The game in Sunburn begins in a small dead-end town in Delaware when Polly and Adam meet at the only bar/restaurant. Both are staying across the street in a ratty motel, but why are they there? Author Laura Lippman doesn’t waste time in giving us the details: Adam is there for Polly and Polly is there to get away from a tedious marriage and a toddler she doesn’t want to raise ... Read More...
The Woman in the Window
After a traumatic accident, Dr. Anna Fox is homebound, crippled by agoraphobia. She and her husband are separated and due to her condition, their young daughter lives with him. In this day and age, with the internet and home delivery of virtually anything needed to sustain life, Anna doesn’t find it to be as devastating as one might expect. She can indulge her love of old ... Read More...
May Reading Recap
To call this month’s reading recap a mashup is an understatement. It could also be the library checkout recap or even the non-fiction recap—which is huge because I’m virtually certain I’ve never read more than one non-fiction book a month, much less four. And on all kinds of subjects! But there you have it. May also turned out to be another monster month for how much I ... Read More...
The Women in the Castle
At a German estate in 1938 a summer party turns serious when a group of men discuss their determination to stop Hitler from his ascent to power. Marianne von Lingenfels is the wife of the group’s leader and she makes a promise to take care of the wives and children of the men in the group if they die in their efforts to stop Hitler. They do fail in their assassination ... Read More...
It’s Not You, It’s Me: Mini-Reviews
Back for the first time in 2017, it's the It's Not You, It's Me review extravaganza. All right, maybe not an extravaganza, but I do have two books I read recently that did not ring my bell but might be just right for other readers. Parallel stories of family, art, and loss are at the center of Ellen Umansky’s new novel, The Fortunate Ones. In the present, ... Read More...
News of the World
Jefferson Kidd is a reader. Not like you or me, but an elderly, retired Army captain who earns his living by riding through Northern Texas in 1870, stopping in towns to read the major newspapers to the townspeople. His is a solo act until he meets a man in Wichita Falls who has recovered a little girl kidnapped four years ago by the Kiowa Indians after they killed her ... Read More...
