Books

If you know Inspector Morse only from the late John Thaw’s splendid impersonation in the BBC series shown on PBS over many seasons, you are missing the treat of reading Colin Dexter’s literate, clever novels on which the series was based.
Dexter, now 80, graduated in 1953 from Cambridge (“a city that embraced its river just as Oxford turned away from its”), taught for a decade in a lesser public (private to us) school and then in 1966 moved to Oxford’s local examination board (an organization that creates many of the United Kingdom’s standardized tests) because of increasing deafness.

When Amazon recently announced it would allow Kindle users to check out e-books at public libraries, something Nook and Sony reader owners have been able to do for some time, local Kindle readers must have been delighted to think hundreds of titles would finally be available to them at no cost.

The first thing you notice about Jennifer Donnelly is her passion. Whether you’re reading one of her novels or talking to her about them, expect the experience to be intense.
Donnelly, who lives in the Hudson Valley, will be at Oblong Books and Music in Rhinebeck, NY, Saturday, Aug. 20, at 7:30 p.m. to read from her most recent novel, “The Wild Rose.” The book is the third in a series about an English family in 1914 London.
Another thing her books all have in common is their historical backdrop.

When St. John’s Episcopal Church held its annual book sale last fall during Salisbury’s Fall Festival, organizers unexpectedly found themselves in the unique ­— and dazzling — world of rare books.
While sorting volumes in a box of ordinary contributions, Gaile Binzen noticed a pair of slipcases, each containing a Lewis Carroll book “prettily bound” in leather.
Perhaps they were worth more than the usual five dollars, and probably Dan Dwyer, owner of Johnnycake Books, would know.
And so opened a mystery and a “once-in-a-lifetime” experience for both Dwyer and St. John’s.