much of, just presented as fact. There's no real pushback, but the situation isn't set up to draw attention to itself...Tory's a woman with a life and a style not available without lucky draws in the birth lottery.

That's all so very cozy as a backdrop. It is meant to offer the reader maximum comfort as rents in the fabric of society get repaired and ma'at is restored as it must be in a series mystery. A concern I felt going in was that the Christie-facing bits would really *require* the reader to know already what that particular story referred to was about, or the reference would fall flat; not at all the case. I found the varying levels of familiarity with Dame Agatha's works never impacted my understanding of the plot in any negative way. It offered a frisson of fun when I got it, but nothing was lost when /i didn't see the story connection for myself because that was dealt with in dialogue.

Tory, as the main character and the first-person narrator, will of necessity need to appeal to you for the read to work.

Later, when I'd had a chance to process our little encounter, I realized it made a kind of weird sense that if my guest was indeed Agatha Christie (which I did not believe for a minute), and if she had indeed decided to visit New York City some fifty years after she'd been airlifted to the Great Beyond (which I also did not believe for a minute), she might indeed choose New York's Mystery Guild Library as a home base.

Not quite the first words in the book, but darn close. This is what you're getting, so if you don't like it already, then horseman, pass by.

Me, I'm all in. And the next one, too. Fair enough play, a fun narrative voice, a premise silly enough to make me smile but never played for laughs at anyone...if only I'd liked the love interest I'd be raving!

THE JOHN WILLIAMS PAGE: STONER; and THE MAN WHO WROTE THE PERFECT NOVEL: John Williams, Stoner, and the Writing Life

THE MAN WHO WROTE THE PERFECT NOVEL: John Williams, Stoner, and the Writing Life
CHARLES J. WILLIAMS
University of Texas Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$2.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: An “engrossing” biography of a brilliant novelist underappreciated in his own time who became a twenty-first-century bestseller, from the New York Times–bestselling author (The New Yorker).

When Stoner was published in 1965, the novel sold only a couple of thousand copies before disappearing with hardly a trace. Yet the quietly powerful tale of Midwestern college professor William Stoner, whose life becomes a parable of solitude and anguish, eventually found an admiring audience in America and especially in Europe. The New York Times called Stoner “a perfect novel,” and a host of writers and critics, including Colum McCann, Julian Barnes, Bret Easton Ellis, Ian McEwan, Emma Straub, Ruth Rendell, C.P. Snow, and Irving Howe, praised its artistry. The New Yorker deemed it “a masterly portrait of a truly virtuous and dedicated man.”

This biography traces the life of Stoner’s author, John Williams. Charles J. Shields follows the whole arc of Williams’s life, which in many ways paralleled that of his titular character, from their shared working-class backgrounds to their undistinguished careers in academia. Shields vividly recounts Williams’s development as an author, whose other works include the novels Butcher’s Crossing and Augustus (for the latter, Williams shared the 1972 National Book Award). Shields also reveals the astonishing afterlife of Stoner, which garnered new fans with each American reissue, and then became a bestseller all over Europe after a Dutch publisher brought out a translation in 2013. Since then, Stoner has been published in twenty-one countries and sold over a million copies.

“Like Williams, Shields know how to tell a good story, one that will appeal especially to those interested in the ins and outs of the publishing industry and the ups and downs of a writer’s life.” —Los Angeles Review of Books

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: My earlier reading of Author Shields' excellent And So it Goes: Kurt Vonnegut: A Life made me eager to read this book about John Williams. My as-yet unblogged review of Stoner is below, to add the needed context to my ideas about this book and its subject.

I think the reason this book never got to pop-culture awareness, in spite of Stoner's tremendous success in the twenty-first century, is simple: John Williams is a shitty human being. I mean, men of his generation more often than not were shitty, and abusive, and sexist...homophobic...by our standards of acceptability, irredeemable in ways even Armie Hammer and Neil Gaiman don't approach. Tempus fugit; sic transit gloria mundi.

No one would get away with Vonnegut's misogyny and sexism today, yet here's a man who wrote one of the most horrendous, harridanly women in literature...Edith Stoner...irredeemable even in victim terms, as her malevolence is obvious long before her husband rapes her. What I could never figure out is why she hated Stoner so much, he was never any kind of promising except of failure and disappointment. She wasn't duped; she married the real him, looking down on him every step of the way.

And Williams' life? He insisted Stoner was fictional. I myownself, after reading this book, think otherwise. The litany of grievances against life, work, colleagues (he had no friends that I thought deserved the name), all of it: Stoner. So how does he, Williams, get a pass from the literati? Beats me all hollow, though I suspect it's merely a matter of time.

