MURDER AS A FINE ART by David Morrell
MURDER AS A FINE ART by David Morrell is one of the best mystery books I’ve read this year. It is historically based, taking place in the nineteenth century. As some of you may know, Morrell is best-known for his book, First Blood, upon which the the Rambo movies are based. Murder as a Fine Art is very different from his first writings. It is literary fiction and page-turning at its best.
December 3, 2013
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Judi Clark · 
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Tags: 2013 - authors with books coming out in 2013, Historical, Literary, Mulholland · Posted in: Character Driven, Facing History, Literary, Mystery/Suspense, Real Event Fiction, Real People Fiction, Time Period Fiction
QUEEN OF AMERICA by Luis Alberto Urrea
Like its predecessor, THE HUMMINGBIRD’S DAUGHTER, Urrea’s sequel, QUEEN OF AMERICA is a panoramic, picaresque, sprawling, sweeping novel that dazzles us with epic destiny, perilous twists, and high romance, set primarily in Industrial era America (and six years in the author’s undertaking). Based on Urrea’s real ancestry, this historical fiction combines family folklore with magical realism and Western adventure at the turn of the twentieth century.
November 30, 2011
· Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: 1900s, Historical, Latin American · Posted in: California, italy, Job, Latin American, Magical Realism, Mexico, NE & New York, New Orleans, New York City, Real People Fiction, Texas, Time Period Fiction, United Kingdom, US Southwest, Washington, D.C., Wild West
THE THIRD REICH by Roberto Bolano
Bolaño cites this quotation from Goethe (also given in German) towards the end of this early but posthumously discovered novel. It is as good a key as any to what the book may be about. The protagonist, Udo Berger, a German in his mid-twenties, is literally a guest — in a hotel. He is taking a late summer vacation with his girlfriend Ingeborg in a beach hotel on the Costa Brava where he used to come with his family as a child. Together with another German couple, Hanna and Charly, they engage in the usual occupations: swimming, sunbathing, eating, drinking (a lot), and making love. But shadows hang over this idyll.
November 22, 2011
· Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: 2012 - authors with books published this year, Around-the-World, FSG, Historical, Robert Bolano · Posted in: Germany, Time Period Fiction, World Literature
11/22/63: A NOVEL by Stephen King
Dedicated Stephen King fans are in for an epic treat—an odyssey, a Fool’s journey, an adventure with romance. A genre-bending historical novel with moral implications, this story combines echoes of Homer, H.G. Wells, Don Quixote, Quantum Leap (the old TV show), Jack Finney’s TIME AND AGAIN, and even a spoonful of meta-King himself, the czar of popular fiction.
November 8, 2011
· Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: 1950s, 2012 PB Release, 2013 - authors with books coming out in 2013, 800+ Pages, Historical, JFK, Speculative (Beyond Reality), Time Travel · Posted in: Alternate History, Award Winning Author, Real Event Fiction, Real People Fiction, Speculative (Beyond Reality), Texas, Time Period Fiction
AT HOME, A SHORT HISTORY OF PRIVATE LIFE by Bill Bryson
What would the world do without Bill Bryson? One simply wants to sit at his knee with a huge grin and listen interminably. I’m an irredeemable skinflint and get all my reading material from the library, but At Home is one book I would seriously like to buy for myself. Considering I have almost no books apart from reference books, my Complete Shakespeare and a Bible I once found in a discard pile somewhere, that’s saying quite a lot.
October 14, 2011
· Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: 19th-Century, 2013 - authors with books coming out in 2013, Doubleday, Historical, Nonfiction · Posted in: Non-fiction, United Kingdom
DISASTER WAS MY GOD by Bruce Duffy
I was in my late thirties when the poet Arthur Rimbaud first crossed my horizon. It was Jim Harrison, the American writer, who brought him to my attention. In his memoir OFF TO THE SIDE, Harrison writes, “I think that I was nineteen when Rimbaud’s ‘Everything we are taught is false’ became my modus operandi.” Harrison continues, “…Rimbaud’s defiance of society was vaguely criminal and at nineteen you try to determine what you are by what you are against.” I admire Harrison a great deal. If he liked Rimbaud, if Rimbaud was the man, then I needed to know more.
October 13, 2011
· Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: Doubleday, Fictional Biography, Historical · Posted in: Africa, Facing History, France, Real People Fiction, Writing Life
