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What a unique mixture of characters! An elevator inspector who senses mechanical flaws without seeing them. A man who claims to have designed an elevator based on the mechanism’s point of view. Manufacturers warring over documents that could revolutionize or destroy their industry. Not to mention a labor union campaign…

Take away the mermaid, the side-kick ghost, the enterprising ex-orphan, and you’re left with an ordinary detective story. But where’s the fun in that? Things in Jars, Jess Kidd’s third novel, manages to be both horrific and humorous. Set in nineteenth-century London, it’s a tale Charles Dickens would have been…

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is a novel of naivete, reminiscent of George Orwell’s Animal Farm or William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. In all three cases, the characters find themselves torn from their routine lives and forced into new situations. The story unfolds through the eyes of nine-year-old…

I can’t imagine a more horrifying story than the true one Daniel Ellsberg unveils in The Doomsday Machine. In this well-documented history of nuclear weapons and American policies governing their use, the author demonstrates that the danger they pose is far greater than most people realize. Ellsberg reaches backward in…

Maybe it’s just a coincidence that Searching for Caleb takes place in the mid-1970s. It was a directionless time in America. President Nixon was forced out of office. The Vietnam War ended in disaster. The nation was politically and ethically disillusioned. Morale was at its lowest point since the Kennedy…

Author Nikki Erlick has given herself a tough assignment: creating a world in which people can open a box and find out how long they are going to live. The implications are staggering. How do you carry on with your life with the clock of doom ticking in your head?…

I finally broke down and bought this 1959 novel because I’ve heard so much about it over the years. The Haunting of Hill House contains the requisite features of any ghost story: musty rooms, disorienting angles, a cold spot, disembodied voices, and terrifying noises. What makes it special is the way…

This Pulitzer Prize winner from 1921 reads almost like a Jane Austen novel, except for its mildly feminist theme. Alice is the daughter of Virgil Adams, a man of middling means with no hope of rising above his post at the firm where he has always worked. His wife nags…

Plot-wise, The Weather in Berlin is basic: a movie director, famous for a film he made many years ago, gets a chance to repeat his success. The complications are minimal. The characters are of secondary importance. So what makes this book worthy of a four-star rating? The answer lies in…

Stories about precocious children always remind me of J. D. Salinger’s Glass family; brilliant, but victims of their own intellect. “Too smart for their own good,” T. S. Spivet’s father might say. The crotchety rancher doesn’t seem to know what to make of his twelve-year-old son and his obsession with…