Review: Appointment in Samarra by John O’Hara

Haven’t we all fantasized about acting on pure impulse? Have you ever thought about removing all filters and just saying exactly what you think about someone?

How about throwing a drink at someone because you honestly can’t stand to listen to them for a minute longer? Sure, we all have but for the most part we control our impulses and the filters remain in place.

Luckily we can live vicariously through some of our favorite literary characters! Meet Julian English. Julian is going to act on those impulses and what follows is a train wreck of self destruction.

This is a story about how easily you can fall from grace when you give into rash behavior and you take for granted your “innocents” and become arrogant instead. Julian manages to destroy his life in a matter of three days.

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Review: The Honey Thief by Najaf Mazari

Every culture has folklore and stories that have been told for generations. Most of these folktales focus on society, history, love, family, and culture. Some are presented as parables while others a told with a mixture of fact and fiction.

I haven’t read too much folklore, mostly because I am familiar with a lot of the western civilization tales and I really had no interest in any other regions. When the opportunity to review The Honey Thief came along I debated about reviewing it and ultimately decided to give it a read.

I have studied Middle Eastern religions and some of the politics but I am far from an expert on the culture. I haven’t read a lot of literature from that region which is why this collection of short stories appealed to me. I like books that expose me to cultures I wouldn’t normally be exposed to and reading offers a unique way for the reader to explore a culture that might be uncomfortable for them.

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Review: Cascade by Maryanne O’Hara

Make way for the modern woman. Small town America saw substantial changes during the Great Depression.

People were not just out of jobs and desperate for money, another notable shift was the role of women in the workplace and family.

The golden age of traditional, Middle American values were on the way out which left many feeling nostalgic for a simpler time.

Asa Spaulding felt this shift in society acutely in Maryanne O’Hara’s novel, Cascade. In the small, rural Massachusetts town of  Cascade, Asa runs a small pharmacy, owns a nice house in town, is well known among the locals as a stand up man, and he has married a local women who he hopes will give him a family sooner rather than later.

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Review: His Majesty’s Hope (Maggie Hope Mystery #3) by Susan Elia MacNeal

Maggie Hope has finally gotten the opportunity she has been waiting for to prove herself. After serving as a secret agent and saving Princess Elizabeth in the previous book, Maggie’s performance has earned her a full-fledged membership into the newly formed black ops organization. She is now a Special Operations Executive—or more commonly known as a spook.

Britain plans to drop her behind enemy lines in Germany where she will bug the office of a high ranking Nazi official who just happens to be her estranged mother. The mission is only supposed to last a couple of days—in and out. But when an opportunity presents itself for Maggie to stay on longer and further infiltrate the German society, she decides to press her luck.

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Review: Murder as a Fine Art by David Morrell

Terror has gripped the foggy streets of London in 1854. A family of five has been found brutally murdered–beaten to death with their throats slit–the youngest victim was an infant. Since nothing was taken and the crime scene neatly staged, it can only be considered a crime of the deranged.

Constable Becker was first on the scene, only missing the murderer by a matter of minutes. After raising the alarm, Detective Inspector Sean Ryan arrives and he immediately sees potential in Becker as an assistant.

They gather what few clues were left at the crime scene and realize they aren’t dealing with a mad man, but rather an educated man of means.

The crime itself closely resembles another infamous murder that happened forty three years earlier, The Ratcliffe Highway murders. The famous author Thomas De Quincey also wrote an essay portraying and praising these murders as ‘fine works of art’.

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