Some Monday Readings - July 6, 2026

The ex-Dominion – David Warren at Essays in Idleness. 

The untold story of Brexit – David Shipley at The Critic Magazine.

 

No Faith Worth Defending – Carl Trueman at First Things Magazine.

 

Where Did Lincoln Deliver the Gettysburg Address – Allen Guelzo at The Golden Thread. 

 

Fake World: Everything You Think Is a Lie – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review on Philip K. Dick’s The Penultimate Truth.

 

Journey’s Jonathan Cain releases patriotic rock anthem, reveals meaning of ‘Don’t Stop Believin’’ – Leah MarieAnn Klett at The Christian Post.

 

“We Always Leave Things Unfinished” – Alexander Sorondo at Big Reader Bad Grades.

 

St Bartholomew the Less, the Chapel and Parish Church of St Barts – A London Inheritance.

 

The age of Friedman – James Piereson at The New Criterion.

 

Photograph: Author Philip K. Dick (1928-1982).

Some Wednesday Readings – April 1, 2026

On Judging Books – Matt Reynolds at Mere Orthodoxy. 

Waking Up Chancellorsville – Chris Mackowski at Emerging Civil War.

 

Canada wants to make quoting the Bible illegal – Jane Stannus at The Spectator.

 

What Memoir Scandals Tell Us About Two LLM Writing Scandals – Lincoln Michel at Counter Craft.

 

The Abolition of the Hereditary Lords & the Death of England – John Horvat at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Activism, Uncensored: No Kings in LA – Ford Fischer at Racket News.

 

Traveling America and Lecturing Like a Madman – Bradley Birzer. 

 

What Are Iran’s Centers of Gravity and How Are They Being Attacked? – John Spencer at Urban Warfare. 

 

Photograph: A hall in the Palace of Westminster in London, home of the House of Commons and House of Lords.

Some Wednesday Readings - March 12, 2025

Britain: Multiculturalism contra justice – Sam Bidwell at The Critic Magazine. 

Shrouded Veterans: Destitute Cavalryman Plagiarizes Mark Twain – Frank Jastrzembski at Emerging Civil War.

 

Hermitess and Green Man – Paul Kingsnorth at The Abbey of Misrule.

 

Time Keeps on Slippin’ – Joe Duke at Front Porch Republic.

 

What’s a Trade War and How Did We End Up in One? – Tim Challies.

 

We’re All George Smiley Now – Ana Siljak at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

After Romanian Election Mess, The West’s Foundation is Crumbling – Matt Taibbi at Racket News.

 

25 years on: how Somerset House became a center for contemporary art – Martin Bailey at The Art Newspaper.

 

March 11: The Telegram That Won the War – Lincoln Demotes McClellan – Jason Clark at This Is the Day. 

 

Photograph: Somerset House in London by Robert Bye via Unsplash. Used with permission.

“Hunted” and “Chopped” by Alison Golden

Diana Hunter is something of a brain. Entering college at 16, she’s less interested in dating and far more interested in computers and science. Her mother works at a hospital and her father is a police detective for the Vancouver Police Department. Her father tends to be over-protective of his daughter. 

In Hunted, the prequel for the Diana Hunter suspense series by Alison Golden, Diane’s life turns upside down in a matter of a few months. Her mother commits suicide at work; at least, that’s what the police investigation determines. There’s even a suicide note. Her father gradually comes to understand that this was no suicide, and he and a colleague quietly begin to investigate on their own. Soon they are booth killed in a shootout; the assailants are unknown. This story provides the background for what happens in the next several books in the series – and why Diana became involved in law enforcement.

Chopped is three stories down the road from Hunted. Several years have passed; Diana has moved from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) to the Vancouver Police Department, where she works as a consultant. She’s partnered with detective Peter Hopkinson, and despite her longstanding commitment to no romantic involvement with colleagues, she’s finding herself increasingly attracted.

Alison Golden

Hunter and Hopkinson are called to a murder scene. A headless dead body has been found and a surgical mask is in the victim’s pocket. The missing head is not a sign, but the surgical mask certainly is. Hunter’s old nemesis the Surgeon has resurfaced, and it looks like he’s up to old tricks, including targeting of Hunter herself. The crime has links into international terrorism and a possible assassination plot. Hunter figures the only way to smoke out the Surgeon is to use herself as bait. It works.

Golden has three mystery and suspense series involving signature detectives. The Diana Hunter series is set in Vancouver; the series includes Hunted, Snatched, Stolen, Chopped, and Exposed. The Rev. Annabelle Dixon series is set in Cornwall. And the Inspector David Graham series is set on Jersey, one of the Channel Islands. The last two are officially “cozy mysteries,” which translates as minimal violence and any romantic interest will not involve graphic sex.

Things happen in the Diana Hunter series – and fast. The stories are action-packed, sometimes so action-packed that close reading is required to keep track of everything. But they’re highly entertaining suspense stories, with a very self-sufficient woman detective at the center.

Related:

Three Cozy Mysteries by Alison Golden.

Canada’s 2016 Griffin Prize: Norman Dubie and Liz Howard

Canada’s Griffin Prize was created in 2000 to encourage excellence in poetry. It’s awarded to “first edition books of poetry written in, or translated into, English and submitted from anywhere in the world.” Both an international and Canadian prize is awarded each year – and it’s the biggest monetary prize in the world for poetry – Canadian $65,000 for each award, or about US $50,000 at current exchange rates.

This year, the international prize was awarded to American Norman Dubie for his The Quotations of Bone, published in 2015, and the Canadian prize to Liz Howell for her Infinite Citizen of the Shaking Tent.  

To Continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Louise Penny's "A Fatal Grace"

C.C. de Poitiers isn’t the most likable of people. She bullies her husband and overweight daughter. She bullies the photographer she’s having an affair with. She’s deliberately hurtful and cruel to her new neighbors in Three Pines in Quebec, where she’s recently moved and occupied the largest house in the village. She is planning a major push for her book, Be Calm, in which she articulates of a philosophy of never showing emotion, and no one is going to get in her way.

But someone does. Someone devises and implements death by electrocution, with dozens of witnesses around who are watching a local curling match (a winter sport popular in Canada). The problem is that it might be easier to eliminate the few suspects who didn’t have a motive.

A Fatal Grace is Louise Perry’s second mystery novel featuring Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Homicide Division of the Montreal Surete, and it is a psychological treat.

Gamache and his team, along with the same dysfunctional detective sent by Gamache’s superiors in the first mystery novel, Still Life, are dispatched to investigate. But this is more than a murder; the death of C.C. de Poitiers becomes a prism through which the characters examine themselves and others. This is even more true for Gamache, who is still struggling with the aftermath of a case that ended in a mess, and actually didn’t end at all. Penny uses this story to expand upon what happened in that case and what role Gamache actually played.

Louise Penny

The investigation leads back to Montreal, where the death of a homeless woman seems connected to the electrocution, and then returns to three Pines, for it is in this quiet village of writers, artists and antique shops where the truth lies buried, and lies buried in the distant past.

Penny weaves the two deaths, Gamache’s professional struggles, police department politics and the personal politics of the local townspeople together in an intriguing mystery. Particularly noteworthy is how she develops the physical setting as part of the story – a brutal Canadian winter.

A Fatal Grace is a winner. (And there are several more of the Gamache novels to read.)

Related: My review of Louis Penny’s Still Life.

Photograph by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.