Kate’s 2¢: “First snow, last light” by Wayne Johnston

“First snow, last light” by Wayne Johnston

NOTE: There is a plethora of in-depth biographies of authors and reviews of their books, that state the title, author, published date, and genre; as well as, describing what the book is about, setting, and character(s), so, Kate’s 2¢ shares her thoughts about what she’s read. In her opinion…

   Iole Fabbro and  Stephen Pineo did a good job of narrating this tale for us. I enjoyed listening to this story and I actually liked the ending.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

waynejohnston.ca

Wayne Johnston (born May 22, 1958) is a Canadian novelist. His fiction deals primarily with the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, often in a historical setting. In 2011 Johnston was awarded the Writers’ Trust Engel/Findley Award in recognition of his contribution to Canadian literature.[1]

Early life and education edit

Johnston was born on May 22, 1958, in Goulds, Newfoundland, and graduated from Memorial University of Newfoundland in 1978 with a bachelor’s degree in English. He worked for three years as a reporter for the St. John’s Daily News.[1]

In 1981, he moved to Ottawa and began to pursue writing full-time. He graduated with an MA from the University of New Brunswick in 1983.[1]

Careeredit

Fictionedit

His first novel, The Story of Bobby O’Malley—which was written while he was a graduate student—won the SmithBooks/Books in Canada First Novel Award in 1985.[1][2]

His second novel, The Time of Their Lives, won the Air Canada/Canadian Authors Association Award for Most Promising Young Canadian Writer in 1988.[3] His novel won the 1991 Thomas Head Raddall Award and was subsequently adapted into a film of the same name.[4] Johnston wrote the screenplay for the film, which won best screenplay in the Atlantic Film Festival and was nominated for an ACTRA Award.[3]

Johnston’s breakthrough novel, 1998’s The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, was shortlisted for both the Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Award for English-language fiction.[5][6] It was acclaimed for its portrayal of historical Newfoundland politician Joey Smallwood.[7][8] The Colony of Unrequited Dreams was adapted into a play by Robert Chafe.[9] The novel was chosen for the 2003 edition of CBC Radio’s Canada Reads competition, where it was championed by politician Justin Trudeau.[10]

Johnston’s The Custodian of Paradise, published in 2006, tells the story of Sheilagh Fielding, a fictional character originally introduced in The Colony of Unrequited Dreams.[11] In 2002, Johnston published The Navigator of New York, a historical novel about the race by Robert Peary and Frederick Cook to reach the North Pole; it was shortlisted for both the Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Award for English-language fiction.[12][6] The Custodian of Paradise (2006), A World Elsewhere (2011), and The Son of a Certain Woman (2013) were longlisted for the Giller Prize.[13][14][15]

Johnston was awarded the Writers’ Trust Engel/Findley Award in recognition of his contribution to Canadian literature in 2011.[16] In April 2014, Johnston was shortlisted for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour for his novel The Son of a Certain Woman.[17]

In 2017, his novel First Snow, Last Light was released, with the fictional character Sheilagh Fielding returning for the third time.[18] In 2021, he published The Mystery of Right and Wrong.[19] The Novice of Holloway Hall was published in 2026,[20] and was longlisted for the 2026 Giller Prize.[21]

Non-fictionedit

Johnston has also published non-fiction. His Baltimore’s Mansion (1999), is a memoir about his father and grandfather. It won the inaugural Charles Taylor Prize.[22]

His 2022 memoir Jennie’s Boy recounts his childhood in Newfoundland and won the 2023 Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour.[23][24]

From NLS/BARD/LOC:

First snow, last light DBG09757

Author: Johnston, Wayne

Reading Time: 14 hours, 49 minutes

Production: CNIB

Read by: Iole Fabbro, Stephen Pineo

Subjects: Family, Growing up, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Human Relations, Mystery and Detective Stories, Psychological Fiction

Ned Vatcher, only 14, ambles home from school before the first storm of 1936 to find the house locked, the family car missing, and his parents gone without a trace. From that point on, his life is driven by the need to find out what happened to the Vanished Vatchers. His father, Edgar, born to a poor family of fishermen, had risen to become the right-hand man to the colony’s prime minister, then suffered an unexpected fall from grace. While searching for the truth, Ned finds himself enmeshed in the family of his missing father, who are themselves haunted by the inexplicable disappearance of a third Vatcher, a young man who was lost at sea on a calm and sunny day years earlier. Two other people loom large as Ned becomes Newfoundland’s first media mogul, building an empire to insulate him from loss: a Jesuit priest named Father Duggan, and Sheilagh Fielding, a boozy giantess who, while wandering the city streets at night, composes satiric columns that scandalize the rich and powerful. Bestseller. 2017. Unrated. Marrakesh title.

Toronto : Knopf Canada, 2017.

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Kate’s 2¢: “Good Morning, Killer” by April Smith

“Good Morning, Killer” by April Smith

NOTE: There is a plethora of in-depth biographies of authors and reviews of their books, that state the title, author, published date, and genre; as well as, describing what the book is about, setting, and character(s), so, Kate’s 2¢ shares her thoughts about what she’s read. In her opinion…

   I enjoyed listening to Martha Harmon Pardee, my favorite narrator, share this story with me. The author wielded her craft well to develop the narrative arc and come to a satisfying climax.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

www.aprilsmith.net

April Smith is an American novelist, television writer and producer. Her most recent novel, suspenseful historical fiction, is Home Sweet Home. Previously, A Star For Mrs. Blake, chosen by the Cincinnati Public Library as their 2014 “On The Same Page” all-city reads book [1]. Other works include a series of four mystery/thrillers featuring FBI Special Agent Ana Grey. One of them, Good Morning, Killer, was adapted and executive produced by Smith for the TNT Mystery Movie Nights in 2011. She is also the author of a stand-alone thriller about the only woman baseball scout in the major leagues, Be the One.

