book review Archives

Nine Lives To Die

When Pets Investigate Author: Rita Mae Brown The town of Crozet, Virginia is preparing for a snowy Christmas season. Almost everyone in town is busily involved in some holiday charity preparations, bringing food and company to those in need or continuing to work with the local youth organization, Silver Linings, in their blowout annual fundraiser. But someone isn’t feeling the holiday spirit. They want to take, not give. With two bodies of prominent citizens, bastions of Silver Linings no less, discovered, the town is desperate to find the culprit. Meanwhile, on a nearby farm that belongs to Harry and her husband [...]

Frances Carden2024-08-12T18:43:35-07:00August 12th, 2024|Tags: book review, cozy mystery, Mrs. Murphy, mystery, read, reading|

Rapture

The Dangers of Obsession Author: Thomas Tessier Jeff Lister is a successful man, at least in the world’s eyes. He lives in Hollywood, he’s rich, and he has built his own multi-million-dollar computer business from scratch (it’s the late 80s). But Jeff is a divorced workaholic, and his rare times at home leave him staring at his fancy fish tank, alone. That’s before he returns to his out-of-the-way hometown for a funeral and makes a connection with his high school crush. Jeff never asked Georgianne out, never took the risk of rejection. But he always wanted her. Even his current, underaged [...]

Frances Carden2024-08-11T14:20:32-07:00August 11th, 2024|Tags: book review, horror, read, reading, stalker|

Empire of Dirt, The

Lyrical, Literary, Loathsome, and Lifeless Author: Francesca Manfredi Valentia lives in the “blind house,” in rural Italy, growing up with her religious grandmother and her disenchanted, flighty mother. The house is said to be cursed; the women abnormal. The townsfolk stay away, and as her period approaches and she grows from childhood into womanhood, Valentia suspects that the walls weeping blood, the plagues of locust and frogs, and the men who cannot remain are all somehow tied to her. Has the curse come alive again through her emerging womanhood? The Empire of Dirt is ostensibly a coming-of-age novel, told through the [...]

Frances Carden2024-08-03T21:12:25-07:00August 3rd, 2024|Tags: book review, magical realism, read, reading|