Joanne Collings
Content by Joanne Collings
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Sight Hound should come with a warning label: Beware of Dog. Dante, the cancer-afflicted, amputee Irish Wolfhound of the title, will steal your heart.
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Debut novelist Tracy Kiely has come up with the smashing idea of marrying Jane Austen’s wit and social acuity to the form of the modern cozy mystery and gotten excellent results in Murder
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It is impossible to read John Shors' second novel (after Beneath a Marble Sky) without thinking what a great movie it would make.
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Just thinking about Laurie R. King's Touchstone makes my shoulders do that snuggling motion you know, the way you wriggle them as you settle into a really comfortable chair.
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I've been told all my life that I think too much, so I was delighted to make the acquaintance of Isabel Dalhousie, a 40-ish spinster, Edinburgh resident, editor of Review of Applied Ethics and
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Jay McInerney's The Good Life joins the body of fiction grappling with the events of September 11, 2001, and the various landscapes literal, personal, political forever altered by that day.
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I had an epiphany while reading Emyl Jenkins’ very engaging novel: When did mystery become synonymous with murder mystery?
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I hadn't read too many chapters of Gail Tsukiyama's beautiful and fascinating novel about a Japanese family before, during and after World War II when I began to wonder how I had missed her five prev
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For more than a decade, the Thatcher years have been a touchstone for British novelists of all genres.
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The game of consequences requires that each player write a few lines following a simple direction, then fold the sheet over before the next person responds to a new direction on that same paper, and
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Summer has never struck me as a good time for knitting: all that wool around a sticky body in the heat and humidity doesn't sound comfortable.
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Don’t let anyone tell you that you don’t learn anything from reading fiction.
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The older I get, the more aware I am that there are just too many books being published. There's no way to keep up and read everything, so I've made reading guidelines for myself.
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Reading Lunar Park, Bret Easton Ellis' new novel about a writer named Bret Easton Ellis, is like nothing so much as watching a terrible accident occurring in slow-motion and re
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Preparing to become a vicar to a rural church closed for nearly 40 years, Father Timothy Kavanagh considers the challenges ahead: "He would still wear his collar and vestments; he would still celebra
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It’s hard to imagine a more topical cozy mystery than Casey Daniels’ Dead Man Talking: not only is Pepper Martin a detective for ghosts—helping them by solving crimes that
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The English invented the cozy mystery and Simon Brett—creator of famous characters Mrs. Pargeter and Charles Paris—is a master of the form.
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I've been doing my traveling via armchair for some years now. With the right book in hand, though, this is not nearly as limiting as it might sound.
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After four books in the Thursday Next series, Jasper Fforde has turned his unique imagination to the inspired joining of familiar nursery rhymes and modern detective novels.
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It is easy for a life to become unblessed. Thus begins Dana Spiotta's complex second novel as young Mary Whittaker goes underground in 1972, after a Vietnam War protest turns fatal.
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“One lovely big family. For Alison, Allersmead is a kind of glowing archetypal hearth, and she is its guardian.
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The author’s motive for writing a novel—if I am even aware of it—usually matters less than being educated and entertained.
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In a time when many 12-year-olds have already mapped out their futures, 28-year-old Dwight Wilmer-ding is standing still: he's got a going-nowhere job and a going-nowhere relationship with a young wo
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One of the biggest challenges faced by the author of cozy mystery series is finding original and convincing ways to involve his or her amateur detective protagonist in murder investigations book af
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A French noblewoman of dubious and mysterious past navigates the waters of 1784 London in Philippa Stockley's highly enjoyable romp of a novel, A Factory of Cunning, composed of letters and jo
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Does the thought of Christmas shopping get you down? Put yourself at the top of the list and pick up a copy of Rick Warren's The Purpose of Christmas.
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It’s vacation week in Blackpool for Ruth Singleton and her family in 1959.
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The Bitch Posse begins with some sly but apt Consumer Product Information, which warns the reader about what is to come with an intense sense of immediacy.
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