RODDY DOYLE’S NEW story collection crafts wistful poetry out of the everyday trials and triumphs of Irish men.

A LIBERIAN BROADCASTER sketches a portrait of her conflict-torn country in her own story, those of listeners.

FASCINATING TOPIC–the history of UFO disinformation campaigns–suffers from distractingly unfocused approach.

TENSE, TAUT FINANCIAL THRILLER from Norb Vonnegut is set in the rarefied world of global hedge fund skulduggery.

A SUDDEN TRAGEDY links two Cape Cod families in this delicate, complex, elegaic novel.  Truly touching.

REINVENTING THE MEMOIR as poem, Maxine Hong Kingston invites us into her luminous and introspective life.

IRREVERENT, WELL RESEARCHED lightning tour through behavioral economics shows why things cost what they do.

SURLY AND SARCASTIC as Spade, quixotic as Marlowe, Turkish-German detective Kemal Kayankaya is simply The Man. B PLUS

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TURK! (KEMAL KAYANKAYA SERIES #1)
Melville House Publishing
2011

LUMINOUS, ENCHANTING MEMOIR about a woman connecting with a wild snail as her own life is slowed by illness. A MINUS

THE SOUND OF A WILD SNAIL EATING
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
2010

GRIMLY COMIC NOVEL follows the bloody vendetta between two groups of misfits: 20ish slackers v. 40ish spinsters. B PLUS

POPULAR HITS OF THE SHOWA ERA
W. W. Norton & Company
2011