Book Review

This commentary originally aired July 10, 2017.  

In his latest crime novel, The Force, Don Winslow abandons the Mexican-California border of his acclaimed novel The Cartel for the patrol borough of Manhattan North, New York City.

Luis Alberto Urrea”s The House of Broken Angels takes place over two days, during two highly charged family gatherings; the first is a funeral, and the second is a last-blast birthday.

Francisco Cantú, author of The Line Becomes a River, worked four years as a Border Patrol Officer along the borderlands of Mexico before getting his MFA in writing from the University of Arizona. As an agent, he kept a diary.

Inspired by the noir novels of James M. Cain, Laura Lippman assiduously delivers a masterpiece of the form in her steamy novel Sunburn. An alleged secret stash of cash from a questionable insurance settlement, apparently amoral characters, and ulterior motives all mixed up because of a fervid love affair simmer over a steady flame, until everything combusts.

Not quite a memoir, not quite a collection of essays, Maggie O’Farrell’s I Am, I Am, I Am is a group of personal narratives recounting the times when her life edged dangerously close to death. The subtitle, “Seventeen Brushes with Death,” is powerful in itself, but even more so when you read what she experienced.

Laura Moriarty’s new dystopian novel, American Heart, pays homage to Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. 

This review originally aired on July 24, 2017.    

Michael Connelly’s latest detective novel, The Late Show, his 30th, introduces a new female detective, Renee Ballard.

Kevin Young’s official website lists him as a poet, essayist, professor, editor, and Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library. To be up-to-date we need the option of New Yorker poetry editor, a post he began in November. 

Some Were Paupers, Some Were Kings is a collection of columns written by Mark McCormick over the past 20 years. 

Former Wichitans, Lois and Jeffrey Ruby—mother and son—show us that writing is in their blood. Each has a new book targeted to middle grade readers.