A Separate Development

By Christopher Hope

Harry Moto is of an age to graduate from school and go on to college. He has a group of friends but isn't really that close to any of them. On the night of what would be here in the United States senior prom, Harry and a girl are caught making out by one of the teachers. This teacher, a man who has taken a dislike to Harry, runs to Harry's parents and rats him out. So Harry comes home to yelling and incriminations and ranting and raving ( the novel is set in the late 1950s and early 1960s) and his parents acting like hysterical fools. So he runs away.
Harry has a problem, though. Living in South Africa during apartheid, Harry has kinky black hair and an swarthy complexion. His parents are both white but his grandmother was swarthy like Harry. And Harry's parents never got around to registering him as the son of white parents. So he is often accused of or mistaken for being of mixed blood.
At this time in South Africa, it was in fact illegal for non-whites and whites to have sexual relations. People could go to jail for breaking the so-called Immorality Act. Since Harry looked mixed, without papers, there was very little he could do to earn a living. Just to get by, Harry accepted his mixed looks and passed himself off as mixed to be eligible to do the jobs considered suitable for non-whites: delivery boy, cab driver, bus boy. He lived this way for years but eventually crossed paths with the police and ended up rotting in jail just for not looking white enough, basically.

What a disappointment this novel was, and all because of the lying blurbs: On the front of the book, "A wildly funny novel." From the back: "Make the reader ... hoot with laughter." "bitterly funny."
I didn't find anything about this story to be funny, not even 'bitterly funny." Rape, murder, child abuse, mutilation, unfairness, hatefulness, discrimination, it is anything but funny.
I wanted to read a funny story, something to take my mind off things. This was not that story. In fact, about half way through, I stopped reading it for several weeks. Then when I picked it up to finish it, I started to get the feeling the story wasn't going to end happily and that made me impatient to finish with it. I pretty much just skipped through the last two chapters. Reading about poor, innocent, unlucky Harry being beaten and tortured by his jailers for the crime of being a white man with darker skin was not what I wanted to be reading. This is not a funny story, this is a tragedy. Don't read this book thinking you will be amused unless you are the kind of heartless creep that laughs at the suffering of others.
If  I had gone into this book knowing it was a tragedy not a comedy, I might have liked it better. Instead I was hugely disappointed, thanks to the lying blurbs and reviews.

Hundred Miles to Nowhere

By Elisa Korenne

Living in New York City, musician/singer Elisa Korenne was a typical New Yorker, working, enjoying her friends and her activities and relishing life in the big city. But then she was invited to be a visiting artist for a month in a small western town in Minnesota with the odd name of New York Mills. The offer came with free housing and a nice stipend.
Doing a little research about Minnesota (which she had initially confused with Missouri, good grief), Elisa decided she wanted to experience the outdoors. Her contact in Minnesota gave her the name of a man who might be willing to take her canoeing and camping. And that is how she met the man she would eventually marry, Chris Klein.
Elisa and Chris hit it off and started dating and soon the subject of living together came up. Chris visited Elisa in NYC after the month in Minnesota was over. They talked about Chris moving there, but that would mean leaving the family business. Plus Chris doubted that any NY firm would be interested in hiring him. Since a lot of Elisa's work involved traveling to various gigs around the country, it made more sense for her to move to Minnesota.
But could a big city girl find happiness in the isolation and lack of amenities living, as the title says, a hundred miles to nowhere? Could she learn to cope with the quiet? With the peculiar neighbors? With the long, cold winters? Or would she discover that Minnesota has its own vibrancy and charm and a place for a Jewish singer/songwriter from the Big Apple?

This was a pretty good memoir. Elisa finds her place in the country, surviving vicious dogs, wacky neighbors, brutal weather and a sloppy, sometimes selfish boyfriend who eventually becomes her husband.

Pearls Before Swine : The Ratvolution Will Not Be Televised

By Stephan Pastis

A collection of daily and Sunday comic strips dating from April 2004 to January 2005. It includes the first mention of the crocodile fraternity ZZE, the infamous Zeba Zeba Eata, whose single goal in life is tricking Zebra, their next door neighbor, into becoming dinner.

