Another fabulous novel by Edgar winner William Kent Krueger! Fox Creek is the nineteenth installment of the Cork O’Connor series and my twenty-first book by this talented writer. Do I enjoy his work… you bet as we sat here in Minnesota! In Fox Creek, Cork races against time to save his wife Rainy, Ojibwe healer Henry Meloux, and a mysterious woman from violent mercenaries. Dolores Morriseau has come to Henry for guidance. When men fill the woods trying to capture her, Meloux leads them to safety deep in his beloved Boundary Waters Canoe Area. Well over 100 years old, he must do his best to outwit the mercenaries who […]
Read more...Category Archives: Literature
Dark Intercept
The day before Navy SEAL Jedidiah Johnson is set to retire, he receives a frantic call from his estranged childhood friend. David’s daughter, Sarah Beth, has been kidnapped off the streets of Nashville in broad daylight. The police have no suspects and no leads. The only clue: the body of a dead priest left behind at the scene. David and his wife, Rachel—Jed’s first love—are desperate for help. The police don’t appreciate Jed’s interference in their investigation, but he is determined to find Sarah Beth. Soon he experiences dark memories, voices in his head, nightmares, and visions, and someone tries to kill him. He’s saved by an ancient group […]
Read more...
The Mystery of Mrs. Christie
In December 1926, novelist Agatha Christie and her husband Archie have a vicious argument about his unfaithfulness. On that frigid night, she vanishes. Investigators find her abandoned car on the edge of a deep pond, her fur coat still inside. Her daughter and unfaithful husband have no idea where she is. English officials unleash an unprecedented manhunt to find her and are joined by people all over the country. She reappears eleven days later, claiming amnesia. Marie Benedict wrote the book in a dual narrative: one story line is from Archie’s point-of-view as he contends with the media circus, the other from Agatha’s as she describes their relationship in […]
Read more...
The 6:20 Man
I’ve read twenty-seven books written by David Baldacci, some I gave two stars, some earned five. I’m thinking four stars is just right for The 6:20 Man. Every day without fail, former Army Ranger Travis Devine boards the 6:20 commuter train to Manhattan, where he works as an entry-level analyst at Cowl and Comely, the city’s most prestigious investment firm. He gazes out the train window at the lavish homes of the uberwealthy, dreaming about joining their ranks. Then one morning Devine receives an anonymous, untraceable message which reads: “She is dead.” Sara Ewes, Devine’s coworker and former girlfriend, is found hanging in a storage room of his office […]
Read more...
Carrie Soto is Back
I’ve never been much of a tennis fan, although I took the obligatory tennis lessons at Wesley Park several summers through community ed and then married into a tennis crazed family of jocks. Despite my lack of athleticism, Carrie Soto is Back was engrossing from start to finish. Author Taylor Jenkins Reid delivers another ace. When Carrie Soto retires from tennis, she is the best player the world has ever seen. She has shattered every record and claimed twenty Grand Slam titles. But six years later, she sits in the stands of the 1994 US Open as Nicki Chan ties her record. At thirty-seven years old, Carrie comes out […]
Read more...
Overkill
Former Super Bowl MVP quarterback Zach Bridger is shocked to receive a call from the hospital about his ex-wife, Rebecca Pratt, who is on life-support following a violent assault. He hasn’t seen her since their volatile marriage fell apart five years earlier—why does he still have medical power-of-attorney? Zach must make an impossible choice: keep her on life support or pull the plug. Unable to decide, he walks away, and her vegetative state continues. Two years later, Rebecca’s attacker gets an early release from prison. State prosecutor Kate Lennon is determined to put him back behind bars. But that would take a murder charge, and the only way to do […]
Read more...
October 2022 Picks and Pans
Hello fellow book lovers! For me, October was a month filled with reading variety: historical fiction, contemporary fiction, historical mystery, thriller, Christian fiction (and straight-up-fiction, of course). Most of my books were advance reader copies from publishers, but I enjoyed catch-up books in a couple series. My total isn’t very impressive this month… I started reading Shogun by James Clavell, which comes in at staggering 1,140 pages, but I didn’t finish. It’s a slow read and a definite time suck. Not sure if and when I’ll finish it. I turned on comments for this post… I’d love to hear your thoughts on these books! I’ll be transitioning to video […]
Read more...
Pardonable Lies
This is my third book in the bestselling Maisie Dobbs series. She is a winning heroine; I love her gumption, especially for the era in which she is a detective, her investigative skills, and the plots of these terrific historical mysteries. In Pardonable Lies, Maisie is embroiled in three cases. First, proving 13-year-old Avril Jarvis innocent of first-degree murder in the death of her uncle. Second, verifying that Sir Cecil Lawton’s pilot son Ralph was killed in a plane crash during the Great War. Third, looking into the circumstances of the death of her college friend Priscilla Evernden Partridge’s brother during the war. Maisie faces grave danger and emotional […]
Read more...
Blowback
James Patterson is hit or miss with me. This one was a hit in my book. Imagine this: the president of the United States is brilliant but has also lost his mind. Farfetched? Clearly not! President Keegan Barrett, the former director of the CIA, has a dangerous skill set. Six months into his first term, he devises a clandestine power grab to get revenge. He orders Special Agents Liam Grey and Noa Himel to execute his plan, even though the Central Intelligence Agency is forbidden to operate on American soil. As CIA agents, they’ve sworn to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all threats, foreign […]
Read more...
The Ways We Hide
This wonderful novel maintained my interest from the first sentence. Unlike so many WWII novels I’ve read, The Ways We Hide one isn’t about the British who served as intelligence agents. it’s about an American woman’s involvement with MI9 (which I knew nothing about). MI9, the British Directorate of Military Intelligence Section 9, was a highly secret department of the War Office between 1939 and 1945. Their function was two-fold: to help Allied POWs escape Nazi Germany, and help downed airmen evade capture after being shot down. Fenna Vos grew up on Michigan’s harsh Upper Peninsula. On Christmas Eve, 1913, the union holds a party at the Italian Hall in […]
Read more...