Murder has been around for thousands of years, but it was the Victorians who perfected the art of publicizing it. Every kind of murder — from disemboweling to poisoning — was fodder for journalists, authors, playwrights, and songwriters. Audiences could not get enough, and it’s been the same ever since. In The Invention of Murder:…
Category: Review
Review: Heroes Are My Weakness
Peregrine Island, Maine, is the last place on earth Annie Hewitt wants to be. Her career as a ventriloquist has fallen apart, she’s deep in debt, and her mother has just died. The only things she has left are her puppets and the island cottage her dying mother insisted hides some kind of “legacy” that…
Review: The Iron Trial
Magic is dangerous, and will get you killed. That’s what Callum Hunt’s father has always told him. And the Magisterium — where young magicians are trained — is nothing but a pit of vipers. For other kids Callum’s age, the idea of purposely failing the Iron Trial is unthinkable; for Callum, it’s a goal. He…
Review: America Walks Into a Bar
The bar. What is today a sticky, crowded space whose blaring televisions and tchotsky-covered walls dull the will to live has a long history of nurturing dissidents and serving up rebellions. The American Revolution fomented in taverns in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Abraham Lincoln’s killer plotted with his conspirators in Surratt Tavern. Bar owners smuggled…
Review: Mr. Lincoln’s T-Mails
Every day we send billions of emails, countless text message, and use the internet to access news and information. It’s difficult to imagine a world in which instant communication does not exist. But it wasn’t really that long ago when getting anything but the most local of news required waiting weeks or months for a…