Here is a typical Sunday strip from the collection.

Hyperbole and a Half

By Allie Brosh

The author is a blogger and cartoonist and the book contains some of her online work and some new stories. She writes about her life and her childhood and her dogs with accompanying illustrations. Her drawings of herself are crude and simplistic. But her drawings of her dogs are very evocative and true.
Most of her essays are very funny. But she does address her struggle with depression and poor self image. She beats up on herself a lot.

I wasn't familiar with her blog when I got this book. I had read that the book was very funny and so I wanted it. When I saw her drawing of herself, I couldn't figure out what I was looking at. First I thought it was some kind of shark/human hybrid with a yellow shark fin sticking out of its head. Then, as I got a little further in the book, I thought maybe she drew herself with a yellow dunce hat. It took quite a while before I realized that it was her hair in a pony tail and that the fuchsia part was a dress.  Her drawings of herself and her sister are grotesque but funny. But I loved the drawings of her dogs. So charming and funny. And I really liked her funny stories. The ones about depression and identity not so much.

Pen Pals

By Olivia Goldsmith

Jennifer worked on Wall Street. But now she works in prison because she let herself be talked into taking the fall for her boss, Don and her fiancé, Tom. They had assured her that she would probably never do any jail time and that she would be well compensated when it was all over. Don told her, "These charges are going to be dropped. And even if you do go to trial, you aren't going to be found guilty of anything. Trust me." And Jennifer never questioned it. Tom reinforced what Don said, promising her that, "Nothing is really at risk. It never is in cases like this. Even if you are convicted — which is virtually impossible — we'll have an appeal before the judge can pound his gavel." She believed him, after all, because "Tom was not only a Harvard undergrad and Law Review at Yale, he was also much more than her brilliant attorney. He was her beloved fiancé." And she bought it all, joking, "I only regret that I have but one life to give for my firm."
So instead of all the promises made her, Jennifer finds herself doing three to five years for insider trading and to make matters worse, there will be no appeals. Tom has also informed her that they are no longer engaged to marry because, "...under the circumstances . . .You know my family — it would be very bad publicity for them if I was involved with . . . a convict. . ."
So Jennifer is stuck in circumstances she never envisioned when she agreed to the two men's scheme. Their promises were all empty and now she is on her own in a strange and dangerous new world. How will the pampered Wall Street princess cope with life in the dirty, depressing and degrading women's prison?

This was a pretty good read, although the opening premise of the book is more than a little hard to swallow. Jennifer is portrayed as some kind of hot Wall Street wheeler-dealer. How could she be that savvy and not know that her boss and her fiancé were giving her a sucker's deal?
But never mind that. The real story is Jennifer's timely arrival at the prison just in time to help protect the inmates from the effects of the prison management being transferred from the public to the private sector, with plans by the new management to turn the prisoners into virtual slaves, working to generate revenue for their new bosses, while being paid nearly nothing for their labor.

Night of the Mary Kay Commandos

By Berke Breathed

Bloom County comic strips from the late 1980s. Breathed looks at some of his favorite issues: political incompetence, corporate greed, animal welfare and human stupidity. And he introduces Ronald Ann, the character he built a new comic strip around called Outland.
The main thrust of this collection is Bill and Opus running for the presidency against George Bush and Mike Dukakis. It is a very political collection and not one of my favorites. I've never been a big fan of Bill the Cat. Anyway, here are a couple strips I lifted from online:

Humans, Bow Down

By James Patterson, Emily Raymond and Jill Dembowski

So the robots have taken over and most humans are dead, defeated in the war between the humans and robots. The remaining humans work as humbled servants to their robot masters and those who wouldn't are held in enclaves, living in squalor and poverty.
Two misguided kids from the Reserve, as the enclave in this story is called, make their way into the former city of Denver, now under robot control, looking for fun and mischief. One of them chances upon an unlocked sports car and he steals it and talks the other, the girl, called Six, into taking it back to the Reserve. As it turns out, not unsurprisingly, this is a really dumb idea and before much longer the robot cops are at the Reserve led by one young detective, a robot "woman" known as MikkyBo. Mikky is an idealist and is shocked when her fellow cops open fire on a group of teen kids, killing several. Turns out they were just doing what their boss & Mikky's ordered. Although Mikky doesn't know it yet, the robot leaders have decided on a final solution for the "human" problem: extermination.
So, in its innocence, Mikky thinks it can track down the two car thief teens and bring them to justice, and that will defuse the situation. But Mikky ends up in the hands of a secret band of humans being led by the man who was the creator of the robots. And he is planning on using Mikky as a secret weapon against the robot overlords.

