Shelved: Books Read and Reviewed in December 2025

 

Author talk

Bone Valley.  Gilbert King.  Flatiron Books, 2025.  384 pages.

Paroled in 2024, Leo Schofield spent 36 years in Florida prisons for murdering his wife, despite the fact that multiple witnesses supported his alibi, the killer's fingerprints were found in the victim's abandoned car, absolutely no blood was found at the alleged murder scene,  the body was found at a location that the killer was known to frequent, AND the real killer confessed multiple times.  Technically, Leo is still a convicted murderer today, paroled but not yet legally exonerated.  How does this happen? At least two state prosecutors and some detectives intentionally destroyed evidence, suborned perjury from witnesses, ignored and threatened other witnesses, withheld evidence, and actively lied to jurors and parole board members, shielding a confessed serial killer while doubling and tripling down to convict an innocent teenager and to keep him in prison for the rest of his life.  And Leo's conviction is still, and will always be, the only conviction ever to result from the case.  Pulitzer prize winning author Gilbert King and his research assistant and producer Kelsey Decker created a hugely popular podcast, called "Bone Valley," to discuss the case, and ABC's "20/20" covered the story, but I had never heard of it until I went to a book talk a couple of weeks ago to see King and Schofield in person.  I went because I really, really liked King's previous books Devil in the Grove and Beneath A Ruthless Sun, also about horrible miscarriages of justice in Florida.  This book is incredible, unforgettable, affecting, dumbfounding, and infuriating like few other other books that I've read, and no fiction writer could ever conceive a story this powerful.  Read this book and listen to the podcast.

Manson:  The Life and Times of Charles Manson.  Jeff Guinn.  Simon & Schuster, 2013.  512 pages.  Thanks to Simon & Schuster for the review copy.

I have no idea why Simon & Schuster offered review copies of a twelve-year old book, but I did recently enjoy Jeff Guinn's latest book Waco, and this biography does live up to my expectations.  It is considered the authoritative bio of Charles Manson, and Guinn managed to interview important people who had never spoken to previous authors, like Manson's sister and his cousin, and some former Family members who had rarely done interviews in the past.  It's a thorough, and thoroughly fascinating, account of the man, from his horrific childhood through the murders and subsequent trials, and it also places him in the context of his time, reflecting the turbulence and confusion that constantly swirled in the late 1960s.  As the expression goes, "The man and the hour have met." Manson is an incredible character, and the time was unique.  Both are great subjects to be mined.  Deftly blending them together makes for a really good read.

Documentary on career and trial

Devil's Garden.  Ace Atkins.  Putnam Adult, 2009.  368 pages.

Ace Atkins is one of the authors presenting at the Savannah Book Festival in February 2026, so we decided to listen to one of his earlier works in preparation.  Devil's Garden is based on one of Hollywood's earliest and biggest real-life scandals, the trial of Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle.  In 1921, Arbuckle was arguably Hollywood's biggest star, one of the first stars to earn a million dollars.  His only rival for the spotlight was Charles Chaplin.  He was America's greatest slapstick comedian until a young woman named Virginia Rappe died as a result of a drunken party that took place in rooms rented by Arbuckle in one of San Francisco's fanciest hotels.  Arbuckle was charged with her sexual assault and death.  The resulting scandal and trials, plural, shocked American sensibilities, destroyed his career, and forever cemented Hollywood's reputation as "the Devil's Garden," despite the fact that he was eventually acquitted.  Atkins fictionalizes the story, with a particular focus on Sam Hammett, a Pinkerton Agency detective hired by Arbuckle's defense team to investigate the case.  You might know Sam better by his middle name Dashiell, the name under which he wrote some of the most acclaimed detective noir novels and created the characters Sam Spade and Nick and Nora Charles.  Atkins is a huge fan of the genre and of Hammett, and this book is both his homage and a good story.  I enjoyed it, but I have two complaints, especially with the audiobook version.  One, the Hammett/Noir style flirts dangerously with parody.  The vocabulary and language reminded me at times of comedy sketches lampooning 30s gangsters, even Rocky and Mugsy, the gangsters who were outsmarted by Bugs Bunny in a couple of cartoons.  Two, I'm not sure it was the fault of the narrator, the producer, or the editor, but there were many instances in which the narration seems to jump, jarringly,  from one scene to another without a pause or transition.  Otherwise, a good book.

The Mangrove Coast.  Randy Wayne White.  Putnam, 1998.  290 pages.  Book 6 of 28 in Doc Ford series. 

Marine biologist and former-secret-agent-of-some-undisclosed-sort Doc Ford is just living his life in his Sanibel Island, Florida stilt house when he gets a visit from a stranger claiming to be the daughter of an old comrade killed in Cambodia on a secret mission shortly after the Vietnam War.  In letters home, the friend had told his wife that Doc was the man to call on if she ever needed help when her husband was not around.  Now, the daughter needs Doc's help.  Her mother is missing and possibly endangered by a really shady and worrisome individual.  She's broken all contact with the daughter and may be out of the country.  Worried and intent on helping his dead buddy's family, Doc finds himself enmeshed in a dark mystery that takes him to Cartagena, Colombia and then to Panama.  Another good Doc Ford mystery, and here's the history link:  the book was published in 1998, and today it makes for a quaint look back at the early days of home computing and the internet.  Emails and chat rooms comprise an integral part of the story, but it was new territory in 1998.  Characters refer to emails as "letters' and "correspondence."  At one point during their first meeting, the daughter is surprised to learn that Doc doesn't own a computer.  Ford declares that he has no need for one, saying "I have a phone, a public library down the street, and the post office.  Why do I need a computer?"

Radio interview with author

Forgotten Souls:  The Search for the Lost Tuskegee Airmen.  Cheryl W.  Thompson.  Dafina/Kensington Books, to be published January 27, 2026.  240 pages.  Thanks to Kensington Books for the free advance readers copy for review.

