🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 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…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 Absorbing and masterful psychological suspense, this top-notch thriller is intermingled with thoughtful social commentary on aging, grief, loneliness, and mental clarity — and how hard it is really separate those concepts. Linda Davidson, our first person POV narrator, is seventy-six years old, recently widowed, and living in the retirement…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 A searing, heartfelt memoir that feels like it was written as much for the author, as for the reader. For how else does one, who has felt the inexplicable need to express herself, in words, (written or otherwise), from a very early age, make sense of whole-scale tragedies impossible…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 What a treat! A twisted tale like no other this reader has encountered, so compulsively readable you will struggle to put it down. As the title implies, this book features a diabolical author who somewhat cheekily (and exceedingly disturbingly) runs through a list of tips and techniques to show…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 An expertly paced psychological thriller, this book builds to a nail-biter of an ending that absolutely does not disappoint. A compelling read, with a bevy of interesting characters, the story enters on an only-gradually illuminating plot that will keep you guessing, from start to finish. Told in alternating timelines,…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟➕ A cornucopia of all things Dog, I read this gem with a warm doggie on my lap, straight through on a rainy afternoon. And what a delight that was! Crisscrossing time (past and future), and covering myths, historical happenings, re-interpreted poetry, philosophy, Buddhism, science fiction — and all of…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 Both a searingly intimate memoir and a true-crime story, this book was so hard to put down that I read it in practically one sitting. A heart-rending look at a traumatic crime,and the family involved, written from the vantage point of the author, a sixteen year old teenager at…
A memoir and a somewhat complicated review — for a story beginning with horrific child abuse and leading to what will become a life-long adult search for healing — that could not help but raise all sorts of emotions in this reader. Empathy, pain and compassion. Curiosity and hope. Wonder,…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 “There was no longer any solid foundation to the world. It was all just stories.“ A beautifully rendered, challenging and often dark collection of eight short stories that somehow manage to balance the many avenues of man’s terrible brutality with the boundless tenderness of love — be it that…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 “A moment arrives when the usefulness of a secret expires. Keeping it becomes the thing that hurts us. We have to tell. “ This heartfelt memoir takes us to the darkest place, and back again, as we meet Amy, and her “perfect life” in Amarillo, Texas, and then are…