Category: Reviews

The 6 Top Best Most Anticipated Books of 2018

?Tis the season for the ?Top.? ?Best,? and ?Most Anticipated? books of 2018. (Personally, I?d like there to be a ?Least Anticipated,” as those are the ones that I bet will have the most gems, but I don?t think anyone wrote that.) I?ve gathered a list from several sources – these are the books that…

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The Alienist finally gets its screen debut

I was surprised to learn that Caleb Carr?s novel “The Alienist” will soon be a TNT miniseries?not because it lacked fans (it reached the top 10 of The New York Times? Bestseller list in 1994), but because filming had been held up for years. Paramount Pictures had optioned the screen rights in 1993 and Curtis…

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#TBT It’s Harold Robbins’ The Lonely Lady

In the spirit of #tbt is Harold Robbins? 1976 novel, ?The Lonely Lady.? I’d thought a lot of Robbins’s work was a slight step above dime-store schlock, but ?The Lonely Lady? is a surprisingly timely story about a woman who strives to be a successful screenwriter, yet is repeatedly stonewalled by men in power?men who…

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Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists … and a whole bunch of other phonies

When you create a work of fiction, the world is whatever you want it to be. But “Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News”?isn?t about fiction as it applies to novels?it?s also fiction disguised as memoirs, personas, and especially P.T. Barnum’s world of ?curiosities.” Author Kevin Young dons his Columbo…

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The Brothers: A tragedy decades in the making

Through a recent conversation about Russian politics, I learned about Masha Gessen?s 2015 book ?The Brothers: The Road to an American Tragedy,? about Tamerlan and Dzhokhar “Jahar” Tsarnaev, the brothers behind the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. Both had been written off as radicalized Chechens whose newfound religious zeal caused them to avenge their Muslim brothers,…

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