Educationedit

A 1967 graduate of the Bronx High School of Science, Smith earned a BS with Distinction in English from Boston University and a master’s degree in Creative Writing from Stanford University.

Television producer and writeredit

Smith worked on several hit television series from the late 1970s through 2000 as producer, writer, and executive story editor, including Lou Grant, Cagney & Lacey, and Chicago Hope. She also adapted stories by Stephen King for the TNT series Nightmares & Dreamscapes.

She wrote teleplays for several made-for-TV movies, including the critically acclaimed 1998 remake of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three and the 1999 adaptation of the Anna Quindlen novel Black and Blue. She was nominated for an Emmy Award for her screenplay for Ernie Kovacs: Between the Laughter (1984).

In 2011 Smith penned the adaptation of her own novel Good Morning, Killer, for the TNT Mystery Movie Night series.[1]

Smith’s work has been nominated for three Emmys and two Writer’s Guild awards.

Novelsedit

Smith is the author of seven novels published by Alfred A. Knopf in hardcover and Vintage trade paperback, including thrillers and historical novels of suspense.

The latest, Home Sweet Home (2017), is the epic saga of a family that becomes the victim of a murderous witch-hunt during the McCarthy era in 1950s South Dakota [2]. A Star For Mrs. Blake (2014)[3] is historical fiction based on the Gold Star Mothers pilgrimages of the 1930s, during which the U.S. government authorized funds for widows and mothers of soldiers killed during World War I and buried overseas to visit the graves of their loved ones. Now a forgotten footnote in history, almost 7,000 American women made the journey. It was the first official recognition of the sacrifices made by women during times of war.

She is also known for four novels of suspense featuring FBI Special Agent Ana Grey as the central character: North of Montana (1994), Good Morning, Killer (2003), Judas Horse (2008), and White Shotgun (2011), as well as a standalone thriller about the only woman baseball scout in major league baseball, Be the One, (2000), and two young adult books based on the TV series James at 15.

From NLS/BARD/LOC:

Good morning, killer DB56612

Series: Ana Grey mystery

Order in Series: 02

Author: Smith, April

Reading Time: 10 hours, 43 minutes

Production: National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled, Library of Congress

Read by: Martha Harmon Pardee

Subjects: Mystery and Detective Stories, Psychological Fiction

FBI agent Ana Grey from North of Montana (DB 38878) is searching for a kidnapper who preys on teenage girls. But after Ana is arrested for shooting her lover, police detective Andrew Berringer, she follows the case behind the scenes. Violence, strong language, and some explicit descriptions of sex. 2003.

New York : Alfred A. Knopf, c2003.

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Kate’s 2¢: “Flee, fly, flown” by Janet Hepburn

“Flee, fly, flown” by Janet Hepburn

NOTE: There is a plethora of in-depth biographies of authors and reviews of their books, that state the title, author, published date, and genre; as well as, describing what the book is about, setting, and character(s), so, Kate’s 2¢ shares her thoughts about what she’s read. In her opinion…

   I enjoyed listening to Diane Mackay narrate this bitter/sweet story of two spunky oldsters, who were not ready to be shuffled off, and a young man, who had a lot of potential.  

   I couldn’t find a bio for this author on Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, but her information is in the beginning of the book. Janet Hepburn lives in Port Dover, Ontario. Her novel, Flee, Fly, Flown, was published in March 2013 with Second Story Press.

From NLS/BARD/LOC:

Flee, fly, flown DBG00013

Author: Hepburn, Janet

Reading Time: 6 hours, 45 minutes

Production: CNIB

Read by: Diane Mackay

Subjects: Human Relations, Humor and Humorous Fiction, Psychological Fiction

Lillian and Audrey hatch a plot to escape from Tranquil Meadows Nursing Home, “borrow” a car, and spend their hastily planned vacation time driving to destinations west. They set out on their journey having forgotten that their memory problems might make driving and following directions difficult. Then they meet up with the unsuspecting Rayne, a young man also heading west in hope of reconciling with his family. 2013. Unrated. Marrakesh title.

Toronto : Second Story Press, 2013.

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Kate’s 2¢: “Great House” by Nicole Krauss

“Great House” by Nicole Krauss

NOTE: There is a plethora of in-depth biographies of authors and reviews of their books, that state the title, author, published date, and genre; as well as, describing what the book is about, setting, and character(s), so, Kate’s 2¢ shares her thoughts about what she’s read. In her opinion…

   I enjoyed listening to Jill Fox narrate this lengthy tale of a desk with 19 mismatched drawers. I admit I sometimes got lost in the purpose of the convoluted narrative arc.

   A few takeaways:

–We failed to support each other, as we should have.

–Why is it that the same thing that destroys one, does not destroy another?

–How do you help someone who won’t help himself?

–How simple to put myself into storage (of those 19, mismatched drawers)

–There are times that the kindness of strangers…one realizes how badly one needs kindness.

–My love for her was a failure of imagination.

–We began to assemble more than a thousand years of oral law…it became the Talmud.

–Turn Jerusalem into an idea.

–His school became known as the great house.

–A perfect assemblage of the  infinite parts of the Jewish memory.

