Kinsey and me by Sue Grafton

Kinsey and me by Sue Grafton  New York:  Penguin Group, 2013

Short Stories of an autobiographical nature as the author takes on the persona of 'Kit', re-living events from her childhood with her mentally ill and alcoholic mother and lawyer, alcoholic father.  Very sensitive writing, with a level of introspection nver seen in her 'Alphabet Series'. Second half of book the superior, showing her sensitivity and humanity.

The witch's daughter (2011) by Paula Brackston



My name is Elizabeth Anne Hawksmith, and my age is three hundred and eighty-four years. Each new settlement asks for a new journal, and so this Book of Shadows begins…

In the spring of 1628, the Witchfinder of Wessex finds himself a true Witch. As Bess Hawksmith watches her mother swing from the Hanging Tree she knows that only one man can save her from the same fate at the hands of the panicked mob: the Warlock Gideon Masters, and his Book of Shadows. Secluded at his cottage in the woods, Gideon instructs Bess in the Craft, awakening formidable powers she didn’t know she had and making her immortal. She couldn't have foreseen that even now, centuries later, he would be hunting her across time, determined to claim payment for saving her life.
In present-day England, Elizabeth has built a quiet life for herself, tending her garden and selling herbs and oils at the local farmers' market. But her solitude abruptly ends when a teenage girl called Tegan starts hanging around. Against her better judgment, Elizabeth begins teaching Tegan the ways of the Hedge Witch, in the process awakening memories--and demons—long thought forgotten.
Part historical romance, part modern fantasy, The Witch’s Daughter is a fresh, compelling take on the magical, yet dangerous world of Witches.Readers will long remember the fiercely independent heroine who survives plagues, wars, and the heartbreak that comes with immortality to remain true to herself, and protect the protégé she comes to love.(Review by Goodreads)

Six years (2013) by Harlan Coben



Six years have passed since Jake Sanders watched Natalie, the love of his life, marry another man. Six yearsof hiding a broken heart by throwing himself into his career as a college professor. Six years of keeping his promise to leave Natalie alone, and six years of tortured dreams of her life with her new husband, Todd.

But six years haven’t come close to extinguishing his feelings, and when Jake comes across Todd’s obituary, he can’t keep himself away from the funeral. There he gets the glimpse of Todd’s wife he’s hoping for . . . but she is not Natalie. Whoever the mourning widow is, she’s been married to Todd for more than a decade, and with that fact everything Jake thought he knew about the best time of his life—a time he has never gotten over—is turned completely inside out.
As Jake searches for the truth, his picture-perfect memories of Natalie begin to unravel. Mutual friends of the couple either can’t be found or don’t remember Jake. No one has seen Natalie in years. Jake’s search for the woman who broke his heart—and who lied to him—soon puts his very life at risk as it dawns on him that the man he has become may be based on carefully constructed fiction. (Review by Goodreads)

The Hypnotist (2009) by Lars Kepler

Solving two unrelated, but peculiar, serial killings becomes the mission of Stockholm police detective, Joona Linna., Very suspenseful.



Touch & Go (2013) by Lisa Gardner

The Shoemaker's Wife by Adriana Trigiani

The Shoemaker's Wife by Adriana Trigiani  New York, NY:  Harper Collins, 2012

This review by Carol Memmott, USA TODAY April 01, 2012. 

 "At first glance, there seems to be a disconnect between the sturdy, simple title of Adriana Trigiani's new novel, The Shoemaker's Wife, and the breathlessly gorgeous photo that graces the book's cover. It ran in Harper's Bazaar in 1949 and its model, decked out in a strapless, fiery red gown, is the epitome of sophistication. But within the pages of this novel, Trigiani's 10th, is a gloriously romantic yet sensible world that seamlessly blends practicality and beauty.The novel's real-life back story is as arresting as the one Trigiani creates. It's inspired by the love between the author's grandparents, who grew up in the Northern Alps of Italy but did not meet until they emigrated to the United States. That's the gem of an idea that Trigiani nurtured in her imagination for more than two decades before she put it on paper. The Shoemaker's Wife begins in the Northern Alps in 1905 and follows the lives of Ciro and Eduardo Lazzari, brothers who grew up in a convent because their widowed mother could not care for them. It's also the story of Enza Ravanelli and her big-hearted family whose financial struggles come to a fateful bend in the road when Enza decides to go to America to earn money. She would not know until a chance meeting in New York that Ciro, a boy she kissed and thought never to see again, had also traveled to America to seek his fortune.
What transpires is a classic immigrant success story, but the tale of Enza and Ciro transcends the commonplace because of their great love. It's a love so big that Enza, whose seamstress skills have earned her a spot creating costumes for the Metropolitan Opera House's biggest stars, gives up her dream job. She leaves a fiancé at the altar and marries Ciro. They move to Minnesota, where he makes shoes for working men. Like other period pieces set pre- and post-World War I (think Downton Abbey) that are capturing our imagination, The Shoemaker's Wife is built around the staggering cultural and social changes the war years swept in. In America, the flood of mostly European immigrants changed the country's look and landscape. You don't need to have an immigrant family history to adore this novel — it ranks as one of Trigiani's very best."



