Author: Carol

Yesterday's Tomorrow by Catherine West is a touching love story, played out against the backdrop of the Vietnam War. When Kristin Taylor heads to Vietnam on her own in 1967 she has two goals. First, she's is determined to be a top-notch journalist covering the war. Second, she's looking for her brother, who was already serving in the military there. One of the first people she meets is Luke Taylor, who literally holds a gun in her face. Luke is a brilliant photographer, but moody and certainly has secrets. Sparks fly from the beginning, but they've got the usual battles going on. Neither wants to admit their feeling, each for their own reasons, but eventually they can't resist the love growing between them, but the war provides an even bigger stumbling block. First off, from reading the synopsis, I wouldn't have realized that this was Christian fiction. For me, I don't think it would have affected my decision to read it, but...

Confession #1 - I love mysteries. Confession #2 - I love mystery short stories. Think about it, some of the best mysteries, Sherlock Holmes for example, are short stories. A short story is more like a heady fling— intense, adventurous, emotionally charged, and, when I was young, embarrassingly quick.  Okay, forget that last one.  The best short stories, like those high-octane lovers, never fully leave you.  They burn, linger, haunt.  Some sneak up on you in a subtle way.  Others are like a punch in the gut--sudden, spontaneous.  They knock the wind out of you. (Harlan Coben in the Introduction) Obviously, picking up The Best American Mystery Stories 2011 was a no-brainer for me. In a short story every word counts and the writers represented in this collection, from Joe R. Lansdale to Lawrence Block to Charles McCarry, are master story-tellers. The pages in this anthology are filled with heroes, villains, every sort of setting, every sort of crime, solutions, surprises, and great...