Latest Reviews
After years apart from his criminal family, young Luke Crosswhite returns to their flock deep in the California desert. Luke’s father is serving time for a brutal murder that Luke himself witnessed. Now, his uncle vies for power and rival biker gangs encroach on the family’s various criminal enterprises. A sensitive boy grown hard man, Luke navigates the vicious pressures of “home,” and the loyalties to his cousin, Callie, who has hatched a scheme with her boyfriend, Pretty Baby, to escape the control of the gang, the Combine. Hanging over these desperate, lonesome parties is the gang’s motto, tattooed indelibly across the heart: Blood is Love.
Ava Bonney is a compassionate and studious 14-year-old girl with a dark secret: she has an obsessive interest in the macabre. She is fascinated by the rate at which dead animals decompose. The highway she lives by regularly offers up gifts of roadkill, and in the dead of night she loves nothing more than to pull her latest discovery into her roadside den and record her findings. One night, she stumbles across the body of her classmate. Fearing that her secret ritual could be revealed, she makes an anonymous call to the police. But when Detective Seth Delahaye is given the case, Ava won’t step back --- not while teenagers continue to go missing. Racing alongside the police or against them, Ava is determined to figure out who is hunting her classmates before she becomes the next prey.
Maggie Blount, a divorced mother of two and a California physician, puts her private practice on hold when disaster strikes. Doctors on Wheels takes her and Alex --- Maggie’s professional and romantic partner --- wherever they’re needed. After rolling into rural Louisiana in the wake of a category five hurricane, Maggie immediately bonds with two sisters and their puppy, all orphaned by the storm. Feeling blessed and looking forward to their new foster home in affluent Vista del Mar --- a world apart from the one they’ve known --- Jean and Rose are polite, appreciative and humble. Frankly, they're the polar opposite of Maggie’s own self-involved teenage daughters, Willa and Gemma, who resist this intrusion by strangers into their privileged lives. Soon enough, Maggie’s new blended family is in chaos.
The history of the Ivy League dates back to 1869 when Princeton played the first college football game against Rutgers. THE ANCIENT EIGHT explores Ivy League football today. To play in the NFL, one must maintain the highest academic standards and be a great football player. The rivalries are as intense, as are the strict rules --- but there is also a genuine purity in the Ivy League. Through intimate interviews with players, coaches and key figures, John Feinstein uncovers the unique culture that defines football on the Ivy League gridiron, offering unparalleled access to the remarkable coaching staffs and student-athletes who balance their academic ambitions with their passion for the game.
Two women from different worlds, Grace and Anh, are indelibly changed when a runaway boy is found on a street in their small Long Island town. Brought together by the love of this child displaced by war, the women find friendship and healing from their own painful pasts when their lives intersect with a mysterious wounded Vietnam vet. The vet, Jack, works at the Golden Hours, a watch store that mends timepieces --- and might even mend damaged souls. Inspired by the true story of a Vietnamese refugee who entrusted the dramatic account of her escape from Vietnam to the author, and also that of a wounded veteran, Alyson Richman sheds light on those whose lives were forever impacted by the devastation of that war.
After losing both their parents, Bristol Keats and her sisters struggle to stay afloat in their small, quiet town of Bowskeep. When Bristol begins to receive letters from an “aunt” she’s never heard of who promises she can help, she reluctantly agrees to meet --- and discovers that everything she thought she knew about her family is a lie. Even her father might still be alive, not killed but kidnapped by terrifying creatures to a whole other realm --- the one he is from. Desperate to save her father and find the truth, Bristol journeys to a land of gods and fae and monsters. Pulled into a dangerous world of magic and intrigue, she makes a deadly bargain with the fae leader, Tyghan. But what she doesn't know is that he's the one who drove her parents to live a life on the run. And he is just as determined as she is to find her father --- dead or alive.
Diagnosed with terminal cancer, retired marine biologist Delphine is on the brink of throwing in the towel. She has outlived her PI husband and worries that she’s become a burden to her son and his growing family. One night, while contemplating how to go on, she witnesses a violent argument between a man and his girlfriend. When Delphine discovers that the woman has gone missing along with her young child, she embarks on a quest to find them. What begins as a chance encounter balloons into a rescue mission across the Pacific Northwest. Along the way, Delphine encounters the dregs of humanity --- grappling with schemers, kidnappers and murderers --- as well as its joys. With the help of a few friends, a retired PI and a queer biker gang, she is determined to see her mission through...knowing full well that it may be her last.
A woman welcomes a parasite into her body. A teenager longs for perfect skin. A scientist tends to fragile alien flora. A young man takes the night into his own hands. Unsettling, revelatory and laced with her signature dark humor, Eliza Clark’s debut short story collection plumbs the depths of that most basic human feeling: hunger.
1994, the summer leading up to the ceasefire between Britain and the IRA. In the Northern Irish border town of Cross, after decades of violent activity protesting British rule, a community plays out its end game. Francie, a hardened yet troubled IRA man, has authorized the murder of a policeman by two teenage henchmen. The Widow Donnelly protests in the town square because her son has gone missing. Young Cathy Murphy, a Protestant, is trying to find her place among a people who ignore her. And pathological Handy Byrnes, whose marksmanship makes him a valuable weapon, is out of control. Meanwhile, paranoia is growing because operations are beginning to go wrong. The townsfolk suspect a tout, but no one is willing to accept the evidence before their eyes.
Robbers Roost, Brown’s Hole and Hole-in-the-Wall were three hideouts that collectively were known to outlaws as “Bandit Heaven.” During the 1880s and ‘90s, these remote locations in Wyoming and Utah harbored hundreds of train and bank robbers, horse and cattle thieves, the occasional killer, and anyone else with a price on his head. Tom Clavin's BANDIT HEAVEN is the entertaining story of these tumultuous times and the colorful characters who rode the Outlaw Trail through the frigid mountain passes and throat-parching deserts that connected the three hideouts --- well-guarded enclaves that no sensible lawman would enter.
