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Lorraine W. Shanley

Biography

Lorraine W. Shanley


With years of reviewing experience at Book of the Month Club, Publishers Weekly, etc., Lorraine Shanley now enjoys being able to choose the books she reviews, which tend to be narrative nonfiction, thrillers and suspense. An avid reader and listener of audiobooks and podcasts, Lorraine's day job is in media consulting. She also serves on several nonprofit boards in education and community outreach.

Lorraine W. Shanley

Reviews by Lorraine W. Shanley

by Sarah Braunstein - Fiction, Women's Fiction

Now that her brilliant botanist daughter is off at college, Maeve Cosgrove loves her job at a quiet Maine public library more than anything. But when a teenager accuses Maeve of spying on her romantic escapades in the mezzanine bathroom, she winds up laid off and humiliated. Stuck at home in a tailspin, Maeve cares for the mysterious plants in her daughter’s greenhouse while obsessing over the clearly troubled girl at the source of the rumor. She hopes to have a powerful ally in her attempts to clear her name: her favorite author, Harrison Riddles, who has finally responded to her adoring letters and accepted an invitation to speak at the library. Riddles, meanwhile, announces a plan to write a novel about another young library patron, Sudanese refugee Willie, and enlists Maeve’s help in convincing him to participate.

by Terry Hayes - Fiction, Political Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

If, like Kane, you’re a Denied Access Area spy for the CIA, then boundaries have no meaning. Your function is to go in, do whatever is required, and get out again --- by whatever means necessary. You know when to run, when to hide --- and when to shoot. But some places don’t play by the rules. Some places are too dangerous, even for a man of Kane’s experience. The badlands where the borders of Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan meet are such a place --- a place where violence is the only way to survive. Kane travels there to exfiltrate a man with vital information for the safety of the West, but instead he meets an adversary who will take the world to the brink of extinction. A frightening, clever, vicious man with blood on his hands and vengeance in his heart.

by Karl Marlantes - Fiction, Historical Fiction

Helsinki, 1947. Finland teeters between the Soviet Union and the West. Everyone is being watched. A wrong look or a wrong word could end in catastrophe. Natalya Bobrova, from Russia, and Louise Koski, from the United States, are young wives of their country’s military attachés. When they meet at an embassy party, their husbands, world-class skiers Arnie and Mikhail, drunkenly challenge each other to a friendly --- but secret --- cross-country wilderness race. If news of the race gets out and Mikhail loses, Natalya knows it would mean his death, her imprisonment and the loss of her two children. Meanwhile, Louise, who is childless, uses the race as an opportunity to raise money for a local orphanage, naïve to the danger it will bring to Natalya and her family.

by Ben Mezrich - Business, Economics, Nonfiction

BREAKING TWITTER takes readers inside the darkly comic battle between one of the most intriguing, polarizing, influential men of our time --- Elon Musk --- and the company that represents our culture’s dearest hope for a shared global conversation. From employee accounts within Twitter headquarters to the mission-driven team Musk surrounded himself with, this is the full story from all sides. Can Musk miraculously succeed, or will he spectacularly fail? What will that mean to the global town hall that is Twitter? What, really, is his end goal?

by Douglas Brunt - History, Nonfiction

September 29, 1913. The steamship Dresden is halfway between Belgium and England. On board is one of the most famous men in the world, Rudolf Diesel, whose new internal combustion engine is on the verge of revolutionizing global industry forever. But Diesel never arrives at his destination. He vanishes during the night, and headlines around the world wonder if it was an accident, suicide or murder. In THE MYSTERIOUS CASE OF RUDOLF DIESEL, New York Times bestselling author Douglas Brunt reopens the case and provides an astonishing new conclusion about Diesel’s fate.

by John Glatt - Nonfiction, True Crime

Among the lush, tree-lined waterways of South Carolina low country, the Murdaugh name means power. A century-old, multimillion-dollar law practice has catapulted the family into incredible wealth and local celebrity --- but it was an unimaginable tragedy that would thrust them into the national spotlight. On June 7, 2021, prominent attorney Alex Murdaugh discovered the bodies of his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul, on the grounds of their thousand-acre hunting lodge. The mystery deepened only months later when Alex himself was discovered shot in the head on a local roadside. But as authorities scrambled for clues and the community reeled from the loss and media attention, dark secrets about this Southern legal dynasty came to light.

by Michael Finkel - Nonfiction, True Crime

For centuries, works of art have been stolen in countless ways from all over the world, but no one has been quite as successful at it as the master thief Stéphane Breitwieser. Carrying out more than 200 heists over nearly eight years --- in museums and cathedrals all over Europe --- Breitwieser, along with his girlfriend who worked as his lookout, stole more than 300 objects, until it all fell apart in spectacular fashion. In THE ART THIEF, Michael Finkel brings us into Breitwieser’s strange and fascinating world. Unlike most thieves, Breitwieser never stole for money. Instead, he displayed all his treasures in a pair of secret rooms where he could admire them to his heart’s content.

by Jane L. Rosen - Fiction, Women's Fiction

As a book editor, Julia Morse lived and breathed stories. Whether with her pen to a manuscript or curled up with a book while at her beloved Fire Island cottage, her imagination alight with a good tale, she could anticipate practically any ending. The ending she’d never imagined was her own. To be fair, no one expects to die at 37. So when the unthinkable happens to Julia, rather than following the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel, she chooses to spend one last summer near those she loves most. As she follows her adoring, novelist husband Ben to their --- unexpectedly full --- home on Fire Island, she discovers the ripple effect her life has had on the trajectory of so many.

by Oliver Darkshire - Memoir, Nonfiction

Some years ago, Oliver Darkshire stepped into the hushed interior of Henry Sotheran Ltd to apply for a job. Allured by the smell of old books and the temptation of a management-approved afternoon nap, Darkshire was soon unteetering stacks of first editions and placating the store’s resident ghost (the late Mr. Sotheran, hit by a tram). A novice in this ancient, potentially haunted establishment, Darkshire describes Sotheran’s brushes with history (Dickens, the Titanic), its joyous disorganization, and the unspoken rules of its gleefully old-fashioned staff. As Darkshire gains confidence and experience, he shares trivia about ancient editions and explores the strange space that books occupy in our lives --- where old books often have strong sentimental value, but rarely a commercial one.

by Tim Dorsey - Fiction, Humor, Mystery

After a long and arduous COVID-19 quarantine, Serge A. Storms is fully vaccinated and ready to hit the road. Along with his condo neighbors, he cooks up a wild plan to celebrate in true Serge fashion: each week, they rent a shuttle van and head out for funky Florida road trips and some serious revelry. Meanwhile, a CIA revenge operation down in Honduras goes very, very wrong. The local liaison hired to help with the mission is the only witness to the disaster, and the CIA quickly sets a black ops contractor on his trail to eliminate him. Forced to flee his home country, the witness lands in Miami with a new identity and passport. But the CIA is still on his tail, pushing him further and further south to the Florida Keys, where he runs into Serge’s convoy.