Stray by Ryu Kamio
Reading via an online reader copy is sometimes hard for me. But I persevere and just keep swimming, I mean reading. But with Stray there was the added issue of a big ol’ “watermark” in the middle of things. Nope, they did not want people copying the manga comic by Ryu Kamio and illustrator Nakamura Yuu. Plus, it is manga and therefore, the flow is off for my western eyes to start. With that said, a few days after starting, I finished this Yakuza meets […]
Careless People: A cautionary Take of Power Greed and Lost Idealism? by Sarah Wynn-Williams
Well, well, well, if it isn’t the worst people in the world. I don’t think I’ve been so infuriated since I read John Carreyrou’s ‘Bad Blood.’ I don’t believe there’s much left to redeem Silicon Valley at this point. Stick it all into the insinkerator and set the whole kitchen on fire for all I care. The funny thing is, I would probably have never heard of Careless People, let alone read it, if it weren’t for the suppression efforts. In a brilliant display of the […]
Ruins by Peter Kuper
Ruins by Peter Kuper is the kind of book that can’t really be rated. There are parts that were a five, parts that were a one, and parts a nice solid three. And even each page really could be given its own rating. The main part that I based my score on is the cleverness of the story. We follow a monarch butterfly as its journey parallels the human couple for their year in Mexico. Some things are left up to the imagination in places […]
The Next Ship Home by Heather Webb
CBR 14 Bingo: New I’d left my knowledge of Ellis Island behind in fourth grade; I’ve never read any book about it before this. Alma is a matron on Ellis Island; Francesca is a young woman hailing from Sicily. They become friends, but when as efforts to reduce corruption on the island come to the forefront, they must choose whether they will step forward or stay silent to protect themselves. Long ago in elementary school, our teacher decided that a good way for us to […]
This is the latest in the series by Paul Grossman about the famous and highly respected German homicide detective Willi Kraus. Over the course of Grossman’s several earlier books which I’ve reviewed, the thuggish fringe National Socialist movement grows into the terrifying Nazi juggernaut which destroys the Germany Kraus has known and loved, and soon drives German Jews—himself and his family included—into exile. As one of the last to flee before all escape hatches were slammed shut, the widowed Kraus arrives in Paris without belongings, […]
This bloody action-packed Norwegian police procedural/thriller is as exciting and fast-paced in its telling as it is absurd in its plot. The “hero” is young Sonny Lofthus, a lifer and a drug addict who has spent the past 15 years behind bars copping to crimes committed by the crime syndicate that runs all manner of nasty operations in Oslo. In return, he is kept happily supplied with top quality heroin, to which the assistant warden is well paid to keep a blind eye. The broken […]
