Looking For A Good Book?

Received an Amazon gift card or some other gift card for Christmas? Looking for a good book to purchase?

Well, you can search here for my book reviews and posts on a good number of books.

Or, the Philadelphia Inquirer - where I've been a contributor since 1999 - offers their staff's choice of a good book to read this Christmas season. 

Avid readers are always happy to tell you about the good things they've been reading, and we at The Inquirer are no different. Here's a roundup of the best new books that Inquirer staff members have read this year. Enjoy!
 

A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal, by Ben Macintyre (Crown, $27). A Spy Among Friends is a spellbinding tale of the personal relationship between Nicholas Elliott, a leader of MI6, and his close friend, Kim Philby, the British spymaster who became a Soviet mole. McIntyre's meticulous research helps the reader understand how Elliott, trained to be skeptical and circumspect, could fail to detect the ever-more-obvious signs of Philby's disloyalty. Reads like a John LeCarré spy novel. - Bill Marimow, editor
 

 

Bagmen, by William Lashner (Thomas & Mercer, $14.95 paperback). If they gave a Pulitzer Prize for snappy dialogue, William Lashner would be a betting favorite every time. Bagmen is a murder mystery set in the altogether too convincingly rendered demimonde of Philly's bagmen, the political fixers. - Michael D. Schaffer.

 

You can read the rest of the staff picks via the below link:

http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/literature/20141221_Looking_for_a_good_book_.html

Note: Today is the last day on the job for my Inquirer editor, Michael D. Schaffer. I wish him well in his retirement.