fiction review
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In the fifteen hundreds, a noble girl is born in France. She is named Marguerite, after her mother, who dies in childbirth. Her father dies when she is three years old. The orphaned Marguerite, along with everything she inherits – chateau, vineyards, villages, wealth – are left in the care of her guardian, her father’s…
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“The great gray beast February had eaten Harvey Swick alive.” Harvey is a ten year old boy, and like many such young boys, he prefers fun and games to rainy days and chores. But it is February, he is bored, and there is no respite in sight. Until one stormy day, just as Harvey is…
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Baldur’s Gate is a video game franchise based on the Dungeons and Dragons tabletop role playing game. It is also the name of one of the main cities in the game. The most recent iteration of the video game, Baldur’s Gate 3, was released in 2023 and remains extraordinarily popular, not least because of the…
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Imagine Europe, the shores of Italy, the Aegean Sea. Now imagine it full of monsters – dashing vampires and tattoed Nordic werewolves. Imagine its inhabitants practicing sorceries and Black magics, calling forth the elements and summoning the dead. Imagine elves hungry for human flesh held back by holy crusades, and a Savior who is the…
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One spring in the city of Golden, a man named Theo moves onto the Promenade. He is eighty-six years old, brought to town on some kind of mysterious business, and he’s not sure how long he’s going to stay. He becomes a regular at the coffee shop The Chalice, because they serve the finest espresso…
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This was a book club pick for May 2026, which is when I originally read the book and wrote this review. I loved it so much I include a little homage to it in my own novel – graffiti of cockroaches in an alley. “Art is what we leave of ourselves in other people.” This…
