From the Ashes – Sabrina Flynn

(Reviewed by Lee Nelson) Let’s get the elephant out of the room: I've known of Flynn from my membership in Letters of Mary, a fan-fiction group devoted to Laurie L. King. I met her at 2014 Bouchercon in Long Beach and I wanted to give her book a try as I really love discovering new…

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Cascade Falls – Bruce Ferber

(Reviewed by Don Jung) What does it take to be happy? Finding oneself in this time of uncertainty is a constant theme in Bruce Ferber’s second novel, Cascade Falls. This novel features a host of interesting characters that could be any family in 21st century America. We have Ted Johnson, the patriarch of the family…

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Upper Cut: Highlights of My Hollywood Life – Carrie White

(Reviewed by Cathy Carey) “George Masters had done another one of his disappearing acts from Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills more than a month ago. George had a reputation for being unreliable and outspoken. My favorite George story was about a lady he was styling who kept changing her mind on how she wanted…

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Five Night Stand – Richard J. Alley

(Reviewed by JD Jung)     “There are four people as similar as they are unique—one at the end of his career, one lost in the middle, one who dreams of beginning, and the fourth, a child, not knowing what is ahead of him. None of them know for sure what awaits them; they’re all…

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Married to a Stranger – Nahid Rachlin

(Reviewed by JD Jung) “Did that futile look that so frequently came to her mother’s face point to shattered dreams?...Minou could see the sky turning blood-red. Another day lost, bringing her closer to nothing. She floated in time and space. She would wind up like her mother.” Minou’s mother got married at age fourteen to…

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The Body in the Birches – A Faith Fairchild Mystery -Katherine Hall Page

(Reviewed by Melanie Hamilton) It is a kind of relief when, after being laid off from the law firm, Sophie Maxwell learns that she has to take her mother’s place-who, by the way is in Europe with her new husband- at their family’s summer home, The Birches, on Little Sanpere Island, Maine. That relief is…

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See Also Murder: A Marjorie Trumaine Mystery – Larry D. Sweazy

(Reviewed by Melanie Hamilton) Author Larry D. Sweazy conjures up party-line, rocket-finned cars and long, black pay telephones in See Also, Murder, his version of 1967 North Dakota. When Hilo Jenkins delivers the news of Lida and Erik Knudsen’s murder, indexer Marjorie had no idea what would come next. She had all she could handle…

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A Diamond in the Rough – Rich Fogel

(Reviewed by Don Jung) Want to step back into 1950’s baseball and traditional themes of good versus evil? Emmy award winning writer, Rich Fogel does just that in his first novel, A Diamond in the Rough.  Whitney Snow is an avid baseball fan ever since her father-and only parent- took her to Brooklyn Dodger games. However,…

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The Hunger of the Cheeky Sisters: Ten Tales – Laura Madeline Wiseman (Author), Lauren Rinaldi (Illustrator)

(Reviewed by JD Jung) “Is hunger who you’ll go to bed with tonight because there’ll be no dinner? Or is hunger not a person, not a sentient being who lives in the store with you, sleeps curled up by your feet, but something entirely different? Something like a natural place where you and your family…

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Sailor Man: The Troubled Life and Times of J.P. Nunnally, U.S. Navy – Del Staecker

(Reviewed by Glenda Anderson) Tremendously touching and skillfully written, Del Staecker's Sailor Man is succinct yet powerful. And it stunned me. This is a true story of a sixteen-year-old so anxious to join the Navy in WWII and so patriotic to do his part in "teaching the little yellow men a lesson", that he lies. Says he’s…

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