“I don’t remember how we got to the graveyard…” Ghost Beach is a spooky atmospheric tale enmeshed in the imagery of old cemeteries, remote lighthouses, moss-covered tombstones, damp gray fog, spooky woods, and a dark mysterious coastal windswept cave that seems to hold long-forgotten secrets. Twelve-year-old Jerry Sadler and his…
1997 Pulitzer Prize Review: Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser
“There once lived a man named Martin Dressler, a shopkeeper’s son, who rose from modest beginnings to a height of dreamlike good fortune” (opening line). Steven Millhauser’s bildungsroman, Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer, winner of the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and finalist for the 1996 National…
1996 Pulitzer Prize Review: Independence Day by Richard Ford
“In Haddam, summer floats over tree-softened streets like a sweet lotion balm from a careless, languorous god, and the world falls in tune with its own mysterious anthems” (opening line). The first novel to win both the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award in a single year, Richard Ford’s Independence…
Book Review: Chapterhouse: Dune (1985) by Frank Herbert
“Those who would repeat the past must control the teaching of history” -Bene Gesserit Coda After previously jumping 3,500 years into the future in God Emperor of Dune and then another 1,500 years forward in Heretics of Dune, the final book written by Frank Herbert Chapterhouse: Dune is a return…