Latest Reviews
Noah is the boy everyone admires --- an honor student, a champion swimmer, a hometown success story. Until he confesses to sexually abusing young girls during swim practice. In a single moment, his future evaporates, and his family shoulders the fallout. After 18 months in a juvenile sexual rehabilitation center, Noah returns home. But the town recoils, and his father refuses to let him back into their family's life. Noah's mom, Adrianne, is forced into an impossible role: the mother of a child no one believes deserves saving. As devastating truths emerge, she must confront the darkest question of all: When does standing by your child become a betrayal of everyone around you?
After a magical night out on the town with her boyfriend, Jack, Emily wakes up alone in a huge bed. But the beautiful, well-lit room is nothing like the hotel she and Jack rented, and she has no memory of this place from the night before. Where is she? A woman’s voice directs her to remain in bed. And beyond the end of the bed is a picture frame upon an easel --- a frame with no canvas, no painting, no art. But there is the silhouette of a person Emily does not recognize. A person emanating demand, danger and evil. And the way the woman talks...and the things she says. She’s acting as if Emily herself is the painting. The still life. The art. Emily is as scared as she is confused. But it’s immediately clear that Jack’s life is on the line with her own.
Detective Andy Cooper is about to retire and isn't sure what's next. She'll need to do something, if only to distract herself from how empty her life has become. Everything changes when bodies begin to turn up. Murdered, but how? Not by knife, gun or any obvious weapon. Instead: teethmarks. Chunks missing. Like they'd been chewed on. And not by humans. As she's struggling to solve her final case, an unexpected new friendship seems like just what Andy needs. Where she is detached from life, Fiona embraces it. Where she is a homebody, Fiona roams. Yet the women are drawn together by a shared love of nature and wildlife. Until Andy learns the dark truth behind Fiona's smile. A secret that threatens to unravel the world as she knows it.
Growing up, Marnie Stephens believed that destiny was real and the universe had a plan. But at 30, real life has become more difficult than divine. Especially when Marnie wakes up at a hospital in Boston with no memory of how she got there...or the last year of her life. Her doctor tells her she suffered a head injury; her boyfriend, Matt, insists they broke up months ago; and her hair is somehow eight inches shorter. Before she knows it, she finds herself in an apartment she doesn’t remember with a new neighbor, Ben Morgan, she’s sure she won’t forget. As Marnie sets out to retrace the last year of her life, the last thing she needs is to start falling for Ben, the grumpy (and incredibly attractive) neighbor helping her. But the universe has other plans.
Graziella, a 96-year-old former nun, spends her days running the parish’s food kitchen, convinced it is her responsibility to keep everyone fed in their working-class New York neighborhood. Her daughter, Grace, a respected psychology professor, appears accomplished and composed, yet she finds herself unmoored as her personal life falters. Ella --- Graziella’s granddaughter and Grace’s daughter --- is weary of defending her vegan diet and anti-capitalistic lifestyle. Blind to her own brilliance, she longs, above all, for a place to belong. Living together again, the three Graces reckon with the distances that have shaped them, and with what it means, at last, to be fully known.
Nanako Hanada is a passionate book lover who manages the Village Vanguard, an iconically eccentric bookstore in Tokyo. But her story takes a turn with the breakdown of her marriage. Spending her nights alone in Tokyo's four-hour capsules, she’s finding herself rather isolated. That's until Nanako finds the meet-up site Perfect Strangers, where people meet for 30-minute bursts to find friendship or romance, build a network, or just share ideas. She sets up her profile promising to recommend people “the book that will change their life.” In the ensuing year, Nanako meets hundreds of people, a ragtag range of strangers who happen to believe in the power of a great book.
He was born feet first. His mother did not survive, and the nickname, Agrippa --- mother killer --- stuck. But the schoolyard taunting only served to harden his resolve and hone his predilection for aggression. Agrippa was a mere commoner, a plebeian, but he earned the respect and fear of his peers. He defended a bullied young boy, Octavius, who turned out to be Caesar’s nephew. He eventually joined the ranks of the legionnaires and marched against their enemies. His prowess on the battlefield spoke for itself, and Caesar relied on him to protect his favored nephew. When Caesar was murdered in the Senate, Octavius inherited the empire in name only. To assume the mantle, he would have to fight for it. Agrippa, forever by his side, would be his closest advisor and the merciless agent of his military will.
Twenty-five years ago in Seaside, Washington, a charming drifter named Sam met three inseparable teenage girls at the local amusement park. Days later, one of them was found dead. Barb and Nicolette were shocked to learn that the man they all met at Wonderland was the Carnival Killer. After he's arrested for the murders of five young women --- one of whom was their best friend, Lorelei --- Nicolette moved to the city to pursue her dreams of being famous. Barb stayed behind in Seaside, eventually becoming a reporter for the local paper. But when the Carnival Killer recants his confession and a new body washes ashore on the eve of Wonderland’s grand reopening, the secrets that Barb and Nicolette have worked so hard to bury begin to resurface, threatening to destroy everything in their carefully constructed lives.
When celebrated and enigmatic artist Victor D'Arcangelo dies unexpectedly, his nearest and dearest receive an irresistible summons: attend his weekend memorial --- or forfeit their inheritance. But once they arrive, the paradise begins to feel more like a prison. Someone knows their secrets. Someone wants revenge. As the weekend spirals into chaos, one question hangs in the sultry, tropical air: Who, if anyone, will survive? This time, the masterpiece may be murder.
Queenie is 33 and the editorial director for The Good Sis, a thriving media network amplifying the voices of Black women --- a far cry from her former toxic workplace. With a great platform and a renewed sense of purpose, she’s fighting the good fight. But when an appointment for research goes haywire and reveals startling truths about her own fertility, Queenie is confronted with a racing biological clock when she’s not even sure she wants kids in the first place. Surrounded by loyal friends who seem to fall in love with their person and get pregnant at the drop of a hat, and the reappearance of an old flame she never stopped loving, while being pulled into a series of confusing “situationships” that really do NOT go anywhere, means that time is running out in all parts of her life.
