Author name: Ed Frey

Missive #492 Published 8 May 2025

Over the years, Wendell Berry has sought to understand and confront the financial structure of modern society and the impact of developing late capitalism on American culture. There is perhaps no more demanding or important critique available to contemporary citizens than Berry's writings — just as there is no vocabulary more given to obfuscation than that of economics as practiced by professionals and academics. Berry has called upon us to return to the basics. He has traced how the clarity of our economic approach has eroded over time, as the financial asylum was overtaken by the inmates, and citizens were turned from consumers — entertained and distracted — to victims, threatened by a future of despair and disillusion.

Missive #491 Published 6 May 2025

For all those who adore Joanna Trollope's cool, honest writing style comes the fifth novel in the hugely popular "Caper Court" series. Leo Davies QC - charismatic, attractive and sexually ambiguous - inspires powerful feelings. Feelings that sometimes border on obsession.

This book was more 'Chick Lit' than the previous books in the series. I didn't like it as well. There are three more books in the series that I'll read hoping that this one was an outlier.

Missive #488 Published 29 April 2025

This edited customer review is just the beginning of one of the many one and two star reviews the book received at goodreads.com. "What is it that compels authors to end their careers preaching to the masses? This boring and tendentious piece of propaganda should never be mistaken for an act of fiction or competent literature." — Edited customer review

I might add that the last chapter in the book can be skipped if you make it that far or perhaps your are one of those readers that would give the book five stars, there were some.

Missive #485 Published 24 April 2025

Beginning with Into the Darkness , Darkness Descending , and Through the Darkness , bestselling author Harry Turtledove ("The master of alternative history"- Publishers Weekly ) has been telling an epic the story of a world war, comparable to the terrible world wars of our own 20th century, in a world where magic works.

Imagine the drama and terror of the Second World War-only the bullets are beams of magical fire, the tanks are great lumbering beasts, and fighters and bombers are dragons raining fire upon their targets. Welcome to the world of the Derlavaian War, a world that is slowly but surely being conquered, mile by bloody mile, by the forces of the Algarvian empire … forces whose most terrible battle magics are powered by the slaughter of innocent people, the Kaunians, whom Algarve-like much of the world-holds in disdain.

Missive #484 Published 21 April 2025

Richard Sharpe is sent to Copenhagen to deliver a bribe to stop the Danes handing over possession of their battle fleet to the French.

It seems very easy. But nothing is easy in a Europe stirred by French ambitions. The Danes possess a battle fleet that could replace every ship the French lost at Trafalgar, and Napoleon's forces are gathering to take it. The British have to stop them, while the Danes insist on remaining neutral.