Some Wednesday Readings

“Battle of Jackson” Day – Chris Mackowski at Emerging Cicil War.

 

The end of “Anglo-Saxon”? – Samuel Rubinstein at The Critic Magazine. 

 

Things I Learned from Rural Living – Lara D’Entremont at Story Warren.

 

Climate Protestors Charged over Magna Carta Attack in London – Gareth Harris at The Art Newspaper.

 

Non-profits Are Making Billions Off the Border Crisis – Madeleine Rowley at The Free Press.

 

Guardians of the Nation’s Glory: The Civil War Memorials of Northwest Washington, D.C. – Kyle Hallowell at Emerging Civil War. 

 

Reading Shakespeare at Home with Teenagers – Joseph Woodard at The Imaginative Conservative.

Photograph: The Magna Carta, via Wikimedia. 

Poetry and Music: In “(After),” the Aaron Irwin Trio Orchestrates Nine Poems

I’m not a music critic. I read and review a lot of poetry, but most days I don’t consider myself a poetry critic, either. But I love listening to music. Lately, when I go on long walks three to four times a week, I’m listening to Eremo by Jeff Johnson and John Van Deusen.  

In their new album (After), the Aaron Irwin Trio has combined music and poetry to create something decidedly different. Each of the nine compositions orchestrate a poem; three include a recitation of the poem. “Orchestrate” may be the wrong word here; the musicians describe each selection an interaction “between sound and verse.” 

 

And what the listener experiences is a wide array of emotions and responses – joy, chaos, beauty, anxiety, and more. 

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

The Destruction of Sennacherib, poem by Lord Byron – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

It Happens to Those Who Live Alone – poem by David Whyte.

 

‘The Body of a Woman and the Heart of a King,’ speech by Elizabeth I as the Spanish Aramada loomed – Douglas Murray at The Free Press.

 

At John Keats’ House – Spitalfields Life.

 

New Every Morning – poem by Tania Runyan at Every Day Poems.

"Dickensland" by Lee Jackson

In the last 12 years, I’ve visited the Charles Dickens Museum on Doughty Street in London five times. I tried when we visited the city in 2012, but it but was closed for remodeling, during the 200^th anniversary of his birth, no less. In addition to the museum visits, I’ve done a few walks suggested by various guidebooks and maps where you can see what little might be left of the London known and chronicled by Dickens. Some years back, I joined the Dickens Fellowship, a worldwide association founded in 1902 who “share a common interest in the life and works of Charles Dickens.”  

It turns out, I follow in a long line of literary tourists, beginning as early as 1865 (five years before the author died) when a friend guided Louisa May Alcott on a tour of sites associated with Dickens. For fans, of which I number myself, the difference between a real site like the house on Doughty Street and the Thames River stairs where Nancy is overheard ratting on Bill Sykes in Oliver Twist is not one of reality versus fiction. Of course it’s fiction. Except when you actually find it.

 

Lee Jackson, novelist, historian, and academic advisor to the Dickens Museum, knows the real and imagined passions of literary tourists well. In Dickensland: The Curious History of Dickens’s London, he tells the story of literary tourism and Charles Dickens. For a fan of Dickens, it’s both informative and great fun. For people who aren’t fanatics about the subject, it’s a carefully researched and fully documented history of a phenomenon associated with Dickens and perhaps only other author – William Shakespeare.

 

Jackson explains that the most avid literary tourists happen to be those from North America (I’m in good company). It was American touristsm in fact, who provided the impetus for what is known today as “The Old Curiosity Shop” to accept its fate and become actually that. It was originally an art gallery, and while Dickens might have seen it, it was never the inspiration for the book. 

 

Lee Jackson

Dickensland takes you on its own tour, identifying the major sites of Dickens tourism and explaining what connection they did (and didn’t) have. You discover cemeteries, haunted bridges, “great rambling queer old places,” and much more. The author also provides some history of the Dickens Fellowship, how it helped bring the Dickens Museum into existence, and what the museum itself has looked like over the years, including the renovation in 2012 that temporarily closed the place.

 

Jackson received his doctorate degree from Royal Holloway University of London. He’s written novels, anthologies, and non-fiction books, including A Dictionary of Victorian London (2006), Walking Dickens’ London (2012), Dirty Old London (2014), and Palaces of Pleasure (2019). 

