When three members of my family rave about a novel, I really don’t have much choice but to read it, which is how I found myself immersed in the early days of WWII with a young Ukrainian sniper. A female sniper fighting on the front lines in Kate Quinn’s propulsive The Diamond Eye. Lyudmila Pavlichenko is still a teen and a single mother when Hitler invades Russian ... Read More...
Margo’s Got Money Troubles
Margo is 19 and languishing at community college when she is swept into an affair with a married professor. She ends up pregnant and decides to have the baby. What follows in Margo’s Got Money Troubles is a story and characters that are frustrating, quirky, and endearing. Let’s jump right into the frustrating. My pragmatic nature trampled my romantic side decades ago so a ... Read More...
The Gown: A Novel of the Royal Wedding
The euphoria felt in England at the end of World War II was slowly replaced by the realities of an eviscerated economy and the continued need for rationing. The engagement of the much-loved Princess Elizabeth to a dashing naval officer and prince was a ray of sunshine for a worn-out country. And for any woman who’s ever dreamed of a wedding what could be more ... Read More...
River East, River West
In the search for fiction that takes me out of my own experiences Aube Rey Lescure’s River East, River West was just what I wanted. Alva and her mother Sloan have always been partners, the two of them against the world. A daunting task made even more so by the fact that they live in Shanghai. Sloan is white and Alva is bi-racial from a long-gone Chinese father. While her mother ... Read More...
My 8 Favorite Books of 2023
Finally! Let’s talk reading again, specifically my favorite books of 2023 so we can move onto what lies ahead in 2024. It was an interesting year in that I don’t remember another time when I had this many 5-star nonfiction books. I’m not even sure I’ve ever read so much great nonfiction in one year (and I’m too lazy to go back and check)! Somehow, 2023 came ... Read More...
Kill Show: A Novel
Sara Parcell is a teenager and gifted violinist who disappears on what seems to be an ordinary day. Within days her case goes national, coming to the attention of an ambitious reality TV show producer desperate to do something bigger than dating competition shows. To that end she reaches out to Sara’s parents to follow her abduction in real-time as a TV documentary. This is the ... Read More...
