Missive #234 Published 5 March 2024

Based on real events of 400 years past [The Steel Bonnets read 24 March 2023], this is a vivid depiction of the terror and brutality of life on the Anglo-Scottish Border. To the young Lady Margaret Dacre, raised in the rich security of Queen Elizabeth's court, the Scottish Border is a land of blood and violence, where her inheritance lay at the mercy of the outlaws and feuding tribes of England's last frontier.

Missive #232 Published 2 March 2024

First published in 1940, James Still's masterful novel has become a classic. It is the story, seen through the eyes of a boy, of three years in the life of his family and their kin. He sees his parents pulled between the meager farm with its sense of independence and the mining camp with its uncertain promise of material prosperity.

Missive #230 Published 29 February 2024

This is an interesting book but in my opinion is muddled . He moves the chronology around such that I found it difficult to keep track of when events were happening. There does not seem to be any continuity to an overall story; each of the '21 laws' stand alone for the most part. I may try some of his other books.

Missive #229 Published 28 February 2024

A week in the life of a 22-year-old grifter in the Hamptons.
Cline does pretty-but-creepy like no one else and now takes her brand of alluring ickiness to the wealthy enclaves of Long Island (the location is unnamed but clearly recognizable) in the last week of summer. We meet Alex swimming in the ocean, high on painkillers she's stolen from her man of the moment, a "civilian" named Simon who doesn't know Alex is a working girl and who has invited her to spend the month of August at his place "out east."

Missive #228 Published 27 February 2024

It not very common that a physician practicing both pediatrics and general medicine would also be a poet and novelist. However, that is what Williams was, he also served as the Passaic General Hospital's chief of pediatrics from 1924 until his death. I'll be reading the rest of this trilogy just to see what happens to Flossie.

Missive #226 Published 24 February 2024

Critically acclaimed science journalist, Mark Buchanan tells the fascinating story of the discovery that there is a natural structure of instability woven into the fabric of our world, which explains why catastrophes— both natural and human— happen.
Scientists have recently discovered a new law of nature and its footprints are virtually everywhere— in the spread of forest fires, mass extinctions, traffic jams, earthquakes, stock-market fluctuations, the rise and fall of nations, and even trends in fashion, music and art.