Category: Books

When I read a short story by S. J. Rozan a while back, "Chin Yong-Yun Takes a Case," I had never heard of Rozan before, let alone her series character, Lydia Chin, Yong-Yun's daughter, but I had enjoyed the unique perspective to keep it in the back of my mind. When I saw that our library had China Trade, the first in the series, available as an audio, I had to borrow it. Lydia Chin is in her late-20s, an age at which her traditional mother thinks she should have been married by, and a private investigator, an occupation her mother and brother disapprove of, but that doesn't stop Lydia. A lifelong resident of Chinatown in New York, Lydia is the obvious choice when part of a small neighborhood museum's porcelain collection is stolen. The investigation takes her and her sometimes partner Bill into meetings with the menacing gangs who have a hold of Chinatown and beyond the edges of the neighborhood,...

I only have so many hours in a day and there are so many books out there that I want to read I find it hard to keep grinding away at a book that I just don't care about. The Thirteen by Susie Moloney is one of those books. I know many people have loved it and the blurb, and cover, really grabbed my attention. "Desperate Housewives" meets "The Witches of Eastwick" in this novel about a woman who returns with her teenage daughter to her childhood home, not knowing that she's stepped back into a community run by a group of witches. And maybe I didn't keep reading long enough. I got about a third of the way through and just didn't care. I didn't understand what was going on, except that Paula and her daughter were obviously in danger. I knew the other women were witches, but I wasn't invested in the story. I set it aside for a couple of...

I know, I know, moose doesn't actually start with Z, but you didn't think I could make it through the whole month without featuring an alphabet picture book, did you? And Moose has been waiting all month to make an appearance- you don't realize how disappointed he was when M was for Miss Piggy. Z Is for Moose by Kelly Bingham is a hilarious book, maybe not the best introductory alphabet book, but a whole lot of fun. I think it would be best for kids who more or less already know the alphabet and are ready to play with it. Zebra is putting on an alphabet show, with all kinds of animals and things like ice cream and a xylophone, and poor Moose is just too anxious for his turn. He tries to be on stage for D, gets inside the ice cream cone on I, and sticks his head in at H is for hat. Each time he is told by...

My husband knows that I don't mow the yard, nor do I bug him about it very often. To be quite honest, grass makes me sneeze. The yard today is Scotland Yard circa1889, brought to (fictional) life by Alex Grecian. The Yard takes place in London shortly after the Metropolitan Police's failure to capture Jack the Ripper. Due to the countless numbers of murders committed in London each month, the Murder Squad has been formed, a group of specially selected detectives whose job it is to investigate the killings. There are only twelve of them, but then one of their ranks, Inspector Little shows up dead, shoved into a steamer trunk in Euston Square Station. It falls to the newest member of the team, Inspector Day, to find the killer. With the help of Dr. Bernard Kingsley, the pathologist who is ahead of his time both as a doctor as a forensic scientist, Day follows the few clues left at the...

No, not those unmentionables. Unmentionables as in people with special gifts, superhuman abilities, like Diesel and Lizzie in Janet Evanovich's Wicked Appetite. I'm not a fan of Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series, even though I always feel like I should be. Something about it just rubs me the wrong way. I don't know if it's Stephanie herself or the feeling that Evanovich is just trying too hard. But that means that I've only read a couple of Plum novels, and none of the in-between ones, so this is my first meeting with Diesel. Those more familiar with her work will I'm sure recognize the name and alread know that he's just downright sexy, and a little dangerous. I do like her earlier romances though, which is why I decided to give Wicked Appetite a try. And it was an audio available at my library when I needed a new one to listen to. Lizzy Tucker is a cupcake baker, who makes amazing goodies....

Photo credit In A Double Death on the Black Isle by A. D. Scott, Scotland is as much a character as the actual people. In the 1950s it's a beautiful country in transition, the ancient feudal system is crumbling, women are finding their own places in the world, but old prejudices and beliefs still exist. Joanne Ross, a still-learning reporter, has a tough life as a single mother working to support her two girls after leaving her abusive husband. She can't divorce him, because of the scandal that would surely ensue, and can't keep him away from herself or the girls. Then there's her "friend," Patricia Ord Mackenzie who is pregnant and marries a the father, a fisherman who is definitely below her class. Her family are upper class, wealthy landowners, and her mother is furious with her choice. Now in the same day, two men die on the Black Isle. Patricia’s husband is killed in a fall on the same day Fraser Munro, the reviled son...