These Toxic Things by #RachelHowzellHall

It took me a little while to actually decide to read These Toxic Things for a few reasons. To be brutally honest, I haven’t read very many books written by Black authors. When I do, I end up loving them but I’m always a bit hesitant writing reviews for fear of being nonauthentic or coming across as artificial. At my age sometimes we’re still learning, you know? It’s sad that we have to learn at…

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A quick ha-ha

I had to winterize the garden before a cold snap tonight so…. Happy Weekend!

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The Spires by #KateMoretti

The Spires by #KateMoretti

Five friends through university become five co-dependents in the year following graduation when they find that none of them are quite ready to move past the relationships that they have formed. Now twenty years later the strangeness, tragedy and secrets of that year have come back to haunt of the “spires” as they called themselves. But why? And who is doing this to her, to them? There appear to…

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Bad Scene #MaxTomlinson

Max Tomlinson is back with my favorite character, Colleen Hayes, an ex-con (she stabbed her abusive husband, who could blame her) now private investigator in the 1960s/70s. This series began in the 1960s but with Bad Scene we’ve moved into the groovin 70s, an era filled with disco music, cults and political upheaval. God, I loved the 70s and I absolutely LOVED Bad Scene. Colleen gets a tip from…

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Constance by Matthew FitzSimmons

Constance by Matthew FitzSimmons

Rarely do I have the pleasure of reading pure Sci-Fi since most Sci-Fi written today involves space fiction or fantasy but Constance was a rare treat of pure hard core science fiction set in the not-so near but near enough future so that, thankfully, it did not require world building (I hate world building, sorry.) At its heart is the story of cloning. The rich elite get to keep themselves going…

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She is such a badass...

She is such a badass…

One hand in her pocket and the other breaking world records to win a Gold Medal!! And then here comes some man to tell her how she’s doing wrong. Seriously, she’s a badass and there simply are no words left for men.

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Three For Thursday: I Will Make You Pay, On Cold Ground and Tell No Lies

Three For Thursday: I Will Make You Pay, On Cold Ground and Tell No Lies

There was a time during 2020, when I simply had to step away from crime fiction and thrillers. Perhaps it was the reality of death everywhere or maybe I had hit a tipping point of reading too many but I switched gears into other genres. I’ve gone back to some types of crime fiction as you can tell from my posts, but thrillers and suspense still leave me dry. The three books that I am featuring…

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Preserving the Season by Mary Tregellas

Preserving the Season by Mary Tregellas

Years and years ago, maybe hundreds, I learned to make a simple strawberry jam with my grandfather. I thought I was a proper know it all at that point because none of my friends knew how to do that. It was like magic watching the berries and pectin slowly meld into such a marvelous concoction. That simple strawberry jam was as far as I got for year and years more until I discovered the joys of…

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Not One of Us @DebbieHerbert

Not One of Us @DebbieHerbert

I lived in the Southern US nearly my entire life and, honestly, didn’t like it one bit. I did, however, love southern literature. When I moved north, however, I found I didn’t enjoy reading southern lit nearly as much as I once did because it seemed less honest or real, more sappy and contrived as though the authors were attempting to create a genteel place that only existed in their minds or…

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Recent Reads, Rapid Reviews: The Heirloom Garden, The Long Call, The Fourteenth of September

Recent Reads, Rapid Reviews: The Heirloom Garden, The Long Call, The Fourteenth of September

It’s time for some quick-fire reviews of books that I’ve pulled from my TBR list, some which were hits and others, well, not so much. The HEIRLOOM GARDEN by Viola Shipman For the PopSugar reading challenge I needed a book about a passion of mine. As you know, gardening is a huge passion for me, this year more so than in the past. When I saw the title of this book I thought it would be a perfect…

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The Noise @JDBarker and James Patterson

The Noise @JDBarker and James Patterson

Let me state up front that J.D.Barker could write a phone book and I would read it and enjoy it. I have, in the past, given his books less that five stars because I thought he could do a better job than he did – NOT because I thought he wasn’t stunningly awesome. That said, I started The Noise late in the afternoon and did not put it down once, not even, until I finished late last night. I was…

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FANTASTICLAND by #MikeBockoven

I was searching for something similar to Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre and FantasticLand was recommended multiple times. Similar in writing styles, both are written after the fact as follow up accounts of “true crime” too terrible to comprehend. The first time I read FantasticLand was just during the Covid lock down. Thinking that my mindset might have been…

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Tell Me (Inland Empire 2) #AnneFrasier

Tell Me (Inland Empire 2) #AnneFrasier

Tell Me, the second in the Inland Empire (a specific area with the Mojave desert) series, picks up a few months after the first with Remi back in her desert abode and she and Daniel physically recovered from their previous ordeal. Daniel is called out to the Pacific Coast Trail in search of hikers who are missing after one of the hikers is found brutally murdered. He, of course, enlists the help…

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A Deadly Influence by #MikeOmer

A Deadly Influence by #MikeOmer

I love (!) Mike Omer’s writing and especially adore his Zoe/Tatum series – she’s a profiler, he’s an agent – so when I saw that Omer had a new series I had to read it. But… it took me three different times of reading, putting down the book, reading and putting it down again before I actually read all the way through it. I would have been so stupid if I had not convinced myself to pick up A Deadly…

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Red Widow @AlmaKatsu

Of course I’ve read The Hunger and The Deep and I assumed that Red Widow would follow along those lines, lines which I loved for the record. I could not have been more wrong. How can an author write such completely different genres!? Aaaaah, but lest you think that I was disappointed, I was not. This is, by far, one of the best spy novels I’ve ever read and, wow, I’ve read all of the original Tom…

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Beyond the Headlines

Beyond the Headlines is the fourth book in the Clare Carlson series and the second that I’ve read. Clare is a seasoned journalist now working in a news room but the hard core journalism bug never quite let go of Clare. When she comes across a good story, she runs with it – which is exactly what she does in Beyond the Headlines. Clare goes beyond the 5 second sound bite to get at the truth,…

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Recent Reads and Rapid Reviews: The Hive, When a Stranger Comes to Town and The One I Left Behind

Recent Reads and Rapid Reviews: The Hive, When a Stranger Comes to Town and The One I Left Behind

This the third book I’ve recently read involving cults, bees and the perfection of their hives. It’s weird BUT I absolutely loved this book! Gregg Olsen is a hit or miss author for me and this one definitely was a hit. If you think about Mary Kaye Ash, the home based “beauty” guru, and put her philosophy on drugs then you have the main protagonist of The Hive. Marnie, the “queen bee” is obsessed…

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