Heartstopper by Joy Fielding

Welcome to Torrance, Florida. Population: 4,160. As Sheriff John Weber would attest, the deadliest predators to date in his tiny hamlet were the alligators lurking in the nearby swamps. But that was before someone abducted and murdered a runaway teenage girl...and before the disappearance of popular and pretty Liana Martin. The pattern is chilling to Sandy Crosbie, the town's new high school English teacher. With a marriage on the rocks, thanks to her husband's online affairs, and a beautiful teenage daughter to protect, Sandy wishes she'd never come to the seemingly quiet town with shocking depths of scandal, sex, and brutality roiling beneath its surface. And as Sheriff Weber digs up more questions than answers in a dead-end investigation, one truth emerges: the prettiest ones are being targeted, the heartstoppers. And this killer intends to give them their due....
Alternating between the chilling journal entries of a cold-blooded murderer and the sizzling scandals of small-town life, "Heartstopper" is Joy Fielding's most exciting novel of suspense yet. (Goodreads, Mar 24, 2012)

The man Who Left Too Soon by Barry Forshaw

Though Stieg and his common-law wife lived and worked toether for some 30 years, she was not able to inherit any of his weath or rights to intellectual property.  This was according to Swedish law, which require a legal marraige or will, otherwise his estate goes to his next-of-kin.  His father and brother are battling his wife for his legacy, which is very valuable when one considers books and movies!

"The stranger-than-fiction life story of the author of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo " His three novels are violent, terrifying, brilliantly written, and have sold millions of copies around the world, but Stieg Larrson was not able to witness their international success. Since he died in 2004 the author of the Millennium trilogy has received international fame with dizzying speed. But when one looks a little deeper at the man behind these phenomenal novels, it is clear that his life would be remembered as truly extraordinary even had his trilogy never been published. Larrson was a workaholic: a political activist, photographer, graphic designer, a respected journalist, and the editor of numerous science fiction magazines. At night, to relax, he wrote crime novels. By the time of his death at the age of 50 he had completed "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Next," the third book featuring the hypnotic Lisbeth Salander. His relentless personality and political convictions did not make life easy. He famously took on some dangerous neo-Nazi opponents, making for much speculation that his enemies, who often told him that his days were numbered, may have a hand in his premature demise. This difficult man, brilliant and multifaceted, is the subject of a penetrating biography and a celebration of his remarkable life and books."(Review from Goodreads, March 24, 2012)

Gabby: A Story of Courage and Hope by Gabrielle Giffords & Mark Kelly



What I had been wanting to read was a story of Gabby Giffords' physical recovery after her most horrific shooting on January 8, 2011 Tuscaon Arizona by a lone male shooter.  Six were were killed, and Congresswoman Giffords was in critical condition.  However, in place of a story concentrating on the details of her medical journey, the book is a love story. Narrated in most by her husband, Mark Kelly tells of their childhoods, courtship, marriage, and desire to have a baby. The baby was not to be realized, but Mark's two daughters have become loving step-daughters to Gabby.   

Morality For Beautiful Girls by Alexander McCall Smith 2001



Another volume of the series , 'The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency' delights the reader.  McCall Smith's books are so pleasurable that they warm the heart and uplift the spirit.  Morality for Beautiful Girls gives Mma Maketetse a prominent role as she becomes an Assistant Manager of Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni's garage.  She whips his previously lazy and immature apprentices into shape, such that they actually want to please her. Mma Makateste soldiers on at work and at home.  She has not confided in Mma Ramotswe that her brother, who is dying of AIDS, has now become her sole responsibility. Money and medical helpf for him will be very difficult.

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni has become ill, but Precious Ramotswe  discovers that his illness is not of the body, but more of the soul.  It is something the doctor calls "depression".  In addition to looking after the orphan children he adopted, Mma Ramotswe must help him understand his illness and accept help, which he does in the form of going to the Orphan Farm for a respite and the nurturing of Mma Potokwane,  form whom Mt. J.L.B Matekoni has done many favours to help the orphans. There is a government official who is convinced his sister-in-law is attempting to poison his brother.  Precious Ramotsawe must solve this case to the satisfaction of all.

To My Dearest Friends by Patricia Volk

This delightful little novel packs a real punch.  A story about friendship, differences, love, and obligation.  Two women who met only breifly had a mutual friend who died of cancer.  She left the two women she valued the most to open her saftey deposit box.  Following her instructions, the women determined their task, which was to find her lover.  Shock that she had an illicit affair caused them to reconsider what we know about one another in life and about how secrets can define us, for good or for bad.

