Latest Reviews
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.
The movie star M is one of the most recognizable faces of our time. Her image is everywhere. It has been like that since she was a child. With such fame, her life has the appearance of freedom: people are instantly obliging, spaces are altered to accommodate her, time can be rearranged. M may live in the same places as real people. She may meet her friends or collect her children from school or walk her dogs as they do. But it seems the rules of reality have melted away. Now, a writer has decided to pay close attention to M’s life in the hope of understanding who she really is. It is hard not to feel ugly or insignificant next to M. But what truths --- about the very experience of living --- might this proximity allow the writer to briefly capture?
Dr. Charly McKenna had the perfect life: a thriving dermatology practice, a luxury apartment overlooking Central Park, and a handsome husband who adored her. Until the night a bullet tore through her skull…and stole everything. Now Charly wakes in a rehabilitation hospital unable to walk, speak or remember her own name. All she knows is that someone tried to kill her. As fragments of memory surface, so do unsettling questions about the people around her. The truth of what happened that night lives somewhere inside her brain. And as Charly pieces together the jagged edges of her past, she begins to realize the most terrifying possibility: the person who wants her dead might be the one she once trusted most.
Tuesday Hendrickson has spent eight years running from memories of that night. Her sister’s screams. Blood on the walls. And Arsen Bauer, a monster known as the Crying Killer, shot down in a barrage of bullets as he fled. Tuesday changed her last name and moved away. She’s now a private investigator who guards herself and her daughter, Julia, like their lives depend on it. And maybe they do. Because unless she’s imagining things, Tuesday has seen Arsen on the streets of Saint Paul. When bodies begin surfacing bearing the Crying Killer’s brutal and unmistakable signature, Tuesday is certain he’s coming for them. As her paranoia intensifies, she is left with a terrible choice: unearth the shocking secret she buried with her sister, or become the Crying Killer’s next victim.
A top-secret government project hits upon a revolutionary idea for transporting matter across the vast reaches of the universe, and it succeeds in bringing something back. Something alive. Soon, mankind’s reign comes to an abrupt halt when a truck hauling a very special shipping container overturns and rolls off the highway, unleashing an otherworldly horror upon an unsuspecting New England countryside. Several years later, an unidentified man emerges from the rubble of humanity. He travels by night up the rural East Coast, discovering Americana ruins and encountering monsters the likes of which no one has survived. Scarred and molded by the cruel horrors of this new natural order, he must face his own dwindling humanity and pray that any others out there have not become monsters themselves.
After a traumatic accident that almost cost him his life, Jordan is finally starting to feel normal again. Well, maybe not normal. Everything tastes like ash, and when he looks at the people around him, their faces start to melt. His friends are doing their best to get him back on his feet and maybe even find someone to take his mind off his last failed relationship. Then he meets Lilith. The two share an instant connection, but after a wild and passionate night together, she ghosts him. Jordan searches the city for Lilith, desperate to see her again. But when a woman claiming to be Lilith shows up, wearing a different face but knowing intimate details about Jordan, he worries he’s losing his grip on reality. As he grows closer to this mysterious woman, he discovers that happily ever afters sometimes come at a cost.
Like many of us, Jen Golbeck looked at her rescue golden retrievers and affectionately wondered what exactly was going on in their cute, fuzzy heads. But as a left-brained scientist, Golbeck set out to seek concrete answers --- research and data --- to back up the hunch that there’s a lot more going on beneath the surface of our pups’ funny looks and adorable, occasionally destructive, behaviors. What she finds is a surprising relationship between positive psychology and how we might learn to think about how our dogs think in a whole new light. She introduces a mold-breaking concept that shifts our focus from solving problems and scolding “bad behavior” to building on strengths based on qualities like focus, vitality and curiosity.
Acting Detective Inspector Roberta Steel has never been shy, but she’s finally retiring. After 30 years of policing Aberdeen’s underbelly, she’s all set for her twilight years to feature gardening gloves, afternoon tea, crossword puzzles and shouting at the television. So when a body turns up in a wheelie bin, it looks like an excellent way to round off her career and go out with a bang. But the Northeast of Scotland isn’t finished with her yet. There’s a violent protest to stop; far-right populist politicians and sketchy government spooks; a by-election; drugs, dogs and baby-doll nighties; and a desperate ex-colleague, begging her for help. With only her Queen Street Irregulars for backup, and the top brass desperate to get rid of her, these final few weeks just might be the death of her.
Anna Maybourne never imagined herself living in a place like Harper’s Creek, a nowhere town full of dusty farmland plagued by drought. It’s supposed to be a new start for her and her family. But after dropping out of college, Anna feels stuck in place --- working a part-time job, watching her little sister grow up, and taking care of her grandmother with dementia. It seems that the only interesting thing about her new town is the string of grisly murders attributed to a killer called the Farmhandman. Along with outspoken loner Melissa Laverne and handsome deputy Todd Greenbough, Anna fills her hours with the town’s darkest curiosity. But even though the prime suspect is long dead, the Farmhandman murders begin to feel too close for comfort as the anniversary nears.
