There’s currently a renaissance of mythic retelling novels. By portraying Medea, Quin set herself an especially hard challenge to create a character we will sympathize and root for. Her solutions to this challenge are intriguing and fairly successful. I recommend this one. Read my review and see why.
Interpreting Neolithic carvings and buildings seems perilous at best, but lots of fun. New excavations have upturned the previous understanding of Turkey’s Neolithic monumental sites with their amazing carvings of beasts and men. What stories are they telling?
We don’t usually associate too much rain with Egypt, but there was enough that a legal papyrus instructs judges how to settle disputes over rain gutters. But did they even have gutters? You may enjoy a snippet of ancient daily life on a subject we all love to avoid dealing with.
There’s the top 10 discoveries in archaeology overall for the year, and then there’s those in Near Eastern archaeology. I find this list more interesting–a map, dating by clay, wine, and the Queen of Sheba. Does that grab you, also?
When is sliver more precious than gold, and tin most precious of all? And how far would an Old Kingdom Pharaoh send his traders to fetch silver for his queen? These are some of the questions I’m asking myself after reading about a “surprising” new trading discovery buried in Hetepheres tomb.
Why did Hittites fight from chariots rather than horseback? At least part of the answer is that they hadn’t sorted out the right kind of saddle. So this “earliest” frame saddle found in Mongolia is intriguing. Up for some horse history?
I enjoy seeing which discoveries make Archaeology Magazine’s “Top 10” list each year. I am impressed by the range of dates, geography, and types this year.
Here’s my review of The Pomegranate Gate, an Inquisition-era novel inspired by Jewish folklore and mysticism. I loved this one!
I created a list of three favorite reads of the year for the Shepherd’s website–which I hope you’ll enjoy. And that got me thinking about what books are or are not anything like my own fiction.
I hope you enjoy my review of One Puzzling Afternoon, a dual timeline (1951/2018), character-driven mystery with a narrator suffering from age-related memory loss and the corroding effect of dangerous secrets kept over a lifetime.
