Penguin Audio – Carol's Notebook

Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin

September 30, 2026September 30, 2026 by Carol2 Comments

It's 1171 and King Henry II has a problem. Children are being murdered in Cambridge, and the Jews have been blamed, which wouldn't matter much, except the King gets a lot of taxes from them. The Jews are currently under the King's protection in a castle fortress, but the situation needs resolved. He requests aid from the King of Sicily, who send an unlikely trio to England: Simon of Naples, a Jewish investigator; Mansur, a eunuch Saracen; and Adelia Aguilar, a woman doctor trained in the study of corpses. The medieval setting was fascinating.. Religion and politics are completely intertwined. The crusades are on-going. There are calls for the Jews removal from England. Women have little to no value or sway. Adelia, herself, has to pretend she is not as competent and knowledgeable as she is, just to avoid being burned as a witch. Women in historical novels are so often more progressive and have more agency than the majority did...

How to Cheat Your Own Death by Kristen Perrin

September 16, 2026September 16, 2026 by CarolNo Comments

The mystery was good and I enjoyed the mix of murder and art. I don't love London as a setting as much as Castle Knoll, but I get it. Annie's relationship with her parents is a mess. As is her whatever is going on with Detective Crane. I like that's we're sticking with the fortunes as our connecting point. I enjoyed the dual timelines, but maybe prefer the people and events of the 60s over the current time period....

Home Before Dark by Riley Sager

June 25, 2026June 25, 2026 by Carol2 Comments

The set-up is good. Twenty-five years ago, Maggie Holt's father wrote a book, House of Horrors, about their family's three weeks in the haunted Baneberry Hall. The book became a best seller, but now her father is dead and she's inherited the house. Maggie's convinced the book was fiction and remembers nothing from their time there, so she moves into Baneberry Hall to renovate it for sale and, hopefully, find out the truth of what really happened that summer. It turns out that the house is creepier than Maggie had expected. The book alternates between the present timeline and chapters from House of Horrors, using what her dad wrote to echo what she's living through. It turns out that more might be true than she thought. I listened to the audio and having two narrators, one for House of Horrors and one for Maggie's point of view, worked well. I don't read many horror books and this is my first...

Homicide and Halo-Halo by Mia P. Manansala

May 11, 2026May 11, 2026 by CarolNo Comments

Homicide and Halo-Halo is the second in the series, and while it would work as a stand-alone, Lila is still processing the events that happened in the first one a few months ago. Detective Park has given her the name of a therapist, but Lila is adamant that she doesn't need help - and worries how her aunt would view counseling. Lila has a lot going on. Not only is she dealing with PTSD, she is opening a new cafe with her best friend, Adeena, and Adeena's girlfriend, Elena, but is having trouble coming up with new recipes to serve, She's also a judge for the Miss Teen Shady Palms Beauty Pageant, which takes up an absurd amount of time. Do place still have pageants like this? At least it involves things like community service and creativity. It also brings up some of Lila's body image issues and mixed feelings about her mother, who died when Lila was a child. We're...

Arsenic and Adobo by Mia P. Manansala

May 7, 2026May 7, 2026 by CarolNo Comments

I don't know why it's taken me so long to pick up this series. I love culinary cozies, especially when the food featured is not a style I'm familiar with. Lila has returned to her hometown after a bad breakup to help her Aunt Rosie run the family Filipino restaurant. It's not going well, though, and then a local restaurant critic/Lila's high school boyfriend ends up dead, poisoned after eating at the restaurant. Lila becomes the primary suspect, which is her reason for investigating. Every amateur sleuth needs a legitimate reason to nose into the investigation, at least for the first couple of books. Lila's family and friends, mostly women, are wonderful- supportive and quirky. We have tons of yummy food and a couple of recipes in the back. Lila herself is not my favorite, yet, but has potential. I need her to be a little more focused and I don't like the potential love triangle forming for her. The...

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

November 21, 2025November 20, 2025 by Carol2 Comments

I am maybe not the right audience for On the Road. I know if's a classic and definitely a product of its time. I found it a slog to get through. It's a series of road trips take by Sal Paradise (Kerouac) and Dean Moriarty (Neal Cassady) back and forth across the continent. They meet a variety of people, see a variety of towns, make money in a variety of way - and to be honest I couldn't care less. It's racist and sexist and, yes, it's the fifties and would usually overlook those to some extent, but I didn't enjoy the rest of the book enough. It's also pretentious and, at the same time, purposefully naive. I will say Kerouac has a strong voice which the narrator conveyed well in the audio I listened too. Honestly, that's probably the only reason I didn't set the book down. Well, that and I needed a "stream of consciousness" narrative for a...