It's taken far too long for the Tuskegee Airmen to get their just due for their service as the nation's first black military pilots and for their legendary record of achievements in World War II, but, at least in the past few decades, the veterans and their stories have been recognized.  Unfortunately, not all survived long enough to see it.  In fact, 27  of the over 1,000 Airmen were lost during the war, and their service and sacrifice was forgotten to all but their family. Cheryl W. Thompson, an investigative journalist and the daughter of a Tuskegee Airman herself, set out to uncover and tell the stories of those missing men.  The result is a really great history of the unit and the men who comprised it, and now, after 80 years, those 27 missing men are getting at least some of the respect they deserve.

Author talk

Dark Renaissance:  The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival.  Stephen Greenblatt.  W.W. Norton & Company, 2025.  352 pages.

This book appears on multiple "Best of 2025" lists.  I've read and liked Greenblatt's book, The Swerve, although it wasn't a page-turner by any stretch of the imagination.  I'm really interested in the Renaissance/Elizabethan period, and I have read a lot about it.  I love a good historical mystery.  Yet, after a getting a third of the way through, I'm giving up on Dark Renaissance, fully embracing the late-in-life rule of thumb that life's too short to read books that you don't enjoy.  Problem number one:  Seemingly every sentence contains words and phrases like "probably," "maybe," "likely," "might have," "could have," "potentially," "perhaps," et cetera.  If those words were removed, the book would be half as long.  Yes, Greenblatt does provide context about Elizabethan England, but the specifics about Marlowe are scant, to put it generously.  Problem number two:  The book is just simply boring, at least so far.  It did not hold my attention.  

Author podcast interview

Incendiary:  The Psychiatrist, the Mad Bomber, and the Invention of Criminal Profiling.  Michael Cannell.  Minotaur Books, 2017.  304 pages.

Michael Cannell is another author appearing at the Savannah Book Festival in February 2026, so I chose to read this earlier work.  It's about an episode of history that was totally new to me.  I had no idea that New York City was gripped by terror from 1940 to 1956 because a Mad Bomber detonated dozens of pipe bombs in public areas around Manhattan.  Bombs were planted in phone booths, restrooms, subway stations, and movie theaters.   Radio City Music Hall was even targeted.  Fortunately, no one died, but there were multiple injuries.  The Bomber wrote letters taking credit and explaining that he was seeking revenge against Con Ed, the huge electric company that had mistreated him following a workplace injury.  The police were stymied, and the public lived in fear.  The head of the police bomb squad, a progressive cop who believed that science and crimefighting went hand in hand.  This was a radical idea in the mid 20th century.  Many of his superiors and colleagues thought the idea was ridiculous, that crimes were solved by legwork and instinct.  Captain Howard Finney persisted, however, and sought out the advice of psychiatrist Dr. James Brussel.  Brussel provided a detailed description of the Bomber's background, personality, and even personal appearance that narrowed the investigation.  The real break came when a newspaper took Brussel's advice to make the investigation more public and engaged the Bomber in a public correspondence, causing him to unwittingly reveal more identifying information that led to his arrest.  This was an excellent book that really held my interest throughout, and I learned about this specific case, as well as about the history of the bomb squad, other big criminal cases, the use of the insanity defense, and how Dr. Brussel became the father of criminal profiling.  

Ten Thousand Islands  Randy Wayne White.  G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2000.  320 pages.  Book 7 of 28 in Doc Ford series.

This Doc Ford mystery is really focused on Marco Island Florida and the Calusa people who occupied it before the Spanish invasion.  Like the other indigenous peoples who occupied Florida before the Spanish, we know very little about them.  Almost all of Florida's first peoples died of disease and murder in the earliest days of contact.  The Calusa were thought to be a powerful confederacy that dominated southwest Florida that fished and traded and probably had connections to the Mayas.  The region, and especially Marco Island, were once covered with mounds and remains of settlements.  Then the developers came.  That's the backdrop for this mystery that surrounds the death of a teenage girl fifteen years earlier.  She seemed to have a special psychic connection to the Calusa that allowed her to find artifacts including a Marco Island cat figurine, one of the most intriguing artifacts ever found in the Americas, in my opinion.  (The real one, about 6 inches high, was discovered in 1896.)  Her psychic gift and her discoveries may have her death.  Now, strange things are happening,  her grave has been disturbed, and her mother turns to Ford for help.  Like the other Doc Ford books, you'll probably figure things out before he does, but it's still a good story.  

Art:  An Interactive Guide: A Hands-On Tour of the World's Greatest Artists and Their Masterpieces: With Magic Pages, Flaps, Wheels, Timelines, and More!  Mifflin Lowe.  Bushel & Peck Books, 2025.  80 pages.

I've always been a huge fan of pop-up books and museums-in-books, the interactive books with pop-ups, manipulatives, and inserts, so I thought this book looked fun.  It's aimed at grades 4 through 6, but it could have wider appeal.  It contains brief biographies of a number of major artists and overviews of one or two of their most famous works.  It's adequate, a decent introduction to art and artists.  And the title must set a record for most colons, and punctuation in general, of any book title ever.  However, it's kind of disappointing on two counts.  First, it is overwhelmingly male and European in focus.  Secondly, the inserts and geegaws are boring.  They don't add much.  The most common gimmick is an overlay with notes pointing out a few elements.  The book doesn't come close to matching the subject. 

The Bishop's Pawn.  Steve Berry.  Minotaur Books, 2018.  352 pages.  Book 13 of 20 in Cotton Malone series.

I found the last Cotton Malone book that I read, The 14th Colony, to be disappointing, but this entry in the series is a return to form.  It's a flashback to Cotton's first case as a top US Justice Department 18 years earlier, before the Magellan Billet was actually formed, and his first meeting with his future boss, Stephanie Nelle.  The usual tropes are almost all there:  Stephanie sends him on a mission without telling him critical information, there's a mysterious and very capable woman ally, there's a major conspiracy based on some intentionally hidden bit of history, the stakes are high, Cotton refuses to explain his unusual nickname, there are betrayals, multiple people die in very public shootouts (You have to wonder how all these shootouts, explosions, and chases are reported and explained - or not? - in the media or by authorities to the survivors.).  There's one major variation:  the big climactic shootout doesn't take place in church or religious site; it takes place in the middle of Disney World --- which is akin to a religious site for many, in a way.  And it is a departure for Berry in  that it's mostly written in first person, told by Cotton.  The mystery here involves the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. , and it delves deeply into King's last years, his assassination, the conspiracy theories, James Earl Ray, and into J. Edgar Hoover's personal hatred of King and his totally illegal and unethical use of the FBI to attack King and the entire civil rights movement using the truly evil COINTELPRO. (Look it up and educate yourself.  If you ever fell for  Hoover's carefully created and crafted image of the FBI as a super-professional, elite, apolitical, organization beyond moral reproach, you'll find  that the organization has actually had multiple and continuous periods and pockets of immorality and ineptitude within, throughout its history.) Berry creates a solid action adventure that's also thought-provoking, and he even manages to pull off a major twist in the end.  