Despite its rather silly premise and that it seems to be aimed at Hollywood moguls looking for another teen flick similar to the Hunger Games to produce, I found this book surprisingly readable and quite enjoyable.

Get Fuzzy : Groovitude

By Darby Conley

A daily comic strip featuring Rob Wilco and his two pets, Satchel, the dog and Bucky, the cat. Although these pets are more like really stupid or very innocent small humans than animals. Satchel is mainly the butt of Bucky's stunts and Bucky provides most of the drama, with his craziness and wild schemes.

I was not familiar with the strip since I haven't bought a newspaper since the 1990s. I found the idea of dogs and cats conversing with humans a bit strange. Snoopy never spoke out loud, nor did Garfield. They had thought bubbles but no actual voice. Not only do this dog and cat talk, but Bucky is supposed to clean out his own litter box and Satchel sometimes does the cooking, although his concoctions are apt to appeal more to dogs than humans, like his cake with liver frosting. I would have liked to post that comic strip on here, but my scanner is not currently available due to computer problems. So instead here are a couple strips  I found online:

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Lost in a Good Book

By Jasper Fforde

A continuation from the first book, The Eyre Affair, in which Thursday Next killed arch-criminal Acheron Hades and imprisoned Goliath Corporation operative Jack Schitt in Poe's poem The Raven.
Now married to her lover from the first story, Landen, and pregnant with their baby, Thursday finds herself being hunted by persons unknown and the Goliath people demanding that she free Schitt from Poe's famous poem. When she refuses, Goliath agents go back in time and erase Landen when he was just a toddler, promising to bring him back when she brings back Jack Schitt. But not only do they want Schitt, they also want the Prose Portal, the device that enables humans to enter the word of the written word. And its inventor, Thursday's Uncle Mycroft.

This was a weird story, just like the first one. All this jumping about in time and in and out of books is more than a little confusing. At one point in the story Thursday is shot dead, but comes back, thanks to time travel, but I really didn't understand that part. A lot of this story doesn't make much sense, but that is part of its charm, I think.
Anyway, I enjoyed the story and am looking forward to the next in the series, The Well of Lost Plots.

You'll Grow Out of It

By Jessi Klein

Jessi shares her life and talks about her transition from administrative assistant to comedy writer and stand-up performer. From miss to ma'am. From single girl to married woman. From never wanting children to desperate for a baby and willing to endure the torture of fertility treatments. From childless to new mom. From loser to Emmy award winner. But never from wolf to poodle. (Klein has a theory that girls are born either a wolf or a poodle. Poodles are effortlessly feminine. Wolves are not.)

This was an enjoyable book even though I came into it not knowing who Jessi Klein is. I thought the reviews of the book made it sound interesting and funny. It was interesting though not all that funny. Mildly amusing at most although I will admit I don't have an East Coast sense of humor. Nor do I have access to non-free TV so I was frequently looking up references to see what she was talking about and because of that I learned what a blouson top is.

