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Pamela Kramer

Biography

Pamela Kramer


Pamela Kramer began her obsession with books by reading the entire Wizard of Oz series when she was in kindergarten and first grade. She was a lawyer for many years and is retired from her job as a dual language gifted teacher in Highland Park, Illinois. Pamela enjoyed combining her love of books and her love of animals with her teaching. She got to read new picture books to younger students and used their reactions in her reviews. Through her website, she is able to recommend middle grade and young adult books to students. All the students and former students (and teachers) know where to go for good book recommendations! She served on the Illinois Bluestem steering committee (Illinois School Library Media Association Award) for several years.

Pam also loves to read adult books, and several authors whose books she has reviewed have become friends. She has rescued a variety of animals, from dogs and cats to rats and rabbits, and she loves nothing more than reading while cuddling with one of her four dogs or two cats. She always has a foster dog in her home as well. She has reviewed books online since 2010 and began writing about books for the now defunct Examiner.com website and later as a contributor to Huffington Post. She continues to review -- mostly on her blog, PamelaKramer.com. She spends school breaks reading as much as possible while also organizing and checking the massive piles of books in her home. Her favorite thing? Seeing a quote from one of her reviews on the back of a book!

Pamela Kramer

Reviews by Pamela Kramer

by Kelley Armstrong - Fiction, Mystery

Detective Casey Duncan and her husband, Sheriff Eric Dalton, are entering a new chapter of life as parents to their six-month-old baby. Their family is hidden away in the sanctuary town of Haven's Rock where they can live safe and private lives. But when they encounter hikers too close to the borders of Haven's Rock, they realize they're in danger of being exposed. When they find one of the hikers dead the next day, they realize that their paranoia was justified, but they're no closer to finding out who these people were and what they were doing in the vicinity of Haven's Rock. Only by tracing the hikers' movements, as well as examining the recent behavior of their closest neighbors, the workers of a secretive mining camp, will they be able to figure out where the threat is coming from and shut it down.

by Kate Quinn - Fiction, Magical Realism

Alexandria “Alix” Watson has learned one lesson from her barren childhood in the foster-care system: Unlike people, books will never let you down. Working three dead-end jobs to make ends meet and knowing that college is a pipe dream, Alix takes nightly refuge in the high-vaulted reading room at the Boston Public Library, escaping into her favorite fantasy novels and dreaming of far-off lands. Until the day she stumbles through a hidden door and meets the Librarian: the ageless, acerbic guardian of a hidden library where the desperate and the lost escape to new lives...inside their favorite books. The Librarian takes a dazzled Alix under her wing, but before she can escape into the pages of her new life, a shadowy enemy emerges to threaten everyone the Astral Library has ever helped protect.

by Sadeqa Johnson - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Women's Fiction

Ethel Gathers, the proud wife of an American Officer, is living in Occupied Germany in the 1950s. After discovering a local orphanage filled with the abandoned mixed-race children of German women and Black American GIs, Ethel feels compelled to help find these children homes. Philadelphia-born Ozzie Phillips volunteers for the recently desegregated army in 1948. While serving in Mannheim, Germany, he meets a local woman, Jelka, and the two embark on a relationship that will impact their lives forever. In 1965 Maryland, Sophia Clark is given an opportunity to attend a prestigious all-white boarding school and escape her heartless parents. While at the school, she discovers a secret that upends her world and sends her on a quest to unravel her own identity. KEEPER OF LOST CHILDREN explores how one woman’s vision will change the course of countless lives.

by Janie Chang - Fiction, Gothic, Historical Fiction

Shanghai, 1911. Lisan Liu is elated when she is hired as secretary to wealthy American Caroline Stanton, the new mistress of Lennox Manor on the outskirts of Shanghai’s International Settlement. However, the Manor has a dark past due to a previous owner’s suicide, and soon Lisan’s childhood nightmares resurface with more intensity. Adding to her unease is the young gardener, Yao, who both entices and disturbs her. Newly married Caroline looks forward to life in China with her husband, Thomas. But an unwelcome guest, Andrew Grey, attends her party and claims to know secrets she can’t afford to have exposed. As Caroline struggles with Grey’s extortion and Thomas’ mysterious illness, Lisan’s future is upended when she learns the truth about her past, and why her identity has been hidden all these years.