Shark River.  Randy Wayne White.  G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2001.  291 pages. Book 8 of 28 in the Doc Ford Series.

This eighth Doc Ford adventure opens with Doc enjoying a rare vacation at a luxury island resort.  But, of course, it's Doc, so the vacation is cut short when he thwarts the attempted kidnapping of another guest, resulting in his entanglement with a Colombian cartel, and he himself becomes the target of the cartel's ruthless head.  He also has to deal with a from-the-grave curveball thrown at him by his recently deceased estranged Uncle Tucker - a curveball that leads to yet another adventure for Doc and his buddy, Tomlinson.  It's another excellent Doc Ford action story, and the reader learns some major details about the secret past lives of Doc and Tomlinson - details that could affect their relationship.  White also takes the reader deeper into the lives and the relationships of the residents of Dinkins Bay Marina.  And a fun, new, and hopefully recurring character is introduced, with the foreshadowed possibilities of a couple of other new future characters.

From CBS Sunday morning

Family of Spies:  A World War II Story of Nazi Espionage, Betrayal, and the Secret History Behind Pearl Harbor.  Christine Kuehn. Celadon Books, 2025.  272 pages.

Every family has secrets, but few secrets are as massive and as consequential as those hidden by Christine Kuehn's father and Aunt Ruth.  Kuehn knew that her father had been born in Germany, but he had grown up in Hawaii, where his family had migrated to in the late 1930s.  However, he almost never talked about his parents or siblings except to say that his parents had both died in Germany.  Christine thought it was very strange because he was a great storyteller normally.  Then, one day in 1994, a letter from a screenwriter researching the Pearl Harbor attack found her and changed her life.  She found that her grandparents had been Nazi spies working for the Japanese and tasked with learning sensitive military information in preparation for X-Day, the surprise attack on America's Pacific Fleet naval base.  base.  Not only was her grandfather Otto the only person ever convicted in connection with the Pearl Harbor attack, but her Aunt Ruth, Christine learned, had been a mistress of Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels when she was a teenager.  Her grandmother and Ruth had actively gathered information from oblivious naval personnel and their wives and girlfriend.  Eberhard's youngest brother Hans had been trained as a small boy to charm his way onto American battleships and to memorize details of weaponry and layout.  Only her father appeared to be innocent.  Kuehn struggled with this information for decades, researching and uncovering more and more information and then debating with herself and with her husband about what to do with the information, finally deciding to publish.  It is an incredible story, and it is, once again, proof that truth is usually stranger than fiction.  

Twelve Mile Limit  Randy Wayne White.  G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2002.  304 pages.  Book 9 of 28 in the Doc Ford series.  

The 9th Doc Ford mystery open with a scuba diving tragedy that takes the life of Janet Mueller, one of Doc Ford's Dinkins Bay neighbors and friends.  White based the story on a real-life incident that occurred in 1994, down to the details of the search for the real victims and using real quotes from people involved in the real investigation, but he adapted the true story to accommodate the fictional Janet and her three companions.  The Canadians who disappeared in the true story were never found, however, and White's hypothesis of what happened to them provides the rest of the plot for this dark story.  The plot revolves around human trafficking and the international sex slave trade, and it requires Ford to mount a rescue mission to the jungles of Colombia.  Published in 2002, it tackles the subject well before human trafficking became as big a part of our  public awareness.  Ford is dragged into a large and violent international conspiracy that threatens his life and those lives of people close to him.  Another good Ford thriller.

Shelved: Books Read and Reviewed in November 2025

 

Author Talk

Ring Shout.  P. Djeli Clark.  Tor Nightfire, 2025 (paperback, originally 2020).  192 pages.

If you liked the movie "Sinners," or other horror films by directors like Ryan Coogler and Jordan Peele, then this is the book for you.  It's horror, fantasy, and history all wrapped in one virtually non-stop action package.  The setting is 1922 in Macon and Stone Mountain Georgia.  The Ku Klux Klan has been reborn following the release of the movie "The Birth of a Nation" in 1915.  As black veterans returned from World War I and started standing up for their civil rights in Jim Crow America, the Klan mobilized and ramped up violence in response.  The Red Summer of 1919, the Tulsa Massacre of 1921, and a spike in lynchings are just some of the events referenced in this book.  In Clark's re-imagining, the KKK actually consists of two factions, the Klan, comprising the average American racists, and the Ku Kluxes who are actually demonic monsters created and fed by hate and who only exist by stirring and escalating hate.  A small band of women forms for the purpose of destroying the Ku Kluxes.  There's Maryse, armed with a magical sword gifted to her by three spiritual aunties who appear to her in visions, Sadie, a sharpshooter, and Chef, who disguised herself as a man and fought as a Harlem Hellfighter in WWI.  They're aided by Maryse's spiritual advisor Nana Jean and Molly, a self-taught Choctaw scientist and engineer who devises weapons and strategies along with her female apprentices, and Emma, a German Jewish social revolutionary communist.  Following some skirmishes and a major Klux attack on a juke joint in Macon, everybody heads to Stone Mountain, the site where the Klan was reborn and the first crosses were burned, for the final apocalyptic, the-fate-of-the-world-hangs-in-the-balance battle.   Clark blends history and horror with Gullah, African, and Caribbean folklore and delivers a very creative and original read and a great ride from beginning to end.

The Invisible Spy:  The Untold True Story of an NFL Player Turned Spy and His Role in America's Covert WWII Operations.  Thomas Maier.  Hanover Square Press, 2025.  480 pages.