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

Whippoorwill

By Sharon Sala

Set in the territory of Kansas, after the Civil War but before the turn of the century, the story brings together a cast of characters to the dusty town of Lizard Flats, all of them coming for one reason: to see the preacher from back East, the Reverend Randall W. Howe.
Rev. Howe is headed West to make a new life for himself and put aside his lustful ways and rededicate himself to his holy calling. He was invited to Lizard Flats to perform the marriage of the town's two leading citizens, banker Alfonso Worthy and his wealthy, widowed, eager bride Sophie Hollis.
Headed to the town, among others, is Henry Wainwright, a grizzled trapper, bringing the body of his partner, Parson Sutter, whose last request was to have burial presided over by a real preacher. And there are Hetty and Charity Doone and Wade James, seeking a reckoning with Rev. Howe, who took Charity's innocence.  Also headed to Lizard Flats are Miles Crutchaw and Truly Fine, who want to get married. Miles is a miner who has struck pay dirt and Truly is the saloon whore who is the light of his eyes. Another couple desiring to be married by the preacher are Joe Redhawk, a gunman, and Caitlin O'Shea, a young Irish girl. Redhawk rescued Caitlin from captivity by a half-blind Arapahoe brave. And finally there are the Jessups, Isaac, Minna and their adolescent son, Baby Boy. Isaac and Minna have decided it is about time Baby Boy got a real name and they want the preacher to christen him and make it official.
Meanwhile, back in Lizard Flats, Eulis Porter, town drunk and Letty Murphy, town whore, are about to spoil everyone's big plans when the lusty Reverend Howe dies in Letty's bed. Fearing she will be hanged because of the preacher's death, Letty talks Eulis into helping her. Together they will hide the body in a newly dug grave and, with a bath, shave and wearing the preacher's garments, they will try to hoodwink everyone and pass Eulis off as the Reverend.

This was quite the tale. I found it a bit hard to keep track of all the characters and had to make a list. But it was well worth it. The story is amusing, heartbreaking at times, and with overtones of tragedy but mostly is it just hugely entertaining. Well done!

Skylark

By Sheila Simonson

Two women are on holiday in London, England. One of them strikes up a friendship with a waiter from Eastern Europe. They go to see a play together but on the ride home via the Underground, the waiter, Milos, is attacked and knifed. A fellow passenger's shopping bag is also stolen, a bag that was similar to one that held a manuscript written by Milos, supposedly a translation of a Shakespeare play into his native language. As it later turns out, it was actually an eyewitness account of atrocities committed by the govenment of Milos' native land. 
When the police suspect one of the women, Lark, of being the attacker, Lark and the other woman, Ann, embark on a quest to find out the truth, protect Milos from further attempts on his life, and clear Lark of suspicion. And maybe get a little sightseeing in at the same time.

This was an interesting story and fun to read about fellow Americans coping with cultural differences between the British and the Americans. Plus an interesting and different mystery.

Reincarnation Blues

By Michael Poole

Milo has lived thousands of lives.  So far he has been unable to obtain perfection and pass on into perfect harmony with the Universal Oneness. But Milo is rapidly approaching the limit: 10,000 lives. If a soul is not able to perfect itself after 10,000 lifetimes, it is destroyed.
His first life ended in childhood. As he lay dying, he was visited by Death. Death appeared as a beautiful young girl. Death, or as she preferred to be called, Suzie, admired young Milo. She thought him resourceful and brave. And she sought him out in the land between life and eternity, a place were newly dead souls pause to wind down and take stock before jumping back into life. And so their attachment began, Milo and Suzie, and it lasted through and beyond Milo's thousands of lifetimes. It lasted through his repeated failures to achieve perfection. It lasted even when Suzie decided she would no longer be Death and she began to fade away.
Together, Milo and Suzie will face great suffering and deprivation. Will Milo finally be able to overcome his past and take the ultimate step into perfection?

The story follows Milo through some of his key lifetimes and explores his failures and his successes. Although his past lives were never good enough to win through to the ultimate goal of nirvana (although I don't think the word nirvana is ever used in the story). Three of the most important stories are set in the future and one in the time of Buddha where Milo is one of Buddha's followers. He ends up killing the Buddha. A mercy killing, but murder nonetheless. Perfection not attained.
In one of the stories set in the future, Milo as a promising young student is accused of rape by a disturbed young woman and is sent to prison. While in prison he discovers he has special powers, one of which includes the ability to heal the minds of his fellow prisoners resulting in them becoming peaceful and productive. Just as he is beginning to make a real difference in the lives of the inmates, he is told the woman has recanted and he is free to go back home. But he doesn't want to leave the work he has started with the inmates and resists. He is then shot with a stunner and transported against his will back home. The stunner destroys his special abilities and Milo drifts into a life of idleness and alcoholism. Then his accuser pays him a visit. She tells him she is sorry, that she was mentally ill but has undergone treatment and is doing quite well in her life. The injustice of it all hits Milo very hard and he commits suicide after she leaves.
This story was pretty typical of the tone of the stories. Most of them are kind of sad and depressing.  I also found the book kind of preachy. But the stories are very interesting and thought-provoking, if a little to grim for me.