 

Dickensland is a treat for the literary tourist and an entertaining read for those who simply enjoy the works of the man. I count myself fortunate to be both.

 

Related:

 

A Week of Dickens: Resources on His Life, Works, Walks, and London.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

“Willing to be Useful to His Country”: Robert Q. Shirley of Vicksburg, Mississippi – Jeff Giambrone at Emerging Civil War.

 

At 200 Years Old, the London National Gallery is Redefining What It Means to Be a ‘National’ Museum – Ann Wallentine at Smithsonian Magazine.

 

Salman Rushdie Writes Back – Joel Miller at Miller’s Book Review.

 

We have a priest

After Hebrews 8:1-13 

We have a priest

like Melchizedek.

We have a priest

who sits in heaven.

We have a priest

seated at the throne.

Sacrifices are no longer

required, as he was

the sacrifice.

We have a priest who

replaces earthly ones.

We have a priest who

eliminated the need

for earthly priests.

We have a priest who

replaces earthly sacrifices.

We have a priest

in heaven because

we cannot keep the law.

 

Photograph by Jacob Bentzinger via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

Mother’s Day After Abortion – Camille Cates at New Growth Press.

 

The Hidden Sorrow of Mother’s Day – David Bannon at Front Porch Republic.

 

The Ache for Home – Mary Grace Mangano at Comment Magazine.

Saturday Good Reads - May 11, 2024

My wife and I have been members of the Missouri Botanical Garden, known in St. Louis as Shaw’s Garden, since 1979. We love the place, and I have a deep affection for its rural sister, Shaw’s Nature Reserve (which we call the Arboretum; St. Louisans have another “real” name for a lot of things). Some two or three years ago, the garden embarked upon a new welcome center, administration building, and meeting space, tearing down what was previously there and replacing it with, well, what I call the mausoleum. I don’t know what it is about modern architecture that is so institutional or even “anti-human,” but it’s all over. It turns out we are not alone. Michael Strand at Front Porch Republic asks the question: why does modern architecture seemed designed to demoralize? 

What caught my attention with the university campus protests was the tents the protestors were using for their encampments. No matter what the location – Columbia, UCLA, and all points in between – the tents looked oddly the same. There’s a reason, as it turns out. Read Park MacDoufald at Tablet Magazine on the people setting American on fire. Patrick West at The Spectator notes how the protests are curiously copycat, no matter what Western country they happen in.

 

Tim Challies has a 10-episode documentary on Christian history, capturing the story of global Christianity. It is now free to watch on YouTube or Tim’s web site.

 

More Good Reads

 

British Stuff

 

The Relics of Old St. Paul’s – Spitalfields Life. 

 

Israel / Anti-Semitism

 

From the River to the Sea: Getting It Right, Getting It Wrong – Susie Linfield at Salmagundi.

 

Not in Our Name – the editors of Tablet Magazine.

 

Every argument for Israel: Answering the case against Israel point-by-point – Mark Humphreys at The Critic Magazine.

 

Faith

 

The Early Church’s Protection of Women and Children – Breakpoint / Colson Center.

 

Truth I Didn’t Learn in Business School – Ken Eldred at the Institute for Faith, Work, & Economics.

 

A Good Neighbor – Kit Swartz at Gentle Reformation.

 

Poetry

 

Tree House – Seth Lewis.

 

Pope’s Gilgamesh – Adam Roberts at Adam’s Notebook.

 

“Swans” by Sally Thomas – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

White Chalet Bird House – Lauren Camp at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

Writing and Literature

 

Why Research Matters in Fiction – Jack Du Brul at Writer’s Digest.

 

More Publishing Facts You May Not Know – Lincoln Michel at Counter Craft.

 

Paul Auster’s Voice – Michael O’Donnell at The Millions.

 

News Media

 

Is Journalism Back? New York Times Editor Goes Ballistic on Biden, “Safe Space” Era – Matt Taibbi at Racket News.

 

Unscientific American: Science journalism surrenders to progressive ideology – James Meigs at City Journal. 

Note to Readers: In Search of the Great Canadian Terror - Matt Taibbi at Racket News.

