The Polly Klaas kidnapping and murder in California was thirty years ago, but is still known today as the event that changed how the criminal justice system responds in child abduction cases. Kim Cross documents the aftermath of the Klaas kidnapping alongside the actions of investigators, police, and the FBI in her new book In Light of All Darkness. It was 1993 and 12-year-old ... Read More...
Belgravia by Julian Fellowes
I decided to leave the gloom of October behind and start November with an uncomplicated, lovely novel that opens in a time that seems quiet to us, but was tumultuous for those living it. The novel is Belgravia and it begins with a very real event, the Duchess of Richmond’s ball in Brussels in 1815. In history, this glamorous event, attended by some of the highest aristocrats ... Read More...
The Light Pirate
Frida’s baby isn’t due for another month, but as Wanda, a Cat 4 hurricane, bears down on the family’s home in a small Florida town she decides to make her entrance to the world. To mark the event Frida names her Wanda, hoping the storm’s power and strength will manifest in her daughter. What she can’t know is the full impact the hurricane will have on all their lives. The Light ... Read More...
Fun Summer Reading
Hello, lovely readers! Remember me? Remember fun? Let's pretend I'm sitting on a chaise relaxing by the lake in this photo. Ha. I survived the 2,200 mile drive from Ann Arbor, but am now ensconced in a utilitarian, extended stay hotel that is to put it kindly, dreary. My poor husband tries to manage Zoom calls at 5am with me sleeping in bed 3’ away. The fire alarm went ... Read More...
June Reading Wrap-Up
What an odd month June has turned out to be. Partly summer and partly more spring with lots and lots of rain—the kind we usually get in April and May. We traveled at the beginning of the month so that felt weird and then I hit a hard reading slump that was only cured by true crime nonfiction. Here are the highs and lows. I wasn’t a real-time fan of Friends ... Read More...
What’s Mine and Yours
In Piedmont, North Carolina in the 1990s two women are faced with raising young children on their own. Jade and her son Gee are Black while Lacey May and her three daughters are White. Both are living on the same edge of desperation, but in What’s Mine and Yours each responds to her circumstances in very different ways. Ways that come to clash a decade later, when despite it ... Read More...
