Avery Chambers, ex-therapist gone rogue, uses her own ten step program for her clients. “Golden” wife Marissa wants Avery to help keep her marriage alive as she tells her “Golden” husband Robert about an affair. When these three characters come together the mystery and suspense begin in The Golden Couple by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen, a riveting novel of deception…
This outstanding cozy locked-room mystery features Tempest Raj, who was born into an Indian magical dynasty dating back generations. Tempest is a highly successful stage magician with a Las Vegas show – until a tragic accident forces her to return to her Bay Area hometown with her career in shambles. She is considering going to…
How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question might just be the perfect book. Well… okay, maybe not perfect. Having just absorbed this book’s lessons on ethics and morality, it would be incorrect for me to oversell you. Perfection is surprisingly hard to achieve! So let me dial it back a notch…
Debut novelist Charmaine Wilkerson's impressive Black Cake is a sweeping, multigenerational saga filled with secrets, misunderstandings, and eventually healing and reconciliation. At the heart of the story is matriarch Eleanor Bennett and her family's signature recipe for Black Cake. The concoction, which has been passed down for generations, takes months to complete because the baker soaks the fruit in…
While it is a truth universally acknowledged that I am a scaredy cat, I occasionally read books MOST people would call horror, and others (me) would call Exceedingly Creepy, just for a change of pace. It's February, after all, and if ever there was a time to mix things up, it's now, when the fresh…
What price is too high when standing up for one's convictions? Can there ever be honor in compromising one’s principles? The idealist may see the answers to these questions in black and white, but the realist knows that nothing in life is ever so clear. These questions lie at the very heart of Thrity Umrigar’s…
When I look at my family tree, I sometimes wonder about the stories my ancestors could tell me. The dates and places for my great-great-great grandparents are interesting to have, but I wish I knew more about their lives. I just finished a wonderful saga that made me think about all my relatives who traveled from Denmark to…
Korea: 1917-1965 Jade: a young girl sold to a prominent courtesan house by her desperate family JungHo: a homeless orphan hustling for survival on the streets of Seoul Yamada: a well-connected and high-ranking officer in the Japanese army MyungBo and SungSoo: old friends who find themselves on opposing political sides Over the course of decades,…
Author Jung Yun Ten years ago, during the height of North Dakota's oil boom, my husband’s job at Motorola took him to Williston, ND to oversee a project building out the area’s cellular network. The weeks he spent on that project were some of the most difficult of his life, and his descriptions of the…
"To cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival.'' Wendall Berry I've read several books this year with strong environmental themes. The latest is Pastoral Song by James Rebanks, an eloquent recount of a British farmer's attempt to turn his family farm into an environmentally friendly…
