I’m a BIG Michael Connelly fan. Recently, I have enjoyed 2020’s Law of Innocence, (he latest “Lincoln Lawyer” novel featuring Mickey Haller) and Fair Warning (with Jack McEvoy from The Poet and Scarecrow books), but have been eagerly awaiting more of Detective Renee Ballard, introduced in 2017’s The Late Show. The strong female protagonist always …
Last year, I read and reviewed Snow by John Banville, and it was a solid five-star read for me. In fact, I said “I need to read more John Banville books!” So I was happy to receive April in Spain from Harlequin/Hanover Square Press and NetGalley in exchange for this honest review. The protagonist, Quirke, …
Elin Hilderbrand is well-known for being the “queen of beach reads.” Titles like Summer of ‘69, 28 Summers, Trouble in Paradise…you get the idea. Every once in a while, I want something escapist, pretty much guaranteed to have a happy ending, and NOT focused on any of the current “issues” that are like a tsunami …
True friends?. They are the kind of people you can pick up the phone at 3 am, tell them you need help, and they will JUST SHOW UP. No questions, you know you can count on them. That’s part of the premise of Kimberly McKreight’s Friends Like These, in which 5 long-time friends from college …
I’ve been a member of WeightWatchers (now known as WW) off and on for longer than I want to realize, so I was looking forward to reading The Shift by Gary Foster, PhD. With any book about weight loss, I always want to know about the author — who they are and whether they have …
Paula Hawkins, best known for Girl On The Train and Into The Water, now gives us A Slow Fire Burning. Thanks to Penguin Group Riverhead and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for this honest review of a book I was REALLY looking forward to as an escape from the news of the day… The …
I consider myself a halfhearted fan of William Kent Krueger: I enjoyed both Ordinary Grace and This Tender Land (https://littorallibrarian.org/this-tender-land-by-william-kent-krueger/). But the only one in the beloved Cork O’Connor series I had read was Iron Lake, so when I received a copy of Lightning Strike from Atria Books and NetGalley in exchange for an honest …
The Turnout sounded so good: the story of Dara and Marie Durant, dancers since they were tiny ballerina wannabes. Growing up, they were both homeschooled and trained as dancers by their mother, who founded the Durant School of Dance, along with Dara’s husband Charlie, a former star ballet student of their mother’s. Dara is the …
I’m kind of a big fan of thrillers, female-in-distress genre in particular. So I was super happy to receive a copy of Dark Roads by Chevy Stevens, author of Still Missing, Never Let You Go, and other equally entertaining books. It tells the story of women killed along the highway in British Columbia, and features …
Publication Date June 15, 2021 Nathan Harris has written an amazing debut novel. The Sweetness of Water is set in a fictional Georgia town during the Reconstruction period just after the Civil War ended, with the main characters being a land-owning family and two brothers, recently freed from the neighboring plantation. George and Isabelle Walker …
Adam Serwer is a staff writer at The Atlantic, focused on politics, race, and justice. Like many Americans, I have spent much of the last five years reeling as we saw the kind of President we had and the America we were becoming. I admit I waver between being so freaked out by the news …
A couple of years ago, I listened to to the Dirty John podcast. Having grown up in Orange County and having known more than a few people like Debra Newell and her daughters, I was totally drawn in to the story of the uber-rich woman who had made tons of money as an interior designer …