Every great book breaks rules. Dwarves, child prodigies, murder victims, they’ve all narrated our treasured classics. And one day Rana Dasgupta’s “Solo’’ will be spoken of with the same hushed reverence. It is a magical, heartbreaking book full of occult wisdom and lyrical grace. A book about how we never stand outside history; and yet how we must see ourselves in that way to live. No one understands this conumdrum better than the book’s one-hundred-year-old Bulgarian hero, whose life story consumes the first half of the story.
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How about Ghosts on the Red Line, the new novel by Peter David Shapiro? It's a different kind of ghost story that explores what happens when commuters on Boston's Red Line report seeing people whom they know have died. The MBTA hires a consultant to find the cause of these strange events. A prominent psychic becomes involved, along with the Archbishop of Boston, members of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, MIT researchers, Cambridge police, and a notorious gangster, all pursuing their own agendas. Ghosts on the Red Line is generating good buzz from readers ("imaginative, strange account" "good read" "lots of Boston color" "compelling storyline"). In a nice bit of circularity, the book is now being advertised on posters in Red Line train cars. It's in paperback and eBook formats at Amazon and BarnesAndNoble.com. The fact that I wrote Ghosts on the Red Line has absolutely nothing to do with my recommending that you check it out.