 

Early Morning Rain – Peter, Paul & Mary

 Painting: Interior with a Woman Reading, oil on canvas (1907) by Niels Holsoe (1865-1928). 

A life eternal

After Hebrews 7:25-28 

This priest, this sole member

of the order of Melchizedek,

this king able to save those

who draw near, this priest

is holy. This priest is

innocent. This priest is

unstained. This priest is

separated. This priest is

exalted. This priest makes

no sacrifices, because

this priest was

the sacrifice.

 

Photograph by Jacob Bentzinger via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

The Martyr – poem by Herman Melville at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin).

 

Finding Crist in Isolation: A Sonnet for St. Julian of Norwich and A Sonnet for Ascension Day – Malcolm Guite.

 

On the Need to Reactivate Our Right Hemispheres – Eric Scheske at Front Porch Republic.

"Murder in the Field" by Roy Lewis

Arnold Landon has a great opportunity to partially escape the politics of the Morpeth Department of Antiquities & Museums, and he seizes it. He’s seconded (or loaned) to an archaeological dig under scientists from York; they’re excavating a field which contains all kinds of Roman and Celtic artifacts. 

He quickly discovers the tensions among the team. Led by his friend Rhea Williams, it includes four students and a professor. The lone woman student seems expert at playing off the men, including the professor, until one night at dinner, and after too much to drink, she ridicules him in front of the team and a guest. Tensions break into open hostilities. 

 

We know where this headed; the woman student is found murdered in a ditch. Detective Inspector Pat Garrett thinks he knows the likely killer. Landon, taking something of a smaller role than he has in previous mysteries, is troubled by something e thinks he should remember. When he does, the story veers in another direction, and more lives are threatened.

 

Roy Lewis

Murder in the Field is the 12^th Arnold Landon mystery by British author Roy Lewis. Like its predecessors, the reader is treated to not only a good story but also a readable and rather fascinating look into an archaeological dig.

 

Lewis (1933-2019) was the author of some 60 other mysteries, novels, and short story collections. His Inspector Crow series includes A Lover Too Many, Murder in the Mine, The Woods Murder, Error of Judgment, and Murder for Money, among others. The Eric Ward series, of which The Sedleigh Hall Murder is the first (and originally published as A Certain Blindness in 1981), includes 17 novels. Lewis lived in northern England. 

 

Related:

 

Murder Under the Bridge by Roy Lewis.

 

Murder in the Tower by Roy Lewis. 

 

Murder in the Church by Roy Lewis.

 

Murder in the Barn by Roy Lewis.

 

Murder in the Manor by Roy Lewis.

 

Murder in the Farmhouse by Roy Lewis.

 

Murder in the Stableyard by Roy Lewis.

 

Murder in the House by Roy Lewis.

 

Murder by the Quay by Roy Lewis.

 

Error in Judgment by Roy Lewis. 

 

Murder at the Folly by Roy Lewis.

 

Some Thursday Readings

 

Murders for May – Jeremy Black at The Critic Magazine.

 

Poet Laura: Moon Landing – Michelle Rinaldi Ortega at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

The Liberal Arts: Take It or Leave It – Elizabeth Stice at Front Porch Republic.

Do You Outline, or Do You Write into the Dark?

A problem developed while I was writing my fifth novel. The problem had to do with what I conceived as a minor character – a four-year-old boy who would grow to adulthood during the story. But he wasn’t the main character; far from it, in fact. He was supposed to have a bit role. 

Unfortunately, he had a different idea.

 

I kept floundering with the manuscript because this kid kept sticking his head in. It was as if he was demanding a bigger part of the story. I was hitting dead end after dead end, and my writing was going nowhere.

 

To continue reading, please see my post today at the ACFW Blog. 

 

Photograph by Steven Houston via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

The Battle of the Wilderness with Chris Mackowski – American Civil War & UK History.

 

How French Intellectuals Ruined the West – Helen Pluckrose at Quillette.

 

Doing Theology with Poetry – Abram Van Engen at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

When Less is More – A Haiku / Sonnet Poetry Challenge – James Tweedie at the Society of Classical Poets.

