“There's something about first love, isn't there? she said. It's untouchable to those who played no part in it. But it's the measure of all that follows.” ― Sarah Winman, Tin Man Michael and Ellis were the best of friends and embraced life with exuberance as they grew up together exploring Oxford, England on their…
“What shapes us is not always our achievements but our omissions. Not lies; simply the truths we don’t tell.” ― C.J. Tudor, The Chalk Man The creepy opening scene of The Chalk Man sucked me right into this book where I happily stayed until the last pages when all its secrets were finally revealed---and what…
At the Jan. 4 Genealogy Networking Group, we brought family photos which we analyzed, using some of the tricks and techniques we’d learned from Tina Beaird at our December holiday party at Maggiano’s. (Thanks again to Adrian for organizing such a wonderful dinner!) The first picture was one of two young men that Ellen…
It’s hard to imagine the Christmas season without Scrooge, Tiny Tim and the ghosts of Christmases Past, Present and Future. My introduction to A Christmas Carol was when my Dad read it to me as a child and I’ve been a huge fan of it in all its iterations ever since. In the prologue of…
“Long before we discovered that he had fathered two children by two different women, one in Drimoleague and one in Clonakilty, Father James Monroe stood on the altar of the Church of our Lady, Star of the Sea...and denounced my mother as a whore.” Even before he was born, and his pregnant, unwed mother was…
“An Indian Affairs agent said,' The question will suggest itself, which of these people are the savages?'” ― David Grann, Killers of the Flower Moon Mollie Burkhart (second from right) lost all three of her sisters under suspicious circumstances. Rita Smith (left) died in an explosion, Anna Brown (second from left) was shot in the…
When one of the regular customers of the Bright Ideas Bookstore hangs himself as she is closing the store one night, Lydia is shocked to find a picture of her ten-year-old self sticking out of his pocket. Joey had been one of their regulars, part of a scruffy and mostly harmless group fondly nicknamed the…
In Elizabeth Strout’s slim best-selling novel My Name Is Lucy Barton (2016), readers were introduced to Lucy and her mother as they tentatively and tenderly reconnected after years of estrangement. In Strout’s newest book, Anything Is Possible (2017) which is a companion book to My Name Is Lucy Barton, the reader takes a stroll through the…
There is just a handful of authors whose books I absolutely must read as soon as they come out, and Greg Iles sits at the top of this short list. Mississippi Blood, his newest book and the conclusion of the best-selling Natchez Burning trilogy, is a page-turning, nail-biter of a wild ride. (If you’ve somehow…
Robert Harris’s new novel Conclave is NOT about vampires as one of my colleagues guessed from the title, but instead is an unputdownable thriller set in a Vatican conclave sometime in the not-so-distant future. The Pope has died and the 117 Cardinals of the Catholic Church have gathered to elect, from amongst themselves, a new…
