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The ox-bow incident Walter Van Tilburg Clark writes a classic western in 1940 that challenges previous westerns by drifting away from the usual cliches. This is a novel that is the forerunner of my favorite westerns:'Shane'( 1949 ) and 'High Noon'( 1952 ). While Shane studied greed for land and...

The house with the seven gables Nathaniel Hawthorne gives the reader a lesson in descriptive writing in this 1851 American Gothic novel. The purpose of descriptive writing is to completely describe every person, place, or thing so that the reader clearly sees it in his mind. This is why the...

It's conceivable that comments from one of my favorite historical fiction writers, Newt Gingrich could have derailed Mitt Romney's bid to become the 45th President of the United States of America. If you read 'To Try Men's Souls', 'Valley Forge', or 'The Battle of the Crater', Newt does exude a...

To mmyap I loved blech! But my favorites are: Faugh! and Bejabbers! Book Reviews And Comments By Rick O

A connecticut yankee in king arthur's court :stars5::stars5::) Book Reviews And Comments By Rick O If you think Bing Crosby's 1949 movie was anything like Mark Twain's fantasy classic published in 1889...Forget It! Like the precursor novels,'Gulliver's Travels' written in 1726 by Jonathan...

2030 Albert Brooks writes a novel of future politics and life in America that I thought was way too predictable. This book didn't work for me. If you look at our current spending, it's obvious that America will be spending all of it's future monies on interest alone. We will lose our status as...

Railsea In 1851 Herman Melville published 'Moby Dick' , in 2012 China Mieville published the remake. Well, sort of! Actually the only thing in common is the closeness of their last names. Let's see...We have Melville's whale ship, the Pequod and Mieville's mole train, the Medes. Not quite the...

To Maryjo I'm really only a fan of Agatha's novels, but I have shown a weakness for Mickey Spillane's 'Mike Hammer' and Dashiell Hammett's Nick & Nora Charles of 'The Thin Man' series. Book Reviews And Comments By Rick O

To maryjo This is the fifth Hercule Poirot novel that I've read. I agree that 'Murder on the Orient Express' was her best. I haven't seen any of the movies yet, but plan on soon. Reading Agatha is an ambrosial experience. Hercule would say " Mais oui " to that statement. Book Reviews And...

Death in the clouds A hodgepodge group of people board a flight from Paris to Croydon and before they land one turns up dead! Luckily one of the passengers is the great Hercule Poirot. Thus starts another mystery by Agatha Christie, the most read author of all times. Published in 1935, this...

To Maryjo: Thank so much for your kind words about my blog! I did have two different authors send me their novels to read and review. I love reading all genres of literature and then writing a review. Book Reviews And Comments By Rick O

To: Maryjo I believe Grant was a military savant, unfortunately he was too trusting with his staff as president, which caused him many problems. This is a wonderful book. If you like history that seems like fiction read books by Candice Millard such as, ' Destiny of the Republic', it's a solid...

Grant's final victory This is the seventh non-fiction book that I've read concerning U.S. presidents in the last year and it ranks right up there with books about Presidents' Garfield, Cleveland, Mckinley, T. Roosevelt and FDR. Author Charles Bracelen Flood penned equally as well as his fellow...

Roadside picnic "The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming". Whoops! Wrong story. I meant the novel was written by the Russian brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. The aliens are coming, the aliens are coming! Whoops! They left. They were here only for a roadside picnic. Now the...

To Mary Jo: You will love this book- it's a real page-turner. ricko

The Thirteenth Tale The launching of Diane Setterfield's writing career couldn't have gone better. This novel published in 2006 is reminiscent of the old English gothic novels such as Charlotte Bronte's 'Jane Eyre' . I would also think that Agatha Christie's Miss Marple would have been proud of...

The Epiphanist The debut novel of William Rosencrans may have spawned a new genre of writing. It's a combination of fantasy and China Mieville's weird fiction sans the neologistical vocabulary. Mr. Rosencrans does use diction that makes you run to the lexicon now and then, but these are real...

The Master and Margarita This is a brilliant and complex work of art by Mikhail Bulgakov written in 1930s Russia and unpublished until 1966, 26 years after the author's death. This version was translated by Mirra Ginsburg. The novel combines fantasy, a satirical look at the Stalin run...

Blood and thunder The title of the book is the moniker used to describe the ' dime novels ' written about Kit Carson's adventures during the turbulent Indian Wars of the 1850's through the 1860's. Hampton Sides writes an epic account of what really happened in the Southwest. This non-fiction...

The swan thieves Elizabeth Kostova easily avoids the sophomore jinx with her second epistolary novel. While this volume isn't the fearsome novel that 'The Historian' was, it does have plenty of enigmas and intrigue. What do you expect without Vlad the Impaler. I enjoy reading novels that are...