Poets and Poems: Anna Lewis and "Memory's Abacus"

One of the strongest memories I have of my paternal grandmother is her writing the notes for the ladies Sunday School lesson she’d be teaching on the coming Sunday. She’d sit in the easy chair in her large bedroom, intently writing in her small, black-leather ringed notebook, completely focused on the task at hand. I’d sit quietly nearby, reding my book and occasionally looking up to watch her. I knew not to disturb her while she prepared her lesson. As she wrote, she’d occasionally mention names of the ladies in the class, as if anticipating their questions. 

I was reminded of this while reading Memory’s Abacus, the new (and first) poetry collection by Anna Lewis. In the title poem, she recounts a memory of her grandmother, tapping her fingers on the Christmas tablecloth, speaking the name of each of 10 cousins with each tap. “Dispersed now or dead, her childhood kin / reunite as a line of names / along her swollen knuckles.” Associating the tapping and reciting of family names with an abacus is an image almost crystallized in memory – and as a memory. 

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

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Lost Time – poem by Paul Wittenberger at Paul’s Substack.

 

Who Should Write Poetry? – Glenn Arbery at The Imaginative Conservative.

 

Sonnet 19: On His Blindness by John Milton – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Press – poem by Richard Maxson at Everyday Poems. 

Wallace Stevens, ‘The Reader’ (1935) – Adam Roberts at Adam’s Notebook.

"The Aleppo Codex" by Matti Friedman

It’s one of the most famous books on the planet – the Aleppo Codex, often called the Crown of Aleppo. It is the Hebrew scriptures – what Christians would call the Old Testament – written by, or under the direction of the Hebrew scholar Aaron Ben-Asher about 930 A.D. It was composed in the city of Tiberias, located in what today is the state of Israel.  

In the 1400s, it was transferred to the care of the Jews of Aleppo (now a city of Syria) and stored in the main synagogue. There it remained until 1947. That year, the United Nations approved the partition of the British Mandate in Palestine, creating the nation of Israel. The new nation was even out of the cradle when it was forced to fight its Arab nations, who would not tolerate a formal Jewish nation.

A page from the Codex (Wikimedia)

Riots against the Jews happened in cities all over the Mideast and Egypt. The Jews of Aleppo faced their own pogrom, which included attacks against Jews, ransacking and looting of businesses and homes, and a major attack on the synagogue. The first reports said the Codex had been burned among a host of other books and scrolls. What had happened was that it had been damaged but gathered together and taken to safety and hidden (in the home of a cooperative Christian). There it remained, until 1957, when the political situation in Syria for the dwindling number of Jews looked increasingly dire. 

 

The official story was that a decision was made to remove the Codex from its hiding place, place it in the care of a family fleeing Syria, who took it (and themselves) first out of Syria into Lebanon and then into Turkey. There it stayed for a few months, when it was transported to Israel and presented to the nation’s president. It was a story of the Codex coming full circle, returning to the land of its composition after a journey of almost a thousand years. The Codex as presented was not a complete 

 

Matti Friedman, then a reporter for Associated Press based in Israel, became interested in the story in 2008 – some 50 years after its return to Israel. But almost as soon as he began looking into the story, he began to sense that something wasn’t quite right about the official and widely believed account. The Codex was definitely back in Israel and in the hands of the government, and elements of the official story were true, or close to true.

 

Through scores of interviews and extensive research into government files and documents, Friedman pieced together what likely really happened. The story he tells in The Aleppo Codex: A True Story of Obsession, Faith, and the Pursuit of an Ancient Bible documents what he was able to learn, far beyond the official account, and what might never be fully understood.

 

Matti Friedman

Friedman is a journalist and author. He’s worked for the Associated Press; contributed to the New York Times Opinion Page; written for Smithsonian Magazine, The Atlantic, and several other publications; and currently writes for Tablet Magazine. He’s published four works of non-fiction: The Aleppo Codex (2012); Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier’s Story of a Forgotten War (2016); Spies of No Country: Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel (2019); and Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai (2022). His books have received numerous awards and recognitions, and The Aleppo Codex has been translated into seven languages. He lives in Toronto and Jerusalem.

 

Written 12 years ago, The Aleppo Codex does more than tell a story about an important Hebrew Bible. Friedman explains how the Codex fared during the Israeli war for independence and the decade after. By extension, it all tells the stories of the Jews of the Mideast diaspora, once numerous throughout the region and now almost completely gone (they, like the Codex, were forced to travel). He discusses the role high-level politics played, and even when old-fashioned greed entered the picture.

