Dena Nordstrom is on the verge of making it big as a female newscaster in 1970s New York, but she’s not dealing well with the stress of the job and some unresolved issues from her past. This was enjoyable enough. My favorite parts featured the extended family living in Elmwood Springs, Missouri. I kept reading Continue Reading…
**SPOILERS FOR SOULLESS, CHANGELESS, AND BLAMELESS** Alexia Maccon, nee Tarrabotti, is back in residence at Woolsey Castle. She’s gloriously pregnant, not very happy with the way the infant-inconvenience is trying to slow her down, and firmly resolved to keep on with her daily business as usual. When a ghost appears to her and manages to Continue Reading…
**SPOILERS FOR THE 1ST IN THE SERIES, BLISS** Rosemary Bliss feels incredibly guilty; she lost her family’s magical cookbook to her evil Aunt Lily and now everything in their hometown of Calamity Falls just feels drab. To make matters worse, Aunt Lily is everywhere Rose turns–on the TV, on the radio, and now on the Continue Reading…
Victoria McQueen, known at different times as Vic or The Brat, inadvertently discovers she has a special gift when she’s about ten years old. If she wants to find something badly enough, she can ride her Raleigh Tuff Burner bike across a rickety wooden covered bridge and find whatever she’s looking for on the other Continue Reading…
Charles Vess’s fantasy artwork has been collected in a beautiful volume. I love just about every piece of art in this book. The few that I don’t like are probably the few that are science fiction. I am not at all knowledgeable about art so I can’t write in any kind of meaningful way about Continue Reading…
Mitch Moxley hits a personal low in his mid-twenties. His career is pretty much nonexistent and he’s tired of the cold, gray Toronto winters. He starts looking for jobs overseas and stumbles on a job working for a state newspaper in China, the China Daily. He applies and lands himself a one year contract. He Continue Reading…
Jacob Portman grew up believing every word of his beloved grandfather’s fantastic stories–the levitating girl, the invisible boy, the strong children. Grandpa Portman claimed to have grown up with them all in a special orphanage in Wales. As Jake grows older though, he realizes that the stories can’t possibly be true. After Grandpa’s shocking death, Continue Reading…
When Michael Berg is 15, he has an affair with Hanna Schmitz, who is over twice his age. The affair does eventually come to an end, but their lives are intertwined afterwards. This book should have been passionate, challenging, and emotionally wrenching. But I just felt too distanced from everything. I’m trying to decide if Continue Reading…
It’s been two years since the events of The Lincoln Lawyer and Mickey Haller is not on his game. His…medical problems… at the end of the first book have left him addicted to painkillers. He’s done a stint in rehab, he’s taken time off work to get himself together, and he’s starting to think about Continue Reading…
One Monday night a month, a group of students gather in a quiet restaurant kitchen to attend The School of Essential Ingredients. Owner Lillian tells them from the beginning that she does not have a list of these “essential ingredients,” nor does she offer them recipes. “All I can say is that you will learn Continue Reading…
Dr. Spencer Black was a brilliant doctor whose career was derailed by an obsession with mythological creatures. He believed that anatomical deformities were not so much mutations as throwbacks to earlier days in the evolutionary timeline. He believed he could prove this by recreating creatures from fable and myth. If he could make them viable, Continue Reading…