–Of many people, each has his own way of coping with reality

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

www.nicolekrauss.com

Nicole Krauss (born August 18, 1974)[1] is an American author best known for her four novels Man Walks into a Room (2002), The History of Love (2005), Great House (2010) and Forest Dark (2017), which have been translated into 35 languages.[2] Her fiction has been published in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Esquire, and Granta’s Best American Novelists Under 40, and has been collected in The Best American Short Stories 2003,[3] The Best American Short Stories 2008,[4] The Best American Short Stories 2019[5] and The Best American Short Stories 2021.[6]

In 2011, Krauss won an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Great House.[7] A collection of her short stories, To Be a Man, was published in 2020[8] and won the Wingate Literary Prize in 2022.[9][10]

Early lifeedit

Krauss, who grew up on Long Island,[11][12] New York, was born in Manhattan, New York City, to a British Jewish mother and an American Jewish father, an engineer and orthopedic surgeon[13] who grew up partly in Israel.[14] Krauss’s maternal grandparents were born in Germany and Ukraine and later emigrated to London. Her paternal grandparents were born in Hungary and Slonim, Belarus, met in Israel, and later emigrated to New York.[15] Many of these places are central to Krauss’s 2005 novel, The History of Love, and the book is dedicated to her grandparents.[12]

Krauss, who started writing when she was a teenager,[16][17] wrote and published mainly poetry[17][18] until she began her first novel in 2001.

In 1987, when Krauss’s father traveled with his family to Switzerland to take up a medical fellowship in Basel, she was enrolled as a boarder in the International School of Geneva, where she pursued her secondary school studies in Year 9. Krauss’s memories of that experience are conveyed in her autobiographical short story “Switzerland”, published in 2020.[19]

Krauss enrolled in Stanford University in 1992, and that fall she met Joseph Brodsky[11][20] who worked closely with her on her poetry over the next three years. He also introduced her to the work of writers such as Italo Calvino and Zbigniew Herbert. In 1999, three years after Brodsky died, Krauss produced a documentary about his work for BBC Radio 3.[21] She traveled to St. Petersburg where she stood in the “room and a half” where he grew up, made famous by his essay of that title. Krauss majored in English and graduated with honors, winning several undergraduate prizes for her poetry as well as the Dean’s Award for academic achievement. She also curated a reading series with Fiona Maazel at the Russian Samovar, a restaurant in New York City co-founded by Roman Kaplan, Brodsky and Mikhail Baryshnikov.[22]

In 1996 Krauss was awarded a Marshall Scholarship and enrolled in a master’s program at Somerville College, Oxford,[2] where she wrote a thesis on the American artist Joseph Cornell. During the second year of her scholarship she attended the Courtauld Institute in London,[2] where she received a master’s degree in art history, specializing in 17th-century Dutch art and writing a thesis on Rembrandt.

From NLS/BARD/LOC:

Great house DB71935

Author: Krauss, Nicole

Reading Time: 11 hours, 36 minutes

Production: National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled, Library of Congress

Read by: Jill Fox

Subjects: Bestsellers, Family, Psychological Fiction

Tale of a grand desk of nineteen drawers and its symbolism to owners present and past: a New York writer, a Chilean poet, an Israeli reacquiring family furniture that was stolen by the Nazis, and a woman who escaped the Holocaust. Some strong language. Natal Book Award Finalist. Bestseller. 2010.

New York : W. W. Norton & Co., c2010.

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Kate’s 2¢: “That time I got drunk and saved a human”, Mead mishaps03 by Kimberly Lemming

“That time I got drunk and saved a human”, Mead mishaps03 by Kimberly Lemming

Kate’s 2¢: “That time I got drunk and saved a human”, Mead mishaps03 by That time I got drunk and saved a human Mead mishaps03

Kate’s 2¢: “That time I got drunk and saved a human”, Mead mishaps03 by

NOTE: There is a plethora of in-depth biographies of authors and reviews of their books, that state the title, author, published date, and genre; as well as, describing what the book is about, setting, and character(s), so, Kate’s 2¢ shares her thoughts about what she’s read. In her opinion…

   This is one of the seven books NLS sent to me on one cartridge.

   I smiled a lot as I listened to Hazel Addison narrate this humorous fairytale.  It is hard to take seriously a dragon shapeshifter whose human form still retains one horn.

AI Overview

Kimberly Lemming is a USA Today bestselling author known for writing humorous and diverse fantasy romance novels, including the popular Mead Mishaps series.

From NLS/BARD/LOC:

That time I got drunk and saved a human DB132907

Series: Mead mishaps

Order in Series: 03

Author: Lemming, Kimberly

Reading Time: 9 hours, 0 minutes

Production: National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled, Library of Congress

Read by: Hazel Addison

Subjects: Fantasy Fiction, Romance

“All children are told fairytales. Some are epic adventures with high stakes and exciting twists but others are tales of pitiful princesses trapped in boring towers pining for their Prince Charmings to come and rescue them. But one young woman always hated those stories. Why didn’t they get up and rescue themselves? Little did she know that her own fate would take a similarly ironic turn. Because now, here she is. Stuck. In a tower. Turns out, when a dragon holds you hostage, he doesn’t just let you get up and leave. Who knew? And just when she thinks she sees hope on the horizon, that hope is smashed to bits by — you guessed it — another damn dragon.” — From publisher. Unrated. Commercial audiobook.

New York : Hachette Book Group, 2023.

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Kate’s 2¢: “Dreyer’s English: an utterly correct guide to clarity and style” by Benjamin Dreyer

“Dreyer’s English: an utterly correct guide to clarity and style” by Benjamin Dreyer

NOTE: There is a plethora of in-depth biographies of authors and reviews of their books, that state the title, author, published date, and genre; as well as, describing what the book is about, setting, and character(s), so, Kate’s 2¢ shares her thoughts about what she’s read. In her opinion…

   Benjamin Dreyer expressively read his book with examples voiced by  Alison Fraser. It was fun to review so many of the rules I learned ‘way back when. One of the suggestions I find hard to implement and read concern using italics for titles. My screen reader doesn’t indicate italics so I don’t know when itlaics are used.  If I increase the verbosity, there is too much chatter to hear the text.

