I’ve had a good run of books that I’ve liked at least somewhat, and often quite a lot, the last couple months. This one, while certainly not terrible, is one I just can’t say that I enjoyed overall. Nonetheless, the author (a Brit and a best-selling writer on both sides of the Atlantic) clearly has […]
Read more "BOOK REVIEW: Insomnia"This charming, episodic memoir focuses on family life, parenthood, and facing up to the fact that, no matter how much you may want to, nobody can completely protect their loved ones from the world’s threats–including illness and eventual death. If that thumbnail description makes the book sound like a downer overall, rest assured it isn’t. […]
Read more "BOOK REVIEW: Bomb Shelter: Love, Time, and Other Explosives"One of the finest crime novelists of our time and a frequent best-selling author, Don Winslow launches a violent yet thoughtful and quite compelling new trilogy with City On Fire. This epic tale takes its cues from Homer’s Iliad and Virgil’s Aeneid in its portrayal of loyalty, betrayals and an obsessive, even twisted code of […]
Read more "BOOK REVIEW: City On Fire"This fairly interesting first novel marks the beginning of a new, food-oriented cozy series. Willa Bauer recently moved to Yarrow Glen, a picturesque small town in Sonoma Valley, California. She left the family farm up in Oregon several years back to pursue her passion–very nearly an obsession–with cheese and cheese-making. She had jobs all over […]
Read more "BOOK REVIEW: Cheddar Off Dead"Marie Benedict has made a significant, indeed a best-selling, literary career by doing fictionalized books about the real lives of historically important yet lesser known women. In this case, the author follows the frustrating, too brief yet gloriously productive career of Rosalind Franklin. A brilliant English scientist, she did the painstaking and vital research that […]
Read more "BOOK REVIEW: Her Hidden Genius"Easter Bonnet Murder by Leslie Meier (Cozy Mystery Novel, 2022). Leslie Meier has published a great many cozy mysteries, this one being the 28th in the series centered on the coastal community of Tinker’s Cove in Maine and Lucy Stone. A wife and mother of three grown or nearly grown children, Stone works part time […]
Read more "BOOK REVIEW: Easter Bonnet Murder"Often funny, always insightful and, in the end, profoundly moving, this novel uses the trope about an adult waking up to find herself inhabiting a much-younger version of her to reveal great truths about family love, understanding and final acceptance (even the embracing) of the inevitable. About to turn 40, Alice’s life is (on balance) […]
Read more "BOOK REVIEW: This Time Tomorrow"In a book described as Burke’s most autobiographical to date, the author’s protagonist is aging novelist Aaron Holland Broussard. It’s the latest novel in the Holland Family series, but as always complete unto itself. Aaron’s never married, middle aged daughter Fannie Mae has died suddenly and he’s heartbroken. To honor her memory, he embarks on […]
Read more "BOOK REVIEW: Every Cloak Rolled in Blood"This is the third book in Krentz’s Fogg Lake Trilogy, about a weird little, psychic energy-drenched town in the Rocky Mountains and people connected to it. But the book is completely understandable and enjoyable if you haven’t read the previous two (I haven’t). The way books are marketed can be a bit deceptive and any […]
Read more "BOOK REVIEW: Lightning in a Mirror"
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