Snoopy: Boogie Down is a collection of veteran Peanuts strips marketed to the middle grades. It’s not just Snoopy. All the gang is here: Charlie Brown, Lucy, Sally, Peppermint Patty and even Snoopy’s brother Spike at the way from Needles. The comics were selected to appeal to the middle gradesContinue Reading
She Wants It is a Hollywood film and television memoir by Jill Soloway. Jill is the writer/director of Amazon’s Transparent. Transparent is based on Jill’s real life. Jill’s father was depressed and a mostly absent workaholic father during her childhood. After Jill and her sister, Faith, went to college, theirContinue Reading
A Gift of Bones is a good small town private investigator cozy mystery. Eve is days away from giving birth when she disappears. A ransom demand is sent to her cousin. Private investigator, Sarah Booth Delaney, and her partner, Tinkie, are hired to find the missing woman. The missing woman’sContinue Reading
From Mary Shelley’s 1818 book to The Munsters and beyond, the Vault of Frankenstein is an extensively researched look at the impact of a single book published 200 years ago. “Only Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan and Dracula have appeared more often in media than Frankenstein’s monster.” Not bad for a nineteen-year-oldContinue Reading
A multitude of suspects fills Nantucket Counterfeit, an enjoyable merging of a cozy setting with a police procedural. Horst Refn is the Artistic Director of the Nantucket Theater Lab. He is a ladies man and a possible blackmailer. Worse, he is found face down in his basement’s chest freezer—frostbitten andContinue Reading
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Seek is a continuation of the famous Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide. We are obviously playing Hide and Seek. Attorney Utterson is set to inherit Dr. Jekyll’s substantial estate after the doctor is missing a full seven years. Two weeks prior to his inheriting, a personContinue Reading
An interesting character study of a lonely police detective forced to retire. The Darkness is another character as is the beautiful isolation of Iceland. Hulda is 64. She is dreading retiring to her lonely apartment when her superior tells she has been replaced effectively in two weeks. He allows herContinue Reading
A true crime memoir that reads like a thriller! The takedown of the notorious street gang, MS-13, is described in Operation Devil Horns. “A special agent is never—ever—off duty.” MS-13 expanded from El Salvador throughout Central America to Los Angeles and finally San Francisco’s Mission District. Local cops were unableContinue Reading
Claw the System: Poems from the Cat Uprising is a short book filled with luscious cat photos and poems written by extremely upset cats. Cats have a four stage plan for their uprising: recognize, resist, revolt and rebuild. Each stage has a chapter filled with at least ten poems andContinue Reading
In Be Our Ghost, Kate and her grandmother, Liza, run a bed and breakfast in coastal Oregon. When a local businessman is found dead, they investigate to exonerate a local business owner. Soon they are uncovering oodles of secrets in this fine cozy mystery. Norman wants to open a largeContinue Reading
The wild wild West is alive and well high above Palm Springs in the Mojave Desert. Low Life in the Desert tells the allegedly true tale of Pioneertown in the early noughties. David, an Australian journalist, moves to Los Angeles to be with his girlfriend, Boo, who is writing aContinue Reading
The Witch Elm was an acceptable family drama but not much of a thriller. Toby is a lucky privileged jerk. His girlfriend, Melissa, is a sweet bubblehead. After celebrating his ability to talk his way out of a possibly career-ending mistake at work, Toby goes home. There he surprises twoContinue Reading
All kinds of lunches, dinners and holiday meals are included in Simply Bento. This cookbook includes Japanese, sandwich, noodle, rice and sushi bento recipes. It has a full chapter featuring vegan bento recipes and another for low carb bento. Each entree’s recipe comes with suggestions for side dishes and aContinue Reading
Light and easy cozy mystery set in the world of talent agent, Kay, who provides animal actors to television and film productions. Bird, Bath and Beyond is a nice afternoon’s entertainment with no graphic violence or language. Celebrity parrot, Barney, is the sole witness to the death of television star,Continue Reading
A killer is stalking Wheatfield, a miracle is seen at the local church and Virgil Flowers is on the case in Holy Ghost. The mayor of tiny Wheatfield Minnesota was selected as a joke. However, he and his teenage partner come up with a con that might just save theContinue Reading
Melding hard-boiled noir with a post-Facebook breach world is a brilliant idea. When nothing is private, the world’s only choice is to turn to Analog Volume 1. In 2023, Jack is a Ledger Man, a paper jockey hired to move confidential papers from place to place. He also literally brokeContinue Reading