Fiction
Rachel Reviews: King Arthur's Bones by The Medieval Murderers
This is book five in the series of books by the Medieval Murderers and if you've not come across them before, you may be curious as to who this group of authorial killers are. They are, of course, a group of historical fiction writers, specialising in murder mysteries. Each author's books are set in a different period of British history and usually comprise some sort of amateur detective who seeks the truth of what has happened. These sleuths can be official, as in representatives of the king or church, or merely curious justice seekers who are keen to uncover the killer.
By Rachel Deeming22 days ago in BookClub
"Crossing Division Street" Asks What We Really Inherit From the Past
Rebecca Chamian Ribaudo's Crossing Division Street begins with a sudden encounter that changes the course of one woman's life. Set partly in Chicago's Cabrini-Green neighborhood, the novel follows Sidone Russo, a successful attorney whose carefully constructed independence is challenged when a young girl unexpectedly enters her car and asks for help.
By Rachel Martino22 days ago in BookClub
Finding the Pulse of Love: My Review of Emmanuelle Pagano’s 'Trysting'
For me, Emmanuelle Pagano’s Trysting was not a book I could simply sit down and read. It was a book I had to learn how to breathe with. As someone used to traditional plots and recurring characters, opening this text was a lesson in literary disorientation. It took me about twenty pages to finally get into the swing of Pagano's unconventional rhythm. However, once my mind calibrated to its unique frequency, I was entirely powerless against its magic. I loved it. Unreservedly.
By Alyson Smith 23 days ago in BookClub
Rachel Reviews: Too Late for Redemption by Sydney Preston
It is with some shame that I admit having this book dowloaded to my Kindle for a long time, probably measurable in years. I'm not sure why it's taken me so long to read it as Preston's books are a good read.
By Rachel Deeming25 days ago in BookClub
Rachel Reviews: Storyland by Amy Jeffs
I've always been fascinated by myths and Britain is a country where it feels like they are barely buried beneath the land, releasing their magic, from the Highlands of Scotland to the tor of Glastonbury. I couldn't imagine rewriting them but that's exactly what Amy Jeffs has done here: taken the ancient myths of Great Britain (and Ireland to some extent) and crafted them into short stories, with an authorial note at the end of each one showing her reflections on each as well as an anecdote if she's visited the real life places to which they relate.
By Rachel Deeming26 days ago in BookClub
Rachel Reviews: The Window by M.L. Calder
This was such a nice book to read. I don't mean that to sound fatuous or trite as nice is an adjective much overused and maligned but it was so gentle in its prose that I felt like I drifted through my reading of it and it really was nice. There was a calm to it, produced by Calder's written style which lulled me and carried me through the drama and emotion of the story of the Morans. That's not to say that it's not an emotive because it is but there is something about the rhythm of the read that I liked: phrases acting like waves or repeated motives in music.
By Rachel Deeming27 days ago in BookClub
Penelope Was the Real Hero of “The Odyssey” All Along. Top Story - August 2026.
Mention Homer’s Odyssey , and the first name that comes to mind is undoubtedly Odysseus. Hard to blame a fellow Greek for that, seeing how he lends his name to the title. After all, this is a hero of warring and wandering - a soldier who survived the Trojan War, fought off storms at sea, and even outsmarted gods and mythical creatures on his way home. It took him ten long years to get back to his homeland of Ithaca, but he finally made it.
By Jenna Deedy29 days ago in BookClub
The Windup Girl
The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi won both the Hugo and Nebula awards when it was published in 2009: a rare achievement for any author of science fiction, rarer still for a debut novel. So when I found it, dog-eared and languishing behind an old coffee grinder at the thrift store, I was surprised that I had never heard of it. Even though the aughts are thoroughly in the rearview mirror, it’s strange for an achievement like Bacigalupi’s to have had so little staying power. After all, most people with even a casual interest in fantasy and science fiction will have heard of Miéville’s The City & The City, which won the same awards in the same year. I became determined to see for myself what made up the gulf between these two novels, so I ponied up the requisite three bucks and dove in.
By Daniel Bradburyabout a month ago in BookClub