   I like his common-sense approach to our written English language.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

benjamindreyer.com

Benjamin Dreyer (born May 11, 1958) is an American writer and copy editor. He was copy chief at Random House until he retired in 2023.[1] He is the author of Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style (2019). The Washington Post called Dreyer “the unofficial language guru on Twitter”.[2]

Early lifeedit

Dreyer was born May 11, 1958[3] in a Jewish family.[4] He grew up in Queens, New York and Albertson, Long Island.[5] He attended Northwestern University.[6]

Careeredit

Early in his career, Dreyer pursued writing[7] and acting.[5] He worked in bars and restaurants before turning to freelance proofreading, and then copy editing.[5] In 1993, he joined Random House full time as a production editor.[6] He was promoted from group manager to senior managing editor and copy chief in 2008[8] and served as vice-president, executive managing editor and copy chief, at the Random House division of Penguin Random House.[6] until 2023. Supervising the publication of hundreds of titles a year—The New York Times describes Dreyer’s role as “style-arbiter-of-last-resort”—he works with novelist Elizabeth Strout as the sole author he continues to copy-edit himself.[5]

Dreyer’s Englishedit

Dreyer’s English began as a revision of an internal memo to advise copy editors and proofreaders at Random House.[9] The memo expanded to about 20 pages, and eventually Dreyer became interested in developing it into a book. That book, Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style, was published by Random House in January 2019.[10] It debuted at #9 on The New York Times bestseller list for “Advice, How-To & Miscellaneous”[11] and received enthusiastic reviews.[12][13]

In The New Yorker, Katy Waldman wrote that “Dreyer beckons readers by showing that his rules make prose pleasurable… The author’s delight in his tool kit is palpable.”[14] Writing in Paste magazine, Frannie Jackson recommended the book as “invaluable to everyone who wants to shore up their writing skills and an utter treat for anyone who simply revels in language.”[15] The Wall Street Journal’s reviewer, Ben Yagoda, saw “wisdom and good sense on nearly every page”,[16] and noted what he termed a trend of “copy editors’ memoirs-cum-style guides”, comparing Dreyer’s English to “the splendid Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen”, from New Yorker copy editor Mary Norris.[16]

The Washington Post calls Dreyer “the unofficial language guru on Twitter”.[2]

In 2020, Dreyer released STET! Dreyer’s English: A Game for Language Lovers, Grammar Geeks, and Bibliophiles, a card game based on his style guide.[17] Dreyer maintains an active presence on social media, where he frequently comments on grammar, usage, and literary culture.[18]

Personal lifeedit

Dreyer lives in Santa Monica, California.

From NLS/BARD/LOC:

Dreyer’s English: an utterly correct guide to clarity and style DB93768

Author: Dreyer, Benjamin

Reading Time: 9 hours, 41 minutes

Production: National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled, Library of Congress

Read by: Benjamin Dreyer, Alison Fraser

Subjects: Bestsellers, Language

Downloaded: 08/16/2026

Random House editor distills the knowledge that he has gained from working on hundreds of books into a guide on punctuation, grammar, and usage. Provides general rules and lessons as well as tips for specific difficult cases. Strong language. Commercial audiobook. Bestseller. 2019.

[New York] : Random House Audio, 2019.

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Dreyer’s English: an utterly correct guide to clarity and style DB93768

Author: Dreyer, Benjamin

Reading Time: 9 hours, 41 minutes

Production: National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled, Library of Congress

Read by: Benjamin Dreyer, Alison Fraser

Subjects: Bestsellers, Language

Downloaded: 08/16/2026

Random House editor distills the knowledge that he has gained from working on hundreds of books into a guide on punctuation, grammar, and usage. Provides general rules and lessons as well as tips for specific difficult cases. Strong language. Commercial audiobook. Bestseller. 2019.

[New York] : Random House Audio, 2019.

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Kate’s 2¢: “Two plus four equals one: celebrating the partnership of people with disabilities and their assistance dogs” by Kathy Nimmer

“Two plus four equals one: celebrating the partnership of people with disabilities and their assistance dogs” by Kathy Nimmer

NOTE: There is a plethora of in-depth biographies of authors and reviews of their books, that state the title, author, published date, and genre; as well as, describing what the book is about, setting, and character(s), so, Kate’s 2¢ shares her thoughts about what she’s read. In her opinion…

   I enjoyed listening to Mitzi Friedlander narrate these often moving vignettes about assistance dogs.

   I can appreciate all the time, emotion,  and effort Kathy Nimmer put into researching this anthology of personal stories. It seem strange that, although she wrote many from her interviews with people, she used her by-line, instead of the interviewee’s name.  I listened to an interview with her, Graham Buck, and Kathie Zubricky from GEB.

   I have partnered with seven guide dogs and can attest to how wonderful it is to pick up that harness and confidently walk with my head held up high.   

From NLS/BARD/LOC:

Two plus four equals one: celebrating the partnership of people with disabilities and their assistance dogs DB74137

Author: Nimmer, Kathy

Reading Time: 10 hours, 22 minutes

Production: National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled, Library of Congress

Read by: Mitzi Friedlander

Subjects: Animals and Wildlife, Disability

Downloaded: 08/16/2026

A collection of stories, essays, and poems about beloved canine partners from individuals who have disabilities and others. Describes the challenges and rewards of training guide dogs, the first days with a new service animal, and daily life. Shares moments of humor–and of loss. 2010.

Indianapolis, IN : Dog Ear Pub., c2010.

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Kate’s 2¢: “The absence of mercy” by John Burley

“The absence of mercy” by John Burley

NOTE: There is a plethora of in-depth biographies of authors and reviews of their books, that state the title, author, published date, and genre; as well as, describing what the book is about, setting, and character(s), so, Kate’s 2¢ shares her thoughts about what she’s read. In her opinion…

   Dan Bloom did a good job of narrating this gruesome, Psychological Fiction. All too often, we can’t admit to what we see right under our nose.

