by Mary Watson Webber ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 9, 2017
An often entertaining, fast-moving crime tale featuring a brave and bright child protagonist.
A small-town story of murder and blackmail that centers on a young girl.
This sequel to Webber’s (Keepers of the Coffee Pot, 2016) first book begins with the murder of a woman named Pam Rinker. Pam’s husband, John, is immediately suspected despite having a solid alibi. Unable to escape the questions surrounding his wife’s death, he leaves their California home and moves to Huntsville, Texas, to take advantage of a job offer from his brother-in-law, Bob Connaly. This smaller, more intimate town is haunted by the attempted murder some months ago of Maggie Watson, the courageous, precocious young daughter of beauty shop owner Grace. Maggie soon finds herself in trouble again, this time with Velma Ballard, a local woman who’s long been suspected of blackmailing her neighbors. After Velma catches Maggie building a small, illegal fire while playing in a gully, she demands that the girl pay for her crime by helping with chores around her house. However, Grace is wary of Velma’s intentions, and as she suspected, Velma soon asks Maggie to participate in a dangerous blackmail scheme that brings the child back to the site of her attempted murder. This ultimately sets in motion a series of violent and tragic occurrences that circle back to Pam’s unsolved killing. Over the course of the story, Webber craftily weaves together threads involving murder and lesser crimes that unite a wide cast of characters, some of whom blur the line between perpetrator and victim. She creates endearing heroes and detestable villains, with the young Maggie standing out as a shining central figure. That said, some of the writing is clunky and awkward: “Exiting the pathway onto the lawn behind the beauty shop she heard a yelp, then a thud. Oh, my, gosh, whoever it is tripped on the root.” Ultimately, though, Webber constructs an exciting tale whose resolution remains uncertain until the very end.
An often entertaining, fast-moving crime tale featuring a brave and bright child protagonist.Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 248
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Robinne Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 13, 2017
A fascinating, thought-provoking, genre-bending romantic read.
When Solène Marchand takes her 12-year-old daughter to a concert by the hottest boy band on the planet, she doesn't expect to fall in love with one of the singers.
Middle-aged art gallery owner Solène hasn’t dated since her divorce, but when her ex-husband buys their daughter and a group of her friends tickets to Vegas and a backstage concert experience, then backs out at the last minute, she steps in as escort. The five guys in the wildly popular English boy band August Moon appeal to women of all ages, but Hayes, the brains behind the group’s success, flirts with Solène at the concert meet and greet, invites them to a party after the show, then pursues her once she gets back to Los Angeles. He’s only 20 and he’s incredibly famous; his attention is flattering and heady. The two fall into an affair that’s supposed to be light and easy, but before long they can’t ignore their intense emotional attachment. Solène is hesitant to tell her daughter, but when she procrastinates, Isabelle learns about it through an online tabloid, which damages their relationship and leaves Solène open to censure from her ex. Then, once the affair goes viral, she experiences the darker side of Hayes’ fan base. What started out as a jaunty adventure turns into an emotionally fraught journey, and Solène must decide what she’s willing to risk for her happiness and what she won’t risk for her daughter’s. Actress Lee, who appeared in Fifty Shades Darker, debuts with a beautifully written novel that explores sex, love, romance, and fantasy in moving, insightful ways while also examining a woman’s struggle with aging and sexism, with a nod at the tension between celebrity and privacy.
A fascinating, thought-provoking, genre-bending romantic read.Pub Date: June 13, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-250-12590-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
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BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
by Kathy Reichs ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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by Kathy Reichs
BOOK REVIEW
by Kathy Reichs
BOOK REVIEW
by Kathy Reichs
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