It promises to be a busy week for Hannah Swensen. Not only is she whipping up treats for the chamber of commerce booth at the Tri-County fair, she's also judging the baking contest; acting as a magician's assistant for her business partner's husband; trying to coax Moishe, her previously rapacious feline, to end his hunger strike, and performing her own private carnival act by juggling the demands of her mother and sisters.
With so much on her plate, it's no wonder Hannah finds herself on the midway only moments before the fair closes for the night. After hearing a suspicious thump, she goes snooping–only to discover Willa Sunquist, a student teacher and fellow bake contest judge, dead alongside an upended key lime pie. But who would want to kill Willa and why?
Now Hannah needs to crank up the heat, hoping that Willa’s killer will get rattled and make a mistake. If that happens she intends to be there, even if it means getting on a carnival ride that could very well be her last…
Date Night is a psychological thriller featuring married couple Libby and Sean Randell. Libby thinks that she has a solid marriage to Sean. Then one morning there's a note on her windscreen telling her that her husband is having an affair. She confronts him and of course, he denies it. She doesn't believe him but they go on a date night for dinner to try and ease the tension. The date does not go to well, so they return home. When they get there babysitter Sasha is missing. A few days later Libby is arrested under the suspicion of murder.
The story alternates from the recent past to the present. This confused me in the first couple of chapters until I noticed the pattern. The writing, however, made the book a breeze to read and I couldn't put the book down until I finished reading it. There are numerous twists in the story that all lead up to the reveal of the murderer. With all of the characters having secrets, and the need to lie about them, I couldn't figure out the whodunnit. It was a total surprise when the killer was finally revealed. The whydunnit was not revealed until the last page and it was a shocker. Date Night is the perfect psychological thriller that reads like an Alfred Hitchcock story.
If you want to read something you know you will enjoy, pick up Date Night.
5 out of 5 stars.
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The Barbary Coast, 1621. A mysterious vessel floats silently on the water. It is known only as the Ghost Ship. For months it has hunted pirates to liberate those enslaved by corsairs, manned by a courageous crew of mariners from Italy and France, Holland and the Canary Islands.
But the bravest men on board are not who they seem. And the stakes could not be higher. If arrested, they will be hanged for their crimes. Can they survive the journey and escape their fate?
A sweeping and epic love story, ranging from France in 1610 to Amsterdam and the Canary Islands in the 1620s, The Ghost Ship is a thrilling novel of adventure and buccaneering, love and revenge, stolen fortunes and hidden secrets on the high seas.
This book is so incredibly lovely that I don't know where to start. The Ghost Ship has adventure, buccaneering, illicit love and lots of secrets. It most of all is a story of a defiant woman making her mark in a man's world. Our heroine Louise has always wanted to be the captain of a ship. When she turns twenty-five she receives an inheritance from her father and quickly buys a ship called Old Moon. Ten years later, she hosts a farewell dinner party for the Old Moon's retiring captain and meets Gilles, a wine merchant's apprentice. Louise and Gilles become fast friends and later begin a relationship. However, Gilles has a secret of his own. He is a she.
While Louise hires another man to be her captain, she decides that she is going to travel with her ship to the Canary Islands. Fate steps in and Louise becomes the captain. It is her commandeering of this ship that leads Louise to inquisitors in the Canaries, a Spanish and hence Catholic, island nation. With her family being well known Huguenots she is already a suspicious person to the inquisitors. However, some one on the ship has talked with them about her.
Louise’s quest to break society's rules had me scared for her throughout the novel. She was a tough lady but without her inheritance she would have probably married and bore children. Money gave her options. It was lovely to reconnect with her grandparents who we met in book two. Grandmother Minou is one of my favorite characters in the series and she has some of her own secrets that get exposed. We also find out what happened with her parents.
Alot happened in this intricate plot. Author Mosse obviously did plenty of research into the Huguenots. She brought their travails to life. I also liked that she wrote a Preface before the story began telling the reader what was fact and fiction. It was nice that I didn't need to question facts as I read the book.