by Mary Kubica - Fiction, Psychological Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

Courtney Gray’s peaceful vacation turns into a nightmare when she discovers her brother and sister-in-law dead in their lakeside cottage. Her niece, Reese, is missing. Her nephew, Wyatt, is asleep upstairs --- unharmed. As police swarm the quiet resort, dark truths about Courtney’s family --- and the town itself --- begin to surface. Is Reese a victim...or the killer? With everyone hiding something, Courtney races to uncover the terrible mystery. But the closer she gets, the harder it is to know who --- or what --- to trust.

by Robert Dugoni - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

In a quiet South Seattle neighborhood, a suspected drug smuggler and his girlfriend are murdered in their home. When a young man named Michael Westbrook is accused of the brutal double homicide, his uncle, JP Harrison, turns to Keera Duggan to defend him. The evidence is circumstantial --- Michael worked with one of the victims, drugs were found in his possession, and he bolted from authorities. Ruthless star prosecutor Anh Tran has gotten convictions on much less. With the testimony of two prison informants, the case looks grave. To free her client, Keera must dig deep before Tran crushes both of them. As the investigation gets more twisted with each new find, Keera is swept up in a mystery with far-reaching consequences. This case isn’t just murder. It’s looking like a conspiracy.

by Thrity Umrigar - Domestic Thriller, Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

One night after a party, old grievances surface between married couple Aliya and Sam, and the night ends badly with a heated argument. Sam goes for a run early the next morning to clear her head --- and doesn’t come back. Aliya reports her wife missing, but as a gay Muslim daughter of immigrants, she can't escape the scrutiny and suspicion of those around her. Scared and furious, and feeling isolated as strangers and acquaintances alike doubt her innocence, Aliya makes one wrong choice after another. She must fight to prove her innocence in the public eye even as she is torn between her fear that Sam is dead and her desire to find and save her wife. But is safety ever truly possible for them?

by Andromeda Romano-Lax - Fiction, Psychological Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

Over one terrible weekend, two teenage girls are found dead in a wealthy Chicago suburb. As the community mourns, Abby Rosso, the girls’ high school counselor, begins to suspect that her son was secretly involved in their lives --- and possibly their deaths. Abby doesn’t want to believe Benjamin hurt anyone. But she’s seen the warning signs before. Two decades ago, her brother was imprisoned for a disturbing crime --- he was only a little older than Benjamin is now. And Abby has more troubling memories from her own adolescence that confirm what boys and men are capable of. As Abby searches for the truth about what happened to her students, she’s forced to face the question: Has she been making excuses for Benjamin for years?

by Kendra Elliot - Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

In the crisp mountain air of central Oregon, a teenage girl’s search for discarded cans leads to a horrifying discovery: a body, brutally murdered and abandoned in the woods. The case falls to Deschutes County Detective Noelle Marshall, who finds herself navigating a community steeped in secrets, suspicion and distrust of outsiders --- especially law enforcement. Miles away, FBI Special Agent Max Rhodes investigates a different kind of darkness --- chatter about a violent uprising from a shadowy militia group preparing for war. The two cases seem worlds apart. But as Noelle digs into the murdered man’s past and Max closes in on the source of the terror plot, their paths begin to converge in a terrifying way. This was no random killing. It was a message.

by Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke - Fiction, Magical Realism, Romance

At Naysay Inc., Megan’s job is to whisper negative thoughts straight into the minds of clients in the Real World. It’s all in a day’s dirty work in Naysayland, the parallel reality where your negativity is manufactured and self-doubt is a commodity. But when she is assigned to sabotage a romance between lifestyle influencer Lily and author Jasper, Megan’s carefully constructed reality begins to unravel. The project teams her with Ben, the smug but cute whisperer in the next cubicle. As they work to tear down Lily and Jasper’s situationship, Megan and Ben are catching feelings for each other. As their empathy grows, and they start rooting for the relationship they’re tasked with destroying, dreaded HR is sniffing around. Now they’re facing a choice: keep crushing dreams for a paycheck, or risk everything for their own fairy tale.