Review: For three years Shadow has been biding his time in prison and waiting for the day when he can return home to the woman of his dreams, his wife Laura. Prison has neither broken him nor enlightened him, but it has taught him coin tricks. He has continued to maintain the same modicum of behavior: thoughtful, patient, observant. He moves through prison with minimal entropy, and although his sentence was six years, good behavior has gotten him three. But days before he gets out the warden calls him into his office, and Shadow finds out his wife was killed in a car accident. The world he knows crumbles beneath his feet. Read the rest of this entry »

City of Thieves

Review: Eggs. Why did it have to be eggs? In a Russian city under siege by German forces, food runs scarce and eggs seem to be the scarcest of all. A Russian commander plans a birthday celebration for his beautiful, ice-skating daughter, and amidst the chaos of the war, he wants the very best for his sweetest little lady. What birthday would be complete without a cake, and what cake would be complete without eggs. He finds two men, Lev and Kolya, to steal these eggs and gives them one week to do so.

Cost of eggs in Leningrad during WWII: your life.

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Review: Zimbabwe is dying. Robert Mugabe who began his presidency by helping to stimulate the economy and providing a foundation for rapid growth now cripples his country. White farmers are driven off their prosperous farms and into exile or hiding while Mugabe uses them as scapegoats to cover his own failings. War veterans set up camp on properties, harassing, beating and occasionally killing blacks and whites alike. Caught in the middle of this crisis, Peter Godwin illustrates the tragic downfall of his homeland.

His successful career in journalism has moved him from Zimbabwe to London and then, finally, New York. He transits between the two in order to keep an eye on his aging parents who continue to live in the country they call home. Each time he touches down in Harare airport his situation becomes increasingly tenuous and desperate. Read the rest of this entry »

Review: Inside the country of India is a place called The Darkness. Here the people work in filthy conditions, live in sordid huts, and struggle for little. Rickshaw pullers wait by the road, emaciated and oppressed, waiting for the rich to buy their services. Corruption thrives like maggots in rotting flesh. Business men bribe police, landowners exact painful costs from their tenants, and teachers keep government funding for themselves. Balram, one of many poor children is one day labeled as a diamond in the rough. And, for the first time, he starts to dream of bigger things. Read the rest of this entry »

Review: There is a villain caged in the prison system with a laundry list of crimes against the world. His skin is impermeable to bullets. His movements are a blur. His mind operates at a level not seen since Einstein or Feynman. This is his twelfth incarceration and he is about to break out and try to conquer the world. Again. There was the time he hypnotized the President. The time he took over Chemical Bank. The time he imitated the Pope. The Senate was called to order but he froze them. He even held the Moon hostage. The Moon. He calls himself Doctor Impossible. The rest of the world knows him as as a supervillain.

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Review: Liz Gilbert, socialite, author, journalist, realizes her life is spiraling out of control. As her marriage falls apart, she begins to question her direction. Rock bottom starts to appear when she finds herself searching for answers on the floor of her bathroom. She claws through the rest of her divorce and tries to hold herself together. Solace comes in the form a new lover, but even this turns into a tumultuous relationship. She orbits this man in an erratic spiral, and, just before she enters the atmosphere in a fiery ball destined to burn up and fall to the earth a charred and useless rock, she comes to a decision. Read the rest of this entry »

Review: The world has turned to gray. The sky remains the same color of leaden despair day after day. The ground smolders, powdered in ash and the charred remains of civilization. When night descends, the land is engulfed in a darkness more complete than anything one can imagine. At times there is the faint flicker of a light, solitary and weak, hopeful and hopeless. The light belongs to a boy and his father. The two travel through post-apocalyptic America on the concrete remnants of our vast highway system, pushing before them a grocery cart filled with their meager supplies. Read the rest of this entry »

Review: Mr. Norrell claims to be the only true magician left in England. His solitary life keeps him far and away from prying eyes, and he spends copious amounts of time in his personal library reading the books he’s accrued through monetary donations, bribery, threats, and other means of dubious nature. In the wee beginning of the book, he cows a sect of theoretical magicians into agreeing to give up their own innocent and uneffective research into magic. His lust for isolation matches his caution and arrogance, and he slowly begins to emerge as a force to be noted. An early act he performs to raise eyebrows involves literally giving life to a dead woman. His fame grinds to halt when he takes an apprentice: Jonathan Strange. Read the rest of this entry »

Review: The government has limited the number of children couples can have to two, but the Wiggin family has a third. Their first two children, Peter and Valentine, are geniuses, but their personalities are polar opposites. Peter harbors a sadistic soul while his sister Valentine projects benevolence and empathy. Their youngest sibling is Andrew Wiggin. Due to his status as a “third”, he is marginalized by his classmates and peers, and he serves as a constant reminder to his parents of their unorthodox situation. Meanwhile, the world is constantly vigilante against another alien attack by what are known as the “buggers”. The species, which resemble giant insects, launched devastating attacks on Earth years ago, and the government keeps the populace reminded of the potential for another assault. Read the rest of this entry »

Review: Valentino Achak Deng, a Dinka living in Southern Sudan, is seven years old when Northern Sudanese raiders come to his small African village, burn it down and finish off a massacre that began months earlier. He is separated from his parents, and in the chaos of burning, screaming, and dying, he flees into the forest surrounding his village. Where does a small boy turn to when faced with the dangers of wild animals, when those that would help him are slaughtered, when armed men roam the countryside hoping to exterminate his people? Read the rest of this entry »