Say My Name is an interesting blend of true crime fiction and somewhat autobiographical fiction. Clifford writes of an author who, post-divorce, has returned to his childhood home to teach a summer session at a local university. When the job falls through and two...
Normally, I avoid books by celebrities as I feel they have enough celebrity and media promotion without my adding to their aura. However, as the mother of a Black child who enjoys fantasy and science fiction, I read this anyway. I would rate this at 3.5 but rounded to...
With a teenager in the house for the first time in years, I am catching up on some young adult reading so we can talk about the books over the dinner table. Rick Riordan has been a long-term favorite in this household, so we were glad to discover a new-to-us book,...
Juris Ex Machina is a genre-bending science fiction thriller set in the distant future. The city of Arcadia exists under a dome, and all its functions are controlled by artificial intelligence. Computers have taken over so entirely that they are the “jury” that...
Virtuous Women is a complex novel of faith in a changing world. Hope Wagner is being raised in a fundamentally religious family. Her mother dies giving birth to her eleventh child, but the father refuses to seek medical attention, feeling both that physicians are...
I’ll be upfront and say I’m a long-time fan of Michael Crichton and the Jurassic Park series of books and movies. If you enjoy that sort of sci-fi/thriller, Extinction is the book for you. I read it in its entirety in one night. I simply couldn’t put it down. Erebus...
Having read most of Rick Riordan’s young adult series, I decided to switch to his adult mystery series which I started eons ago and enjoyed but somehow never finished. The Tres Navarre series includes seven books, Big Red Tequila, The Widower’s Two Step, The Last King...
In the Shadow of the Pyrenees is another of Kathryn Gauci’s impeccably researched historical fiction novels set during World War II. France has fallen to the Germans, and the Vichy government, headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain, is ruling in Germany’s name. The Maquis...
I have read all four books written by Roméo Dallaire, retired Canadian Lieutenant-General and Senator, (Shake Hands with the Devil; They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children; Waiting for First Light; and his newest, The Peace: A Warrior’s Journey. I find him to...
For those of you who might want a little more background on the Rwandan Genocide either before or after reading Hunting the Devil, I have compiled a brief background and timeline of the war and posted it here. The take-home point is that no one cared. No one wanted...
In the last year or two I’ve embarked on re-reading books by T.H. White that I read years ago as well as H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald, who turns to the guidance of T.H. White as she raises a goshawk. Long a King Arthur fan, I first read The Once and Future King (a...
All We Were Promised, a debut novel by Aston Lattimore, gives a different historical perspective on Philadelphia history. The book involves three young Black women in quite disparate levels of society. The main character, Charlotte, was named Carrie as a child and...
In Mia’s Journey, author Diane Byington creates a genre-bending novel combining science fiction, paranormal activity, and women’s fiction. Mia Gray took over her brother’s dream of becoming an astronaut after his death. She’s worked for years to be assigned to a...
I enjoyed reading Kidder’s nonfiction books, Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World and Strength in What Remains, and decided to catch up on some of his backlist. He is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author with what I feel...
Having recently read the Rick Riordan’s Heroes of Olympus series, I decided to tackle his Trials of Apollo series (which includes The Hidden Oracle, The Dark Prophecy, The Burning Maze, The Tyrant’s Tomb, andThe Tower of Nero) and found it just as enjoyable. Zeus...
I had read the short story prequel to this fantasy/paranormal/LGBTQ romance (“Witch City Rift”) which helped clarify a bit of this book and introduces some of the characters (like Remi Gatti, the villain/love interest in the male/male romance), but Rifted Hearts is...
I'm finding, as I get older, reading books that are thought-provoking or emotionally crushing (such as books on genocide) I have to read in stages. Because of the emotional discomfort The Lion Seeker brought, I started out not wanting to review it. It was painful to...
Every Living Thing is a wonderful account of two men in a competition of their own making to name every living creature on earth. They were nearly exactly contemporaries, being born only months apart—Carl Linnaeus, born May 1707, while Buffon was born in September...
I credit Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series with engendering my son’s love of reading. We read that series aloud to each other, every word, all 407,960 of them. I loved them as much as he did. He’s grown up now, but I have a youngster who loves fantasy in the house...
Daughters of Warsaw is a dual point-of-view historical fiction novel, split between the present time in Seattle and World War II Warsaw. Lizzie in the Pacific Northwest has suffered a series of miscarriages and is wallowing in self-pity and grief when she discovers...
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