🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 A book that couldn’t possibly be more charming, this is a read to savor, to enjoy, and to come back to, when your heart needs reminding that life is love, and all that goes with it. The disappointments, the grief, the anger, and of course, the joy and the…
🌟🌟🌟💫 A very mixed bag for this reader — first, the good (which is actually very good). This book starts with an interesting premise, featuring a detailed set of characters, each with their own POV, in a gorgeous island setting. The story is somewhat centered on a fascinating and horrifying…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 A non-stop thriller which mixes Mexican drug cartel sheer and bloody terror with the incredible saga of a simple tequila-producing family, who grows from 1950’s Mexico to present day, along the way becoming a hugely successful, and absolutely dysfunctional, globally situated corporate dynasty, modeled with the moniker “RAM”. Peopled…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 A searing and complex look at identity, sobriety, loneliness and longing — centering on the internal world of women, caretaking, motherhood, and the insidious push for disappearance into societal roles that, much as they may feel that way, do not ultimately define us. Between these pages we will follow…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 A creepy and compelling peek into the not too distant future, where multiple acts of procreation (from those who can) are prioritized in a beat-up world struggling to preserve alarming population levels. Facing escalating climate pressures and mysterious viruses, (a world not too significantly unlike our own), our narrator,…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟+ A strange and absolutely wonderful collection of short stories, unlike anything you are likely to ever read. These stories resonate, they sing, metaphorically, as they broach topics like crippling anxiety, the insecurities of motherhood, chronic illness and our destruction of the environment, all couched in stories of missing organs…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 A sweet and heartfelt reminder that life is short, and the love of family and good friends a joy that must be captured, as quickly as it reveals itself. The fifth in the “Escape to the Lake” series by this wonderful and prolific author, I read this charming novel…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 A gorgeous, life-affirming picture book, targeted for three to seven year olds, about curiosity, and wonder, and keeping our head high, up in the clouds, where it belongs. The story centers on the littlest crow, who does not understand her elders fear and the smallness it makes of their…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 A stylish and engrossing thriller, this terrific murder mystery hits all the right notes, starting with a premise that is both tantalizing and original. We all know that murderers’ lives have been commercialized, sensationalized and documented far more thoroughly than the lives of their victims. But what of murderer’s…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 A collection of twelve short stories, each a perfect encapsulation of literary characters stood up living and breathing, with seemingly effortless grace, and the space of a mere few pages. In each case, young and old, and brimming with dry humor, the reader is invited in to share lives…