It’s always fun to spend time with Meg and her family and friends especially at Christmas time. In Rockin’ Around the Chickadee, Meg’s house is strangely quiet because her sister-in-law, Delaney, is on bedrest for her pregnancy. She is staying in Meg’s dining room with her husband, and Meg’s brother,Continue Reading
You Better Watch Out combines a slasher movie “why me?” atmosphere with a classic locked room mystery that will have fans of both cheering. Seriously, I loved it! Greg wakes up in a strange 1950s version of a town with no memories of how he got there. He quickly findsContinue Reading
What causes a horror manga author to get into horror? In Uncanny: The Origins of Fear, we see (through vivid drawings) that it started with an outdoor toilet. The book is largely text but does include a few illustrations too. It begins as Junji Ito’s autobiography written in first person.Continue Reading
My Review Nothing gets me in the Christmas spirit quite so well as a trip to Murder She Wrote’s Cabot Cove, Maine. Jessica is expecting A Killer Christmas, what with her nephew, his wife, and their adorable son coming to visit. However, Christmas is a killer this year in moreContinue Reading
Puzzle Me Twice is a fun, and humbling, ride through your preconceptions! Even though the author warns you that these puzzles are tricky and should be examined carefully, I got 90% of them wrong. And I thought the Mensa test was easy. I’m not a stupid person so why couldn’tContinue Reading
Agatha Raisin is doing everything but Killing Time in this whirlwind of a cozy mystery. There is a murder, an assault, burglaries, death threats, a bombing, attempted kidnappings and more on Agatha’s plate. There is even a Mallorca retreat with her new boyfriend. On top of everything, Agatha has agreedContinue Reading
Newlyweds Nicola and Anton know that death is always lurking nearby. Her cystitis fibrosis is already overdue to kill her. However, neither expect the auto accident that kills Anton first. His final words to her, “I’ll Be Waiting for you”. Nicola misses Anton desperately and goes to medium after mediumContinue Reading
I adored the first quarter of I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom. The plot of a loser paid $200K to move a girl with a box labeled radioactive across country and the various online trolls and redditors “interpreting” found social media images of the pair isContinue Reading
Despite being about two serial killers’ exploits, The Serial Killer Guide to San Francisco is actually a very pleasant cozy mystery. Its setting in San Francisco is used almost like another main character so it is part travelogue too. Capri owns a small business running tours featuring famous movie sitesContinue Reading
Where I End is scarily not politically correct. The bedridden mother is called a bed-thing and treated as a soulless burden. The protagonist is called a soul-stench but casually mentions her many rapes as a child by the repulsed but sexually aroused island men. The book’s entire mood is distasteful.Continue Reading
Nature has created some wild things and Atlas Obscura: Wild Life describes them all! From heavy metal vultures called lammergeiers to the Himalayas’ Noble Rhubarbs, these living beings are fascinating to read about. The lammergeier wears “KISS-worthy eye masks”, eats skeletons and loves to dye themselves blood red. The NobelContinue Reading
Hmmm, well there wasn’t much in this book about The Gangs of Zion, other than that they exist. Instead this is a rather pompous autobiography about a black cop in a gang unit in Salt Lake City, Utah in the 1990s. In Utah, being black was unusual and being aContinue Reading
Have you ever wondered how artists, writers or other creative types begin their creative journey? How do they continue from the bare idea to the final product? Most importantly, how do they know they are done? The Work of Art lets forty-three creatives speak in their own words about theirContinue Reading
Here One Moment begins with a great setup. An elderly woman arises from her seat in a plane and calmly tells everyone in her section their age and manner of death. Who is the woman and why did she do such an extraordinary thing? How will the predictions impact theContinue Reading
Everything you want to know about the new AI chatbots and the creators behind them are detailed in Supremacy. The book begins with the biographies of OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, and DeepMind CEO, Demis Hassabis. Both begin with altruistic views of saving, or at least, helping, mankind. But the massiveContinue Reading
It’s 1983 in a small town in Northern Iceland. A nurse arrives early to her job and finds her boss dead and seemingly tortured on a desk. The police arrest the sanatorium’s caretaker but don’t have enough evidence to hold him. The case is never solved but the subsequent suicideContinue Reading