During WWII, American comic books, movies, radio shows, and propaganda convinced Americans that Axis spies and saboteurs were at large throughout the country and carrying out diabolical missions.   And as far as Germans were involved that premise was more correct than they knew.  What Americans didn't know, until quite recently, was that there were as many, if not more, British and Russian spies, agents of our allies, at work in the United States.  During the late 1930s and the war itself, the British acted with impunity, employing hundreds of agents, including future literary figures like Ian Fleming and Roald Dahl, who operated out of an office on the 36th floor of Rockefeller Center in New York City.  The British spy operation had the full support of President Roosevelt and reported directly to Prime Minister Churchill and his trusted subordinates.  They investigated and shared information with J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, planted disinformation and propaganda in American media, and actively carried out their own missions on American soil to further British war aims.  British expats in Hollywood like Cary Grant, Noel Coward,  and Alfred Hitchcock contributed helpful information gathered on the west coast and at New York cocktail parties.  The man who served as the bridge between British and American intelligence was Ernest Cuneo, a first generation Italian-American who had been a standout football player at Columbia University and in the earliest days of the NFL, the late 1920s - the kind of player who played for the entire sixty minutes of regulation play, both offense and defense, often for as little as $50 per game.  He was instrumental in making the connection between the established and professional British espionage organizations and the brash, upstart (sometimes reckless) American OSS founded by "Wild Bill" Donovan, the forerunner of the CIA.  He had personal and professional connections to the two biggest media figures of the time, Walter Winchell and Drew Pearson, read and listened to by tens of millions of Americans weekly, and he became a master manipulator of the press. He and Fleming became extremely close and life-long friends.  Bits of Cuneo are sprinkled throughout Fleming's James Bond novels, inspired by their collaboration at Rockefeller Center.  All the while, he remained invisible and kept his pivotal role largely unknown, not only during the war but throughout his life.  This book is really thorough and fascinating look at his incredible life and at the world of WWII espionage.

Author talk

Midnight Burning.  Paul Levine.  Blank Slate Press, 2025.  374 pages.  Book 1 of Einstein-Chaplin Thriller series.

It's 1937 Hollywood, and two of the most famous men in the world, Charlie Chaplin and Albert Einstein - geniuses at the top of their respective fields, are close friends living privileged lives, but the events of the world soon intrude and shake their world.  As Europe begins its descent into war, Chaplin is in the process of creating "The Great Dictator," his political magnum opus, his one-man frontal assault on Adolf Hitler and fascism, his biting satire and personal attack against the Fuhrer.  Meanwhile, the Silver Shirts, the West Coast fascist paramilitary thugs, just one of multiple pro-Hitler groups operating throughout the country, make plans to prevent its completion.   With support and encouragement from Berlin, the Silver Shirts' plan goes beyond that, however, to include murders of dozens of top Hollywood movers and shakers who are either Jewish or anti-fascists and to light the fuse for a fascist coup to overthrow the American government.  When Chaplin and Einstein accidentally uncover the plot, they realize that the movement has deep roots in California law enforcement and the FBI, so it's up to them to leap into action to thwart the evil plot.  The result is a super, action-packed, buddy action thriller, based on real historical facts and including lots of cameos from real people including Douglas Fairbanks, Bob Hope, Bugsy Siegel, William Randolph Hearst, Joseph Goebbels, and Charles Lindbergh, along with Georgia Ann Robinson, the first black female police officer in Los Angeles.  It all works to make a really great story.  This book is billed as the first of an Einstein-Chaplin thriller series, and I would definitely read more.  (And it led me to go back and watch "The Great Dictator" again, also highly recommended.)

Circle of Days.  Ken Follett.  Grand Central Publishing, 2025.  704 pages. Thanks to Grand Central Publishing for the review copy.

Without a doubt, Ken Follett is a master of historical fiction.  His Kingsbridge and Century series are unmatched.  Each tells a thrilling story with incredible characters, and each is a virtual self-contained history class, the former a course on the Middle Ages and the latter a comprehensive survey of the 20th century.  For years, I've looked forward to new Follett novels.  Circle of Days is a major disappointment, chiefly because IT'S TOO DAMNED LONG!  Don't get me wrong, the other books are physically very long, but they don't feel like it.  Circle drags.  It is incredibly slow-paced.  The plot seems to cover decades and decades in the lives of a few main characters and three different communities, farmers, herders, and hunter-gatherers who normally live separate lives but come together a few times a year at the site of Stonehenge for religious rituals. They work, they have sex (Follett is still one of the worst writers to have ever written a sex scene.), and they fight every few years.  Then, the cycle repeats.  Eventually --- in the last quarter of the book at most --- they build the stone structure that stands today.  It gets 3 out of 5 stars because it's Follett, but if you haven't read Follett before, don't start here; start with Kingsbridge or Century.

Stars of Alabama.  Sean Dietrich.  Thomas Nelson, 2019.  352 pages.  

Sean Dietrich, also known as Sean of the South, is a columnist, storyteller, novelist, and folk music historian and performer with a large following who focuses on the South.  I've seen some of his writings from time to time shared on social media, but I'd never really read any of his novels before. He will be a featured author at the Savannah Book Festival in February 2026, so we decided to read one of his earlier works and chose Stars.  Stars is a story about the importance of "found family" and enduring hope. It begins in the depths of the Great Depression and continues over the next two decades, weaving together three stories.  Coot is a former child preacher abused and exploited by an evil revival circuit preacher.  Marigold is a struggling teenaged girl who finds security keeping house in a brothel and discovers that she has a real faith healing gift.  Vern and Paul are middle-aged migrant workers who discover an infant baby girl abandoned in the woods and then a stranded mother and her children, eventually raising the children as their own.  Their lives converge at a huge revival in Mobile.  I imagine that this will be the only Sean Dietrich novel that I ever reader, just not my cup of tea at all.  Again, too damn long and slow.  Mawkish. Hallmark movie-ish.  Overly descriptive and sentimental and manipulative. I can see why he's popular.  It's like a Thomas Kincaid painting in historical fiction form.  Too much.

The 14th Colony.  Steve Berry.  Macmillan, 2016.  480 pages.  Book 11 of 20 in Cotton Malone series.

