Latest Reviews
Philomena McCarthy has defied the odds to become a young officer with the Metropolitan Police despite her father and her uncles being notorious London gangsters. On patrol one night, Philomena finds a barefoot child, covered in blood, who says she can’t wake her mother. Meanwhile, three miles away, a London jeweler has a bomb strapped to his chest in his ransacked store and millions are missing. These two events collide and threaten Philomena’s career, her new marriage, and her life. In too deep, and falling further, Phil must decide who she can trust --- her family or her colleagues --- and on what side of the thin blue line she wants to live.
When infamous chef, restaurateur and television personality Maria Capello's husband died, the media circus was intense…and quick to cast the blame. Whispers claimed Maria murdered her husband to build her culinary empire on his bones, and that there was an all-too-grisly reason his body was never recovered. Yet for the past few decades, the Capello family maintained their stony silence --- until now. Thea Woods has no idea why she was chosen to work with Maria on her sure-to-be-infamous memoir, but she doesn't question her luck. Spirited away to the Capellos' rustic upstate farm, she's soon embroiled in the mystery --- and cut off from the rest of the world. As the true story of Maria's past unfolds and the stench of rot hidden behind the kind coastal grandmother veneer rises, Thea finds herself trapped...and desperately afraid.
Chef Liv Kuo’s star is on the rise…until a traumatic incident leaves her emotionally unable to venture outside her Manhattan apartment. But an unexpected reason to break free comes from Ah-Ma, Liv’s beloved grandmother in Taiwan. Ah-Ma needs Liv’s help in finding her fourth daughter, taken from her when the girl was an infant. After all these years, it seems impossible. It’s also a mystery: Ah-Ma’s fourth daughter is an aunt Liv never even knew existed. After landing in Taiwan, Liv hears the heartbreaking story of her grandmother’s plight in a country once under martial law, of choices made for her, and of the hopeful search for a lost girl that has endured for more than 60 years. Their journey for answers turns up both a precious old cookbook and a tale of fatal betrayal that shakes everything Liv believed about her family.
For generations, Indigenous People have known that their family members disappeared, many of them after being consigned to a coordinated system designed to destroy who the First Nations, Métis and Inuit people are. This is one of Canada’s greatest open secrets, an unhealed wound that until recently lay hidden by shame and abandonment. THE KNOWING is the unfolding of history unlike anything we have ever read before. Award-winning and bestselling Anishinaabe author Tanya Talaga retells the history of her country as only she can --- through an Indigenous lens, beginning with the life of her great-great grandmother, Annie Carpenter, and her family as they experienced decades of government- and Church-sanctioned enfranchisement and genocide.
London, June 1814: On a day out in Hyde Park to celebrate the peace treaty with France, Mary Godwin and Jane “Claire” Clairmont are less than charmed by their brother Charles’ courtship with a girl from the local cheese shop. When Miss Winnet Davies is not swooning from the heat, she’s imploring Charles to buy her a pretty dress. But he hasn’t a tuppence --- nor have they, as their father, philosopher William Godwin, is facing the prospect of debtor’s prison. When a constable arrives at the Godwin home the following day, looking for Charles, Mary and Jane learn that the lifeless body of Miss Davies was found hanging from a tree branch and an examination revealed she was with child. Their stepbrother has gone missing. Mary assumes that he too is dead, but her stepmother admonishes her and insists the sisters find their brother.
Edited by Don Bruns, this fourth installment in the Music and Murder Mystery series is a nonstop thrill ride of engrossing mysteries from some of the best authors in the business. It includes a brand-new Jack Reacher story from Andrew Child and a never-before-seen Pignon Scorbion prequel from Rick Bleiweiss, as well as exciting new mysteries from Heather Graham, Don Bruns, John Gilstrap, Dave Bruns, C. J. Kudlacz and Charles Todd. Whether you are familiar with the series or encountering it for the first time, BAT OUT OF HELL has something for everyone.
Ten years ago, 17-year-old high school volleyball star Callie Jones vanished from her quiet Wisconsin lake community. A highly publicized search followed, but her body was never found. Ethan Hall, a former renegade detective turned ER doctor, left law enforcement to escape the horrors of the kid crime division. But on the 10th anniversary of Callie’s disappearance, his former partner, Pete Kramer, makes a desperate request. Pete is the veteran detective who originally investigated the case. Now he’s dying, and he needs Ethan to return to the haunting work he left behind --- and solve what happened to Callie, once and for all. It turns out there is much more to the nightmare of Callie’s disappearance than Ethan imagined, including a connection with his own dark past…and secrets that are still worth killing for.
Jason Bourne is on a boat in the Mediterranean moonlight with his lover, Johanna. He’s happy for the first time in years. Then in the next instant, he finds himself floating on wreckage as fire and smoke choke the sky. Johanna is gone. And Bourne finds the darkness of lost memory closing around his mind again. As he did once before, Bourne must piece together the fragments of who he is, even as assassins hunt him across Europe. He teams up with his spy chief, Shadow, who reveals the shocking secret that Bourne’s surrogate father --- David Abbott, the founder of Treadstone --- is alive and missing. Together they must find Abbott before his enemies do. But Shadow is a master of manipulation who won’t hesitate to betray Bourne to get what she wants.
Marissa, Jeannie, Samira and Nicole are beginning to grapple with their own identities. As their children become more independent, they struggle to find purpose. But when they meet at a bowling night fundraiser for their kids’ school, they discover a shared interest in true crime that crystalizes around a mysterious double homicide that took place in their hometown a decade earlier. A couple in their 60s vanished overnight from their home and mysteriously shuttered their family business, leaving millions of dollars unaccounted for. Initially believed to have absconded with the money, they went from suspects to victims when their bodies were discovered in their car at the bottom of a steep ravine. And then the case turned cold. But what if the moms could solve it? What if they could bring a killer to justice and give closure to a grieving family?
THE BOYS IN THE LIGHT follows the parallel journeys of Company D and Eddie Willner, the author’s father, as they are caught up on two sides of World War II. At 16, Eddie Willner was among the millions of European Jews rounded up by Hitler’s Nazis. He was forced into slave labor alongside his father and his best friend, Mike, and spent the next three years of his life surviving the death camps. Meanwhile, in the United States, boys only a few years older than Eddie were joining the army and heading toward their own precarious futures. A company of 3rd Armored Division tankers, led by 23-year-old Elmer Hovland, quickly became battle-hardened and weary, constantly questioning whether the war was worth it. They got their answer when two emaciated boys stepped out of the woods with their tattooed arms raised.
