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.