This is a must-read for any Gatsby enthusiast, English lit student, or lover of the Jazz Age. Churchwell carefully pieces together very specific events in the Fitzgeralds’ lives and relates them to Scott’s most famous work, The Great Gatsby. These are not wild hunches or bizarre theories. She draws from scrapbooks, newspaper clippings, letters from friends,…
REVIEW: INVENTION OF MURDER by Judith Flanders
Despite the title, this delightful tome is nearly 500 pages of salacious details of crime and murder in Victorian England — plus almost 100 pages of notes, bibliography and index. For someone like me, it’s a treasure trove of the ignoble and infamous. I admit, I got a little giddy when the book arrived. It…
31 Days of Halloween – October 5
In June 1836 five young boys, hunting for rabbits on the north-eastern slopes Arthur’s Seat, Edinburgh, found 17 miniature coffins hidden inside a cave.
ACCENT: BURIAL RITES by Hannah Kent
I’ve never read anything quite like this debut novel from the young author Hannah Kent. Set in early Victorian-era Iceland, it features a convicted murderess and the family assigned to house her until her execution. I couldn’t help but be reminded of the original 3:10 to Yuma. A citizen us entrusted with keeping and safely transporting…
REVIEW: THE DAMNATION OF JOHN DONELLAN by Elizabeth Cooke
It has all the makings of a Georgian era Agatha Christie novel — a house full of suspects, bizarre alibis, unsubstantiated timelines, inheritances, jealousy, and a bottle or two of poison. When young soon-to-be baronet Theodosius Boughton dies unexpectedly one morning, a scandal erupts in the quiet countryside county of Warwickshire. Although not in tip-top…