Drama: An Actor's Education by John Lithgow



This autobiography did not meet my expectations.  In most places it was uninteresting, as Lithgow went over details and incidents of his past which were unimportant to the reader, if not to Lithgow. Detailing the events around the girl who first kissed him is one example of this involvement.  He wrote considerably about his father, but not his mother.  His fragmented childhood saw hime to move from commujnity to community as his father sought work in the theatre.   He was painfully honest about his marital extra-affairs and how that contributed to his divorcing.  I wanted to learn more about his many acting roles, but he focused more on his life devoid of the theatre, which did influence his life "dramatically".

Please Look After Mom by Kyung-Sook Shin

I'm reading right now.  Let you know later what I think.



To Darkness and To Death by Julia Spencer-Fleming



Millicent van der Hoeven has decided to sell her family's Adirondack estate to a nature conservancy. But on the day of the land transfer, her brother frantically calls the police. Millie has disappeared in the cold November forest…

Reverend Clare Fergusson gets an early morning phone call to join the Millers Kill search and rescue operation. As a former Army helicopter pilo...moreMillicent van der Hoeven has decided to sell her family's Adirondack estate to a nature conservancy. But on the day of the land transfer, her brother frantically calls the police. Millie has disappeared in the cold November forest…

Reverend Clare Fergusson gets an early morning phone call to join the Millers Kill search and rescue operation. As a former Army helicopter pilot trained in survival skills, she can't refuse the request--even though it's the day of the bishop's annual visit. Worse for Clare, the search operation will link her up with Russ Van Alstyne, the very married local police chief who is her greatest temptation. Now, as Clare and Russ race time to find Millie van der Hoeven, they soon discover the secrets of someone who is desperate to stop the sale...and a deadly madness waiting to destroy them 

I Am Half-Sick of Shadows by Alan Bradley

Flavia de Luce stikes again! 

I Am Half-Sick of Shadows. By Alan Bradley. Doubleday Canada, 271 pages, $29.95

Top among them is the series’ whip-smart narrator, the 11-year-old hobby sleuth and compulsively curious Flavia de Luce. What she lacks in age, she makes up for with her wits and resourcefulness, and a savage passion for chemistry (especially poisons).
For those unfamiliar with the series, Flavia’s mind functions as a kind of neurological crossroads, where the likes of Madame Curie, Agatha Christie and MacGyver meet to unravel the crimes plaguing this remote 1950s English countryside.
While Bradley arms Flavia with an ancient, fully stocked chemistry lab – her Sanctum Sanctorum – his greatest gift to her (and to his readers) is her ability to think deeply. She proves a thoughtful observer, capable of giving pause to ideas not yet fully formed, and allowing them to percolate and collect until they are remarkably lucid.
She doesn’t rush herself. She thinks things through. She contemplates and assesses. And, like any good detective, she not only notices clues left behind but ones missing from the equation, too.
With three solved murders under her belt, Flavia is quickly gaining on the local inspector – her intellectual rival as well as her mentor (who, by the way, has yet to approve the arrangement). Upon running into him unexpectedly, she observes: “[Inspector Hewitt and I] stood staring at one another across the foyer like two wolves that have come from different directions upon a clearing full of sheep.”
With the inspector at her coattails, here is what gives rise to her next investigation: With bankruptcy looming, Flavia’s reclusive father decides to open up their Buckshaw estate to a London film crew. And this is not just any film crew, but a film crew working closely with famed star Phyllis Wyvern.
With Buckshaw serving as the setting for their next big picture, the crew descends. A rogue snowstorm maroons the team, half the local parish curious about the visit and, purportedly, the culprit – all within the confines of cold, rickety Buckshaw. Sure, Wyvern may be past her prime, but she still knows how to command her audience – even in death. The untimely demise of the self-absorbed screen siren – she is strangled with a length of film from one of her own movies – poses lots of questions and even more suspects.
With nobody going in or out, a classic whodunit ensues. Was it the electrician? The dresser? Or was it someone far less conspicuous? The story introduces us to new characters and reunites us with old favourites (Nialla, also known as Mother Goose from Bradley’s The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag, returns in a big way).
The story also hints at Flavia’s looming sense of change. Bradley reminds readers what a little room and freedom to interpret the space afford a growing mind, especially one as curious as Flavia’s. Her insatiable thirst for knowledge is infectious. (“It makes you wonder, doesn’t it, who wrote the laws for the wind and the rain, the snow and the dew?”) Her faults are endearing.
As in the past three works, Bradley gives a thrilling ride. Out of a creaky old mansion, he conjures a vivid and vivacious story – and yes, raises a few old ghosts, too. But the storyline comes a close second to Bradley’s delightful use of language. He gives the impression he has as much fun crafting sentences as Flavia does mixing noxious compounds. His writing is clear and memorably playful. I Am Half-Sick of Shadows is a delicious, lighthearted holiday read best served by a crackling fireplace with warm eggnog – but please, hold the noxious compounds.

