Rebecca Rego, Book Reviewer

Book Review

Ghost of a Smile

by Rebecca Rego

From this non-Japanese writer comes a collection of traditional Japanese ghost stories as colorful, enigmatic, and foreboding as the bookjacket’s cover art, which features a “Hell Courtesan.” Set in Tokyo, Boehm’s eight longish... Read More

Book Review

All Loves Excelling

by Rebecca Rego

Amanda Bahringer, the unsure seventeen-year-old main character of Bunting’s novel, is perhaps too easily summed up by her boarding school hallmaster as a “Triple burden. Parent ambition. Parent protection. Wanted another one.” Her... Read More

Book Review

Too Rich and Too Thin

by Rebecca Rego

Champion, author of four other Bomber Hanson books, delivers an old-fashioned murder mystery complete with Las Vegas mobsters, a suspicious butler, and a “knockout” model named Cheryl Darling (a parody in itself). Cheryl has been... Read More

Book Review

Eccentric Islands

by Rebecca Rego

John Donne said, “No man is an island,” but Holm is one to refute that statement. His name means “small island” in Old Norse, and that fact fuels this essayist’s wayward journey to five physical islands-Iceland, Madagascar,... Read More

Book Review

Year of the Smoke Girl

by Rebecca Rego

As she lay dying, Khatia Quigley’s mother gives Khatia a new name—the Chinese middle name of Wu Shan. This sets Khatia on a journey to define who and what she is, most evidently in terms of sexuality and race. The common “struggle... Read More

Book Review

White Fire

by Rebecca Rego

Dirk Arendt, the main character of Murray’s engaging historical adventure tale, shares a literary lineage with both Hawkeye from The Last of the Mohicans and Indiana Jones. This Cape Colony Dutchman is a scout too, with equal parts... Read More

Book Review

Writing to Deadline

by Rebecca Rego

Writing the lede (sic) to a review of this book is a daunting task when one considers the expertise of its author, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, columnist for the Boston Globe, and Professor Emeritus of English at the University of... Read More

Book Review

A Time for Treason

by Rebecca Rego

Walther traces a triangle between America, England and France as passion and political intrigue arrive by land and sea to a world on the brink of the Revolutionary War. In an effort to avenge her parent’s death, whose ship was sunk by... Read More

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