The best entry in this character-driven series mixes a well-plotted mystery with a romance that rings true to life.
The road to true love is both rocky and dangerous for a Colorado widow.
Cat Latimer is a successful author who unexpectedly inherited her ex-husband’s Victorian house, which she uses as a writers’ retreat with help from her former high school love, Seth Howard, and her friend Shauna. Cat and Seth are slowly working their way back to the love they once had before Cat dumped Seth and married the wrong man. Seth’s a handyman, driver, and hiking guide; Shauna’s a fabulous cook. This particular retreat starts out a bit unusual, for it includes two married couples and Brodie Capone, a student from the local college who may have a difficult time fitting in with the self-sufficient couples. But it really runs off the rails when the delightful hike Seth had planned turns into a murder investigation after Cat spots a body and calls her Uncle Pete. Head of the local police, he’s never surprised when Cat finds a body (Sconed to Death, 2019, etc.). This time, though, he’s unhappy about being distracted from a visit by his girlfriend, Shirley, a retired deputy from Alaska. When the body is identified as that of Chance McAllister, a member of Seth’s former Army platoon reported to have died years before in Germany, Seth is flabbergasted. Seth, who hasn't said anything to Cat about an upcoming platoon reunion in town (she found out about it when she heard him talking to someone on the phone), is disturbed when she suggests that some of his buddies may know something about why Chance apparently staged his own death, returned to his hometown, and settled down in a remote mining camp. When Uncle Pete leaves Chance’s journal for Cat to read in hopes that it might contain a clue, she can’t resist sleuthing.
The best entry in this character-driven series mixes a well-plotted mystery with a romance that rings true to life.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4967-1685-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
Her zany cast will have readers wondering whether DiRico’s series debut is set in Belle View or Bellevue.
Murder crashes the party.
Mia Carina would like nothing better than to see her dad, Ravello, a made man in Donny Boldano’s mob, go straight. When she hears he’s won the Belle View Banquet Manor from hard-luck gambler Andre Bouras in a poker game, she rushes back from Palm Beach to help him run the place, hoping it will provide her dad with enough legitimate income to allow him to cut his ties with the underworld. Despite its dated décor and bone-shaking proximity to LaGuardia Airport, the catering hall has panoramic views out its windows that make it a worthy rival to the overpriced event venues in Manhattan—which Mia’s outer-borough friends drive her nuts by calling “the city.” (“Queens is the city” is her perennial retort.) And she proves her borough cred by moving in with her nonna in Astoria. But running a catering hall involves more than dealing with bridezillas like Alice Paluski, who’s determined to make her wedding bigger and better than her twin sister’s, or with momzillas like Barbara Grazio, Alice’s prospective mother-in-law, who’s determined to make the groom’s side of the wedding outshine the bride’s. She has to wrangle an ever changing cast of chefs, sous-chefs, waitstaff, decorators, DJs, and the occasional stripper, who all bring a host of quirks and baggage to the banquet table. She also has to deal with more than one corpse. It takes all of Mia’s considerable ingenuity to keep Ravello’s first legit enterprise from becoming a ticket right back to the slammer.
Her zany cast will have readers wondering whether DiRico’s series debut is set in Belle View or Bellevue.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4967-2534-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Perfect for readers who wish To Kill a Mockingbird had been presented from a slightly older, male point of view.
Eskens’ latest novel is a warmhearted story of a white teenager's awakening to the racial tensions that run through his Missouri town in 1976.
Years before he’ll become a successful attorney (The Shadows We Hide, 2018, etc.), Boady Sanden struggles to navigate all the usual high school ordeals in small-town Jessup, including boring subjects and bullying by the likes of all-state wrestler and prom king Jarvis Halcomb. In Boady’s case, these everyday problems are aggravated by his outsider status as a non-Catholic freshman at St. Ignatius High School, his home life with his widowed, introverted mother, Emma, and, most recently, the arrival of some new neighbors, the Elgins. Charles Elgin is definitely an improvement on indolent Cecil Halcomb, Jarvis' father, whom he replaces as manager of the local manufacturing plant after bookkeeper Lida Poe disappears with more than $100,000 of the plant’s money. Jenna Elgin is excellent company for Emma Sanden, whom she helps draw out of her shell. And after a comically unfortunate first encounter, Boady quickly takes to their son, Thomas, who’s exactly his age. But the Elgins, like Lida Poe, are African American, and the combination of an unsolved embezzlement, good old boy Cecil’s displacement by an outsider, and the town’s incipient racism works slowly but inexorably to put Boady, recruited by the Crusaders of Racial Purity and Strength, under pressure to betray his new friendship. Declining to join the racists but repeatedly running away rather than refusing their demands point blank, Boady must navigate a perilous route to supporting his community and claiming his own adult identity.
Perfect for readers who wish To Kill a Mockingbird had been presented from a slightly older, male point of view.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-316-50972-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Mulholland Books/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
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