There is nothing I love more than finding a new detective series to read. I’ll devour a good mystery of any sort, but when it’s a series, that’s like stumbling on buried treasure. My latest discovery is the Pentecost and Parker novels by Stephen Spotswood. Set in the 1940’s, they feature Lillian Pentecost, “New York…
This outstanding cozy locked-room mystery features Tempest Raj, who was born into an Indian magical dynasty dating back generations. Tempest is a highly successful stage magician with a Las Vegas show – until a tragic accident forces her to return to her Bay Area hometown with her career in shambles. She is considering going to…
It's 2017, and fierce, independent Olga Acevedo is running a successful wedding planning business for the New York elite while her charming brother Prieto, a U.S. Congressman, fights for liberal causes and tries to stay true to their Puerto Rican roots. The siblings are close to their extended family since their father died of AIDS…
Spy thriller fans, take note: Box 88 should be on your reading list! Lachlan Kite is part of Box 88, a spy organization so secret that not even MI6 and the CIA know it exists. (Why the odd name for a spy agency? That gets explained in the book.) When Kite is abducted and interrogated…
With climate change at the forefront of the news these days, we’ve been seeing a lot of fiction integrating themes about nature and the environment. The Island of Missing Trees is one of those books. British-Turkish author Shafak brings together nature and humanity in a gentle, almost playful way – one of the narrators is…
I don’t normally gravitate toward short stories, and I’m not really sure why. However, this year I decided to branch out and read a few. I’m so glad I did! Here are two books of “shorts:” one a collection of essays, the other of stories, and all worthwhile reading. The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green…
This extraordinary novel (which has nothing to do with mixed martial arts or the UFC) tells the story of three generations of women in Toronto. Swiv, the nine-year-old narrator, has a voice unlike any other I've read. Precocious and funny, parroting her relatives, she is writing a letter to her father, who has left her…
Quentin Tarantino meets The Odd Couple in this searing, heartfelt, suspenseful book. Ike Randolph is a Black ex-con who has been playing it straight for 15 years. He runs his own landscaping business and has made a quiet, stable life for himself with his wife Mya outside of Richmond, Virginia. When his only child Isiah…
When you think of gardening, what comes to mind? A new activity, brought on by Covid cabin fever? Something your mother or grandmother did? It's certainly not a necessity for most of us anymore. Growing food, like sewing clothes or building furniture, has become industrialized and commoditized in our modern society. The rise of big…
Lone Stars is a modern family saga of four generations of the Warner family, spanning from 1960’s Texas to Obama-era Brooklyn. Growing up along the border of Texas and Mexico, Lacy Adams discovers her mother isn’t telling her the truth about her family. In West Texas, a young man named Aaron Warner dreams of college…
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