Morris has a good time weaving his tale of vice and squalor in 1860s Russia, and your appreciation of his handiwork will depend on your fondness for the sort of ventriloquized fiction in which a writer dons the voice and manners of another culture, another century.
In "Séance," he has a good, spooky tale to work with — a medium and her husband kidnap a child in the hope of using the crime to reveal her divinatory talents — but the noirish element gets swallowed up in endless stretches of frothy, ersatz-Bernstein lyricism.
Happily, Mr. Posner, a former Wall Street lawyer, has a good ear for tales, tall or otherwise.
But upstart producers in Syria and Dubai, among other places, are catching up.In this section When not imploding is not enough Hunger and terror Come and have a good time Time for tall tales on television The villagers hemmed in ReprintsThis year's diversity of Ramadan fare is more bewildering than ever.
The rump of the ARS, led by the former Somali army colonel, Hassan Dahir Aweys, says it will sign a ceasefire only if the Ethiopians go.In this section When not imploding is not enough Hunger and terror Come and have a good time Time for tall tales on television The villagers hemmed in ReprintsEven then, the Islamic Courts' former military wing, known as the Shabab (meaning Youth), would fight on.
According to "The Liar's Tale," for example, Immanuel Kant has a good deal to answer for.
When an author announces he is writing a trilogy of books just so it can contain his full story, one's first thought is it had better be a good tale to stretch over that length.
"There's an Irish word called seanachai, which means storyteller, and it derives from this tradition of Irish people having the ability to tell a good tale," Ms. Hughes said.
