Book Review | “The Orchid Hour” by Nancy Bilyeau

Nancy Bilyeau offers her readers an immersive experience into the milieu of 1923 New York City with the historical novel The Orchid Hour. Set within the insular Italian community called Little Italy, when Prohibition was fuelling organised crime and proliferation of speakeasies (a new word for me), the heroine in this captivating and a poignant …

Book Review | “Come November” by Scott Lord

I always enjoy good suspense thrillers and historical fiction. When these are blended together, and with a love story thrown in, what more could I have hoped for? Come November is one such novel that delivers all these and more. It’s a fascinating story of two young reporters who were given the rare opportunity to …

Book Review | “Burned: The Spy South Africa Never Caught” by Sue Dobson

South Africa in the 1980’s was known as the beautiful golden paradise perched on the tip of the African continent. But the beauty and allure of that country masked a brutal, racist and much hated apartheid policy perpetrated by the White South African regime. Many who had opposed it - mostly Blacks - paid for …

Book Review | “The Magic Kingdom” by Russell Banks

The tantalising prospect of discovering what’s in The Magic Kingdom made me go for this book but it’s not what I had expected. Instead of magical elements that the title conjures up, the narrative recounts the life of one Harley Mann who had in his adolescent years experienced life in a religious utopian community - …

Book Review | “The Island of Missing Trees” by Elif Shafak

In her latest book The Island of Missing Trees, British-Turkish author Elif Shafak makes a courageous foray into the pain and trauma of ethnic violence that ripped an island apart, a division that still exists today. She introduces the island in this way: “Once upon a memory, at the far end of the Mediterranean Sea, …