🌟🌟🌟💫 Based in and around Portland, Oregon, this legal thriller is peppered with several plot twists, a central and darkly terrible crime, a bevy of suspicious characters, and a long and circuitous road that may or may not lead to justice. Charlie Webb is an average guy, and an equally…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 Unusual and gripping, this made-for-teens story is the start of a new series by one of my favorite (adult mystery) authors. In this new genre, we meet Hannah Armstrong, a strangely-gifted fourteen-year-old, who has the ability to hear other’s thoughts, in the form of “whispers”, which are often chaotically…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 A stunning collection of short stories, told across decades and spanning New Zealand and Canada, each centering on one of a small group of loosely-connected women that have crossed paths, although their stories are told here individually. With incredible fineness the author slices through these literary lives, each story…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 A raw and powerful memoir, a story of a life lived with trauma, written by an author who is very well known for her fiction, and who cannot resist playing a trick or two on the reader, beginning with her identification as a perhaps inevitably “unreliable” narrator. The author’s…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 Like a giant ball of fluffy wool, this absolutely delightful read will tangle you up completely, so sweetly snug you will want to stay more than a while. Written to take place over a three-day period, this book is narrated in the first-person voice of Gail Baines, a sixty-one…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 Wow. Layered with so many velvety bands of literary texture and nuance, this is an absorbing, mesmerizing, haunting read, leading the reader deep into the hidden lives of two families, — the stories untold, the fears blindly enacted, the words not spoken but festering, for years, and even decades,…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 A sweet and endearing middle-grade story about love and longing, as seen from the POV of a sensitive bear, a motherly fox, and a competent but grumpy cat. Set in an imagined post-crisis New York City, the story teems with witches, and magic-competents - some good, and some as…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 An emotionally gripping story, highlighting the debilitating trail cut by grief, loss, fear and self-shaming. Narrated in turn by Kyle McCray, a fortyish mechanic, now living in Spokane, Washington and his ex-wife, Casey, who remained behind two-and-a-half years ago in their home and hometown of Potsdam NY, Kyle’s losses…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 A beautifully intricate story encompassing philosophical yearnings (fiercely compelling in their insight) for a pre-technological planet, and a multi-layered political agenda — all peppered with characters teeming with self-interest and corruption. Sadie Smith is an enigma. A seemingly heartless, perhaps even psychopathic, shadowy figure, “Sadie”, our first person POV…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 If living (vicariously) on a small island community, ensconced with colorful neighbors, your local pub, a whole lot of baking, tea, and of course, whiskey, calls out to you — consider now adding a spirited mystery, an intricate and engaging plot, and a cast of characters you will want…