reviews

Rock Stars, Missing Children, Cabins, and Ghost Ships Author: Carolyn Keene In her 11th mystery, Nancy sets out on what should be a relaxing vacation, only to get drawn into one of her father’s cases, a suspicious record deal, a ghost ship sighting, a missing treasure, a suspicious estate family, a doppelganger of her new friend, multiple kidnapping attempts, and someone else’s rocky romance. It’s a lot – even for Nancy – and as she treks the forbidding forest around her cabin with Bess, George, and new friend Cecily in tow, she begins to suspect that the disparate mysteries all somehow come together, centered on the Driscoll’s at the nearby estate. A lot is going on in Clue of the Broken Locket, arguably far too much, and the action and adventure is non-stop, as is the danger, near-misses, kidnappings, and assorted threats.  A wider cast of characters [...]

Generations Apart Author: Mary Helen Sheriff Writing fiction about difficult, emotional, real world topics while maintaining an overall light tone is a tough ask. Too far in one direction and the story gets too heavy, in the other it’s inappropriately breezy. While a lot of authors choose to use dark humor or absurdity to maintain a balance between dark and light, Mary Helen Sheriff goes a different way in her novel Boop and Eve’s Road Trip. Boop and Eve are grandmother and granddaughter, both living in Florida. Boop (actual name Betty) is retired; Eve is in her first year of [...]

A Close-Up of a Religion About Aliens and Suicide Author: Benjamin E. Zeller In March 1997, thirty-nine people ritualistically killed themselves to board a spaceship and become aliens. This was the result of a cult two decades in the making, a mix of Protestantism, New Age philosophy, Ancient Astronaut theory, conspiracy theories, and science-fiction fandom. The cult, or new religion as Benjamin E. Zeller terms it, most often called Heaven’s Gate, now remains, living in our pop culture and collective memories. But what does it say about our uniquely American culture, our inability to separate fact from fiction, and our religious cherry-picking? [...]