An Addiction and an Award

“Because I am, essentially, a reading addict, my impulse is simply to rip right through a book, fiction or nonfiction, just for the animal pleasure of it. But sad experience has shown that if I abandon myself in this way, I will finish the book without being...

The Poisoned Pawn

In Peggy Blair’s latest crackerjack thriller, ghost-haunted Cuban cop Ricardo Ramirez hits Canada, where he must clear the name of a colleague who stands accused of murdering his own wife.

A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain

Adrianne Harun plumbs the depths of rural despair with an eclectic cast of characters who face not only the traditional pitfalls of drugs and poverty, but also the malign supernatural attentions of an itinerant musician who might be Old Scratch himself.

Five-Star Paradox

March 11: “He was a great thundering paradox of a man, noble and ignoble, inspiring and outrageous, arrogant and shy, the best of men and the worst of men…”  

The Martian

Andy Weir’s stirring paean to the will to survive finds a castaway on the Red Planet, as astronaut Mark Watney outdoes Jules Verne, Tom Swift and George Clooney in his quest to live and even flourish in this forbidding environment.