Cotton Malone, the retired Justice Department special agent who became a rare and old books dealer in Copenhagen, saves the world again in this 11th adventure.  In this case, he races the clock to thwart the plot of former KGB agent Aleksandr Zorin, an unreconstructed Soviet hardliner who has nursed an intense hatred for the United States and resentment of its role in the downfall of the Soviet Union for decades. Zorkin's plan? To use suitcase nuclear explosive devices secretly planted in the US in the mid 1980s to blow Washington DC on inauguration day, counting on the blast to devastate the federal government and to plunge the country into chaos.  It seems that the 20th and 25th amendments to the Constitution and the 1947 presidential succession act are all flawed, omitting important legal details and specificity that have the potential to reduce the country to complete and fatal weakness and collapse.  While the flaws have been noted over the years, Congress has never taken action to close the loopholes.  All of that would be triggered by eliminating both the outgoing and incoming executive branches in one fell swoop on inauguration day when all of the players are conveniently located in one place --- sitting ducks. This Malone thriller reads differently than the previous volumes.  The historical mystery at the center of the story is not really explained until about halfway into the book, very late for a Malone book.  The whole idea of the "14th colony," the hypothetical plans to invade Canada devised by the Society of the Cincinnati, seems like a superfluous red herring.  The mandatory violent shootout in a church or temple, a feature of every Malone book that usually occurs in the early chapters, doesn't occur here until the climax, and it's a bare-hands fight with no guns (when there was no good reason not to use a gun).  Another Malone book hallmark is at least one character flipping the switch and enacting a major surprise betrayal; that betrayal comes very late here, during the climax.  Overall, not the most satisfying Malone book, but still Malone, and, as usual, I learned new things, this time about the real-life origins and history of the Society of the Cincinnati and the technical flaws in the presidential succession act.  It seems like this book's purpose may have been more about developing the characters and their relationships than about the mystery itself.

North of Havana.  Randy Wayne White.  G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1997.  241 pages.  Book 5 of 28 in Doc Ford series.

Marion "Doc" Ford, the former secret agent who retired to become a full time marine biologist on Sanibel Island, Florida, is just trying to live his life when he is dragged back into international intrigue.  His buddy Tomlinson is in trouble.  He's sailed his boat/home into Cuban territorial waters, and he finds himself and his companion under arrest and threatened with the permanent seizure of his boat, and possibly worse, unless Ford goes to Havana with cash to bribe officials and gain their release.  That presents a couple of problems:  1) it's the 1990s, and American travel to Cuba, especially with American cash, is highly illegal and potentially dangerous, and 2) Ford has a history in Cuba as an agent that makes it extremely dangerous for him personally to ever return to the island.  But, his friend is in trouble, and Doc accepts the mission, accompanied, against his preferences, by his female friend/lover(?)/fitness trainer, the pro tennis player and golfer Dewey.  Once they locate Tomlinson, they find themselves enmeshed in both a plot to assassinate Fidel Castro and a search for a lost treasure, including the long-missing remains of Christopher Columbus.  The result is a solid, short Doc Ford thriller that does have historic connections.  The reader learns about Cuban revolutionary history and the situation in the 1990s, the attitudes of Cubans and Cuban refugees toward each other, and the speculation about what was going to happen once Castro lost power or died.  (Of course, as we have seen, absolutely none of that speculation came to fruition.)

Author talk

The Martians:  The True Story of an Alien Craze That Captured Turn-of-the-Century America.  David Baron.  Liveright, 2025.  336 pages.

The 1890s were an unsettled decade.  (I feel like I write that about nearly every decade, come to think of it.)  Radical socialists and anarchists used riots, bombings, and assassinations to further their political aims across both Europe and the United States.  The United States fell into a deep economic depression in 1893 that lead to unemployment, hardships, and desperation.  The labor movement was gaining steam, and robber barons and management responded harshly, and violent clashes between strikers and strike-breakers ensued.  Women began agitating for political rights and attempting to crack through long-established barriers in occupations, science, and the arts.  Fanning the flames of unrest, the "Yellow Press" proliferated and spread the wildest, most sensationalized stories, usually by twisting facts or excluding them altogether, in order to sell newspapers.  (I know:  it was such a wild and unbelievable time.)  Naturally, all of this made for fertile ground for a crazy mass delusion to take hold in popular culture.  (Again, such an incredibly foreign time to us currently.)  In this case, two astronomers, one Italian and one French, independently theorized that Mars, seen from the Earth, displayed evidence of intelligent life, specifically "canals" (a mis-translation of the Italian word for "channels").  American amateur astronomer Percival Lowell became the leader in the movement to prove life on Mars and maybe even to establish contact with Martians.  Brilliant scientist and engineer Nikola Tesla even hopped on board.  For the next couple of decades, basically up to the outbreak of WWI, the scientific world was embroiled in debates and arguments, and the average Joes, Giuseppes, and Jacques, imagined all sorts of ramifications of the discovery of, and contact with life, on Mars.  This book is a really fun and enlightening look at the whole episode in our history, and the ramifications that are still with us today, specifically the inspiration for many 20th century scientists and for the whole genre of science fiction.

Address Unknown.  Kathrine Kressman Taylor.  Ecco, 2021.  (originally published in 1938) 96 pages.

Originally published in 1938 in Story magazine, Address Unknown  is actually a short story or novella. However, its impact and its genius, both then and now, are very much inversely proportional to its length.  It was written by Kathrine Kressman Taylor and published  under the name Kressman Taylor, chosen to come across as more masculine, because publishers thought the subject was too dark and heavy for a female author.  The subject? The rise of Nazism and its insidious infection of seemingly civilized, intelligent, cultured, and reasonable people - a warning to Americans about how such a thing could happen.  When published, the story became an immediate sensation, published and republished in other magazines and eventually published as a bestselling book.   It was translated into several languages and printed across Europe, achieving the same interest there --- that is until the war started and the Nazis occupied more and more of Europe and immediately banned the work.  It is an epistolary work, written totally in the form of letters exchanged between two long-time friends and business partners in a San Francisco art gallery who consider themselves brothers, one a German-born Jew who remains in San Francisco to run the gallery while the other, a German Gentile, returns to Munich to live with his family in 1932.  The latter, with his American wealth, quickly becomes a big man in town, and he and his family soon fall head over heels into idolization of this young upstart politician named Adolf Hitler who is restoring pride and patriotic fervor to the long-suffering German nation.  The letters document the resulting collapse of the friendship - formerly brotherhood -- in a brutally heart-wrenching manner.  Even if you strip away the prescient warning against political extremism that still resonates today, Address Unknown is one of the most powerful pieces of fiction writing - and epistolary fiction - that I've ever read.  

