Most readers have no clue what conditions were like in the Arctic lands of Scandinavia at the beginning of the twentieth century, when the Sami, or Lapps, were herding their reindeer herds across frozen forests and lakes. One chapter... Read More

Reality, wrote the American poet Wallace Stevens, “is things as they are.” That may be true in Western fiction, but what is really real in Beijing? The dozen stories that make up "The Beijing of Possibilities" carry realistic details... Read More

With Pestilence, War, Famine, and Death galloping around the planet (and Pollution keeping up in his Hummer), public discourse today seems to have no place for humor except in movies about the pranks of adolescents of all ages. Satire?... Read More

Ahhhhh, the olden days, back when everyone was, like the narrator of this novel, clueless. Susannah, or Susie-Q, as her lover calls her when he’s drunk, is a twenty-year-old philosophy major at Sussex University in England. She has... Read More

Written by two men who hold masters degrees from the University of Southern California film school, "Save the Whales Please" is a movie between book covers with short scenes that end where the director—Quentin Tarantino—might say,... Read More

At last-Elizabeths Celtic Mary Magdalen has a close encounter with Paul of Tarsus and the outspoken Maeve and the prolix apostle do not see eye to eye. To readers of the first two volumes of The Maeve Chronicles this will not come as a... Read More

It is the Mother from Hell who opens this novel as her son Gustav arrives at JFK Airport to spend his va-cation with his family in upstate New York. As they set off across Manhattan, Mother has words for Gustav, his Sephardic wife, his... Read More

History can fill the memory. If asked, “Where you were on September 11, 2001?” readers will no doubt remember exactly where they were and what they were doing. “Where were you on November 22, 1963?” This reviewer was teaching a... Read More