Dibs

Have you ever wondered what Peter Pan’s been up to since … well, since Peter Pan? Revealing yet again its increasing tendency not to leave good enough alone, Disney has launched a series of sequels. This one follows Peter and the Starcatchers, and we find the flying boy sallying forth into pirate territory, where he [...]

In this lushly sensual new venture by the Harvard-grad (and hot) author of last year’s lesbian-coming-of-age-in-India tour-de-force Babyji, a reclusive and long-celibate Indian author decamps to France, where he meets in the flesh his biggest fan, previously known only online. The ensuing summer is one of achy waiting, of funny only-in-France snark (one character, the [...]

It’s not all about Downward-facing Dog, headstands and the Lotus position. Psychotherapist and yoga teacher Cope reveals that there’s more to the ancient Indian practice than just postures and breathing techniques. He focuses instead on the Yoga Sutra, a guide to proper living, eating, thinking and speaking penned some eighteen centuries ago by the sage [...]

An apparent ritual slaughter in an historic Parisian church, with gory bits scattered around the altar, blood seeping into the fifteenth-century stone and a hunky but deep and emotionally vulnerable forensic sleuth scouring the scene ten years later for clues — so is there a new wave of Catholic-France-related murder mysteries or what? May paces [...]

Even if you don’t read it, this one has to win an award for Best Title Ever. A spunky, curly-haired, famous doctor who performs abortions is found dead in her swimming pool at the end of a day on which she fought with both her lawyer husband and college-student daughter. Who killed Diana? Given her [...]

A disgruntled lawyer in the waning years of California’s dot-com boom, Walton discovered eBay. An old army buddy taught him how to buy cheap art at thrift shops and sell it on the site for thousands. Greed got the better of both men as they began forging famous artists’ signatures’ onto paintings — when one [...]

A Canadian interior designer in France’s romantic, castle-studded Dordogne region hunts for her twin sister, who disappeared twenty years previous without a trace while hunting for orchids. It’s a teensy bit predictable, but Wan’s careful attention to character development makes this mystery novel fairly chewy beach reading for those with a penchant for flowers, France, [...]

Unless you’re the type who purposely searches out snippets about disasters, you go your whole life hardly ever hearing about the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire — a 1911 inferno in an overcrowded New York sweatshop which resulted in the deaths of many poor young female workers. And then suddenly, about five years ago, boom: Like the fire [...]

She only ever saw her parents kiss once, and that was just a “chaste peck on the cheek.” In this engaging cartoon-as-memoir, Lambda Award-winning comics artist Bechdel searches through layers of incident and artifact for the truth about her father, a style-conscious, aesthetically inclined funeral-home director (hence the book’s title) and English teacher who was [...]

To truly “get” this book, it helps to be a poker lover. Or, failing that, to have played a fair amount of poker. Or, failing that, to at least have played some sort of card game, sometime, and to know the rules — because this account by a journalist and all-around regular guy of his [...]