From the WEB:

John Burley was born in Baltimore, Maryland and grew up near the Chesapeake Bay.  Following college, he served as a paramedic/firefighter in a busy 911 jurisdiction just north of Washington, D.C. He later completed a graduate degree in medical pathology and attended medical school in Chicago, earning his Doctor of Medicine from Rosalind Franklin University before returning to Baltimore to complete an emergency medicine residency training program at University of Maryland Medical Center and the R. Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center. 

After graduating from residency, John moved to California, where he began work on his first novel. THE ABSENCE OF MERCY was published by HarperCollins in November 2013. It received the National Black Ribbon Award in recognition of an author who brings a fresh, new voice to suspense writing. 

John currently lives in the San Francisco Bay area where he works as an emergency department physician. His third novel, THE QUIET CHILD, released in the United States in August 2017.

From NLS/BARD/LOC:

The absence of mercy DB78026

Author: Burley, John

Reading Time: 9 hours, 33 minutes

Production: National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled, Library of Congress

Read by: Dan Bloom

Subjects: Psychological Fiction, Suspense Fiction

In the small Ohio River town of Wintersville, medical examiner Ben Stevenson investigates the worst case of his career–a fifteen-year-old boy was savagely killed and dismembered. When Monica, a friend of Ben’s son, narrowly survives the next attack, Ben fears for his family. Violence and some strong language. 2013.

New York, NY : William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, [2013]

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Kate’s 2¢: “The 22 murders of Madison May” by Max Barry

“The 22 murders of Madison May” by Max Barry

NOTE: There is a plethora of in-depth biographies of authors and reviews of their books, that state the title, author, published date, and genre; as well as, describing what the book is about, setting, and character(s), so, Kate’s 2¢ shares her thoughts about what she’s read. In her opinion…

   I enjoyed listening to Helen Laser narrate this story about parallel universes and the obsession one man has for an actress he saw in a movie and the people who want to stop him before he murders her again.

 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Website

www.maxbarry.com

Max Barry (born 18 March 1973) is an Australian author and software developer. He also maintains a blog on various topics, including politics.

Early life and educationedit

Max Barry was born on 18 March 1973[2] in Stratford, Victoria, Australia.[3]

Careeredit

When Barry published his first novel, Syrup, he spelled his name “Maxx”, “because he thought it would be a funny joke about marketing”, but subsequently has used “Max”.[4][2]

Barry is also the creator of NationStates, an online game created to help advertise his second novel, Jennifer Government, that eventually evolved into its own online community. In early 2004, Barry converted his website to a blog and began regularly posting to it.[2]

Company, published in 2006, was his third novel.[2] In the November 2004 issue of the magazine Fast Company the novel Company was ranked at number 8 on a list of the top 100 “people, ideas, and trends that will change how we work and live in 2005”.[5]

Barry wrote the screenplay for Syrup, which was released in theatres on 7 June 2013. Universal Pictures has acquired screen rights to Company, which will be adapted by Steve Pink. Jennifer Government was optioned by Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney’s now defunct Section Eight Productions. His novel Machine Man initially was an online serial, but has since been updated and published in 2011 by Vintage Books. The film rights have been picked up by Mandalay Pictures.[6]

From NLS/BARD/LOC:

The 22 murders of Madison May DB107435

Author: Barry, Max

Reading Time: 10 hours, 26 minutes

Production: National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled, Library of Congress

Read by: Helen Laser

Subjects: Psychological Fiction, Science Fiction, Suspense Fiction

While investigating a murder, journalist Felicity Staples spots the killer just before he vanishes. Afterwards, Felicity’s universe seems to have shifted slightly–many small details are wrong. She soon learns that the killer is pursuing every version of his victim across time and space. Unrated. Commercial audiobook. 2021.

[New York] : Penguin Audio, 2021.

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Kate’s 2¢: “Absolute friends DB57589” by John Le Carré  

“Absolute friends DB57589” by John Le Carré  

NOTE: There is a plethora of in-depth biographies of authors and reviews of their books, that state the title, author, published date, and genre; as well as, describing what the book is about, setting, and character(s), so, Kate’s 2¢ shares her thoughts about what she’s read. In her opinion…

   Fred Major did a good job of narrating this psychological spy story.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

David John Moore Cornwell (19 October 1931 – 12 December 2020), known by his pen name John le Carré (/ləˈkæreɪ/ lə-KARR-ay),[1] was an English author.[2][3][4][5] Many of his espionage novels have been adapted for film or television. He has been described as a “sophisticated, morally ambiguous writer”,[6] and is considered one of the greatest novelists of the postwar era. During the 1950s and 1960s, he worked for both the Security Service (MI5) and the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6).[7] Near the end of his life, le Carré became an Irish citizen.

Le Carré’s third novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963) became an international best-seller, and was adapted into an award-winning film. This success allowed him to leave MI6 to become a full-time author.[8]

His other novels that have been adapted for film or television include The Looking Glass War (1965), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1974), Smiley’s People (1979), The Little Drummer Girl (1983), A Perfect Spy (1986), The Russia House (1989), The Night Manager (1993), The Tailor of Panama (1996), The Constant Gardener (2001), A Most Wanted Man (2008) and Our Kind of Traitor (2010). In 2008, The Times named le Carré one of the “50 greatest British writers since 1945”.[9] Philip Roth said that A Perfect Spy (1986) was “the best English novel since the war”.[6]

Early life and educationedit

David John Moore Cornwell was born on 19 October 1931 in Poole, Dorset, England, son of[10][11] Ronald Thomas Archibald Cornwell (Ronnie Cornwell),[12][13] and Olive Moore Cornwell (née Glassey). His older brother, Tony, was an advertising executive and county cricketer (for Dorset), who later lived in the United States.[14][15] His younger half-sister was the actress Charlotte Cornwell, and his younger half-brother, Rupert Cornwell, was a former Washington bureau chief for The Independent.[16][17] Cornwell had little early memory of his mother, who had left their family home when he was five years old. His maternal uncle was Liberal MP Alec Glassey.[18] When Cornwell was 21 years old, Glassey gave him the address in Ipswich where his mother was living; mother and son reunited at Ipswich railway station, at her written invitation, following Cornwell’s initial letter of reconciliation.[19][20]