Excellent review  by dragana kovacevic from Toronto Globe and Mail Dec 07,2011.

 

Oprah: A Biography by Kitty Kelley

How did Oprah – born in 1954 to an unwed teenage mother in racist, small-town Mississippi – become the richest and most influential woman of her generation? One clue is that she was aspirational from the very start. At 10, she saw Diana Ross on the Ed Sullivan show and immediately decided that she too was going to be a rich and famous black woman.
Kelley accuses Oprah of exaggerating the poverty and deprivation of her early childhood. Perhaps she did. But her journey is no less astonishing. For the first few years of her life, she was raised largely by her grandparents. Later, she bounced back and forth between her mother in Milwaukee (who by then had two more children) and her father, who owned a barbershop in Nashville. (Her father was not, in fact, her father, as she later discovered.)

Her adolescence was chaotic and deeply troubled. She was sexually abused. She was promiscuous. She even slept with men for money. Just before her 15th birthday, she gave birth to a premature baby, a son, who died a few weeks later. She remembered it as “the shaming, most embarrassing, horrible thing” of her young life.
Most girls with a CV like that are headed straight for the underclass. But Oprah was not most girls. A week after giving birth she went back to school, where no one knew she’d been pregnant. She threw herself into becoming a someone. She told her drama teacher she was going to be a movie star.
Oprah was a born performer, with enormous belief in herself and a ferocious drive for self-improvement. She had a poster on her mirror with a quote from Jesse Jackson. “Excellence is the best deterrent to racism,” it said. “Therefore, be excellent.” She refused to speak black English. She spoke in local churches, won major speaking competitions and got herself elected vice-president of her mostly white high school. (Her campaign slogan was “Put a Little Color in Your Life. Vote for the Grand Ole Oprah.”) She landed a job at a black radio station, then became the first black woman on local television. She was 21. She told people she was going to be the black Barbara Walters.
Part of Oprah’s genius is her phenomenal ability to project warmth and authenticity. Her fans adore her because she's able to seem like Everywoman. Her troubles with men, food and (as she eventually admitted) drugs make her seem flawed and vulnerable, just like them. Unlike them, she never let her troubles hold her back. Even as she lay prostrate on the floor, weeping over Mr. Wrong, she was planning her breakthrough into major markets.
Professional setbacks simply redoubled her determination. At 22, she was recruited to co-anchor the leading news show in Baltimore, where she was a miserable, humiliating flop. (She was so unready for prime time that she mispronounced Canada as Ca-NAY-da). She picked herself up and was eventually offered an experimental morning talk show. By 33, she was TV’s highest-paid talk-show host. She surrounded herself with smart people who were extremely loyal to her and worked like dogs. By 50, just as she had predicted, she was a billionaire.
You can argue whether Oprah's influence has been better or worse for the culture. I'd argue both. (The Queen of confessional TV has constantly campaigned for liberal social values and believes in reading books.) Kelley isn't interested in this question. Her job is to dig up scandal, which she has done by tracking down everybody who ever had a grievance.
Yet people looking for titillation will be disappointed to learn there’s no evidence that Oprah ever had a lesbian affair with Diane Sawyer or anybody else. It’s true she’s not fond of her mother, but it’s also easy to see why. Most of her relatives are a dodgy lot. Her half-sister, a drug addict, peddled the story about her secret pregnancy to the National Enquirer for $19,000. She has been remarkably generous to them anyway. Many of the people she met on the way up are aggrieved that they don’t hear from her any more. But so what?
Oprah has been plagued for years by people who want to make money off their relationship to her – ex-boyfriends, miffed employees and the like. Today, everyone who works for her must sign an elaborate confidentiality agreement pledging not to talk about her – ever. Kelley makes a big deal of this. She argues that although Oprah pretends to live her life in public, in fact she has a lifelong obsession with secrecy. “The book,” she says, “tries to show how these secrets, these awful secrets, controlled Oprah for most of her life.” It doesn't seem to occur to her that Oprah might have a perfectly legitimate business reason for trying to protect her multibillion-dollar brand.
You can probably tell by now that I don't like Kitty Kelley much. She is remarkably thick-headed. She has no answers for the really interesting questions about Oprah, who has probably had more impact on popular culture than any other single figure of our time. Until that book comes along, though, she's done us a service.
Margaret Wente is a Globe and Mail columnist.

