Book Reviews
Book Review: Don’t Speak by J. L. Brown.

Book Review: Don’t Speak by J. L. Brown.

Written in 2015 and independently published in 2016, Don’t Speak (Jade Harrington series, book # 1) reflects the political scene in America at that time. This thriller has a female, Whitney Fairchild, running for president against a conservative male incumbent whose...

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Book Review: Pride of Eden

Book Review: Pride of Eden

Pride of Eden, released March 17, 2020 by St. Martin's Press, is a gritty book inhabited by even-grittier characters. Author Taylor Brown pulls together a diverse cast of mostly-unlikable characters. Anse Caulfield is a Vietnam vet and retired racehorse jockey. He is...

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Book Review: What’s Left Untold

Book Review: What’s Left Untold

Two girls with totally opposite personalities, Anna and Lia, find an unlikely friendship in high school, one that survives even their interest in the same boys. They have a falling out in college—and Lia walks out of Anna’s life without further word. That event...

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Book Review: Remaining Aileen by Autumn Lindsey

Remaining Aileen is author Autumn Lindsey’s debut novel. Lindsey provides new nuances to vampire lore as she twists women’s fiction and vampire paranormal to produce a unique blend that is at times light-hearted and at others vampire-dark. It's a Twilight meets soccer...

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Review: Queen of the Owls by Barbara Linn Probst

Review: Queen of the Owls by Barbara Linn Probst

Barbara Linn Probst’s debut novel, Queen of the Owls, is stunning: gorgeous prose highlighting a book about creativity, seeing and being seen. As a former photographer and artist, this book has everything needed to intrigue me: Georgia O’Keeffe, Alfred Steiglitz,...

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Book Review: American Dirt

Book Review: American Dirt

American Dirt has been mired in so much controversy, I almost didn't read it. In the end, though, curiosity pulled me in so I could make up my own mind. The #MeToo and the #OwnVoices movements have caused a fundamental shift in America and in American literature. As a...

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Book Review: If She Had Stayed by Diane Byington

Book Review: If She Had Stayed by Diane Byington

If She had Stayed is Ms. Byington’s sophomore book and was such a joy to read I whizzed through it in one sitting. She successfully blends women’s fiction with time travel while fan-girling over scientist Nikola Tesla. Kaley Kline, a mid-thirties woman, having never...

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Book Review: The Unexpected Spy

Book Review: The Unexpected Spy

Tracy Walder’s The Unexpected Spy: From the CIA to the FBI, My Secret Life Taking Down Some of the World's Most Notorious Terrorists is her memoir of her years as a counterterrorism officer in the CIA and a special agent in the FBI in the post-911 world. She makes it...

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Book Review: Chanel’s Riviera

Book Review: Chanel’s Riviera

Per the author, Anne de Courcy, this book (Chanel's Riviera: Glamour, Decadence, and Survival in Peace and War, 1930-1944) isn't intended to be a definitive biography of Coco Chanel. It is more of a biography of a place—the French Riviera—before and during the Second...

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Book Review: You Can See More from Up Here by Mark Guerin

Book Review: You Can See More from Up Here by Mark Guerin

I was captivated by Mark Guerin's You Can See More From Up Here from the first sentence. The relationships in reporter Walker McGuire’s life are gradually amped up in an engaging way as is the suspense. The reader has ample opportunity to bond with each character as...

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Book Review: All the Silent Voices by Elena Mikalsen

Book Review: All the Silent Voices by Elena Mikalsen

This is author Elena Mikalsen’s third book, and with each her prose has tightened. Here, she draws upon her experience as a psychologist. Her protagonist, college student Emma, has been raped, beaten, and left for dead by a football player. She is forced from school...

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Book Review: The Disharmony of Silence by Linda Rosen

Book Review: The Disharmony of Silence by Linda Rosen

The Disharmony of Silence, released March 5, 2020 by Black Rose Writing, authored by Linda Rosen shows how secrets affect families through future generations. She tells the dual stories of Lena and Carolyn through alternating time lines separated by eighty-plus years....

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Book Review: Writers & Lovers by Lily King

Book Review: Writers & Lovers by Lily King

Lily King’s Writers & Lovers is an extraordinary novel. As a writer I appreciated King’s efforts at capturing the life of a writer; they seem genuine as she describes the difficulty of putting words on a page in a meaningful way. This is King’s fifth novel and...

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Book Review: The Sinful Scot

Book Review: The Sinful Scot

Though The Sinful Scot is the third book in Maddison Michaels’s Saints and Scoundrels series, it can be read as a standalone novel.  Connie is raised to marry a man chosen by her parents, one most likely to elevate the family status. Unfortunately, the duke they...

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