Four sixty-something couples are best friends. After the families get involved together in a bad investment, the four wives see their comfortable retirement dreams float away. But when one husband dies from a freak accident, his wife collects on his million dollar life insurance and is soon living in relativeContinue Reading
I should have known after reading and so enjoying House of the Spirits decades ago that any other book by this author would feel like a letdown. Her latest novel, My Name Is Emilia del Valle, continues the saga of the del Valle family that she has written about inContinue Reading
Five college students go missing on Parents Weekend. An investigation ensues. I found this book to have too many characters to keep straight. Each of the students have parents with issues that seem almost stereotypical of these types of thrillers. The book takes almost 20% of its time explaining eachContinue Reading
Cold Burn is as much ripped from the headlines as any book I’ve ever read. It has extinct animal revivals, detrimental climate change effects, an unknown fatal disease killing everyone in its path, a malevolent rogue billionaire, and Russian hoods. The plot feels like a mix of the series writtenContinue Reading
I have a confession. I really don’t like reading historical fiction. This author, David Baldacci, is one of my favorite thriller writers so I gave Strangers in Time a chance. And I’m glad I did. Strangers in Time has an intriguing plot but it shines best with its fully fleshedContinue Reading
Murder by Cheesecake brings back the 80s friend group from The Golden Girls. In the book, they plan a wedding, try to find a date for the wedding (and life in general), and solve a murder. The jokes (and the sarcasm) are still as funny as ever. However, I didContinue Reading
Murderous trees! A truly bad day at the office! A not-so-idyllic beach! Ghosts whispering from beyond the grave! An evil mail slot! Malevolent forces are at work in The Shivers Collection of five short stories from the biggest names in horror. As with most short story collections, some stories wereContinue Reading
My Review With No Roast for the Weary we return to the Village Blend, a coffeehouse in Greenwich Village, New York City. The shop has been faltering since the pandemic. Clare, the manager, and her baristas come up with a plan to drive more traffic to their store, opening aContinue Reading
My Review In Murder Strikes a Chord, Cassidy is the owner of an event space that she inherited from her grandmother in the Blue Ridge Mountains. She also inherited her grandmother’s four sixty something friends, who work part-time for the company. This weekend is Cassidy’s first multi-weekend oldies music festivalContinue Reading
When We Were Real is an unusual book. It begins as a mashup of The Matrix and the 14th century Canterbury Tales. Seriously. But in ends as a meta look at something completely different. So even if I usually begin my reviews with a plot summary, I won’t do itContinue Reading
In Dead Post Society, house flippers and cousins, Whitney and Buck, decide to renovate an old Victorian mansion with a dark history. Forty years ago, the headmaster of a local boarding school killed his wife and then himself in the study of the home. When Whitney finds a new clueContinue Reading
While I love reading about cults, The Last Session was just too dark for me. If you have any triggers at all, this book will activate them. Unfortunately, I chose not to continue after the orgy scene that seemed to have been added more for its shock value than anyContinue Reading
Be prepared for everything from Scottish archeology to tattooing to murder in Written in Stone, book ten in the Scottish Bookshop Mystery series. Delaney is an American, who runs a bookstore in Edinburgh Scotland. Delaney’s Scottish husband, Tom, owns a nearby pub. One day Tom and Delaney are visiting aContinue Reading
Your Pasta Sucks contains multitudes. It is a very funny memoir from a self-proclaimed Italian, Irish, Mexican homosexual. It also has family recipes that have a lot of ingredients and mostly take a while to cook. Photos are rather hit and miss. Nutritional information is non-existent. Admittedly, I wouldn’t recommendContinue Reading
If you are Nobody’s Fool, pick up this pulse-pounding thriller where the jaw-dropping twists keep coming until the surprising conclusion. Sami has had a string of bad luck beginning with a college vacation in Spain that went horribly wrong. Now, someone featured in his nightmares appears in his night classContinue Reading
My Review Jessica Fletcher is a great novelist and an experienced amateur detective. She loves bicycling around her small Maine town of Cabot Cove and traveling the world. However, after almost forty years, even she has an occasional accident. In Snowy with a Chance of Murder, Jessica is on herContinue Reading