This book really made me smile. It is one of those books that skips back and forth between the present day and the past. Each skip reveals more of the story between an Iowa farm girl and a young German POW who happens to be held close by, and who comes to help on her family farm. There are lots of geographical references that I happened to be familiar with: Clear Lake, Mason City, and the Grotto O....

I just finished Killers of the Flower Moon. Perhaps the rumor of Osage blood running through my family tree made me pick it up. Or perhaps I am just intrigued by this recounting of real life murders and the fact that I had never heard of them. Either way, a chilling read of multiple murders of the Osage in Oklahoma and the men who investigated them.

London is a fascinating city, above and below. Peter Ackroyd's nonfiction book London Under caught my eye and turned out to be worth the time. Crypt's, sewers, ruins, the Tube, and bomb shelters. The author goes over these and more. And there is as much going on below ground as above. A good read for anyone who has traveled to London or history lovers alike.

I Let You Go is a novel that I have mixed feelings about. The writing is excellent and the characters thoughts and dialogue are realistic and convincing. What I question is some of the characters motives, actions, and reliability. The novel starts with a Prologue where the reader witnesses a child dying in a hit and run accident. Then Part One begins with main character Jenna living, if you can ca....

Do you enjoy cute, funny, and somewhat quirky novels? Then this one's for you. In the novel The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend we find Sara traveling from Sweden to stay with her American pen-pal Amy, only to arrive to the news that the woman is dead. Wow, what an opening to a book! The people of Broken Wheel want Sara to stay, as that is what Amy would have wanted, so she does. The format of t....

The Paris Librarian came into my hands as I was shelving and I immediately thought Paris? Library? Wow, what a great combination! And truthfully, I probably enjoyed the comments about shelving and circulation a bit more than the average person, but hey, I like library stuff. The story is a "Hugo Marston" mystery, the first I've read, and I have to say it was a good, straightforward, enjoyable myst....

As I read the first few chapters of Before I Go to Sleep I began to get the impression that for me, this felt like an old school horror story, or as if the classic TV show the Twilight Zone had been transfered to print. The story is one of Christine Lucas, a woman with amnesia, and Ben, her husband, and finally Dr. Nash, who is secretly helping Christine, even as he studies her case. I was drawn i....

Have you ever liked the characters in a book more than the plot? Don't get me wrong, The Play of Death has a lot going on, many twists and turns, but I just love the characters so much. Jakob Kusil, a big, scary, hulk of a man, is the town hangman and executioner. Magdalena is his oldest daughter. Simon, a doctor of sorts, fell in love with her back at the series beginning and had to get permissio....

The Forgetting Time is the story of Noah, a troubled child, and Janie, his single mother, who is trying to deal with him. One of his most extreme behaviors is his refusal to bathe. But in addition to this odd behavior, Noah seems to know things he shouldn't know. And he constantly asks for his "real" mother. This is the set up for a voyage of discovery that leads Janie to suspect Noah has memories....

Blue eyes, five o'clock shadow, and body armor. The male cover model of Highland Master caught my eye the other day and I decided to allow myself this guilty pleasure. This is a standard historical romance, with a meeting between the widow Lady Triona and Sir Brett, followed by attraction, trouble, and sex. For me it ran a little long and was a bit overdone on two parts: one-Lady Triona's doubts a....