reviews

Chocolate, Coffee, and Cunning Author: Cleo Coyle If there’s one thing that’s more sumptuously sensual than coffee, it's chocolate. Aphrodite’s Village, an exclusive women’s online community with individual sectors run by established “goddesses” is capitalizing and exaggerating the aphrodisiacal properties of everyone’s favorite combo by teaming with The Village Blend to produce an instant coffee guaranteed to spice up your love life. Madame, normally averse to such blatant commercialism, is only supportive because the goddess in charge of the product is an old and elusive friend. When Clare gets drawn into the dubious action and goddesses start dropping dead in Aphrodite’s [...]

Teenagers can be murder... Author:  Kate Summerscale Robert Coombes wasn’t your average cold-blooded killer.  He was an active and bright 13 year-old boy with a yearning for adventure.  But in the summer of 1895, he stabbed his mother to death in the upstairs bedroom, leaving her to slowly decompose.  Eventually, the neighbors began to notice not only the prolonged absence of Emily Coombes, but a growing stench.  Despite Robert’s cunning attempts to conceal his crime – assisted by his 12 year-old brother Nattie – his mother’s decaying and maggot-infested body was finally discovered.   Deftly exploring this bizarre true crime, award [...]

 Searching for a home... Author:  Matthew Desmond Calling 9-1-1 will get you evicted.  I’m sure I’m not the only reader who was shocked to learn this.  Having small children in the home is another unexpected liability if you’re trying to keep your apartment.  In an astonishing exploration of life on the edge, Harvard sociologist Matthew Desmond reveals the pain, suffering and heartbreak of the modern housing crisis for America’s poor in Evicted. While still a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Desmond spent most of 2008 and 2009 in Milwaukee, embedding himself in the lives of some of the [...]