fiction
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Letter From Home: “Ellis Peters And The Treasure Hunt That Begins After Midnight” 10/29/26
Few pleasures are more satisfying than the late-night search for a new book. The house is quiet. The television has long since lost its appeal. I didn’t want to run upstairs to wander the shelves, so I took my Kindle and started perusing the offerings. Earlier this year, a friend gave away a couple of… Continue reading
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Northern Wisconsin Charm, Human Depth: The Story Of Edgar Sawtelle Resonates
David Wroblewski writes The Story of Edgar Sawtelle in a deliberately unhurried style, which made it a perfect fit for this rainy, cloudy weekend. No timelines or must-do-lists. Unless making another pot of coffee is considered a chore. This kind of weekend is exactly the indulgent stretch of time this novel needs to unfurl. The… Continue reading
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Letter From Home: “Little Raccoon” 6/18/26
A couple of weeks ago, James and I sorted through a large drawer containing childhood memories. I picked up the well-used and somewhat frayed hardcover copy of Little Raccoon. My father would come into the dining room, and without ceremony, he’d reach for the book that was included in a pile of my childhood reads. I… Continue reading
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Letter From Home “The Embosser” 5/23/26
The old man in Maine looked like he had more local wisdom than anyone around, so I asked if he had lived there all his life. “Not yet,” he said while grinning back at me. The best folks to talk with when traveling are the ones with weathered faces and eyes that link with yours:… Continue reading
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Exhaustion From Hypermasculinity In (Ted Bell) Books
I was reading a book in the parking area at the Middleton Post Office this afternoon as James ran some boxes in for mailing. I was 300 pages into Ted Bell’s second Alex Hawke book, Assassin, and abruptly closed it and threw it in the back seat. I had come close to calling it a… Continue reading
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Stuart Kaminsky: Inspector Rostnikov Series Has Characters Striving For Moral, Ethical, Humane Outcomes
This week, the last two books in the Inspector Rostnikov series by Stuart Kaminsky arrived from Amazon. As I took them from the package, I wondered what suspense they would hold. Over the next few months, they will land in my hands, and then there will be no more to anticipate. I was crowdsourcing in… Continue reading