What made me enjoy this book so much was the factual reporting of his life story: The multiple infidelities and marriages; his early infatuation with theater; his early love for Look Homeward, Angel, that adolescent's dream book; his admiration for Ronald Colman as Sydney Carton in the film of A Tale of Two Cities (I shudder even typing that sentence fragment, go look at the link to see why; oleaginous much?). These facts and many more make as comprehensible and clear a picture of the man who could author Stoner as well as the proto-Blood Meridian Western-but-don't-tell-him-you're-calling-it-that Butcher's Crossing as one could ever hope to find.

Violence, in John Williams' œuvre, is less physiologically present than in McCarthy's. It's not dwelt on with loving, prurient, in my view pornographic lingering money shots of prose. It's, well, I guess my best match between vocabulary and feeling is clinical. John Williams was undoubtedly an acoholic, an abusive and distant man, and the way to be all those things is to be removed from one's emotional states, to devalue and deny empathy while, paradoxically, demanding that very feeling for one's characters as they enact worse and worse things on their victims.

Should one who has not read any Williams, but would like to, read this biography? Not with any expectation of still wanting to read his work. It's a good way to learn how you'll respond to the work itself though. I don't know how knowing about the real person doing the writing of the books we know and love should make us feel. It varies, I suppose, from reader to reader, from writer to writer.

I'll go out on a limb and say that, for $2.99 on Kindle, the answer in this case is "absolutely do read it." Author Shields is enough of a talented storyteller to make time spent learning how nasty one person can get worth one's time.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

STONER
JOHN WILLIAMS
NYRB Classics
$9.99 Kindle edition, available now

The Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers: Fiction For the week ending August 25, 2026

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: Discover an American masterpiece. This unassuming story about the life of a quiet English professor has earned the admiration of readers all over the globe.

William Stoner is born at the end of the nineteenth century into a dirt-poor Missouri farming family. Sent to the state university to study agronomy, he instead falls in love with English literature and embraces a scholar’s life, so different from the hardscrabble existence he has known. And yet as the years pass, Stoner encounters a succession of disappointments: marriage into a “proper” family estranges him from his parents; his career is stymied; his wife and daughter turn coldly away from him; a transforming experience of new love ends under threat of scandal. Driven ever deeper within himself, Stoner rediscovers the stoic silence of his forebears and confronts an essential solitude.

John Williams’s luminous and deeply moving novel is a work of quiet perfection. William Stoner emerges from it not only as an archetypal American, but as an unlikely existential hero, standing, like a figure in a painting by Edward Hopper, in stark relief against an unforgiving world.

I BOUGHT A PAPERBACK FROM THE PUBLISHER FIFTEEN YEARS AGO. THANK YOU, PAST SELF.

My Review: I went into this read thinking it'd be another wildly overpraised midcentury modern grimfest. I was happily proved wrong, though that is the last time I will ever use the word "happy" in conjunction with this tale.

A story about a small Prufrockian man, doomed from the get-go to a disappointing existence unworthy of the descriptor "life" by any but the most generous definition of the subject. Author Alex Preston (Goodreads profile link), in a 2015 review he blogged, said of Stoner:

With each of Stoner’s defeats, he backs further and further away from us, his voice becoming more distant, his character less alive on the page. At the start of the novel, I was yelling at him to grow a pair. By the time he lets his wife sacrifice their daughter on the altar of her motiveless malignancy, I’d given up on him entirely. I read through to the end because I wanted to see if...there would be something elegiac, a note of quiet redemption in the final passages of the book. There wasn’t.

Scathing! Angry, upset, and not wrong in any way. Yet, as Author Preston's fury warms my heart, I am required by my own appreciation of the story to admit that I found these very things to be the raison d'etre of the novel, and the beating heart of John Williams' artistry. He told a failure's life in a failure's language; he accepted Stoner as the small, ungreased cog in a small, janky machine full of others like him that Williams himself was.

So, while very aware of this divisive thematic and stylistic choice will not be to everyone's taste, I can honestly and wholeheartedly say it was very much to mine.

Casey Affleck was set to portray Stoner in the film! (Although ten years on, I think we're safe to assume the project has spluttered out.) This was excellent news! I...enjoyed, liked, all those words seem full of misplaced chirpiness applied to Stoner's small, cramped life...resonated with this novel and after seeing Mr. Affleck in Manchester by the Sea I can only be happy and grateful he might yet assume the leading role in it.