 

It's a fascinating story, and it still has relevance to what is happening in the Mideast today.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

Changes – artwork by Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

Jane Austen versus virtue signaling: What Mansfield Park can tell us about contemporary politics – Stephen Wigmore at The Critic Magazine.

 

British Empire Exposition, Wembley, 1924 – A London Inheritance.

 

At the Ragged School Museum – Spitalfields Life.

 

Travels in New France – Jonathan Geltner at Slant Books on historian Francis Parkman.

It wasn't the law

After Hebrews 7:11-28 

It was set early on:

the priests were of the tribes

Levitical, named after Levi,

Jacob’s son. If this had been

sufficient, if the law has been

sufficient, if perfection could

have been attained through

this priesthood, nothing else

would have been needed. But

the priests were men, types

signifying who the real priest

was, indicating the priest

to come, the priest after

the order of Melchizedek.

This was the king who was,

is, a priest, the priest there 

from the beginning,

Only this priest alone was, 

is, sufficient.

 

Photograph by Elimende Inagella via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

Non-Boring Poetry Books (for Children) to Make You Love Poetry – Erica at What Do We Do all Day.

 

Andy Crouch: In a Time of Culture Collapse, Build Friendships – Trevin Wax at The Gospel Coalition.

 

The Mystery of Father-Son Relationships – Benjamin Myers at Plough Quarterly reviews An Ordinary Life: Poems by B.H. Fairchild. 

 

Whatever Comes, Get Wisdom: AI, the Future, and Our Chief End – Owen Anderson at Christ Over All.

 

What About Abortion in the Case of Rape? – Jonathan Noyes at Stand to Reason.

Saturday Good Reads - May 4, 2024

Growing up, I often worked at my father’s printing business in downtown New Orleans. And I was often employed to deliver finished jobs and pick up new ones. Many a time I passed the corner of Gravier Street and St. Charles Avenue and saw a plaque on a small building wall. It simply read: “The Paul Morphy Chess Club.” I was reminded of that plaque this week when I read “America’s Greatest Chess Player Was a Confederate?” by Evan Portman at Emerging Civil War. The Historic New Orleans Collection also has an article about how Morphy brought chess to New Orleans.  

With all the news coverage of the pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses, what’s being lost, or conveniently overlooked, is what happened on Oct. 7. Sheryl Sandberg, the former COO of Facebook, is promoting a documentary about that day, entitled Screams Before Silence. If Hamas was set on outdoing the Nazis, they at least came close. And I ask myself, if it’s the Palestinians the protestors are so concerned about, why aren’t they screaming about what Hamas has done to them: stealing billions in aid, using women and children as shields, placing missiles and weapons in schools and hospitals, indoctrinating children in hating Jews (with a little help from the United Nations). Instead, all we see and hear are college students (and outsiders) chanting the slogans of Hamas and Hezbollah.

 

More Good Reads

 

The Campus Protests 

 

An explanation of the campus protests – Charles Lipson at The Spectator.

 

There Are Two Set Rules of Speech – Abigail Shrier at The Free Press.

 

The ‘Micro-Intifada’: How American Protestors Are Being Trained in ‘Militancy’ – Francesca Block at The Free Press.

 

Parent Call to UCLA Police – via X (formerly Twitter).

 

Life and Culture

 

Understanding Russell Kirk: A Bold Biography by Bradley Birzer – Robert Stacey at The Imaginative Conservative. 

 

A True Bipartisan Scandal – Matt Taibbi at The Free Press. 

 

Writing and Literature

 

WITD (Writing into the Dark) is Not the Only Way – Harvey Stanbrough at Harvey’s (Almost) Daily Journal.

 

The Rare Entertainments of E.C.R. Lorac’s Death of an Author – Martin Edwards at CrimeReads.

 

2024 Edgar Allan Poe Award Winners – Mystery Writers of America.

 

Poetry

 

Canterbury Tales: The General Prologue – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Two poems by Christian Lehnert – a new translation by Richard Sieburth at New Criterion.

