If you’ve had your fill of dreamy teen vampires, then Glen Duncan’s new novel, “The Last Werewolf,” will give you a reason, in the immortal words of Ozzy Osbourne, to bark at the moon. The serious literary crowd can’t bring itself to take any of the genre stuff seriously: Tales of werewolves, vampires and other [...]

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A reputation can last a long time if you do little to disturb it.   The cover of Judith Hermann’s third book, “Alice,” features a quotation from a review I wrote about her first, “The Summerhouse, Later,” in 2001. It describes Hermann as “a master storyteller.”   But to call Hermann a master storyteller 10 [...]

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Kathy Reichs delivers another stellar effort in her Dr. Temperance Brennan forensic series with “Flash and Bones.” The Charlotte Motor Speedway is known for NASCAR, but it becomes the site of a homicide investigation when a barrel of asphalt containing a body is discovered near the track. Brennan examines the bones, and when the autopsy [...]

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Where is Tibet? That depends upon which Tibet you are talking about. Is it the Tibet that the Chinese occupiers refer to as the Tibet Autonomous Region? Is it the larger ethnographic Tibet that share the same language? Or is it the larger still Tibet of yore that overlaps with four Chinese provinces and four [...]

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The Steampunk Bible has received a lot of critical praise. I can understand why; it certainly is an impressive book to look at, from the ornate cover to the lavish full-color illustrations throughout. I would agree that it is certainly worth the price as a coffee table book for casual browsing. However, the actual text [...]

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