Cornwell’s father – who escaped from his “orthodox but repressive upbringing”[21] as son of “a respectable nonconformist bricklayer who became a house builder and mayor of Poole”[22][23] – had been jailed for insurance fraud and was a known associate of the Kray twins. The family was continually in debt. The father–son relationship has been described as “difficult”.[19] The Guardian reported that Le Carré recalled that he had been “beaten up by his father and grew up mostly starved of affection after his mother abandoned him at the age of five”.[7] Rick Pym, a scheming con man and the father of A Perfect Spy protagonist Magnus Pym, was based on Ronnie. When his father died in 1975, Cornwell paid for a memorial funeral service but did not attend, a plot point repeated in A Perfect Spy.[19]

Cornwell’s schooling began at St Andrew’s Preparatory School, near Pangbourne, Berkshire, and continued at Sherborne School.[24] He grew unhappy with the typically harsh English public school regime of the time and disliked his disciplinarian housemaster. He left Sherborne early to study foreign languages at the University of Bern from 1948 to 1949.[25][24]

In 1950, he was called up for National Service in the British Army, and was commissioned in the Intelligence Corps as a second lieutenant on 21 October 1950.[26] He was garrisoned in Allied-occupied Austria, serving as a German language interrogator of people who had crossed the Iron Curtain to the West.[25] He transferred to the Supplementary Reserve of Officers on 1 July 1952, and was promoted to acting lieutenant on that date with seniority from 29 June 1952.[27] In 1952, he returned to England to study at Lincoln College, Oxford, where he worked covertly for the Security Service, MI5, spying on far-left groups for information about possible Soviet agents. During his studies, he was a member of The Gridiron Club and a college dining society known as The Goblin Club.[25] He was promoted to substantive lieutenant on 19 October 1954, with seniority from 29 June 1952.[28]

When his father was declared bankrupt in 1954, Cornwell left Oxford to teach at Millfield Preparatory School;[18] however, a year later, he returned to Oxford, and graduated in 1956 with a first-class degree in modern languages with a German literature concentration. He then taught French and German at Eton College for two years, before becoming an MI5 officer in 1958.[24]

Work in security servicesedit

Cornwell ran agents, conducted interrogations, tapped telephone lines and effected break-ins.[29] Encouraged by Lord Clanmorris (who wrote crime novels as “John Bingham”), and while being an active MI5 officer, he began writing his first novel, Call for the Dead (1961). Cornwell identified Lord Clanmorris as one of two models for George Smiley, the spymaster of the Circus, the other being Vivian H. H. Green.[30] As a schoolboy, Cornwell first met the latter when Green was the Chaplain and Assistant Master at Sherborne School (1942–51). The friendship continued after Green’s move to Lincoln College, where he tutored Cornwell.[31]

In 1960, Cornwell transferred to MI6, the foreign-intelligence service, and worked under the cover of Second Secretary at the British Embassy in Bonn. He was later transferred to Hamburg as a political consul.[24] There, he wrote the detective story A Murder of Quality (1962) and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963), as “John le Carré” – a pseudonym required because Foreign Office staff were forbidden to publish under their own names.[32][33] The meaning of the pseudonym is ambiguous: he sometimes said he had seen “le Carré” on a storefront, and later said he could not remember an origin.[34] When translated, “le carré” means “the square”.[34]

In 1964, le Carré’s career as an intelligence officer came to an end as the result of the betrayal of British agents’ covers to the KGB by Kim Philby, the infamous British double agent, one of the Cambridge Five.[25][35] Le Carré depicted and analysed Philby as the upper-class traitor, codenamed “Gerald” by the KGB, the mole hunted by George Smiley in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1974).[36][19]

Writingedit

Le Carré’s first two novels, Call for the Dead (1961) and A Murder of Quality (1962), are mystery fiction. Each features a retired spy, George Smiley, investigating a death; in the first book, the apparent suicide of a suspected communist, and in the second volume, a murder at a boys’ public school. Although Call for the Dead evolves into an espionage story, Smiley’s motives are more personal than political.[37] Le Carré’s third novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963), became an international best-seller and remains one of his best-selling works[citation needed]; following its publication, he left MI6 to become a full-time writer. Although le Carré had intended The Spy Who Came in from the Cold as an indictment of espionage as morally compromised, audiences widely viewed its protagonist, Alec Leamas, as a tragic hero. In response, le Carré’s next book, The Looking Glass War, was a satire about an increasingly deadly espionage mission which ultimately proves pointless.[38][39]

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley’s People (the Karla trilogy) brought Smiley back as the central figure in a sprawling espionage saga depicting his efforts first to root out a mole in the Circus and then to entrap his Soviet rival and counterpart, code-named ‘Karla’. The trilogy was originally meant to be a long-running series that would find Smiley dispatching agents after Karla all around the world. Smiley’s People marked the last time Smiley featured as the central character in a le Carré story, although he brought the character back in The Secret Pilgrim[40] and A Legacy of Spies.[41]

A Perfect Spy (1986), which chronicles the boyhood moral education of Magnus Pym and how it leads to his becoming a spy, is the author’s most autobiographical espionage novel, reflecting the boy’s very close relationship with his con man father.[42] Biographer LynnDianne Beene describes the novelist’s own father, Ronnie Cornwell, as “an epic con man of little education, immense charm, extravagant tastes, but no social values”.[43][10] Le Carré reflected that “writing A Perfect Spy is probably what a very wise shrink would have advised”.[44] He also wrote a semi-autobiographical work, The Naïve and Sentimental Lover (1971), as the story of a man’s midlife existential crisis.[45]

With the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, le Carré’s writing shifted to the portrayal of the new multilateral world. His first completely post-Cold War novel, The Night Manager (1993), deals with drug and arms smuggling in the world of Latin American drug lords, secretive Caribbean banking entities and corrupt Western officials.[46][47] His final novel, Silverview, was published posthumously in 2021.

