About a Book

In Louise Penny ’s fifth book about Inspector Armand Gamache, a dead body appears in a bistro in the Quebec town of Three Pines. Nobody knows the murder victim, and Penny spends a good deal of time at the beginning showing us how the town and Gamache come together to figure out this first piece of the puzzle. The Hermit, as the murder victim in The Brutal Telling is first known, is the focus of the investigation, and Penny does solid work keeping her readers interested in knowing who exactly the man was. By the end, we have a fuller picture of the man, and sense we know him just as well as the living characters in the book. Penny takes us into the woods, and we feel like we are clomping through the brush and muck along with Gamache when he finds the cabin where the Hermit lived. Far from a rustic interior, the house contains antique treasures that add to the intrigue of the dead man. From Gamache to his partner Jean Guy Beauvoir, to townspeople Marc and Dominique Gilbe...

Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang, Chelsea Handler I’ve been watching Chelsea Handler since her Chelsea Lately talk show days on the E Network, where she showed as much disdain for her famous guests and panelists as she does for them in Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang, a book from the same period of her career. Handler is known for her dry humor and willingness to make fun of anybody and anything. Here her family takes a beating as she tells tale of doing mushrooms with her brother, who ends up swimming naked in a lake. Her then boyfriend, Ted, also gets it in one of the book's essays, as she recounts tricking him into thinking they killed a dog, going so far as to stage a dog funeral for the sake of her own amusement. While Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang has few laugh-out-loud moments, it does succeed in sending up everyone in the book, Handler included. It also gives room to the Handler who is not going for the big laugh, but the devious smile that comes with reading a friend, a co-w...