This week, we look at a lively overview of England’s formative years and their impact, and a biography of a U.S. frontiersman and peacemaker.
Fiction Revisiting the Glory Days
‘Bleachers’
By John Grisham
This is a different book than what we might expect from the law-drama king. Grisham takes readers on a walk down memory lane to a former high school football team gathered to bury the football coach who deeply impacted them. This book is a tribute to high school football.
Doubleday, 2003, 163 pages The Grandfather of Spy Thrillers
‘The Complete Richard Hannay Stories’
By John Buchan
In these five novels of adventure and suspense, British secret agent Richard Hannay takes center stage. Some readers may be familiar with “The Thirty-Nine Steps,” in part because of the Alfred Hitchcock film. But here are other stories that lend depth to Hannay and launch readers into a world of fast-paced suspense not unlike our own. In “Greenmantle,” for instance, the spy works to thwart a jihad plot in the East. Critic Roger Kimball describes reading Buchan as “a tonic exercise.” This book is for teens as well as adults….