You only need a deep appreciation for exquisite writing and a story enriched by the power of abiding love.





Reader Reviews - From Goodreads

Sue Grafton's alphabet series

Sue Grafton's Alphabet Series

"A" is for Alibi

When Laurence Fife was murdered, few mourned his passing. A prominent divorce attorney with areputation for single-minded ruthlessness on behalf of his clients, Fife was also rumored to be a
    dedicated philanderer.

"B" is for Burglar

      Beverly Danziger looked like an expensive, carefully wrapped package from a good but  conservative shop. Only her compulsive chatter hinted at the nervousness beneath her cool surface. It was a nervousness out of all proportion to the problem she placed before Kinsey Millhone

"C" is for Corpse

He was young—maybe twenty or so—and he must once have been a good-looking kid. Kinsey could see that. But now his body was covered in scars, his face half-collapsed. It saddened Kinsey and made her curio

"D" is for Deadbeat
 He called himself Alvin Limardo, and the job he had for Kinsey was cut-and-dried: locate a kid who'd done him a favor and pass on a check for $25,000. It was only later, after he'd stiffed her for her retainer, that Kinsey found out his name was Daggett. John Daggett.

"E" is for Evidence
It was the silly season and a Monday at that, and Kinsey Millhone was bogged down in a preliminary report on a fire claim. Something was nagging at her, but she couldn't pin it. The last thing she needed in the morning mail was a letter from her bank recording an erroneous $5,000 deposit in her account. Kinsey had never believed in Santa Claus and she wasn't about to change her mind now.

"F" is for Fugitive
Floral Beach wasn't much of a town: six streets long and three deep, its only notable feature a strip of sand fronting the Pacific. It was on that sandy beach seventeen years ago that the strangled body of Jean Timberlake had been found.

"G" is for Gumshoe
Kinsey is run off the road by a red pickup truck, wrecking her '68 Volkswagen and landing herself in the hospital. Maybe a bodyguard is a good idea after all...Enter Robert Dietz, a burnt-out detective, "late forties, five ten, maybe 170, [who arrives in] jeans, cowboy boots, a tweed sport coat with a blue toothbrush protruding from the breast pocket like a ballpoint pen."

"H" is for Homicide
His name was Parnell Perkins, and until shortly after midnight, he'd been a claims adjustor for California Fidelity. Then someone came along and put paid to that line of work. And to any other. Parnell Perkins had been shot at close range and left for dead in the parking lot outside California Fidelity's offices.

"I" is for Innocent
Readers of Sue Grafton's fiction know she never writes the same book twice, and "I" is for Innocent is no exception. Her most intricately plotted novel to date, it is layered in enough complexity to baffle even the cleverest among us.

"J" is for Judgment
Wendell Jaffe was dead these past five years. Or so it seemed until his former insurance agent spotted him in the bar of a dusty little resort halfway between Cabo San Lucas and La Paz.
Lorna Kepler was beautiful and willful, a loner who couldn't resist flirting with danger. Maybe that's what killed her.

"L" is for Lawless
Kinsey's skills are about to be sorely tested. She is about to meet her duplicitious match in a couple of world-class prevaricators who quite literally take her for the ride of her life.


"M" is for Malice
"M" is for money. Lots of it. "M" is for Malek Construction, the $40 million company that grew out of modest soil to become one of the big three in California construction, one of the few still in family hands.

"N" is for NooseKinsey Millhone should have done something else—she should have turned the car in the direction of home. Instead, she was about to put herself in the gravest jeopardy of her career.

"O" is for Outlaw
The call comes on a Monday morning from a guy who scavenges defaulted storage units at auctionThe weekend before, he'd bought a stack of cardboard boxes. In one, there was a collection of childhood memorabilia with Kinsey's name all over it. For thirty bucks, he was offering Kinsey the lot.

"P" is for Peril
Dr. Dowan Purcell had been missing for nine weeks when Kinsey got a call asking her to take on the case. A specialist in geriatric medicine, Purcell was a prominent member of the Santa Teresa medical community, and the police had done a thorough job. Purcell had no known enemies and seemed contented with his life.

"Q" is for Quarry
She was a "Jane Doe," an unidentified white female whose decomposed body was discovered near a quarry off California's Highway 1. The case fell to the Santa Teresa County Sheriff's Department, but the detectives had little to go on.