Shelved: Books Read and Reviewed in October 2025

 

The King's Deception.  Steve Berry.  Ballantine Books, 2013.  432 pages. Book 8 of 20 in the Cotton Malone Series.

The adventures of former Justice Department agent turned Copenhagen rare book dealer Cotton Malone continue in this volume, centered in and around London.  Cotton Malone and his son Gary are flying from Atlanta to Copenhagen for a school break vacation, but they're not alone.  As a favor. Malone has agreed to transport a 15-year old London street kid from Atlanta back to London.  The kid is wanted by both the CIA and British intelligence.   What should be a simple handoff turns into an all-out life or death adventure that threatens them all, and it's rooted in not one, but two, 400-year old British mysteries:  what happened to the legendary "Tudor treasure" and did Elizabeth I harbor a huge secret that would shake the foundations of the United Kingdom?  Some people might look down on these novels, but I find them enjoyable reads.  Berry always starts with tons of research and a real historical question at the core of the book, and he then embellishes the story with a lot of action.  The mysteries are always intriguing and pique my alternate history interests. There may be plot lines that you can see coming from miles away, but there are enough plot twists to hold your attention.  The audiobook versions are great for walks, exercise, housework, sitting around the pool, etc. 

Torpedo Juice.  Tim Dorsey.  William Morrow, 2005.  336 pages.  Book 7 of 26 in the Serge Storms series.

Sadness is realizing that I only have one Serge Storms left to read after this one, since author Tim Dorsey died far too early a couple of years ago.  This is an early one, and the characters of Serge Storms and his boon companion, Coleman, are still being refined and developed. However, it's jumped to a high position on my favorite Serge adventures list.  It's hilarious from beginning to end, and there's plenty of knowledge to be gleaned about the history and culture of the Florida Keys.  Serge has two missions in life:  to bring justice to those who prey on the innocent and to absorb and then to dispense every bit of Florida history, natural and human, that exists.  He makes progress on both fronts here, but he also embarks on a third mission, getting married.  The hunt for his soulmate takes Serge on a typically twisted journey on which he crosses paths with drug dealing kingpins, evil executives, and would-be cult followers.  Along the way, the book takes kind of a meta turn as the Narrator decides to become a part of the story, a brilliant and incredibly original and fun twist.  Also, two sheriff's deputies, Gus and Walter, make a huge contribution to the fun.

Author Talk

The Inheritors:  An Intimate Portrait of South Africa's Racial Reckoning.  Eve Fairbanks.  Simon & Schuster, 2022. 416 pages.  Thanks to Simon & Schuster for the review copy.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, South Africa underwent a revolution, scrapping more than a century of harshly enforced racial segregation and minority rule and instantly pivoting to a majority-rule democracy - an unparalleled transformation.  Americans being Americans, and American media being American media, South Africa basically ceased to exist at that point because we have almost no attention span for domestic events in foreign countries, especially African countries.  The Inheritors provides an insight into that transformation for American readers, primarily through the experiences of three South Africans: Dipuo, a young black woman and anti-apartheid organizer, Malaika, her daughter born around the time of the transition, and Christo, a white Afrikaans farm boy who was one of the last South Africans drafted to fight in Angola.  Eve Fairbanks built relationships with the three over the course of a decade, and she basically allows them to tell their stories.  Readers learn about the struggles of the country through the struggles of these individuals as they try to cope with unprecedented change.  It's an extremely moving, enlightening, and thought-provoking book.

Author Talk

She Came To Slay:  The Life and Times of Harriet Tubman.  Erica Armstrong Dunbar.  37 Ink, 2019.  176 pages.  Thanks to Simon & Schuster for the review copy.

If any American deserves a fresh, thoroughly researched, well-written, originally illustrated, biography that is equally accessible and enjoyable for everyone from grade school to adulthood, it is Harriet Tubman, and this is the book.  Of course, we all know the basics, that Tubman was the most famous conductor of the Underground Railroad who personally escorted hundreds enslaved people to freedom after her own escape.  Some of us may know of her long career as an abolitionist before the Civil War and her service as a spy and nurse during the Civil War.  Fewer know that she became the first woman to lead an armed combat mission - a very consequential mission.  Even after the war, she never stopped, becoming an active suffragist and an advocate for veterans and for the aged.  Tubman's always been near the top of my list of greatest Americans, and this biography is great introduction to her life for yourself and for any younger readers in your life.  

No Sunscreen For the Dead.  Tim Dorsey.  William Morrow, 2019.  336 pages.  Book 22 of 26 in Serge Storms series. (AI generated photo)

Sadly, it's over.  After three or four years, I've now read all 26 books of the Serge Storms books, and there will never be another one.  It's hard to imagine that another author could ever match the perfect combination of insanity and genius that Tim Dorsey displayed in every single title.  Every book is filled with Florida, and American, history, laugh out loud hilarity, biting dead-on satire, and utter chaos.  Granted, his work is not for everyone.  It's filled with absurd, adult comic book-ish, graphic sex and violence that will turn off some readers, but others will recognize the brilliance and will be entertained like never before.  

I read the books out of order because of availability in used book stores and the public library, and that was not an issue for me, but others might need to read them in order.  This book is number 22 of 26, but, in many ways, I think it is a fitting final adventure.  The theme of the book is retirement in Florida, and Serge explores the idea somewhat wistfully, as he finds his people, people who match his love of Florida, of history, and of life itself - people, like him, who have packed a lot of living into life.  He becomes an honorary resident of a retirement mobile  home community and realized that the other residents led incredibly vital lives and made major contributions to society, but now others are taking advantage of them.  That doesn't stand in Serge-world, and his vigilantism in this book is particularly satisfying.  But wait - there's more.  Dorsey also throws in a great Cold War espionage storyline, and the climax is unbridled chaos.  There are a couple of minor glitches.  The first couple of pages lead the reader to believe that it's a book about the notorious community called The Villages, and all of the action takes place a couple of hours south, in and around Sarasota.  (If Florida is jokingly called God's waiting room," Sarasota is the exam room.) There's also an historical error:  In a flashback, one of the characters reports to a submarine base in 1970.  The problem is that it wasn't a submarine base until 1978.  Whether that was an uncharacteristic slip-up or just a little story-telling adjustment, I don't know, but it wouldn't even register with 99.9% of readers.  In any case, No Sunscreen is a more-than-fitting conclusion for me.