The Ghost Ship is a must read. 5 out of 5 stars.
The publisher's summary:
After her widowed father remarries, nineteen-year-old Clara Bender is no longer needed to run his household. Marriage seems like her best hope of moving out, but there are few young men in her tiny Indiana Amish community. When she comes across letters from her mother's aunt Ella Mae Cook, she sets off to visit Lancaster County's Hickory Hollow to decide where her future lies. Ella Mae is not quite ready to move from the farmhouse where she and her recently deceased husband spent over fifty happy years, but her children are eager to resettle her, making Clara's visit seem like an answer to prayer. The two women form a warm bond while restoring an heirloom wedding quilt and sharing their lives, with Ella Mae confiding about a tragedy from her courting years. Eventually, Ella Mae suggests Clara stay for the summer, allowing Ella Mae more time with her and giving Clara an opportunity to meet the area's eligible young men.
This book has a simple plot with a slow pace. I was distracted by the ARC's full justification for the paragraphs so perhaps that is why I felt the pace was slow. Sometimes there were only 2 to 3 words per line. It seemed that no matter how long I read at a stretch, I made little progress toward finishing the book. The justification was much improved by the midpoint of the story and that is where the plot became interesting. There were several mysteries and problems for Clara to resolve and the food descriptions were scrumptious. The pace also picked up nicely. Still, it took me two days to finish this short 190 page book. Unheard of for someone like me who can read three 300 page books in a day.
This week I channeled my inner aloha spirit and added three books to my Kindle that take place in Hawaii. I have quite a few books that I have already planned to read and review in the next two months so I'm not sure when I will have time to read these novels but definitely by the end of the year.
This stunning account of a fictional teenager crossing the Sonoran Desert for Arizona was written for young adults aged 13 through 17. Mateo makes the dangerous journey back home to the United States through the Sonoran Desert with the help of a new friend, a ghost named Guillermo in a supernatural borderland odyssey. Mateo grew up in Phoenix but his family was deported back to Mexico in the summer before his senior year of high school. All he wants in life is to be able to take his SAT test and finish high school. It is the debut graphic novel of Julio Anta and Jacoby Salcedo.
As long as he remembers to stay smart and keep his eyes open, Mateo knows that he can survive the trek across the Sonoran Desert. That is, unless he’s caught by U. S. Border Patrol. Just a few moments after Mateo sneaks across the border fence he is caught. However, he is able to escape but at a huge cost. He loses his backpack and gets lost in the desert. Mateo also is ill-prepared for the unforgiving heat. Enter the ghost, Guillermo, who leads him through the desert.
While a border crossing story is usually an ugly one, the magical realism brought by the ghost gives the novel a light feel. The colorful artwork contributes to this. It has been rendered in a four panel comic strip style a d colored with bright colors.
Frontera is a must read! 5 out of 5 stars.
The latest historical novel from Lisa See is inspired by the true story of a woman physician from 15th-century China. The subject of See’s novel is Tan Yunxian, a real-life woman who lived in China during the Ming dynasty. She went on to become a “ming yi” — famous doctor — and published a compendium of 31 cases in the work “Miscellaneous Records of a Female Doctor.” The story begins in the year 1469 when Tan Yunxian is 8 years old.
The publisher's summary:
According to Confucius, “an educated woman is a worthless woman,” but Tan Yunxian—born into an elite family, yet haunted by death, separations, and loneliness—is being raised by her grandparents to be of use. Her grandmother is one of only a handful of female doctors in China, and she teaches Yunxian the pillars of Chinese medicine, the Four Examinations—looking, listening, touching, and asking—something a man can never do with a female patient.From a young age, Yunxian learns about women’s illnesses, many of which relate to childbearing, alongside a young midwife-in-training, Meiling. The two girls find fast friendship and a mutual purpose—despite the prohibition that a doctor should never touch blood while a midwife comes in frequent contact with it—and they vow to be forever friends, sharing in each other’s joys and struggles. No mud, no lotus, they tell themselves: from adversity beauty can bloom.But when Yunxian is sent into an arranged marriage, her mother-in-law forbids her from seeing Meiling and from helping the women and girls in the household. Yunxian is to act like a proper wife—embroider bound-foot slippers, pluck instruments, recite poetry, give birth to sons, and stay forever within the walls of the family compound, the Garden of Fragrant Delights.How might a woman like Yunxian break free of these traditions, go on to treat women and girls from every level of society, and lead a life of such importance that many of her remedies are still used five centuries later? How might the power of friendship support or complicate these efforts?
