The most common question I am asked during my book tour for Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading, is: what was your favorite book of the year? I can understand the question. For one year I read a book a…

Thrity Umrigar is a beautiful writer. Bombay Time was full of lines I still can quote to myself today, almost two years after reading them. I just finished The Weight of Heaven, which I read with my “Great Lines” book group. For our meetings we each have to…

I am off to Boston today for a reading at The Harvard Bookstore on 1256 Mass Ave in Cambridge, at 7:00 tonight. I will also be on The Emily Rooney Show on WGBH radio at noon, and on WGBH TV, on the Greater Boston show at 7:00 (in case you can’t make it to the bookstore).

In February I read and reviewed The Oracle of Stamboul by Michael David Lukas. Inspired by the beauty of its portrayal of Istanbul, I began to look for other books with Istanbul as landscape. Through a friend I discovered the marvelous mysteries…