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  1. A Dangerous Business by Jane Smiley review

    A Dangerous Business by Jane Smiley review - madams and murder. This tale of brothel workers in gold rush America lacks mystery and risk. E liza is not sorry when her husband dies. Peter Cargill ...

  2. A Dangerous Business by Jane Smiley

    A Dangerous Business by Jane Smiley. Narrated by Therese Plummer (14 hrs 15 min) Women's Fiction, Historical Fiction. Audiobook available December 6th. "From the beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning and best-selling author of A Thousand Acres: a mystery set in 1850s Gold Rush California, as two young prostitutes—best friends Eliza and Jean—follow ...

  3. Jane Smiley's 'A Dangerous Business' is an entertaining, light murder

    Knopf. Since the completion in 2015 of her ambitious multi-generational family saga, The Last Hundred Years trilogy, Jane Smiley has loosened up with two fun novels. A Dangerous Business is an ...

  4. A DANGEROUS BUSINESS

    Applying methods gleaned from a Poe story, a pair of 19th-century working girls put their heads together to fight a crime spree. This strange little book from Pulitzer Prize winner Smiley combines a lurid plot involving the serial strangulation and stabbing of prostitutes in Monterey, California, in the early 1850s with a naïve, plainspoken style of narration and characterization that makes ...

  5. 'A Dangerous Business' review: Jane Smiley's entertaining Western

    Book review. It seems odd to call a novel about prostitution and murder light, but "A Dangerous Business," Jane Smiley's umpteenth book, oddly is. In 1851, Eliza Ripple is married off to a ...

  6. Book review: 'A Dangerous Place,' by Jane Smiley

    Jane Smiley's latest is full of surprises, beginning with its premise. Smiley's new book, 'A Dangerous Business,' is a feminist take on a Western — and also a mystery novel. Review by ...

  7. A Dangerous Business by Jane Smiley: Summary and reviews

    A Dangerous Business succeeds best in its quiet focus on the nuances of Eliza's psyche and her growth as a person, which include natural revelations about how the concepts of guilt and innocence are not so clear-cut within an unequal society. When the truth of the murder case is finally revealed, it comes across as fairly anticlimactic, and ...

  8. Review: 'A Dangerous Business,' by Jane Smiley

    comment. It seems odd to call a novel about prostitution and murder light, but "A Dangerous Business," Jane Smiley's umpteenth book, oddly is. In 1851 Eliza Ripple is married off to a man who's ...

  9. 'A Dangerous Business' Review: Widow in the Wild West

    Jane Smiley's heroine is a plucky woman who finds herself in California during the Gold Rush—with a murderer to catch. Eliza McCracken doesn't want to marry Peter Cargill, the extravagantly ...

  10. Jane Smiley By the Book Interview

    Jane Smiley Wishes Readers Would Embrace More Diverse Books. "It's always tempting for readers to read novels about people like themselves," says the author, whose latest novel is "A ...

  11. Review of A Dangerous Business by Jane Smiley

    A leisurely mystery intersects with a young woman's journey to maturity in 1850s California. Jane Smiley, author of the Pulitzer-winning A Thousand Acres, among many other books, begins A Dangerous Business with an amusing note: "I would like to dedicate this novel to all the copy editors who, over many years, have steered me down the path to an understandable and readable book."

  12. Jane Smiley's new California mystery 'A Dangerous Business'

    Review. A Dangerous Business. By Jane Smiley Knopf: 224 pages, $28 If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.

  13. A Dangerous Business: A novel

    Winner of the Society of American Historians Prize for Historical Fiction A Must-Read Book in USA Today, Chicago Review of Books, Bookstr, Los Angeles Magazine, PopSugar, Crime Reads, Alta Online, AV Club • A Best Gift Book in Good Housekeeping and Vanity Fair "Compulsively readable . . . Jane Smiley has added another star to her crown as one of the great American writers for today or any day.

  14. A Dangerous Business by Jane Smiley: 9780525436089

    About A Dangerous Business. From the Pulitzer Prize-winning, best-selling author of A Thousand Acres: An amazing "mash-up of a Western, a serial-killer mystery and a feminist-inflected tale of life in a bordello" (The Washington Post).In 1850s Gold Rush California two young prostitutes, best friends Eliza and Jean, attempt to find their way ...

  15. A DANGEROUS BUSINESS

    Circe's fascination with mortals becomes the book's marrow and delivers its thrilling ending. All the while, the supernatural sits intriguingly alongside "the tonic of ordinary things.". A few passages coil toward melodrama, and one inelegant line after a rape seems jarringly modern, but the spell holds fast.

  16. A Dangerous Business: A Novel

    A Dangerous Business, Jane Smiley's new bit of historical fiction, pushes forward in a straightforward narrative rhythm that's as pared down and reductive as the standard commonplaces of her heroine's religious upbringing.As the story opens, we meet Eliza Ripple, a widow in mid-19th-century California. Eliza is also a prostitute, serving her clients with plainspoken efficiency, only ...

  17. Jane Smiley's 'A Dangerous Business' a witty Wild West murder mystery

    Jane Smiley paints such vivid imagery with her language that it's easy for her novels to conjure memories of various movies and television. Her latest, "A Dangerous Business" (Knopf, 224 pp ...

  18. All Book Marks reviews for A Dangerous Business by Jane Smiley

    Deftly blending a clever murder mystery with historical strands, Jane Smiley in A Dangerous Business offers an entrancing view of California life in the 1850s Gold Rush days ... Smiley crafts a neat tale of investigation and self-discovery, while managing to maintain a portrait of prostitution as a surprisingly kind necessity of the time.

  19. Book Marks reviews of A Dangerous Business by Jane Smiley

    A Dangerous Business achieves the goal of all worthy historical novels: opening a window to the past, forcing comparisons to the present, raising unsettling questions about how much has really changed. A Dangerous Business by Jane Smiley has an overall rating of Positive based on 18 book reviews.

  20. A Dangerous Business by Jane Smiley

    A Dangerous Business. Jane Smiley. Knopf, $28 (224p) ISBN 978--525-52033-7. Pulitzer Prize winner Smiley ( Perestroika in Paris) spins a remarkable story of the California gold rush and a pair of ...

  21. A Dangerous Business: A novel by Jane Smiley, Paperback

    Editorial Reviews. Winner of the Society of American Historians Prize for Historical Fiction A Must-Read Book in USA Today, Chicago Review of Books, Bookstr, Los Angeles Magazine, PopSugar, Crime Reads, Alta Online, AV Club • A Best Gift Book in Good Housekeeping and Vanity Fair "Compulsively readable . . . Jane Smiley has added another star to her crown as one of the great American ...

  22. A Dangerous Business: A novel: Smiley, Jane: 9780525520337: Amazon.com

    A Dangerous Business: A novel. Hardcover - Deckle Edge, December 6, 2022. From the Pulitzer Prize-winning, best-selling author of A Thousand Acres: An amazing "mash-up of a Western, a serial-killer mystery and a feminist-inflected tale of life in a bordello" (The Washington Post). In 1850s Gold Rush California two young prostitutes, best ...

  23. A Dangerous Business: A novel (Random House Large Print): Smiley, Jane

    Winner of the Society of American Historians Prize for Historical Fiction A Must-Read Book in USA Today, Chicago Review of Books, Bookstr, Los Angeles Magazine, PopSugar, Crime Reads, Alta Online, AV Club • A Best Gift Book in Good Housekeeping and Vanity Fair "Compulsively readable . . . Jane Smiley has added another star to her crown as one of the great American writers for today or any day.