Themesedit

Most of le Carré’s books are spy stories set during the Cold War (1945–91) and portray British Intelligence agents as unheroic political functionaries, aware of the moral ambiguity of their work and engaged more in psychological than physical drama.[48] While “[espionage] was the genre that earned him fame…he used it as a platform to explore larger ethical problems and the human condition”. The insight he demonstrated led “many fellow authors and critics [to regard] him as one of the finest English-language novelists of the twentieth century.”[49] His writing explores “human frailty—moral ambiguity, intrigue, nuance, doubt, and cowardice”.[50]

The fallibility of Western democracy – and of its secret services – is a recurring theme, as are suggestions of a possible east–west moral equivalence.[48] Characters experience little of the violence typically encountered in action thrillers and have very little recourse to gadgets. Much of the conflict is internal, rather than external and visible.[48] The recurring character George Smiley, who plays a central role in five novels and appears as a supporting character in four more, was written as an “antidote” to James Bond, a character le Carré called “an international gangster” rather than a spy and who he felt should be excluded from the canon of espionage literature.[51] In contrast, he intended Smiley, who is an overweight, bespectacled bureaucrat who uses cunning and manipulation to achieve his ends, as an accurate depiction of a spy.[52]

Le Carré’s “writing entered intelligence services themselves. He popularized the term ‘mole’…and other language that has become intelligence vernacular on both sides of the Atlantic – ‘honeytrap’, ‘scalphunter’, ‘lamplighter’ to name a few.”[50] However, in his first tweet as MI6’s chief, Richard Moore revealed the agency’s “complicated relationship with the author: He urged would-be Smileys not to apply to the service.”[50]

Other writing, film cameosedit

Le Carré records a number of incidents from his period as a diplomat in his autobiographical work, The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life (2016), which include escorting six visiting German parliamentarians to a London brothel[53] and translating at a meeting between a senior German politician and Harold Macmillan.[54]

As a journalist, le Carré wrote The Unbearable Peace (1991), a nonfiction account of Brigadier Jean-Louis Jeanmaire (1911–1992), the Swiss Army officer, who spied for the Soviet Union from 1962 until 1975.[55]

Credited under his pen name, le Carré appears as an extra in the 2011 film version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, among the guests at the Christmas party in several flashback scenes. He also appears, in uncredited cameo roles, as a museum usher in Our Kind of Traitor 2016, and in the BBC TV production The Night Manager (2016), as a restaurant diner.

Politicsedit

Threats to democracyedit

In 2017, le Carré expressed concerns over the future of liberal democracy, saying: “I think of all things that were happening across Europe in the 1930s, in Spain, in Japan, obviously in Germany. To me, these are absolutely comparable signs of the rise of fascism and it’s contagious, it’s infectious. Fascism is up and running in Poland and Hungary. There’s an encouragement about.”[56] He later wrote that the end of the Cold War had left the West without a coherent ideology, in contrast to the “notion of individual freedom, of inclusiveness, of tolerance – all of that we called anti-communism” prevailing during that time.[57]

Le Carré opposed both U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, arguing that their desire to seek or maintain their countries’ superpower status caused an impulse “for oligarchy, the dismissal of the truth, the contempt, actually, for the electorate and for the democratic system”.[58] Le Carré compared Trump’s tendency to dismiss the media as “fake news” to the Nazi book burnings, and wrote that the United States is “heading straight down the road to institutional racism and neo-fascism”.[59][60]

In le Carré’s 2019 novel Agent Running in the Field, one of the novel’s characters refers to Trump as “Putin’s shithouse cleaner” who “does everything for little Vladi that little Vladi can’t do for himself”. The novel’s narrator describes Boris Johnson as “a pig-ignorant foreign secretary”. He says Russia is moving “backwards into her dark, delusional past”, with Britain following a short way behind.[61] Le Carré later said that he believed the novel’s plotline, involving the U.S. and British intelligence services colluding to subvert the European Union, to be “horribly possible”.[60]

Brexitedit

Le Carré was an outspoken advocate of European integration and sharply criticised Brexit.[62] He criticised Brexit advocates such as Boris Johnson (whom he referred to as a “mob orator”), Dominic Cummings and Nigel Farage in interviews, claiming that their “task is to fire up the people with nostalgia [and] with anger”. Le Carré further opined that: “What really scares me about nostalgia is that it’s become a political weapon. Politicians are creating a nostalgia for an England that never existed, and selling it, really, as something we could return to”, adding that with “the demise of the working class we saw also the demise of an established social order, based on the stability of ancient class structures”.[60][63] On the other hand, he claimed that the UK Labour Party has “this Leninist element and they have this huge appetite to level society.”[64]

Le Carré once compared Brexit to the 1956 Suez Crisis, stating that it was “without doubt the greatest catastrophe and the greatest idiocy that Britain has perpetrated since the invasion of Suez… The idea, to me, that at the moment we should imagine we can substitute access to the biggest trade union in the world with access to the American market is terrifying”, he said.[65][66][67] Speaking to The Guardian in 2019, he commented: “I’ve always believed, though ironically it’s not the way I’ve voted, that it’s compassionate conservatism that in the end could, for example, integrate the private schooling system. If you do it from the left you will seem to be acting out of resentment; do it from the right and it looks like good social organisation.” Le Carré also said: “I think my own ties to England were hugely loosened over the last few years. And it’s a kind of liberation, if a sad kind.”[60]

