LATEST BOOK ••• All Men Glad and Wise
A mystery set five months after the end of World War I, on a Cotswolds estate whose heir, Hugh Chandace-Willingford, one of the finest riders in England, has been killed at Passchendaele. Hugh has left behind Errant, a gloriously talented young horse, a stable once famous throughout England for dressage, and Harry Green, a stable lad whose father is the chief groom. Harry’s principal concern until the book’s opening has been working Errant in the dressage learned from Hugh—but in March, 1919, the steward of the estate is murdered, and the investigation proves that the estate is on the verge of bankruptcy. What will happen to Harry’s father, now that automobiles are replacing horses as a means of transportation? And what will happen to Harry, a stable lad who is in fact a lass—and one with no skills suitable to women? The answer is clear: Harry must discover who killed the steward, thus proving herself Somebody instead of a servant. The prospect is more dangerous than she has anticipated.
Available at Bartleby's Books and other bookstores.AWARDS
Reviews and Discussions
One Minute Reviews
Laura's column "One Minute Reviews" appeared bi-weekly in Wilmington, Vermont's Deerfield Valley News 2015–2023. In April 2018, she found that no Vermont periodical consistently reviews all commercially published fiction and non-fiction by Vermont authors, so she started a series to fill that void. Published reviews from that series and some earlier reviews of local authors are listed with links to a scan of the printed copy.
Many of the books reviewed in this series are available through Wilmington's Pettee Memorial Library, the Whitingham Free Public Library, and locally-owned Bartleby's Books in Wilmington.
Reviews 2024–present
David Budbill, Judevine: A Love Story for a Place and Its People
Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, Abundance, 5/22/2025
Chloe Dalton, Raising Hare: A Memoir
Geraldine Brooks, Memorial Days: a Memoir
Manu Larcenet, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road: A Graphic Novel Adaptation; and Fred Bernard and Benjamin Flao, Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees: A Graphic Adaptation, 2/6/2025
Syou Ishida, tr. Shimoda We’ll Prescribe You a Cat
Hampton Sides, The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook, 11/21/2024
Danzy Senna, Colored Television, 11/7/2024
Rachel Kushner, Creation Lake, 10/10/2024
Sarah Stewart Taylor, Agony Hill, 10/3/2024
Doris Kearns Goodwin, An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s, 8/29/2024
Rob Mermin, Circle of Sawdust: A Circus Memoir of Mud, Myth, Mirth, Mayhem, and Magic, 8/1/2024
Percival Everett, James, 6/20/2024
Shelby Van Pelt, Remarkably Bright Creatures, 6/6/2024
Jason Roberts, Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life, 5/23/2024
Paul Harding, This Other Eden: A Novel, 5/9/2024
Geraldine Brooks, Horse, 4/11/2024
Daniel Mason, North Woods: a Novel, 3/21/2024
Vermont Reviews 2016–2023
Celia Ryker, Augusta: A Novel Based on a True Story, 5/11/2023
Jane Dwinell and Sky Yardley, Alzheimer’s Canyon: One Couple’s Reflections on Living with Dementia, May 2023
Wyn Cooper, Way Out West, 12/29/2022
Arlene Distler, This Earth, This Body, 12/14/2022
Eric Pope, Granite Kingdom: A Novel, 12/8/2022
Stephen L. Harris, No Excuses, 11/23/2022
Jennifer McMahon, The Children on the Hill, 10/13/2022
Chris Bohjalian, The Lioness, 9/8/2022
Rebecca Majoya and Sallyann Majoya, Uncertain Fruit: A Memoir of Infertility, Loss, and Love, 9/1/2022
Archer Mayor, Fall Guy, 7/21/2022
Susan Speranza, Ice Out: A Novel, 6/16/2022
Celia Ryker, Walking Home: Trail Stories, 6/2/2022
Don Hooper and Bill Mares, I Could Hardly Keep from Laughing: An Illustrated Collection of Vermont Humor, 4/21/2022
Ann Gengarelly, Tony Gengarelly, eds., Another World: Poetry & Art by Young People From The Poetry Studio, 4/7/2022
Catherine Drake, The Treehouse on Dog River Road, 3/24/2022
Archer Mayor, Marked Man: A Joe Gunther Novel, 3/3/2022
Gregory Maguire, The Brides of Maracoor, 2/17/2022
Bernie Lambek, Intent to Commit, 1/6/2022
Megan Mayhew Bergman, How Strange a Season, 12/30/2021
Brad Kessler, North, 12/2/2021
Nathaniel Ian Miller, The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven, 11/24/2021
Michael Freed-Thall, Horodno Burning, 11/4/2021
Gerette Buglion, An Everyday Cult, 9/16/2021