"R" is for Ricochet
Reba Lafferty was a daughter of privilege, the only child of an adoring father. Nord Lafferty was already in his fifties when Reba was born, and he could deny her nothing. Over the years, he quietly settled her many scrapes with the law, but he wasn't there for her when she was convicted of embezzlement and sent to the California Institute for Women. Now, at thirty-two, she is about to be paroled, having served twenty-two months of a four-year sentence.

"S" is for Silence
In "S" is for Silence, Kinsey Millhone's nineteenth excursion into the world of suspense and misadventure, "S" is for surprises as Sue Grafton takes a whole new approach to telling the tale.

"T" is for Trespass
In what may be her most unsettling novel to date, Sue Grafton's "T" is for Trespass is also her most direct confrontation with the forces of evil. Beginning slowly with the day-to-day life of a private eye, Grafton suddenly shifts from the voice of Kinsey Millhone to that of Solana Rojas, introducing readers to a chilling sociopath.

"U" is for Undertow
Calling "T is forespass "taut, terrifying, transfixing and terrific," USA Today went on to ask, "What does it take to write twenty novels about the same character and manage to create a fresh, genre-bending novel every time?" It's a question worth pondering. Through twenty excursions into the dark side of the human soul, Sue Grafton has never written the same book twice. And so it is with this, her twenty-first. Once again, she breaks genre formulas, giving us a twisting, complex, surprise-filled, and totally satisfying thriller.

"W" is for Wasted
Two dead bodies changed the course of my life that fall. One of them I knew and the other I'd never laid eyes on until I saw him in the morgue.
The first was a local PI of suspect reputation. He'd been gunned down near the beach at Santa Teresa. It looked like a robbery gone bad. The other was on the beach six weeks later. He'd been sleeping rough. Probably homeless. No identification. A slip of paper with Millhone's name and number was in his pants pocket. The coroner asked her to come to the morgue to see if she could ID. Two seemingly unrelated deaths, one a murder, the other apparently of natural causes.

More room in a broken heart: The true adventures of Carly Simon (2012) by Stephen Davis

Penguin Pub.
Not a good read.  Book is a collection of cut and pastes from articles and other sources.  Ms. Simon was never interviewed for this publication and does not authorize.  It was a list of recordings and people.  Very little about her emotional and intellectual being or her profuse composition.  No notes ,no references, no bibibliography. When Carley Simon is quoted, one never knows from whence the source. Very weak story line.

The predator (2006) by Patricia Cornwall



"Scarpetta, now freelancing with the National Forensic Academy in Florida, digs into a case more bizarre than any she has ever faced, one that has produced not only unusual physical evidence, but also tantalizing clues about the inner workings of an extremely cunning and criminal mind.

She and her team --- Pete Marino, Benton Wesley, and her niece, Lucy --- track the odd connections between several horrific crimes and the people who are the likely suspects. As one psychopath, safely behind bars and the subject of a classified scientific study at a Harvard-affiliated psychiatric hospital, teases Scarpetta with tips that could be fact --- or fantasy --- the number of killers on the loose seems to multiply. Are these events related or merely random? And what can the study of one man's brain tell them about the methods of a psychopath still lurking in the shadows." 
Copied from Goodreads, Nov 24, 2012

PS  Incredible conflict within the team.  Marino stops taking his antidepressant and becomes very difficult.  Lucy has to reveal that she has a tumor and needs medication and surgery. A doctor on a fellowship is hacking into confidenrial files and listening in on phone calls, to no good end.

Say when (2003) by Elizabeth Berg



When is a marriage worth saving and when is it best to let go? When do half-truths turn into full-blown lies? When does betrayal end and passion begin?

Say When is a compelling, complex novel that takes readers into the heart of a modern marriage where companionship and intimacy, and denial and pain, so often collide. "Of course he knew she was seeing someone," begins the s...more When is a marriage worth saving and when is it best to let go? When do half-truths turn into full-blown lies? When does betrayal end and passion begin?

Say When is a compelling, complex novel that takes readers into the heart of a modern marriage where companionship and intimacy, and denial and pain, so often collide. "Of course he knew she was seeing someone," begins the story of Frank Griffin, a man who's willing to overlook his wife's infidelity -- he would let her have this, this thrilling little romance -- for the sake of keeping his family intact. But when the forty-year-old Ellen requests a divorce on the basis that she has finally found true, romantic love, Griffin must decide whether to fight or flee...or search elsewhere for the kind of life he always dreamed of.

With Elizabeth Berg's trademark blend of rare insight, raw emotion, and hard-won wisdom, Say When is a work of startling revelation that no reader will soon forget.

