Category Archives: Our Best

Our favorite underrated reads

Songs by Honeybird – Peter McDade

(Reviewed by Pat Luboff) #CommissionsEarned “Find your focus and the story may write itself: music and drugs, race and gender, a tragic barn fire and a missing body. It’s all much more dramatic than one usually sees in a dissertation….” … Continue reading

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Tard – Del Staecker

(Reviewed by JD Jung) #CommissionsEarned “Thou shalt not be a victim, and thou shalt not be a perpetrator. But above all else—thou shalt not be a bystander.” That’s one lesson Richard Bettis learned from Matt. One referred to Matt Mueller … Continue reading

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Paris Noir: The Suburbs: Akashic Noir Series – Hervé Delouche (Editor)

(Reviewed by JD Jung) #CommissionsEarned “Where was French romanticism? The opulence of the West? I found Paris—Pantin, really—very different from what I had imagined. I found Pantin ugly…”. An Albanian national flees his country in fear for his life and … Continue reading

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Taking Down Backpage: Fighting the World’s Largest Sex Trafficker – Maggy Krell

(Reviewed by JD Jung) #CommissionsEarned “While a commercial sex transaction may seem consensual on the surface, the lopsided power dynamic, the history of trauma and abuse, and the lack of options often make the consent illusory. And sex without consent … Continue reading

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Five-Alarm Fire (Cat Caliban Series Book 5) – D.B. Borton

(Reviewed by Pat Luboff) I have a friend named Dori. We don’t see each other or speak to each other often, but when we do get together, something special happens. We get into a rapid-fire back-and-forth that turns into laughter … Continue reading

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The Total FilmMaker – Jerry Lewis, Foreword by Maltin Leonard

(Review and poem by Betty Jo Tucker) Way back in the 1950s and 60s, I was an avid Jerry Lewis fan. I enjoyed watching his silly characters doing nonsensical things in movies like “The Delicate Delinquent,” “The Nutty Professor” and … Continue reading

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Here, Right Matters: An American Story – Alexander Vindman

(Reviewed by JD Jung) “Regardless of any impact on the president, the domestic and foreign policy consequences, or personal costs, I had no choice but to report what I’d heard. That duty to report is a critical component of U.S. … Continue reading

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Glimpses of Eternity: Sharing a Loved One’s Passage From This Life to the Next – Raymond Moody, Jr., MD, PhD with Paul Perry

(Reviewed by Pat Luboff) “… these shared death experiences open up an entirely new avenue of rational enlightenment on the question of life after death. They also open a new avenue for scientific studies. And as these studies are completed, … Continue reading

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The Wrong Side of Murder (Curtis Westcott Book 2) – Jeff Buick

(Reviewed by Don Jung) The Wrong Side of Murder involves a twenty-year murder mystery that catches you off guard with all its twists and turns. It features detective Aislinn Bryne who has to cope with a long-lost high school friend … Continue reading

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Pastels and Pedophiles: Inside the Mind of QAnon – Mia Bloom and Sophia Moskalenko

(Reviewed by JD Jung) “In a short four years, QAnon metastasized from a fringe movement on anonymous message boards into a cultlike movement, with millions of followers around the world…and practically seized control of the Republican Party.” What actually is … Continue reading

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