Captains Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call have retired from active duty in the Texas Rangers and tried to settle in to life as ranchers. When an old buddy shows up talking about how beautiful Montana is and how much land is available for ranching, Captain Call is seized with the idea of being the first […]
Author Mardi McConnochie imagines what the lives of the Brontë sisters would have been like if they had grown up on a remote island/penal colony off the coast of Australia. In this fictional tale, their father is the warden of the colony, paranoid to the point of madness and with a giant God-complex. He makes […]
Vida Winter is called the Charles Dickens of her age. No one has ever been able to find out the story of her life. Any reporter who tries gets a beautiful story, but still, it’s only a story. But now Vida is old and sick and she must share her story with the world. She […]
Chet and his human, Bernie, are a private investigating team. When a missing teen case comes their way, Bernie is initially reluctant to take it. He eventually does and the girl shows up under her own steam hours later. But then she goes missing for real. Bernie can just feel that something is really wrong […]
Picking up exactly where Episode 1 left off, Episode 2 finds Takeo and Kaede en route to a marriage at Lord Iida’s stronghold. Takeo is still bent on revenge and Kaede is just trying to survive this brutal world of men. There’s still a lot of potential in this series, it’s just not getting places […]
A successful WWII columnist, Juliet Ashton, has just published a collection of her popular wartime columns. But now she’s looking to write a “meatier” book, she just can’t find a topic she wants to live with throughout years of research. Then she receives a letter from Dawsey Adams, a native of Guernsey. He shares with […]
Tomasu is out wandering the mountains where his village is located, as he has countless times before, but this time when he comes back, a warlord has destroyed it and apparently killed all the inhabitants. Tomasu makes his escape after embarrassing the warlord and earning his eternal enmity. A kind stranger on the trail Tomasu […]
4 Stars. As with almost any anthology, there were stories that I loved and some that just didn’t do anything for me. I was a little afraid that it would start to get depressing (star-crossed love just doesn’t sound happy, now does it?) but there was a good balance of happy and sad endings. Favorite story: “Hurt Me” by […]
4 Stars. I loved this book. I met author Pamela Duncan at a book festival a few years ago and just chattered away at her. I never do that. I’m usually all tongue-tied at author signings and rarely get out more than “Please” and “Thank you.” But it just felt like she was one of my kind of people and so I rattled on while she […]
On a dark and stormy night in 1968, a widow is alone at home, as she usually is. She hears a knock on her door. She isn’t expecting anyone, but, these being simpler times in many ways, she answers anyway. A young black man and white woman are outside, drenched, in obvious need of help. […]
To summarize for those who don’t know, this is an epic poem, part of a greater poem called The Divine Comedy. Dante the Poet travels through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise at the behest of his dead true love, Beatrice. His guide for his tour of Hell is the great Roman poet, Virgil. This was tough. […]