Antoine’s New Orleans mystery keeps readers coming back

Dinner at Antoine’s is an endlessly pleasing novel.To a murder mystery Frances Parkinson Keyes adds two love stories, a conspiracy to overthrow a Latin American government, and generous dollop of New Orleans insider tittle-tattle.

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Dangle in 1948 files for Big Fisherman

The #2 bestseller for 1949, The Big Fisherman, was #1 in1948.
For read my review of the historical-religious novel by Lloyd C. Douglas, use   the drop down menu links at the right. You will find the review under these categories:

1948 novels
religious novels
historical novels

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Bottom of 1948 list is top read today

The Young Lions, Irwin Shaw’s whopping novel about three very different World War II soldiers, was #10 on the 1948 bestseller list. However, it is clearly the best of that year’s novels by today’s standards. By comparison, the best of the rest are mediocre.
Shaw shows how people of different temperaments reach differently to war. [...]

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Superb Novel of the Hell Inside Soldiers

The Young Lions is a superbly plotted novel by Irwin Shaw about three solders in World War II. Christian Diestl is a cultured German; Noah Ackerman is an American Jew; Michael Whitacre is a clumsy ,idealistic, American playwright. This is not so much a “war is hell” story as a story about the hell men carry with them to war. War defines and intensifies each one’s essential nature.

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Pilgrim’s Inn Is Restful, Renewing

Pilgrim’s Inn is Elizabeth Goudge’s gentle novel of an English family pulling themselves back together after World War II. The renovation of the Herb o’ Grace becomes an opportunity for each member of the extended household to find peace and to restore and build relationships.

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Shannon’s Way Is All Downhill

Shannon’s Way is A. J. Cronin’s sequel to The Green Years. Robert Shannon, now an M.D., is working in a research lab, bitterly doing grunt work. He finds comfort and encouragement in Jean Law, an attractive medical student headed for the mission field, but religious differences separate them.

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Raintree County Is Impenetrable

Ross Lockridge Jr.’s Raintree County is one of the best novels you will never read. It’s only for the literati or readers serving consecutive life sentences.

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The Golden Hawk Is a Turkey

The Golden Hawk is another bauble on Frank Yerby’s string of best-selling period romances. Yerby sets this one in the West Indies in the 1600s human life was cheap and New World gold plentiful. Everything about this potboiler is totally predictable.

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Tomorrow Will Be Better Skewers the American Dream

Maggy and Frankie work hard to make a better life for their kids, but they can never save enough to get ahead. Living on the edge makes them cranky and irrational. Bitterness become entrenched and bickering pulls families apart.

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Dinner at Antoine’s Always Delights

Dinner at Antoine’s is an endlessly pleasing novel. Since I found it on my mother’s bookshelf back in the ’60s, I’ve read it many times. I never remember reading it until I’m almost done, and I enjoy it every time.

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