The Birth of the Feature Film:  Crash Course in Film History

The Mirage Factory:  Illusion, Imagination, and the Invention of Los Angeles.  Gary Krist.  Crown, 2018.  416 pages.

Gary Krist is one of those authors at the top of the narrative nonfiction writing game, along with authors like Erik Larson and Abbott Kahler.  In this 2018 book, Krist tells the story of Los Angeles through the lives of three towering figures and their careers from 1910 to 1930:  William Mulholland, the engineering visionary who brought power and water to a formerly written-off barren wasteland in order to make the city even possible, D.W. Griffith, the "father of American film" who built a powerful culture-shaping industry out of a minor novelty, and Aimee Semple McPherson, the charismatic evangelist who built a church that drew tens of thousands of believers each week and who reached millions more each week through magazines, newspapers, tours, and broadcasts on her own radio station.  Singly, they became American icons.  Collectively, they created Los Angeles and made it a major city physically, economically, creatively, and spiritually.  Krist makes the case that all three were both masters of their crafts and masters of illusion, capable of dreaming big dreams and making those dreams come true, overcoming major obstacles in the process.  Yet, the mirages or illusions that they created all dissipated because of their own tragic flaws, "a crescendo of hubris, scandal, and catastrophic failure of design." Each of them saw his or her fortunes and legacies suffer, but the city remained and prospered.  It's a riveting history. No, wait, it's boffo, epic, spectacular, stunning, thrilling, legendary, unforgettable, electrifying, breathtaking, awe-inspiring,  .... etc.

Author talk

Target Tehran:  How Israel Is Using Sabotage, Cyberwarfare, Assassination and Secret Diplomacy to Stop a Nuclear Iran and Create a New Middle East.  Yonah Jeremy Bob and Ilan Evyatar.  Simon & Schuster, 2023.  368 pages.  Thanks to Simon & Schuster for the review copy.

My default position is usually "Truth is stranger (and more interesting) than fiction," and this book definitely makes that case.  I am not a spy thriller reader, but this book should appeal to that group and to those that are fans of political shows like West Wing and The Diplomat.  It is an incredibly inside look at Israel’s covert operations aimed at thwarting Iran’s movement toward becoming a nuclear power. The authors show how Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, has combined sabotage, cyberwarfare, assassinations, diplomatic efforts, and intelligence gathering over the last 20 years or so to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear arms and to reshape power dynamics in the Middle East. It concentrates on events since Israeli agents and Iranians opposed to their government stole Iran's top secret nuclear archives in 2018 in order to prove that Iran was violating previous agreements and actively deceiving the world.  Twenty-first century warfare is in full force as Mossad and the Israeli Defense Force use cyberwarfare and drones in addition to embedded agents and on-the-ground assets and targeted assassinations to destroy Iran's program.   In the process, both Israel and Iran have become Top 5 world cyber-powers. At the same time, there have been some unbelievable diplomatic gains as Israel has forged relationships with several of the Gulf states because they all see Iran as their greatest existential threat.  The book does have some shortcomings.  It is largely one-sided;  the authors had much more access to US and Israeli participants than to Iranians.  Much of the subject matter is still, of course, highly classified, so the authors had to rely on limited declassified documents and interviews with individuals involved, and intelligence agencies and those people involved all have their own agendas.  Finally, time is an issue.  The authors completed writing the book in April 2023, and lots of new developments have already occurred.  Nevertheless, it was a more satisfying read than I anticipated, and I learned a lot about the current climate in the Middle East.

 

Author talk

The Fifties:  An Underground History.  James R. Gaines.  Simon & Schuster, 2023.  288 pages.  Thanks to Simon & Schuster for the review copy.

Too many people think of the 1950s as a decade of conformity and complacency, picturing sock hops, soda fountains, and poodle skirts, but, as I tried to impress upon my students each year, there was always turbulence under that placid surface.  There was the rise of rock and roll and teenage rebellion which shocked older generations.  Beatniks challenged middle-class norms.  Artists shook up the art world.  The Red Scare and the Lavender Scare sent shock waves through government and society.  The civil rights and feminist movements started ramping up.  There was a lot of angst, anger, confusion, and conflict.  This book celebrates several individuals who were brave enough to stand - often alone - on their principles and lead fights that they believed needed fighting.  In particular, Gaines selects gay rights, feminism, civil rights, and environmental movements.  A couple of the people discussed are familiar names, Fannie Lou Hamer, Medgar Evers, and Rachel Carson for example, but the others aren't nearly as well known, or as celebrated as they should be.  There's Norbert Wiener, a mathematician and computer scientist who is considered the father of cybernetics, the forerunner of Artificial Intelligence.  There's Harry Hay who first envisioned a national gay rights movement in the 1940s.  There's Pauli Murray whose law school thesis provided much of the legal basis for Thurgood Marshall's arguments in Brown vs Board of Education and whose legal work made sexual discrimination unconstitutional. Gerda Lerner pioneered the concept of women's history as an academic field, despite being told by superiors and colleagues that there wasn't enough material to study.  Isaac Woodard was a black WWII veteran who was blinded by a South Carolina sheriff because he dared to look him in the eye.  These are all important stories that should be shared.  This book should be widely read.  Almost makes me wish that I was back in the classroom in order to share them. ... Almost.

Who was Xolotl?

Xolo.  Donna Barba Higuera and Mariana Ruiz Johnson.  Levine Querido, release date November 4 2025. 224 pages.  Ages 7-10.

