As a boy, Thomas Brooks unconsciously began to build his skills as a uniter. When an economic situation forced his (adoptive) mother Joan to make moves between neighborhoods on the North Side of Pittsburgh, Brooks journeyed miles on... Read More

Sweet Pea emerges from garden dirt in a state of confused disorientation. “And who was she really? What was the deal?” A friendly bee stops to assure Sweet Pea that her purpose in life need not remain a mystery. Unfortunately the bee... Read More

Stolen artifacts pale next to the psychological wallop of this new installment in the popular Bailey Fish Adventure series. Bailey, who lives with her grandmother because her divorced parents both have jobs abroad, finds herself... Read More

“Princess, dear princess please open the door, for you made a promise you must not ignore!” After retrieving a ball from a well for the princess, the frog calls out to her, for she has ignored the promise she made to him. He... Read More

Enthusiastic overindulgence in drugs and/or alcohol has characterized the lifestyles of many artists of all persuasions, but not since De Quincy has a writer made what amounts to a religion of the pleasures and pains of intoxication. A... Read More

After decades of lament and outrage over the atrocities that drove her family out of their native Chile, Agosín, nearing age fifty, has mellowed into a serene, though certainly not placid, desire to recover the half-wild, half-innocent... Read More

“In the villages we get up early. Old timers used to say, ‘Nos levantamos con las gallinas.’ We get up with the chickens,” the author writes. Residents and ex-residents of northwestern New Mexico will probably recognize, or even... Read More

A chilly fog-shrouded Sweden, where the locals drink plenty of coffee, provides the backdrop for Henning Mankell’s latest mystery featuring Kurt Wallander, the Swedish police detective. The book begins with an off-the-wall killing,... Read More