Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick — aka “Mad Mabel” — is eighty-one years old. A tough-talking (tender-hearted?) and deeply humorous octogenarian, six-feet tall with broad shoulders, Mabel puts up with nothing from any-one, least of all the mousy neighborhood child Persephone, or her much-lamented nemesis, the ninety-three year old Ishaan and his…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 A really interesting premise that comes out of nowhere, messes with a readers brain, and leaves one more than a little awed at the creative mind that inspired it. With a writing style that reminds this reader of Joanne Trollope, this story is a blend of family and relationship…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 “The silence around me so heavy and charged it feels like a physical thing, thick and meaty” A darkly Southern thriller, fronted by an impulsive and somewhat unpredictable heroine, with more than a few surprises up its sleeve. Claire Campbell, a not-very-successful reporter, is thirty-three years old, and is…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 Gardner Camden (Gardy) is a thirty-seven year old FBI agent who works for an unusual division called PAR (Patterns and Recognition). With a focus on solving the toughest crimes, those involving pattern recognition and the making of obscure connections, Gardy is a genius level agent, who just happens to…
🌟🌟🌟🌟 Edgy and raw, this is Book 4 in the Black Harbor series, and the first this reader has had the pleasure to read. Hazel Rydelle, our first-person POV narrator, is an ex-police-transcriber and and ex-occupant of Black Harbor, Milwaukee, — by her accounts a terrible place; black at heart;…
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 For those of us who have found it hard (no, impossible) to ignore that little voice, (coming from inside, but imagined to be coming loud-and-clear by those outside of us) telling us to work unremittingly harder, faster, smarter for after all, we are just not good enough (yet?) -…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 A mesmerizing Nordic mystery, uniquely premised, cleverly plotted, and impossible to put down. Agnes Glin, our third-person-POV narrator, is twenty-seven years old and has lived her entire life in California, although her heritage on her father’s side is Icelandic. Agnes, with her white-blond hair, is still reeling from a…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 An enthralling read by the Icelandic author Ragnar Jonasson, the first of his that this reader has experienced, but certainly not to be the last. This sequel to “The Darkness” can be read and enjoyed successfully as a standalone novel, (as I did,) with the loss of some backstory…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 The first I’ve read in this immensely popular series, featuring Lt Eve Dallas, — this will definitely not be the last. With an appeal that crosses genres, this story is as much about Dallas and her “tribe” - beginning with her ongoing romance with her spouse, the mega-rich and…
🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 Lenny Marks is an unusual heroine. At thirty-seven years old, Lenny hates to be touched, abhors noise and disorder, is socially inept, and is something of a genius when it comes to anagrams (which, along with watching old episodes of Friends, is her go-to self-soothing behavior). One could imagine…