I bought a copy of this book to read during a break at the Southern Festival of Books this past weekend, and it proved to be a great discovery.  I wish I had attended the author's session.  It's a beautifully illustrated children's story of Aztec mythology.  Aztec creator and feathered serpent god Quetzalcoatl had a dog-headed twin brother, a hideous monster, named Xolotl.  Shunned and denigrated by his brother and the other gods, Xolotl struggles to find himself and his function in the realm of the gods. Of course, he becomes the hero, rescuing mankind from extinction and becoming the powerful Lord of the Underworld,  In the process, he creates dogs as humanity's most loyal and devoted companions.  If there's a child in your life that is interested in other cultures, mythology, and art, especially a child who love dogs, this book will be a huge hit.  And if there is not such a child in your life, get a copy for yourself.  You'll love it.

book trailer

The Impossible Fortune.  Richard Osman.  Pamela Dorman Books, 2025.  368 pages.  Book 5 of 5 in Thursday Murder Club mysteries.

A little break from history to read the latest Thursday Murder Club mystery.  We love the whole series, and this one does not disappoint.  (We have still not seen the movie yet because we we are afraid of being let down.)  The four main characters are residents in a retiree community in Britain who solve murders, including a former MI-6 secret agent, a former labor union organizer and agitator, a psychologist, and a nurse.  There is also a large supporting cast of characters, and each one is a well-developed delight.  The mysteries are solid, and there is a lot of humor, with many LOL moments.

Publisher blurb:

"Who's got time to think about murder when there's a wedding to plan?

It’s been a quiet year for the Thursday Murder Club. Joyce is busy with table plans and first dances. Elizabeth is grieving. Ron is dealing with family troubles, and Ibrahim is still providing therapy to his favorite criminal. But when Elizabeth meets Nick, a wedding guest asking for her help, she finds the thrill of the chase is ignited once again. And when Nick disappears without a trace, his cagey business partner becomes the gang’s next stop. It seems the duo have something valuable—something worth killing for.
Joyce’s daughter, Joanna, jumps into the fray to help the gang as they seek answers: Has someone kidnapped Nick? And what’s this uncrackable code they keep hearing about? Plunged back into action once more, can the four friends solve the puzzle and a murder in time?"

The Patriot Threat.  Steve Berry.  Minotaur Books, 2015.  400 pages.  Book 10 of 20 in Cotton Malone series.  

Cotton Malone is back.  The busiest retired secret agent ever in the history of the world.  Working much harder and more often than when he was actually employed.  In this case, his former boss, Stephanie Nelle, tasks him with tracking a rogue North Korean who was once the dictator's anointed heir but who was disinherited and forced into exile.  The problem?  The North Korean is trying to lay hands on top secret historic documents that could cause the collapse of the United States and the destabilization of the world.  You know, the same thing Cotton faces once or twice a year.  The issue is whether or not the 16th amendment establishing the federal income tax was legitimately ratified.  If it was not, the federal government would lose 90% of its revenue and be liable for trillions and trillions of dollars in damages to everyone who ever paid income tax over the last century and who was prosecuted for tax evasion.  In 24 hours time, Cotton, along with agent Luke Daniels and US Treasury Agent Isabella Schaefer, engage in the usual fast-spaced thrilling action in Vienna and across Croatia, racing against North Korean and Chinese intelligence to keep the documents out of the wrong hands.  Typical Cotton formula, but as  satisfying as usual for what it is.  Also, as usual, I learned something from reading this book. In this case, I learned the stories of Haym Salomon, the Jewish businessman who basically financed the American Revolution and was never repaid what he was owned,  and Andrew Mellon, the former Treasury Secretary who built the National Gallery of Art.  I also learned about the real conspiracy theory that the 16th amendment, and the federal income tax, is illegal. 

Author Talk

 Matisse At War:  Art and Resistance in Nazi Occupied France.  Christopher C. Gorham.  Citadel, 2025.  320 pages. Thanks to Kensington Publishing and Citadel for the review copy.

Christopher C. Gorham is an excellent researcher and biographer.  In his newest book, his subject is the great 20th century French artist Henri Matisse, specifically his life in Nice France during Nazi occupation.  Unlike other European creatives who fled Europe during the late 1930s and the early days of World War II, Matisse decided to remain in his home and to continue working, a decision not solely based on patriotism.  As the war progressed, Matisse's health declined, to the point of near death at least once.  It was during this period that he began to move away from painting and adopted the medium of paper cutouts and collage, creating most of my personal favorites of his works.  Gorham discusses his work as skillfully as any art historian, but his real focus is to try to determine what, if anything, Matisse did to aid the Allied war effort, a question that has not been satisfactorily answered in other biographies.   What does he find after a thorough search through letters, journals, and other primary sources?  Spoiler alert:  not much.  No, Matisse didn't join the military Resistance or send coded messages revealing German troop movements or hide Jews downed Allied pilots and help them escape. Instead, Matisse worked, often incorporating French and American patriotic symbolism in his art.  In fact, his mere presence, as others fled, became sort of a minor rallying point for people who knew of it.  Question answered, but honestly, it's not the most exciting answer.  The real excitement and action lay in the lives of Matisse's ex-wife and their children, all of whom risked their lives, and nearly lost them, and joined active resistance cells.  Even Matisse's son Jean, who had already moved to New York before the war and become an important art dealer, worked hard to help Jewish (and other) artists escape to New York and to help them make a living.  It's a good book about Occupied France and an artistic genius.  

Short Lydia Knag interview

Pseudoscience:  An Amusing History of Crackpot Ideas and Why We Love Them.  Lydia Kang, MD, and Nate Pedersen.  Workman Publishing Company, 2025.  320 pages.  

Dr. Lydia Kang and Nate Pedersen's previous book Quackery was a fun and informative look at various medical frauds, missteps,  and deceptions over the years.  In this book they broaden their investigation to look at many pseudosciences and conspiracy theories, investigate their origins, debunk them, and offer explanations for why anyone believed them.  A partial list of the topics covered:  rumpology (reading one's character and future by examining his/her butt), cryptids, UFOs, crop circles, spontaneous human combustion, the Bermuda Triangle, polygraphs, personality tests, faked moon landing conspiracy, world ice theory, flat Earth theory, and ghost hunting. I recommend this book and Quackery for those interested in science history and in human nature in general.