Category Archives: Books

Mary Stewart’s The Wicked Day

Jayme Lynn Blaschke wrote this review. The Arthurian legend has proved irresistible to writers over the years, from Thomas Malory to T.H.White. I first ran across Mary Stewart’s take on Camelot back in 1984, right after The Wicked Day spent … Continue reading

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John A. Lomax and Alan Lomax’s American Ballads and Folk Songs, and Our Singing Country: Folk Songs and Ballads; and John W. Work’s American Negro Songs

The father-and-son team of John and Alan Lomax played a pivotal role in preserving American folk songs at a time when they may have stood in danger of being supplanted by recorded popular music. And they played the role of … Continue reading

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Tony Kushner and Maurice Sendak’s Brundibar

Rebecca Scott wrote this review. Pepicek (very small) and Aninku (his sister, even smaller) have a problem: their mother is very sick. The doctor told them to go to town to get milk, but how can two children who have … Continue reading

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World folk tales and fables: an omnibus review

Victor Montejo’s The Bird Who Cleans the World and Other Mayan Fables (Curbstone Press, 1991) Anita Brenner’s The Boy Who Could Do Anything and Other Mexican Folk Tales (Linnet Books, 1992) George F. Schultz’s Vietnamese Legends (Charles E. Tuttle Company, … Continue reading

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S.E. Hinton’s Hawkes Harbour

S.E. Hinton has had an interesting career. She sold her first (and subsequently most well known) novel The Outsiders, when she was only 17. That was in 1967. In the years since, her career has been punctuated by long breaks … Continue reading

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Stewart Lee Allen’s The Devil’s Cup: Coffee, The Driving Force in History

Pinky Vincent wrote this review. You need be no joe junkie to sip the pleasures of The Devil’s Cup — meaning the book. Stewart Lee Allen has taken on the seemingly onerous task of merging a traveler’s tale with a … Continue reading

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James S. A. Corey’s The Mercy of Gods

The creators of The Expanse (both the nine books and the popular six-season streaming series) are back with the first book of a new series. The Mercy of Gods is an utterly absorbing alien invasion first contact thriller that I … Continue reading

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Elizabeth Bear’s The Folded Sky

Dr. Sunya Song is an expert at teasing information out of ancient archives. She has travelled long and far to an exotic location to do just that, surviving an attack by pirates along the way, only to discover that her … Continue reading

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Ivan Day’s Ice Cream: A History

Ask anyone waving around a Drumstick cone or Klondike Bar where ice cream comes from, and you’re lucky if you get a smart-aleck response like “the freezer.” Ice cream may be near universally loved (there’s an ice cream truck going … Continue reading

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Three 2025 novels from notable authors

Egyptian Motherlode by David Sandner and Jacob Weisman, Tachyon Press 2025 This book is a series of acid trips taken during a series of concerts by a series of people who are all connected, who perform in the same concerts, … Continue reading

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