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Review: The Marauders, by Tom Cooper

The Marauders by Tom Cooper Crown, 2015; 320pp “Of course he knew that searching for an island of marijuana was crazy. But he also knew that every so often fools stumbled upon fortune, whether by fate or fluke.” This is Cosgrove, one of the gallery of scofflaws and no-hopers that fill out Tom Cooper‘s cracking debut […]

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Building a House of Cards: An Interview with Beau Willimon

“Event television” has been replaced by a new phenomenon in recent years, and that’s in no small part thanks to Beau Willimon. On February 1, 2013, Netflix released the entire first season of a show Willimon had (loosely) adapted from a BBC series from 1990, itself a translation of a political thriller published the year […]

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Curtain Call: One Simple Rule

Psychosis. Architecture. Rock music. Dead stars. Racial politics. Could this be another Seriously Entertaining show from the House of SpeakEasy? You might think that; we couldn’t possibly comment. But yes, this month’s line-up is certainly a sizzler. Best-selling novelist Tom Rob Smith rubs shoulders with House of Cards creator Beau Willimon; poet and actress Amber Tamblyn clinks glasses with Turkish […]

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Life on the Farm: A Dark, Disturbing Thriller

The Farm by Tom Rob Smith Grand Central Publishing, 2014; 400pp You’re walking home. You get a phone call from your father. He’s upset. Your mother has been committed to an asylum. “The symptoms started gradually,” he tells you; “anxiety and odd comments, we can all suffer from that. Then came the allegations. She claims […]

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The Life and Death of the Hollywood Actress

Dark Sparkler by Amber Tamblyn Harper Perennial, 2015; 128pp “It’s not easy to write about your dead peers,” said Amber Tamblyn in an interview with Rachel Simon at Bustle published this week. “I was giving myself a lot of permissions that I normally wouldn’t… and telling myself that’s how I am going to get closer to the story, that’s […]

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The Argument From Design

The Architect’s Apprentice by Elif Shafak Viking, 2014; 432pp In a world of inter-religious conflict, plague, and natural disasters, the most elegant teleology may be found in architecture. This is Elif Shafak‘s proposition in her ambitious new novel, The Architect’s Apprentice. Shafak is the mostly widely read female writer in Turkey, has 1.7 million Twitter followers, and in 2010 she […]

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ReadEasy, 3 April 2015

ReadEasy is a new feature for 2015, diving for pearls in a sea of noise. John Adams's "dazzling portrait of virtuosic femininity" @nyphil this week: http://t.co/MxhTjO85CI (Photo: Chris Lee) pic.twitter.com/1hpW8FVS4r — House of SpeakEasy (@SpeakEasy_House) March 29, 2015 Stephen Kotkin and Slavoj Zizek on Stalin… On Tuesday night in the New York Public Library’s beautiful […]

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