 

Judas in the Upper Room – Michael Stalcup at Rabbit Room Poetry.

 

3 sentient blues – Franco Amati at Garbage Notes.

 

Israel

 

Israel and the making of nations – Daniel McCarthy at The Spectator.

 

Faith

 

Antisemitism is the Devil’s Flagpole by Andrew Klavan, and The Tide of Battle Turns by Spencer Klavan,-- at The New Jerusalem. 

 

There’s a Religious Earthquake Coming. Can You Feel It? – Stephen McAlpine. 

 

Falling Slowly – Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova

 Painting: Old Man Reading a Book, oil on canvas (19^th century), artist unknown but associated with the American School. 

The oldest priesthood

After Hebrews 7:11-28 

Before the Levites.

before the sons of Aaron,

it was, and is, the oldest

priesthood. An order

of one, one person,

one man, the one sent

to serve, to minister, 

to save, one sent

to live and die and

rise again. This is

the priesthood, older

than Abraham, older

than Terah, older

than Adam. This is

the priest who created

the world; this priest

saved the world.

This priest is a king.

 

Photograph by Michel Grolet via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Friday Readings

 

Sunday News – poem by Brad Davis at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin). 

 

The Good in Regret – Seth Lewis.

 

“Sonnet Reversed,” poem by Rupert Brooke – Sally Thomas at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

How ‘apocalypse’ became a secular as well as religious idea –Erik Bleich and Christopher Star at The Conversation.

 

“The Bag,” poem by George Herbert – Rabbit Room Poetry.

"A Novel Way to Kill" by Benedict Brown

Eighteen-year-old Christopher Prentiss is visiting his grandfather, retired Scotland Yard Superintendent Lord Edgington. An unexpected invitation arrives, one marked urgent, from the Shipley sisters, who live in Suffolk. The three are well-known, except to young Christopher. One writes historical biography, one is a mystery novelist, and the third (and youngest) is a travel writer.  

The invitation doesn’t explain the urgency, but Lord Edgington and Christopher quickly pack up and head to Suffolk.

 

The three, now in their 50s and 60s, live together with their elderly father at the large family estate. Only the youngest is married. The conversation at dinner still doesn’t explain the urgency, but it does focus on how to commit the perfect crime. When old Mr. Shipley is found dead the next morning, seemingly having fallen from a window during the night, Lord Edgington quickly sizes up the situation. It was no accident, and it was definitely murder.

 

A Novel Way to Kill is a novella in this 1920s Lord Edgington series by British author Benedict Brown. It falls about halfway in the (so far) 12-book series, the twelfth being the recently published The Puzzle of Parham House. The story told in the novella is essentially a murderer testing how much the great Lord Edgington still knows about the business or murder. It’s a rather fun read, and a quick read.

 

In addition to the Lord Edgington stories, Brown has written seven Izzy Palmer mystery novels and three novellas. A native of south London, he lives with his family in Spain. The Lord Edgington mysteries are likely aimed at both the general reader as well as the young adult audience. And they’re well-researched stories, full of information about the mid-1920s.

 

Related:

 

Murder at the Spring Ball by Benedict Brown.

 

A Body at a Boarding School by Benedict Brown.

 

The Mystery of Mistletoe Hall by Benedict Brown.

 

 Death on a Summer’s Day by Benedict Brown.

 

The Tangled Treasure Trail by Benedict Brown.

 

The Curious Case of the Templeton-Swifts by Benedict Brown.

 

The Crimes of Clearwell Castle by Benedict Brown.

 

The Snows of Weston Moor by Benedict Brown.

 

What the Vicar Saw by Benedict Brown.

 

Blood on the Banisters by Benedict Brown.

 

A Killer in the Wings by Benedict Brown.

 

The Christmas Bell Mystery by Benedict Brown.

 

Some Thursday Readings

 

On the Invention of M. Dupin – Olivia Rutigliano at CrimeReads.

 

‘France! à l’heure où tu te prosternes’ (1853) by Victor Hugo – Adam’s Roberts at Adam’s Notebook.

 

The State of the Crime Novel, Part 1: The Writing Life  and Part 2: The Future of Crime Writing – Molly Odintz at CrimeReads.

 

“Confused about the Ivy League,” poem by A,M Juster – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.