The characters are what make this novel such a great story. I loved reading about the ups and downs of Yunxian and Meiling's friendship. They were on different life paths due to their socioeconomic levels but managed to maintain a lifelong affection. There were plenty of misunderstandings between them but most were due to the interference from Yunxian's mother in law and they always made up quickly. As all young adults have done throughout history, both girls fell into the social constructs of their time. Yunxian did not believe that she was superior to Meiling but acted as though she was. Yunxian was quite selfish because she always had whatever she wanted. She never asked Meiling how she was doing or how her family was handling their problems. Yunxian thought her life was more important. Meiling, on the other hand, had to worry about surviving and helping her ostracized mother. Meiling felt that she could not complain to Yunxian about how she treated her because Yunxian was from a higher class. It sounds funny today but in 1400s China, making a social mistake can get you killed.
Their mothers and grandmothers were also great characters. Yunxian's mother dies when she is 8 and she is sent to live with her grandparents. This is where she meets Meiling and Meiling's mother, a midwife. Yunxian's grandmother is a woman's doctor who begins to train her to follow in her footsteps. Meiling is also being trained to become a midwife like her mother. It was natural for this foursome to be closely tied.
The men were not very interesting but this is a women's story. It's not just about female relationships but female medicine too. I can honestly say I felt each and every pain of the women in labor that Meiling treated. In those days a woman crouched down near the floor and pulled on a rope hanging from above to birth the babies. Ouch!
Lady Tan's Circle of Women is a lovely book. I highly recommend it. 5 out of 5 stars.
Legendary art restorer and spy Gabriel Allon joins forces with a brilliant and beautiful master-thief to track down the world’s most valuable missing painting but soon finds himself in a desperate race to prevent an unthinkable conflict between Russia and the West.
As you can tell from the above, the publisher didn't have much to say about the book. Silva's publisher summaries have always been 5+ paragraphs long. This should have been my first clue that the story was somewhat lacking. However, I missed the clue. I would have read the book anyway because I have enjoyed every book in the series.
In The Collector, Vermeer's painting "The Concert," painted in 1664, was cut from its frame in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990 and stolen along with 12 other works. It could be the most valuable stolen object. There have been boasts about the whereabouts of the painting and leads over the years, and they've led nowhere. When a South African shipping tycoon murdered in Amalfi turns out to have a secret vault holding an empty frame that matches the dimensions of the purloined masterpiece, the Italian art police call Gabriel Allon for assistance.
The first half of the novel was a gripping art heist story. I thought it was a good place for the series to continue. Our protagonist, Gabriel Allon, was the consummate spy. He had a side interest in art and painting that he was tremendously talented in pursuing. He was able to create fakes of famous paintings from almost any artist.
The art heist story introduced a new series character. Ingrid Johansen is a brilliant computer hacker. She is an extraordinarily talented thief. She accepted a $10 million payment to steal the Vermeer from a palazzo in Amalfi, not realizing that there's a much broader conspiracy. Ingrid ends up working with Gabriel to find the painting that she stole.
This fantastic art heist story abruptly ends halfway into the novel. The international spy trade picks up the remainder of the story with no apparent connection to the first half with the exception that one of the bad actors in the heist is connected to the Russian government. I did not care for this part of the book. While the last two chapters try to connect the two, it didn't work for me. Silva has also incorporated the Ukraine-Russia War into the story along with a threat of nuclear war. It was not plausible given that half of this 400+ page book was solely an art theft story.
I am disappointed with The Collector. I am rating it 2 out of 5 stars.
