As an avid Donna Leon reader, I find Refiner’s Fire as interesting and engaging as always, filled with sounds, smells, and textures of Venice. Inspector Guido Brunetti remains curious and well-read in a non-linear sort of way. Leon readers will know that Brunetti is a wise, compassionate, and well fed hero. His patient and kind approach to police work is often challenged but it survives, with a touch of cynicism.
I admire the social issues that Leon presents, and this one examines violence, darkness, and corruption — illustrated through bullying, administrative cover-ups, hormone-fueled teenage gang fights, and adult gang fights that we call wars. This war was in Iraq, and it spawned a carefully contrived Italian war hero.
While Brunetti, Signora Elletra, and Griffoni remain strong and positive characters, the darkness around them is unusual for a Leon novel. The author seems to have grown beyond annoyance and anger over the unending tourist invasions and government corruptions. This seemed a more pessimistic story, expressing a tired sadness falling just short of despair — perhaps reflecting a feeling that is spreading among cultures around the globe.
Commissario Guido Brunetti returns with a gripping and powerful case about the murkiness of power and a test of loyalties
'Perfectly crafted . . . this only proves what a truly great writer [Leon] has become' Mark Sanderson, The Times
'One of the most subtle and exquisite detective series ever' Washington Post
When two teenage gangs are arrested after clashing violently in one of Venice's campi, the son of a local hero is implicated. But when Commissario Guido Brunetti is asked by a wealthy foreigner to vet this man, Monforte, for a job, he discovers that Monforte might not be…
John Madden was a working-class kid from Jefferson High School in Daly City, California. He played sports, went into coaching, and became a broadcaster on national television. He was also a larger-than-life figure who brought joy and energy into professional sports, as a major television figure. In Mornings With Madden we get to know the joy and energy part from author and San Francisco Bay Area radio personality Stan Bunger.
Mornings With Madden is clearly a labor of love, written by a kindred spirit who did not look or sound at all like the large and effusive Madden. Radio announcer Bunger was able to draw coach Madden into personal on-air conversations that kept morning listeners attached to their radios. Author Bunger was able to sift through thousands of hours of these recorded conversations, and describe a colorful, thoughtful, personable sports hero in clear, affectionate, and entertaining style. It’s a fun and entertaining book about a lovable man.
An intimate and freewheeling portrait of John Madden through the NFL legend's own words
John Madden is synonymous with football. He was the television face and voice of the nation's most popular sport, the namesake of its best-selling sports video game, and the man with the highest career winning percentage of any NFL coach.
Despite his international fame, there was a side of Madden known only to those who listened to morning radio broadcasts in the San Francisco Bay Area. That's where Madden grew up, lived, and died. It's where for decades he found joy in a daily chat with…
As I was looking for a soothing read after two powerful nonfiction books, I found Shoeless Joe, and discovered a genre where imaginary characters do magical and fantastic things within a realistic setting.
In this case, imaginary baseball heroes (and a few convicted scoundrels) are drawn to a hope-filled baseball diamond created within an Iowa cornfield. And so are author J.D. Salinger, Ray Kinsella, and Shoeless Joe Jackson.
The field is real, and the players are as real as you allow them to be. Writers can make dreamworlds intentionally difficult to grasp, which was also one of the points of the story. If you don’t have the force within you, so to speak, you can’t see the characters, or the field, or the point of it all. I found this to be a sweet and hopeful story that encourages my faith in magical realism.
The inspiration for the beloved film Field of Dreams, Shoeless Joe by W. P. Kinsella is the story about the beauty and history of baseball, and the power and endurance of a dream.
“A moonlit novel about baseball, dreams, family, the land, and literature."—Sports Illustrated
“If you build it, he will come.” These mysterious words, spoken by an Iowa baseball announcer, inspire Ray Kinsella to carve a baseball diamond in his cornfield in honor of his hero, the baseball legend Shoeless Joe Jackson. What follows is both a rich, nostalgic look at one of our most cherished national pastimes and…
This is a morality tale in the trappings of a travel adventure that has been interrupted by wars. Pan American Airways is launching commercial air travel in the Pacific, and their man in Hawaii is my main character, Duff Malone. We travel with him as the intricate pattern of refueling stations is created, first at Midway, then on Wake Island, for the Flying Clippers soon to launch from Alameda to Canton.
But Pan Am’s important venture is confronted by Japan, with its military control of Manchuria and brutal attack on Shanghai; and then the notorious sneak-attack on Pearl Harbor. Malone and his wife Christy are there in Shanghai, and Christy narrowly escapes the air attacks in Hawaii. These stories are but two of the threads that come to form a classic and poignant story of friendships, struggle, personal loss, and eventual rebirth.
My novel was triggered by president Trump’s first-term anti-Muslim border ban, that blatantly and unforgivably used race, religion and fear-of-the unknown to create public animosity toward nonwhite people. His unforgivable tribalism is not unique, as its roots are sown throughout history and across the world. My small protest is this book about cruelty and oppression, resilience and faith, war and peace: the human condition, gentleness overcoming violence.
