🌟🌟🌟🌟 A somewhat bittersweet look at love and abandonment, and the long and twisty road, perhaps unreachable after all, that one must follow to heal. Katerina (Kat) is a thirty-seven year old former journalist, now Manager of a bookshop/cafe in a particularly lovely area of France, -Strasbourg, on the eastern…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 A historical and cleverly-fictionalized look at the inner-life of a British Princess - Louise Caroline Alberta - born in 1848 as the sixth child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert (deceased when this story begins) - an accomplished sculptor, patron of the arts, and yes, champion of love and…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 Lewis Madigan is, or rather, was, a twenty-four year old software developer. Now Lewis, unemployed and desperate, has the dubious task of caring for Chester Wheeler, his terminally-ill and decidedly unpleasant next-door-neighbor. Chester is homophobic, mean-spirited and totally dependent on external care - a situation made all the more…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟➕ With a main protagonist calling to mind apple pie and sunshine, (still at that difficult stage, but at his essence, a gentle optimist, so clearly packaged up with love), a plot oozing with the bittersweet essence of interminably-awkward high-school ardor, and a backdrop of equal parts excruciating and heart-melting…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 A beautiful and lyrical story, with an unusual writing style and more than a hint of magic and lore. Told mainly in the first-person voice of Samuel of Cologne, Sam’s story is augmented by the journals and letters of secondary narrators, criss-crossing back and forth in time to present…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 💫 Heartwarming and cozy, like cocoa before a warm fire, this book explores the random thoughts and musings expressed by a group of actors, creatives, writers, directors and artists, (most of them with only a personal, and not professional, involvement with food) when asked to create an essay for…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 From the very start I have loved Louise Penny’s books, having read every one of them, with the joy and eagerness that comes with revisiting a special world, populated with old friends, beginning with Armand Gamache and extending to (almost) every single character who resides in Three Pines (I…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 An interesting character-based crime story - more a meandering, engaging, mystery-rich novel rather than a more typical police procedural, this book also serves to introduce DC Gabrielle Darin in the first of a series featuring Gaby and her Wales-based detective team. The story of Izzy, a twenty-something, pretty but…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 Q: What do you get when you combine the camaraderie of the gang in the Oceans Eleven series, the plotting and intrigue of a newish James Bond movie, the hard-boiled romance of an old time Humphrey Bogart flick, and the epic-action-adventure-mayhem of a Marvel comic-book? A: this latest installment…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟➕ One of my absolute favorites this year, this book is an absolute treasure - a reading experience to be cherished, and in all likelihood, revisited. A great big book, - not in volume, but in absolute capacity to charm and engage, this book held this reader captive from the…