Rupert Thomson's Secrecy is suffused with deliciously disturbing images and scenes. A thin, dark ribbon of sky. Bared teeth with clumps of hair. A dead bird that dangles from a girl’s first like a flower needing water. A snake skin shed in a doorway. A secret passage. A stabbed countess. A
Marguerite Abouet and Clément Oubrerie's Aya de Yopougon 4 Gallimard, 2008 Read: At the table, because I said that I would use my dictionary to look up all the French words that I don't know (of course I always say that, but I never do) Warning: As the fourth book in
No need to wonder whether you fit in this novel: Harriet Baxter is speaking directly to you, Reader. Even before the novel has properly begun, she is saying "Reader, if you wonder -- as I suspect you may..." Even though you weren't wondering yet. And, on the next page, she
Beacon Press, 2003 (originally 1979) Dana is bookish; when we meet her in the opening pages of Kindred, she is unpacking books after a move. She is sorting the fiction into one of the bigger bookcases in the living room while Kevin finishes unpacking his office. But when
Random House, 1991 Hjalmar Söderberg's Doctor Glas (1905) Trans. Paul Britten Austin Intro. Margaret Atwood Readers are introduced to Doctor Glas via his diary, with his chatter about the weather. From its opening sentences, you'd never guess at the controversy incited by this novel. It's June 12th. There's