Whispers and Lies by Joy Fielding

"A suspenseful tale of a woman who rents out the small cottage behind her house to a mysterious young stranger, Joy Fielding’s latest novel is about trusting and not trusting one’s instincts. A New York Times best-selling author, Fielding has a well-deserved reputation as a writer who knows how to get the reader hooked. From the first page, you can’t put it down. In the same way, Terry Painter is hooked from the very first meeting with her prospective new tenant. Forty and single, Terry has a quiet and ordered life in picturesque Delray, Florida. A nurse at Mission Care private hospital for the elderly and disabled, loved by her patients for her kindness and thoughtfulness, she lives alone in the comfortable house she inherited from her mother five years ago, and rents out the cottage behind it. Alison Simms spots the rental notice posted in the hospital, and blows into Terry’s life like a tropical storm. In her twenties, tall and slim, full of open charm and infectiously enthusiastic, Alison is impossible not to like. “It would be nice having someone around who made me laugh,” thinks Terry.  Alison loves the cottage, right down to the colour combination, and moves in immediately. Terry, usually responsible and pragmatic, surprises herself for failing even to ask for references, but she is drawn instinctively to Alison, and realises she wants her to stay. Alison fills a gap in her life, bringing friendship and warmth. With her sweet tooth and ravenous appetite, the young woman gratefully devours Terry’s home cooking and buys her generous gifts. She even gives her a makeover and a flattering new haircut, helping Terry charm the handsome son of one of her dear, ailing patients. Alison, full of life, brightens the days that are usually spent caring for the old and the sick. Despite the difference in their ages, the two women are comfortable together; it feels like they’ve been friends forever.Yet almost simultaneously, Terry begins to have suspicions about Alison. How much does she know about her, really? Alison has some strange habits and stranger friends. She has a limitless supply of cash in her purse, and knows the house so well it’s as if she’s been in it before. Her reasons for coming to Delray don’t quite add up, and she won’t talk about her parents: “We weren’t on the best of terms.” Moreover, Terry notices a shadowy figure lurking around her house, and starts to receive disturbing phone calls. Snippets of overheard conversation, surreptitious glances in Alison’s diary, and her mother’s nagging voice in her head make Terry paranoid that her tenant may want to do her harm. Should Terry have been more suspicious, or at least wary, especially after the experience with her last tenant? And yet, as Alison says of the neighbour’s pet dogs, “How could anything that sweet be destructive?” And who is hiding more, Alison -- or Terry?Diving deeply into the psyches of her most captivating characters to date, Joy Fielding has created a riveting tale that challenges our most basic assumptions regarding love, friendship, and obsession. It leaves the reader guessing at where the truth really lies until the final shocking twist that Publishers Weekly has called “an ending worthy of Hitchcock”. Fielding delivers an intelligent, tight plot full of psychological complexity, without sacrificing the simple prose and page-turning suspense she is known for around the world."




Review by Randon House Canada

Taltos by Anne Rice

The saga of the Mayfair Witches continues in this novel of reconciliation, acceptance, and foregiveness.  Though I do not normally read anything that deals with the occult, the supernatural, or the fantastical, Anne Rice kept me captivated with this third installment of the  New Orlean's Mayfairs.  I could feel the heat of the Bayou and hear the music of the family gramophone.  Asher demonstrated that not all Taltos are like Lasher, and that Lasher would have been the rare exception to their loving nature.  Bizarre, but fascinating!

moose a memoir of fat camp by Stephanie Klein

From age eight Stephanie's parents commented and fretted about her weight.  Enrolling her in various programs, she only became more aware of her body and more filled with self-loathing.  If only she could have been left alone!  A fat camp did help her one summer and the next summer and the next summer, only for her to return as a counsellor.  But, Stephanie grew up and waddling to her doctors - no, not due to weight, but due to her pregnancy with twins.  Imagine her surprise when her doctor admonished her because her weight was too low.  She had to eat!  She had to gain weight!  Imagine.  She had gone full circle.  This book is filled with humour as Stephanie gives us her insights as a girl, a teen, and an adult.

The Woman in the Mirror: How to Stop Confusing What Yoy Look Like with Who You Are

The author, Cynthia Bulik, Ph.D., is a professor of psychiatry at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine.  She has written and spoken widely on the serious issues of eating disorders and the impact of such on girls and women.  This text is informative and easy to read, however, I found that it did not hold my interest, as the author wrote at length of various womens' testimonies.  Because I am an older woman, I found the second half of the book to be more valuable.  However, I am mindful that a book can be read however the reader wants to read it.  You can read chapters, but not in sequence, if that works for you.  If you want to learn more, go to the author's site http://www.womaninthemirrorbook.com/.