I’ve not previously read Anne Tyler, though she’s published 23 super popular novels.  Three times nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Her 2020 book is Redhead by the Side of the Road.

A slow paced, entertaining slice of life.

Micah … runs Tech Hermit and runs around the neighbourhood fixing computer problems for old ladies who – and you’d be right to bet Tyler mines this for full comic potential – don’t know what a modem is or does. …

He lives rent-free, alone, keeps to himself and sticks to a routine “etched in stone”: Friday is vacuuming day, Monday floor-mopping, and so on. Even his relationship with his “restful to look at” teacher girlfriend has, by his own admission, “solidified”. …

Micah’s peaceful life gets blown up.

Guardian Review

Larson’s true-crime historical non-fiction 2006 book is excellent.

I loved learning about technology of the day. This time the early 1900s.

Guglielmo Marconi, the young Italian entrepreneur. Often credited as the inventor of radio. He shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics. He had no training in physics. And was a jerk.

Hawley Harvey Crippen, who murdered his overbearing wife and fled Britain with his mistress, unaware that Scotland Yard was hot on his heels. Nice guy — aside from the murder

The two men never met, yet their interacting stories make up this tale.

The climax occurs during a trans-Atlantic chase which, thanks to the miracle of Marconi’s invention, was followed by millions of people around the world—with Crippen and his mistress completely unaware.