Fiction

A historical novel based on the known fact that Edgar Allan Poe spent part of his childhood attending an English boarding school. Poe is not the main character--that's a fictional but plausible tutor at the school--but supposedly it posits an explanation for Poe's disappearance just before his death many years later.

Purse book: Just finished "Helsinki White" by American expat Jim Thompson, an intriguing and ultimately depressing novel about racist movements in Finland and how--at least in the author's eyes--government figures and other powerful people manipulate opinion and put on a facade for the public while dealing with some of the sleazebags they supposedly deplore.