Beth Kanell, This Ardent Flame. The Wings of Freedom, Book Two, 9/2/2021
Ann Braden, Flight of the Puffin, 8/12/2021
Liza Ketchum, The Last Garden and Begin with a Bee, 7/22/21
Brett Ann Stanciu, Unstitched: My Journey to Understand Opioid Addiction and How People and Communities Can Heal, 7/1/2021
Neil Shepard and Tamra J. Higgins Vermont Poets and Their Craft, written 2019 for American Book Review
Kevin Stone, The Onion Ring Lovers (Guide to Vermont), 5/27/2021
Kimberly B. Cheney, A Lawyer's Life to Live, 5/6/2021
Larry Olmsted, Fans: How Watching Sports Makes Us Happier, Healthier, And More Understanding, 4/8/2021
Melanie Finn, The Hare, 3/25/21
Sam Clark, The Inland Sea: A Mystery, 3/11/2021
S. Lee Manning, Trojan Horse: A Koyla Petrov Thriller, 2/4/2021
Ginny Sassaman, Preaching Happiness, 12/23/2020
Archer Mayor, The Orphan's Guilt, 11/25/2020
Daphne Kalmar, Stealing Mt. Rushmore, 11/12/2020
Scudder H. Parker, Safe as Lightning, 10/29/2020
Peter Cameron, What Happens at Night, 10/8/2020
Makenna Goodman, The Shame, 9/10/2020
Garrett M. Graff, The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11, 8/27/2020
Lisa Alther, Swan Song; An Odyssey, 8/13/2020
Sarah Stewart Taylor, The Mountains Wild, 7/16/2020
Margot Harrison, The Glare, 7/2/2020
Jay Kirk, Avoid the Day: a New Nonfiction in Two Movements, <6/18/2020/p>
Kari Lizer, Aren't You Forgetting Someone? Essays from my Mid-Life Revenge, 5/28/2020
Katherine Forbes Riley, The Bobcat, 5/14/2020
Stephen P. Kiernan, Universe of Two, 4/16/2020
Katherine Arden, Dead Voices, 4/2/2020
Claire Malcom Lintilhac, China in Another Time: A Personal Story, 3/19/2020
Julia Alvarez, Afterlife, 3/5/2020
Sam Brakeley, Skiing with Henry Knox: A Personal Journey Along Vermont's Catamount Trail, 2/20/2020
Chris Bohjalian, The Red Lotus, 1/16/2020
Tod Olson, Into The Clouds: The Race to Climb the World's Most Dangerous Mountain, 1/2/2020
Leath Tonino, The West Will Swallow You: Essays, 12/19/2019
Jon Clinch, Marley, 12/5/2019
Gary K. Meffe, The Wizard of Odd: A Vermont Tale of Community Devotion, 11/21/2019
Kristina Rodanas, Huck's Way Home, 10/31/2019
Archer Mayor, Bomber's Moon, 10/3/2019
Chris Tebbetts, Me, Myself, and Him, 10/17/2019
Howard Norman, The Ghost Clause, 9/19/2019
Bill McKibben, Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?, 9/5/2019
Dave Patterson, Soon The Light Will Be Perfect, 8/22/2019
Katherine Arden, Small Spaces, 8/8/2019
Miciah Bay Gault, Goodnight Stranger, 7/25/2019
Dr. Molly Millwood, To Have and to Hold: Motherhood, Marriage, and the Modern Dilemma, 7/11/2019
Jo Knowles, Where The Heart Is, 6/27/2019
J.C. Myers, Junkyard at No Town, 6/13/2019
Katherine Arden, The Winter of the Witch, 5/30/2019
Jennifer McMahon, The Invited, 5/16/2019
Lindsey Stoddard, Right as Rain, 4/18/2019
Christy Mihaly and Joe Cepeda, Hey, Hey, Hay! A Tale of Bales and the Machines That Make Them, 4/4/2019
Archer Mayor, Bury The Lead: A Joe Gunther Novel, 3/21/2019
Thomas Christopher Greene, The Perfect Liar, 3/7/2019
Reeve Lindbergh, Two Lives, 2/21/2019
Leath Tonino, The Animal One Thousand Miles Long: Seven Lengths of Vermont and Other Adventures, 2/7/2019
Sara Ward, Aesop Lake, 1/24/2019
Tony Whedon, Drunk in the Woods, 1/10/2019
Yvonne Daley, Going Up the Country: When the Hippies, Dreamers, Freaks, and Radicals Moved to Vermont, 12/27/2018
Bernie Lambek, Uncivil Liberties: A Novel, 12/12/2018
Simone St. James, The Broken Girls, 11/29/2018
T. Stores, Frost Heaves, 11/15/2018
Melanie Finn, The Underneath, 11/1/2018
Maria Hummel, Still Lives, 10/18/2018
Rick Winston, Red Scare in the Green Mountains: Vermont in the McCarthy Era 1946-1960, 10/5/2018
Meg Little Reilly, Everything That Follows, 9/20/2018
Ann Braden, The Benefits of Being an Octopus, 9/5/2018
Mary Kathleen Mehuron, The Opposite of Never, 8/16/2018
Sue Halpern, Summer Hours at the Robbers Library, 8/2/2018
Jessie Haas, Rescue, 7/26/2018
Kimberly Harrington, Amateur Hour: Motherhood in Essays and Swear Words, 7/12/2018
Beth Kanell, The Long Shadow, 6/16/2018
Chris Bohjalian, The Flight Attendant, 5/27/2018
Jackson Ellis, Lords of St. Thomas, 5/10/2018
Robin MacArthur, Heart Spring Mountain, 2/15/2018
Tracey Medeiros, The Vermont Non-GMO Cookbook
Robin MacArthur, Half Wild, 9/22/2016
Neil Shepard and Anthony Reczek, Vermont Exit Ramps II, 4/28/2016
Castle Freeman, Jr., The Devil in the Valley, 2/4/2016