Roger's Recommendations

Roger is our mild mannered office manager by day and then serves as our spirited floor manager during the evening rush. He is well versed in many subjects and is willing to assist anyone with an inquiry. Ask him for advice from Dickens to Greg Iles, from military history to art and photography. He is a native New Yorker and is also quite knowledgeable of the City's rich heritage.

The "Flashman" Novels: "Flashman", "Royal Flash", "Flash for Freedom!", "Flashman at the Charge", "Flashman in the Great Game", "Flashman's Lady", "Flashman and the Redskins", "Flashman and the Dragon", "Flashman and the Mountain of Light", "Flashman and the Angel of the Lord", "Flashman and the Tiger", and "Flashman on the March" (November 2005), by George MacDonald Fraser - The funniest, and among the most riveting, series of action novels ever written. The adventures and misadventures of a Victorian bully, cheat, lecher, liar and all-around scoundrel as he scampers and cringes his way through every military disaster of the 19th century, from Afghanistan to the Little Big Horn. How many men have had to match wits with Lincoln and Bismarck, or survived encounters with Geronimo and the murderous queen Ranavalona of Madagascar (among many others), all the while preserving a richly undeserved reputation for gallantry and decency? The action is terrific, the sex plentiful, and you will not stop laughing.

"The Winter's Tale" by Mark Helprin - A phantasmagorical saga of a master thief in New York City, which spans the last two centuries. Part fable, part historical novel, part romance, the real protagonists of this tale are time and the city itself. Terrifying and enchanting.

"The Once and Future King" by T.H. White - Just how T.H. White manages to retell the epic of King Arthur in a voice that is both medieval and contemporary is nothing short of a miracle. The book is a true original - beautifully written, and ultimately heartbreaking. One of the great novels of the English language.

"Founding Brothers: A Revolutionary Generation" by Joseph Ellis - As good an introduction as you can get to the very human, very gifted men who shaped the emerging American nation. Finely written, clear-eyed, balanced and very perceptive, with an opening - the Hamilton-Burr duel - that is spellbinding, even though you know the outcome.

"True Grit" by Charles Portis - A young girl, Mattie Ross, sets out in the Indian Territory of the 1870s to avenge her father's murder. How she does it, with the aid of the memorable Rooster Cogburn, will hold you from the very first page. Tough, funny, and scary - both the girl and the book. Like The Ox-bow Incident, more than just a great "western".

"Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles" by David Thomson - Thomson may know movies, and movie-making, better than anyone else, with the possible exception of the late Pauline Kael. He certainly writes about it with a panache that equals - and a scholarship that probably exceeds - hers. The Welles biography is as much about the old Hollywood as it is about this self-destructive genius, and Thomson makes both of them fascinating. What a life! What a talent! What a waste!

"Fugitive Pieces" by Anne Michaels - The Canadian poet's first, and as far as I know only, novel is about the aftermath of the Holocaust - the survivors, their lovers, their offspring and the only partially successful efforts (how could it be otherwise?) to get past the cataclysm of genocide, and get on with life. It reads like a prose poem.

"A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole - Too bad the author had to kill himself before he got the recognition this weird, very funny novel always deserved. The misfit characters are so offbeat, the dialogue is so deft, and the setting - New Orleans in the early '60s - is so vividly evoked, that you keep wondering as you read, can Toole keep this up? Yes, he can.

"The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love" by Oscar Hijuelos - At times this novel almost dances. Two Cuban brothers - musicians - trying to make it in post-war New York City: this is part immigrant saga and part nostalgic tribute to the early Latino music scene, richly laced with sensuality and sadness.

"Dickens: Public Life and Private Passion" by Peter Ackroyd - There was only one "the Inimitable", and this biography does the genius and his times full justice. It is fat, fast-paced, imaginative and very persuasive about the links between the man's life and his art. Dickens is all there, fascinating and infuriating, transmuting inner turmoil and limitless energy into some of the greatest novels ever written. Ackroyd brings his considerable talents as a biographer, historian and novelist to bear, with stunning results.