US invasion of Iraqedit

In January 2003, two months prior to the invasion, The Times published le Carré’s essay “The United States Has Gone Mad” criticising the buildup to the Iraq War and President George W. Bush’s response to the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, calling it “worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War” and “beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams”.[68][69] Le Carré participated in the London protests against the Iraq War. He said the war resulted from the “politicisation of intelligence to fit the political intentions” of governments and “How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America’s anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history”.[70][71]

He was critical of Tony Blair’s role in taking Britain into the Iraq War, saying: “I can’t understand that Blair has an afterlife at all. It seems to me that any politician who takes his country to war under false pretences has committed the ultimate sin. I think that a war in which we refuse to accept the body count of those that we kill is also a war of which we should be ashamed.”[70]

Iranedit

Le Carré was critical of Western governments’ policies towards Iran. He said that Iran’s actions are a response to being “encircled by nuclear powers” and by the way in which “we ousted Mosaddeq through the CIA and the Secret Service here across the way and installed the Shah and trained his ghastly secret police force in all the black arts, the SAVAK”.[70]

Le Carré feuded with Salman Rushdie over The Satanic Verses, stating: “Nobody has a God-given right to insult a great religion and be published with impunity”.[72]

Israel and Palestineedit

While researching The Little Drummer Girl, le Carré travelled through the region – including Lebanon – where he met Yasser Arafat. He recounts:

“I have come … to put my hand on the Palestinian heart.” Arafat then seized le Carré’s hand, placing it on his chest. This experience enabled him to see the Palestinians as victims with legitimate claims, and not as merely terrorists.[73]

In a 1998 interview with Douglas Davis, Le Carré described Israel as “the most extraordinary carnival of human variety that I have ever set eyes on, a nation in the process of re-assembling itself from the shards of its past, now Oriental, now Western, now secular, now religious, but always anxiously moralizing about itself, criticizing itself with Maoist ferocity, a nation crackling with debate, rediscovering its past while it fought for its future.” He declared: “No nation on earth was more deserving of peace—or more condemned to fight for it.”[74] In 2003, Le Carré criticised how neo-conservative influences and the Israel lobby shaped U.S. Middle East policy, implying that such manipulation fed continuous conflict. He said the novel (Absolute Friends) was intended to show:

“… neo-conservative group which is commanding the political high ground, calling the shots and appointing the State of Israel as the purpose of all Middle Eastern and practically all global policy.” This frames Israel – not necessarily the nation, but its political positioning – as central to escalatory foreign policy trends fuelling instability.[73]

Le Carré emphasised both empathy and support:

“I stood – and stand – wholeheartedly behind the nation-state of Israel … And wholeheartedly behind the peace process as the guarantor not only of Israel’s survival, but of the Palestinian survival also.”[75]

Personal lifeedit

In 1954, Cornwell married childhood friend Alison Ann Veronica Sharp. They had three sons: film producers Simon and Stephen Cornwell (who in 2011 jointly founded production company The Ink Factory, which has produced several TV series based on Cornwell’s novels), and journalist Tim Cornwell (1962-2022)[76][77][11] They divorced in 1971.[78] In 1972, Cornwell married Jane Eustace, a book editor with Hodder & Stoughton[79] who collaborated with him behind the scenes.[80] They had a son, Nicholas, who writes as Nick Harkaway.[81] Le Carré lived in St Buryan, Cornwall, for more than 40 years; he owned a mile of cliff near Land’s End.[82] The house, Tregiffian Cottage, was put up for sale in 2023 for £3 million.[83] Le Carré also owned a house in Gainsborough Gardens in Hampstead in north London.[84][85]

In 2010, le Carré donated his literary archive to the Bodleian Library, Oxford. The initial 85 boxes of material deposited included handwritten drafts of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Constant Gardener. The library hosted a public display of these and other items to mark World Book Day in March 2011.[86][87]

Le Carré was so disillusioned by the 2016 Brexit vote to leave the European Union that he secured Irish citizenship. In a BBC documentary broadcast in 2021, le Carré’s son Nicholas revealed that his father’s disillusionment with modern Britain, and Brexit in particular, had driven him to embrace his Irish heritage and become an Irish citizen. At the time of his death, le Carré’s friend, the novelist John Banville, confirmed that the writer had researched his family roots in Inchinattin, near Rosscarbery, County Cork, and that he had applied for an Irish passport, to which he was entitled having completed the process of becoming an Irish citizen and having Irish ancestry through his maternal grandmother, Olive Wolfe.[65][66][67] His neighbour and friend Philippe Sands recalled:

He became an Irishman through his maternal grandmother. And it was very, very moving, I have to say, to arrive at the place of the memorial to find an Irish flag and only an Irish flag. He had really in the last years, grown very disillusioned with what had happened to Britain and the United Kingdom.[88]

Le Carré died at Royal Cornwall Hospital, Truro, on 12 December 2020, aged 89.[89][90] An inquest completed in June 2021 concluded that le Carré died after sustaining a fall at his home.[91] His wife Jane died on 27 February 2021, two months after her husband, at age 82.[92]

From NLS/BARD/LOC:

Absolute friends DB57589

Author: Le Carré, John

Reading Time: 13 hours, 43 minutes

Production: National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled, Library of Congress

Read by: Fred Major

Subjects: Bestsellers, Political Fiction, Psychological Fiction, Spy Stories

Unassuming Bavarian tour guide Ted Mundy is actually a retired British double agent. After September 11, 2001, old friend and former colleague Sasha contacts him with a new mission: to stop an impending war in Iraq and become very rich in the process. Strong language and some violence. Bestseller. 2003.

Boston : Little, Brown, c2004.

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