Hank Phillippi Ryan

8 Fiction Books Revealing the Risk of Fame

After you read a book about a celebrity you might realize you’d never want to be a celebrity. If you read a book about fame you’d never want to be famous. Because, in books, what happens? The center of attention, the rockstar, the movie star, the influential publisher ... they…

Hank Phillippi RyanAugust 26, 2021

Fiction Listicles Thrillers

BREAKING NEWS: Books With Reporters as Main Characters

Having a journalist as the main character is good news and bad news. The good news is that it solves one of the trickiest problems in crime fiction writing: if your character is not in law enforcement of some kind (or at least a private detective) and they come across…

Hank Phillippi RyanJuly 29, 2021

Fiction Listicles

Whose Story is This? Classic Tales Cleverly Retold

You’ve heard the wry pronouncement, “There are only two plots in the world: someone takes a journey, and a stranger comes to town.” And then someone inevitably replies “That’s the same story. It all depends upon the point of view.” If there are only two stories in the universe, and…

Hank Phillippi RyanJune 17, 2021

Listicles Young Adult

The Books of Our Lives: A Stack of Reads for New Grads

I remember when my grandson was born; I showered him with books. Yes, he was maybe two hours old, but there were books I needed him to have: A Hole Is to Dig, the Edward Eager mysteries, Winnie-the-Pooh, the Narnia residents, The Snowy Day, The Dot and the Line: A Romance…

Hank Phillippi RyanMay 20, 2021

Fiction Listicles

Where History Becomes Story: 8 Tales of Wartime Bravery

It was my father’s birthday the other day. He would have been 97. And in celebrating, I thought about one encounter he and I had some years ago. We were in a friend’s home library, and Dad pulled a battered paperback volume of poetry from the shelves. “This is just…

Hank Phillippi RyanMarch 11, 2021

Fiction Listicles

When Are We? 8 Stories Featuring Dual Timelines

It’s true. It is possible to be in two places at once. It’s even possible to be in two different times at once! It’s the fascinatingly complex and incredibly revealing method used by authors in books with two separate timelines. You’ve read them — part of the book is marked…

Hank Phillippi RyanJanuary 14, 2021

Fiction Listicles

Winter Is Here: 10 Books to Transport You to a Snowier Setting

Snow is a perfect character. It’s relentless, it’s uncaring, it’s destructive, it’s basically unpredictable, and under the right circumstances, devastatingly beautiful. Without a second thought, it will bury, destroy, disturb, upset and entrap. It can soften any noise, or crash like an explosion. It can freeze a person solid. Or…

Hank Phillippi RyanDecember 17, 2020

Fiction Listicles Thrillers

A (Hotel) Room of One’s Own: 9 Books to Check in to

It’s almost as if the universe designed hotels for storytelling. Floor after floor, room after room, each one numbered like chapters. Each one populated, for some random amount of time, with people who are going somewhere, wanting something, hoping for something, escaping something. They’re private. They have weird keys that…

Hank Phillippi RyanNovember 12, 2020

Fiction Listicles Thrillers

Inside the Writing Brain: 8 Novels About Writing Novels

https://booktrib.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/meta-fiction-feat..jpg The question came to me in my admiration of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood: how does someone write novelistic nonfiction when many of the main characters are dead? How can you write a true-crime novel if you don’t know the truth? And how can you ever find it? I’ll…

Hank Phillippi RyanOctober 22, 2020

Fiction Listicles

Mother Knows Best? 12 Suspenseful Mother-Daughter Dynamics

I can’t think of toxic mother-daughter relationships without hearing Joan Crawford screech about no wire hangers! Or remember the sinister Mrs. Coulter in Philip Pullman’s brilliant novel The Golden Compass, trying to lure her daughter Lyra into giving up the precious alethiometer. (And who was Cinderella’s real mother, anyway, who…

Hank Phillippi RyanSeptember 17, 2020

Fiction Listicles

8 Books to Make You Glad You Stayed Home This Summer

You remember vacations, right? When you got to leave your home, on your own or with your darling family, and pack into a car or plane, and head for a bustling vacation destination, with gloriously crowded beaches and bustling restaurants and expeditions and adventures. Okay, so, next year, we hope. …

Hank Phillippi RyanSeptember 3, 2020

Fiction Listicles

10 Beach Books to Take You to the Beach Vicariously

You can instantly recognize a good beach book. It’s the one with the grits of sand in the binding, and translucent splotches made by Coppertone fingers turning the pages. The ones you find on the shelves of that musty-smelling summer cottage by the ocean you rented, tattered and swollen by…

Hank Phillippi RyanJuly 30, 2020

Fiction Listicles Thrillers

Are You Kidding Me? 9 Thrillers About Children Gone Wrong

There’s no question that in the pantheon of COVID heroes, parents deserve a seat at the top. All of those moms and dads who once relied on eight-hour-a-day schools or eight-hour-a-day camps to take their darlings away, even briefly. To be forced into the present day proximity and relentless home…

Hank Phillippi RyanJuly 2, 2020

Fiction

Tall Poppy Review: Another Side of WWII America in “The Last Year of the War”

The Last Year of the War (Berkley) is now available in paperback. Read on to learn more about this emotionally compelling novel of trauma and friendship. —∞— We are all curious about other people’s lives, aren’t we? That’s why photo albums are endlessly fascinating — people we know seen as…

Hank Phillippi RyanJune 25, 2020

Fiction Listicles Thrillers

8 Thrillers with Twisted Physicians You’ll Be Glad Are Fictitious

First do no harm. That’s what every new doctor swears. It’s an oath, of course, but isn’t it also … an alibi? A doctor is the only person who a victim would willingly let inject with something when they don’t know what it is, swallow whatever pills they offer, drink…

Hank Phillippi RyanJune 4, 2020

Fiction Listicles

9 of Fiction’s Worst Mothers: Aren’t You Glad You Weren’t Their Kids?

I wanted a perfect Mother’s Day selection of books, but not about perfect mothers. Because bad mothers — in fiction at least — are more intriguing. So I asked myself: What books have bad mothers? And I answered in a whispery little voice: your own. Well, that was surprising. But…

Hank Phillippi RyanMay 7, 2020

Hank Phillippi Ryan

8 Fiction Books Revealing the Risk of Fame

BREAKING NEWS: Books With Reporters as Main Characters

Whose Story is This? Classic Tales Cleverly Retold

The Books of Our Lives: A Stack of Reads for New Grads

Where History Becomes Story: 8 Tales of Wartime Bravery

When Are We? 8 Stories Featuring Dual Timelines

Winter Is Here: 10 Books to Transport You to a Snowier Setting

A (Hotel) Room of One’s Own: 9 Books to Check in to

Inside the Writing Brain: 8 Novels About Writing Novels

Mother Knows Best? 12 Suspenseful Mother-Daughter Dynamics

8 Books to Make You Glad You Stayed Home This Summer

10 Beach Books to Take You to the Beach Vicariously

Are You Kidding Me? 9 Thrillers About Children Gone Wrong

Tall Poppy Review: Another Side of WWII America in “The Last Year of the War”

8 Thrillers with Twisted Physicians You’ll Be Glad Are Fictitious

9 of Fiction’s Worst Mothers: Aren’t You Glad You Weren’t Their Kids?

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