FEATURED AUTHOR - Six-time BRAG Medallion Honoree, #1 Best-selling Historical Fantasy author Maria Grace has her PhD in Educational Psychology and is a 16-year veteran of the university classroom where she taught courses in human growth and development, learning, test development and counseling. None of which have anything to do with her undergraduate studies in economics/sociology/managerial studies/behavior sciences. She pretends to be a mild-mannered writer/cat-lady, but most of her vacations require helmets…
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Recent comments: User reviews
The Sign of Silence is a very entertaining mystery. Ted Royle discovers that his best friend, Sir Digby Kemsley may not be all he appears to be and that his fiancée, Phrida Shand may also be hiding deadly secrets from him as well.
However, a caveat to the modern reader. Le Queux wrote his story in the fading aftermath of Victorian England where honor and keeping one’s word to one’s own detriment was an expected social obligation. In today’s world where honor means nothing and life has taken on a tawdry cheapness, some modern readers will not comprehend the motivations of the protagonist or why certain actions were considered reprehensible.
If you are willing to take the story on its own terms, there are many rewards here.
Craig Alan Loewen
http://literary-equine.livejournal.com/
And speaking in a technical sense, Willeford is a very, very capable writer. His grasp of the logistics of writing is quite capable and one wonders how hw would have fared if he had turned his talents to other arenas and genres.
In The Whip Hand, Bill Brown, an L.A. cop fleeing a frame-up, ends up in Dallas and right in the middle of a kidnapping and murder of a six-year-old girl where he is considered a main suspect.
It is evident Willeford did not hold Oklahoma hicks and rich Texans in very high esteem.
Craig Alan Loewen
http://literary-equine.livejournal.com/
Orison Swett Marden (1850-1924) was a prolific writer of self-help books and articles as well as the first editor of Success Magazine which is still being published today.
An Iron Will is a short encouraging work that, though expectantly dated in its examples, is a wonderful book for those of us dealing with a world that finds itself in dramatic transition.
We need not be sheep, but we can craft our own future in spite of those who, out of misplaced altruism or a desire to control, wish to restructure and design it for us.
Kudos to ManyBooks for resurrecting this treasure and my personal hope is that eventually all of Marden's works will be made available.
Craig Alan Loewen
http://literary-equine.livejournal.com/
Charles Willeford wrote a number of sleazies and High Priest of California tops them all. Meet Russell Haxby, used-car salesman, sexual predator, and sociopath, an unpleasant little man in an unpleasant little tale that has no redeeming qualities whatsoever except to shock the reader with its brutal and violent immorality and misogyny.
Amazingly, as tawdry as the story is, the author himself makes a far more fascinating study and the reader is encouraged to read the Wikipedia article on Charles Ray Willeford III (1919 –1988) for an insight into a man’s life far more fascinating than his own stories.
Craig Alan Loewen
http://literary-equine.livejournal.com/
This is truly a pity because if The Monk of Hambleton is a typical example of his storytelling, Livingston was an author of merit. Fortunately, there are lists of his works available for the dedicated bookworm to explore even if the author himself must remain a cipher.
The Monk of Hambleton is a very satisfying and ingenious murder mystery, but little can be revealed without giving too much of the story away. Needles to say there is a murder, a plethora of suspects, and Peter Creighton, the detective who does not appear until Chapter 10.
The story leads you through the clues and its twists and turns are more fascinating than frustrating. You will think you know who the guilty party is and then change your mind and then reconsider. When the culprit is eventually revealed, be assured that even then, truth may still not be all that it appears.
This one is very much worth your time.
Craig Alan Loewen
http://literary-equine.livejournal.com/
The Fairy Changeling and Other Poems is, in this reviewer’s opinion, a mixed bag of talent and subjects. Being her second published book of poetry, with her acquired fame, her talent most likely does not shine as brightly in this collection which is the second of her first published poetry collections.
When Sigerson uses her skills to tell a story, especially when she addresses in poetry any of the Irish folktales or their themes, her talents are put to good use. However, the poems on love and relationships are so maudlin and so obviously biographical that the reader will wish Sigerson had spent her time with a therapist instead of expressing her misery for the world to share.
However, if you like reading your poetry by moonlight with a box of tissues near at hand, this may just be your five-star book.
Craig Alan Loewen
http://literary-equine.livejournal.com/
Published under the title, The Sins of Sumuru in the British Isles, the novel was given the name Nude In Mink in the U.S. and is the first part of the Sumuru cycle.
In total, five books were written around the character of Sumuru and were all written in the last decade of Rohmer’s life.
Sumuru is basically a female version of Rohmer’s other famous literary invention, Doctor Fu Manchu and like all Rohmer’s works, it is best to warn the reader that the Sumuru stories are not politically correct. Sumuru is an ageless, radical feminist who desires to mold the world into a matriarchal society based on aesthetics and though unwilling to use such masculine techniques such as murder, torture, and brainwashing will willingly stoop to using such as a means to a greater end.
Defeated from her aims at the end of every novel, this reviewer suspects there may be those today who would have wished the character more success in her ultimate goals.
Craig Alan Loewen
http://literary-equine.livejournal.com/
Sadly, in this reviewer’s opinion, the first story is not the best of the collection, but if you are willing to take it at face value, the remainder of the stories will gladly fill the expectations of any lover of the old pulps.
Craig Alan Loewen
http://literary-equine.livejournal.com/
Though a prolific writer of essays and poems, Williams is best known today for his seven novels, published from 1930 to 1945.
Considered by many to be supernatural fantasies set in modern day, the novels are not to be considered light reading. One does not read Williams as much as invest in him. Because of his literary depth, his writings have had a profound effect on many authors, notably C.S. Lewis, T. S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, and Tim Powers.
In The Place of the Lion (1931), Platonic archetypes begin to appear throughout England wreaking havoc and death as unsuspecting humanity attempts to deal with the manifestations and their spreading influence.
Readers who are willing to work at reading instead of being spoon-fed by the author will find a veritable banquet in the pages of any Charles Williams novel.
Craig Alan Loewen
http://literary-equine.livejournal.com/
The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted, by Francis Hodgson (1781-1852) is one of the best books I have ever read refuting Calvinism. His arguments appeal to sound logic and he quotes extensively from well-known Calvinists of his day making sure the reader knows what he is arguing against.
However, the book suffers from a complaint very common to Arminians in that Hodgson spends little time refuting the determinism, fatalism, and caste system of Calvinism using Scripture itself.
This is not, as Calvinists maintain, because Arminians cannot back up their beliefs with Holy Writ, but that Arminians believe that God and Christian theology is based on the ability of people to comprehend logically the simple teachings of Scripture and interpret it from simple, sound reason.
Calvinists maintain that the seeming contradiction between God's sovereignty and Scripture's appeals to the free will of humanity cannot be understood by humanity and that the paradox is an antinomy, a contradiction or opposition between two laws or rules.
It is evident the tensions between the two camps have not been settled by Hodson's brilliant defense (at least in this reviewer's opinion), but readers interested in the debate will do well to start here.