Review: Dead Fall, by A.K. Turner
This book, the 4th in the Cassie Raven series, is as good as the others, which is saying a lot. Cassie is a twenty-something mortuary technician in Camden, a neighbourhood in north London. Her “special…
Review: The Warlock Effect, by Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman
This book combines two things that I enjoy reading about very much: magic and espionage. And it does a good job with both — especially the magic. (One of the authors worked closely with Derren…
Did Labour win?
American astronauts did not set foot on the Moon in July 1969. In 2001, the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City were brought down by a controlled explosion, and not…
Review: Esperanto and Its Rivals – The Struggle for an International Language, by Roberto Garvía
In this well-written and fascinating short book, Roberto Garvía focusses almost entirely on Esperanto’s rivals among the other “international auxiliary languages”. There are two of these that matter Volapük and Ido, both long-forgotten except by…
Review: You Like It Darker, by Stephen King
Stephen King is a superb writer of short stories, even if he is better known as a novelist. And to call all the stories in this hefty, nearly 500 page book, “short” stories is a…
Review: How Not to Write a Novel, by Sandra Newman and Howard Mittelmark
A clever and witty book filled with examples of things NOT to do if you’re writing your first novel. And while the authors insist that unlike other writing books, they are telling you about sure-fire…
Review: The Wrong Hands, by Mark Billingham
This, the second book in Mark Billingham’s new Blackpool-based crime series, continues an unbroken trend of superb story-telling, mixed with humour and characters you actually care about. DS Declan Miller sounds at first like a…
Trump and the Teamsters
Last week Donald Trump made an extraordinary announcement on his Truth Social platform. Trump was announced that Sean O’Brien, president of the 1.3 million member Teamsters union, had agreed to address the Republic National Convention…
Review: Jack and Jill, by James Patterson
The third book in the long-running Alex Cross series seems a good place to take a break. While the story has a good beginning, by the end it becomes an excuse for the author to…
90 years later, a new Popular Front is born
It is exactly ninety years since the French Socialist and Communist parties began to create the Popular Front, which dominated French politics in the mid-1930s. The danger then was the threat of the far Right…