Need For reads

Nonfiction Beaks, scales, feathers, fur UNLIKELY COMPANIONS: The Adventures of an Exotic Animal Doctor By Laurie Hess, DVM, with Samantha Rose 259 pp. Da Capo Reviewed by Lynne M. Hinkey, author of Marina Melee Part memoir, part mystery, and all heart, Dr. Laurie Hess’s Unlikely Companions is a captivating look at the dedication, frustration, and devotion that veterinarians – and the whole animal healthcare community – pour into their work. Centered on a spate of sugar-glider deaths, and one vet’s determination to solve the mystery before any more of her patients are lost, this book takes us through a few harrowing weeks in the life of Dr. Laurie Hess, a Westchester county, New York veterinarian specializing in exotic animals. Interspersed with her search for answers, Hess provides a mix of anecdotes about her journey to becoming an exotic animal vet, her family life, and entertaining stories of her often-eccentric clients, and their beloved and bizarre pets that are her patients. Th...

Fiction A crown of living fire TRIAL ON MOUNT KOYA A Hiro Hattori Novel By Susan Spann 256 pp. Seventh Street Books Reviewed by Eric Petersen Mistress of historical mystery Susan Spann is back with the sixth entry (the previous two entries, Betrayal at Iga and The Ninja’s Daughter, are also reviewed on this site) in her Shinobi Mystery series set in a most unusual time and place and featuring a most unusual pair of sleuths. The time and place is 16t th -century Japan, and the sleuths are Hiro Hattori, an honorable samurai and deadly shinobi (ninja) warrior, and Father Mateo, the Portuguese Jesuit priest for whom Hiro has been hired by an unknown party to serve as a bodyguard and translator. The non-religious Hiro is impressed by the foreign priest’s intelligence and courage, while Father Mateo is impressed by the shinobi warrior’s wisdom, compassion, and devotion to honor and justice. The two men have become close friends and acquired a well deserved reputation for solv...

--> Nonfiction Behold, the Medici moons GALILEO GALILEI: The Tuscan Artist By Pietro Greco, translated by Giuliana Giobbi 383 pp. Springer Reviewed by Marty Carlock If you want to know every minuscule detail about Galileo, down to his friends, correspondents, doubters, believers, acolytes and enemies – in the sixteenth century everybody who was anybody had blatant enemies – Pietro Greco is your man. If you want an easy read, look elsewhere. The book suffers from a spectacularly bad translation from Italian. It required some nimble re-translation as I read – becoming accustomed, for instance, to use of the word “realize” to mean “fabricate” or “develop,” as in, to realize a scientific instrument. Or to malapropisms like “the emergency of a new science.” Greco is an Italian science writer, educated as a chemist, editor of Scienza & Societ á and active in science education in Italy. The translator’s English is better than my Italian, but it appears she worked with a dictionary...

Fiction Dangerous psycho, buried secrets SEE ALSO PROOF A Marjorie Trumaine Mystery By Larry D. Sweazy 251 pp. Seventh Street Books Reviewed by Eric Petersen Veteran mystery and Western writer Larry D. Sweazy is back with his third Marjorie Trumaine mystery. (The first two, See Also Murder and See Also Deception , are also reviewed on this site.) Set in an unusual time and place for a mystery – the North Dakota plains in the 1960s – the series features an unforgettable sleuth. With her formidable intellect and voracious passion for reading, Marjorie Trumaine was her father’s pride and joy. He had hoped she’d become an English professor like his brother-in-law, not a farmer like him. Instead, she dropped out of college to marry her high-school sweetheart, farmer Hank Trumaine. Marjorie’s dream of building a big, happy family never came true. Unable to conceive, her doctor pronounced her barren. Then a freak hunting accident left Hank blind and paralyzed from the neck down...