Let’s start the week off with another bargain find on Amazon: Method 15/33 by Shannon Kirk is a steal at 99 cents. It’s a decent read, pretty quick, and has some surprising twists. In Method 15/33 a girl is kidnapped and held for some unknown (at least for a while) purpose. But instead of panicking and dissolving into tears and… Read more
How could you resist a title like this? Something’s Alive on the Titanic by Robert J. Sterling is one of the bargain books I picked up for fun over the past weeks. The title got my attention but, to be honest, my expectations weren’t terribly high. However, I was pleasantly surprised by a book that was well-researched and a fun… Read more
One of the things I’ve been doing lately is scrolling through the free Kindle books at Amazon. There are some interesting titles for $1 or less! It’s a great way to get to know new authors. There are also a lot of free books — most of them are the first title in a series. It’s a sneaky way to… Read more
This was a difficult book to read, but I’m going to be recommending it to everyone. My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell is a story of sexual abuse and what it does to the victim, even when the victim does not want to acknowledge it. Vanessa Wye attends the Browick School, a boarding school in Maine. She struggles, she’s… Read more
I got a pile of review copies from the nice folks at Harper Collins and the timing was perfect! I was really in the mood for some new books and ready to get through to the end. Knowing my favorite genres, I started with The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley — it was a quick, engaging read, and just what I… Read more
I love Nero Wolfe. I own every single Nero Wolfe mystery, either in hardcover or (sometimes crumbling) paperback — at least the ones by Rex Stout. (Note: I hated the TV series. I thought it was a terrible interpretation of the characters.) I love the books, I can quote many of Wolfe’s best lines — I even have The… Read more
The blurb on the front of the book says it all: A contract killer, a detective, and a transgender sex worker: an unlikely team fighting crime and corruption in contemporary Athens. Athenian Blues by Pol Koutsakis is kind of a buddy story – three good friends, solving a murder. One, Drag, is a cop – a brusque homicide detective who is… Read more
I saw a documentary a few years ago called The Imposter. In it, French con-man Frédéric Bourdin impersonates a boy from Texas who went missing when he was 13 years old. I wondered what would make a person do something so awful – torture a family who had already been through so much. In Only Daughter by Anna Snoekstra, we get a glimpse into that… Read more
The Dark Side by Anthony O’Neill is possibly the most fun bit of sci-fi I’ve read in ages. I laughed a lot, cringed a little, and found a whole new set of rules to live by – The Brass Code. The Brass Code is invoked by an evil, amnesiac android named Leonardo Black. Some of my favorites: Don’t take.… Read more
What if the apocalypse came and you didn’t even notice? What if you were camping in the Canadian wilderness or on walkabout in the Australian Outback and you didn’t know that the aliens had landed? What if you were up at your cabin by the lake and you couldn’t understand why no one was picking up their phones? In The Last… Read more