Copied from Goodreads, Nov 24, 2012



The Distant Hours (2010) by Kate Morton



A long lost letter arrives in the post and Edie Burchill finds herself on a journey to Milderhurst Castle, a great but moldering old house, where the Blythe spinsters live and where her mother was billeted 50 years before as a 13 year old child during WWII. The elder Blythe sisters are twins and have spent most of their lives looking after the third and youngest sister, Juniper, who hasn’t been the same since her fiance jilted her in 1941.

Inside the decaying castle, Edie begins to unravel her mother’s past. But there are other secrets hidden in the stones of Milderhurst, and Edie is about to learn more than she expected. The truth of what happened in ‘the distant hours’ of the past has been waiting a long time for someone to find it.

Morton once again enthralls readers with an atmospheric story featuring unforgettable characters beset by love and circumstance and haunted by memory, that reminds us of the rich power of storytelling.

Review by Goodreads Nov 18/12

Bring Up the Bodies (2012) by Hilary Mantel

Though he battled for seven years to marry her, Henry is disenchanted with Anne Boleyn. She has failed to give him a son and her sharp intelligence and audacious will alienate his old friends and the noble families of England. When the discarded Katherine dies in exile from the court, Anne stands starkly exposed, the focus of gossip and malice.
At a word from Henry, Thomas Cromwell is ready to bring her down. Over three terrifying weeks, Anne is ensnared in a web of conspiracy, while the demure Jane Seymour stands waiting her turn for the poisoned wedding ring. But Anne and her powerful family will not yield without a ferocious struggle. Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies follows the dramatic trial of the queen and her suitors for adultery and treason. To defeat the Boleyns, Cromwell must ally with his natural enemies, the papist aristocracy. What price will he pay for Anne's head?

The sequel to Hilary Mantel's 2009 Man Booker Prize winner and New York Times bestseller, Wolf Hall delves into the heart of Tudor history with the downfall of Anne Boleyn.  Review by Goodreads Nov 18/12

Never See Them Again (2012) by M.William Phelps



(reviewed on December 1, 2011)

Thorough account of a quadruple murder in a Houston suburb in 2003.

Veteran true-crime author Phelps (Kill for Me, 2010, etc.) chronicles the story of the killing, which took place inside a home on a usually peaceful street, of best friends Tiffany Rowell and Rachael Koloroutis, both 18; Tiffany's boyfriend Marcus Precella, 19; and Marcus' cousin Adelbert Nicholas Sánchez, 21. For more than two years, Houston police and related law-enforcement agencies seemed stumped by the crime, and it took three years from the day of the slaughter to publicly identify two suspects. Two Houston homicide detectives provide the focal point for Phelps, with numerous other law-enforcement officers entering and leaving the narrative. The author is respectful of the police, never suggesting they are incompetent, but he points out shortcomings of the investigation with admirable detail. The book is primarily a police procedural, but it is also a tribute to the four murder victims. Readers completely unaware of the case will begin to suspect the identity of the murderers, despite numerous other persons of interest as the police pursue a theory of a drug deal gone bad. Illegal drugs were important in the case but not the key to finding the perpetrators. Phelps explains how police, despite their diligence and compassion, might never have found the murderers without guidance from calls to a crime-solving hotline. After police began seeking one suspect, he committed suicide before apprehension. The other one faced trial, which Phelps reports in unimaginative, sometimes overwhelming detail. A jury found her guilty quickly, and she received a life sentence with the possibility of parole.

A thoroughly reported procedural too much repetition and heavy-handed foreshadowing.

Fear no Evil (2007) by Allison Brennan

 (No Evil Trilogy, #3) Goodreads
Instead of preparing for her high school graduation, Lucy Kincaid is facing a vicious execution. Lured by an online predator, she’s destined to die horribly–live on the Internet–while hundreds of heartless viewers watch and vote on the method of her slaughter. Her family’s only hope rests with Kate Donovan, an FBI agent who took on...more In cyberspace, no one can hear you scream.

Instead of preparing for her high school graduation, Lucy Kincaid is facing a vicious execution. Lured by an online predator, she’s destined to die horribly–live on the Internet–while hundreds of heartless viewers watch and vote on the method of her slaughter. Her family’s only hope rests with Kate Donovan, an FBI agent who took on the same sadistic killer once before . . . and lost. Blamed for another girl’s gruesome murder, Kate’s been fighting to clear her name. But she agrees to join the hunt for Lucy–and reluctantly steps back into her worst nightmare.

With time running out before the bloody webcast airs, Kate teams up with forensic psychiatrist Dillon Kincaid to get inside the head of her twisted quarry, zero in on his chamber of horrors, and reach Lucy before grim history repeats itself and another innocent’s brutal death goes hideously live.

Face the fear. Speak its name. See its face.



Wicked Lies by Lisa Jackson



Pulp fiction - murder mystery.  Passes the time.