The Washington Times

Crime and Real Estate in Miami

Liz Balmaseda has not one but two Pulitzers. You'd think she'd be satisfied. But no, she's got to go and write a novel! And it's pretty darn good. How annoying is that? Born in Cuba during the revolution (1959), she was raised and schooled in Florida, wrote for El Herald, the Spanish language sister paper of the Miami Herald in the early 1980s, leaving to become Newsweek's Central America bureau chief, and then a Honduras- based producer for NBC News. In 1987, she came back to "The Herald" as...

Everyone Lives in a Private World

Tania James brings a dazzling array of writerly skills to her debut novel "Atlas of Unknowns." She keeps a tight rein on her plot yet never yanks her characters so much that they cannot show their paces; they canter off her pages with all the spriteliness of their own personalities. Ms. James has a tender heart that feels for their idiosyncrasies and yearnings, a sharp ear for dialogue, and an eye for the details of landscape and setting. Her novel is set in two countries - India and the Unit...

Recalling 'the Gladiator of the Law'

Recently a slew of books has appeared discussing America's greatest and most controversial trial lawyer, Clarence Darrow. During the 1920s, few lawyers were ever "more discussed, more loved, or more hated," according to his friend, journalist H.L. Mencken. "No harder fighter ever practiced at the American bar, nor one who fought oftener for good causes." Darrow was famous for his defense of teenage "thrill killers" Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, who he saved from capital punishment in 1924....

Father-Son Bonding and Memory

Of the cluster of British novelists born around the midpoint of the 20th century, Graham Swift is the quiet one. If his contemporaries Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, Julian Barnes and A.N. Wilson are the class hares, then Mr. Swift is definitely the group's tortoise. But, nevertheless, in the past decades, he has produced eight novels, including "The Sweet-Shop Owner" and "Waterland," collecting a clutch of literary awards in his native land and abroad, and capping it all with winning the most ...

To Be Remembered by Her Beloved

C.S. Lewis' controversial wife, Helen Joy Davidman (1915-1960), has been described variously as a prickly shrew, a talented poet who never got her due, a gold digger, a profound thinker whose book "Smoke on the Mountain" is a fine contribution to biblical apologetics and the Yoko Ono of the Inklings - Lewis' circle of male literary friends. That's quite a mix of perceptions - several of them ungenerous and unjust. Now, Don W. King, a professor of English at Montreat College and author of "Hun...