Pearls Before Swine : BLTs Taste So Darn Good

By Stephan Pastis

Another funny comic strip collection featuring Pig's enormous stupidity and lots of puns.

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The Sopratos

By Stephan Pastis

A Pearls Before Swine Collection. Featuring Stephan's twisted sense of humor and plenty of puns.

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A very amusing and enjoyable comic strip collection!

Fire and Fury

By Michael Wolff

Wolff proposed writing a book on Trump's first year in the White House and was given an amazing amount of access to Trump's people. It's possible that they thought Wolff was going to do a puff piece on Trump and his administration. But instead Wolff wrote an exposé, revealing the craziness, backstabbing, leaking and inexperience of those trying to cope with one of the most unpredictable, childish and ignorant presidents in American history. Even though Trump denied talking to Wolff, sources back up his claim that he did, in fact, talk to Trump, either in person or on the phone.
No one can deny that this administration is probably one of the most unstable ever, do to the poor leadership ability of this  president. Top officials come and go, often fired by  the callous, uncaring and rude Trump via Twitter tweets. No one can deny that Trump's picks seem designed to burn their departments to the ground rather than improve their function and government. And, finally, no one can deny that Trump turns this way and then that, changing his mind hour by hour so that no one really knows (including Trump himself) what he wants.
Does the author really understand what is going on in the White House? It sure seemed so to me. The book was published in January 2018. Towards the end of the book, Wolff says that factions within the White House were pushing for CIA's Mike Pompeo to replace Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State. And in mid March 2018, that is exactly what happened.
It also seems pretty clear to me that Michael Wolff knows what he is talking about. And that Trump and gang are probably as awful as Wolff portrays them. Though, to be honest, Wolff's book is more like a gossipy Hollywood tale than fact-driven portrayal.

Politifact has a fact-check on the Wolff book:    http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2018/jan/09/fact-checking-read-fire-and-fury-michael-wolff/  (Most of the fact-checks are minor things like wrong dates and misspellings.)

Here is a review by The Guardian.

City of Illusions

By Ursula K. LeGuin

He found himself in the forest. He had no memory of anything and was as helpless as an infant. Fortunately he was found by a kind family who took him in and taught him to be a man again. They called him Falk.
Falk stayed with them until he was competent to be on his own. Though he loved them, he knew he had to leave, to head west, to find out who he was and why his mind was stripped of all memories. And so he set forth,  going to Es Toch, the city that might have all the answers.
He encountered other people, none as kind or friendly as those who took him in. Many were dangerous and hostile. He was briefly enslaved but managed to escape with the help of another slave, a woman who claimed to know how to get to Es Toch.
Their journey together was difficult and the woman became very ill and almost died but she was true to her word and led Falk to Es Toch. But once there, she betrayed Falk and handed him over to those who had stripped his mind of all knowledge. These his captors are his only hope, though, of discovering why his mind was tampered with and his only hope of finding his lost self.

The first part of the story where Falk is traveling across a wild and sparsely populated Earth was much better than the second. Once he gets to Es Toch, the story got less interesting as he becomes a passive captive in the hands of his enemies.  He spends his time trying to figure out the truth about his captors and their plans for him, a mostly mental exercise: rather boring to read about.

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

Shopaholic Ties the Knot

By Sophie Kinsella

This novel in the Shopaholic series finds Becky living in New York City with her boyfriend, Luke. She is working as a stylist at a clothing store and Luke is running his public relations business. All is going wonderfully, even though Becky still has a tendency to buy everything that strikes her fancy and a lot of things do strike her fancy. The only fly in the ointment is the entrance into Luke's life of his long-absent mother.
Mother is a society lady and it seems to Becky that she is more interested in Luke's business connections than she is in Luke himself. But Luke is enchanted to have his mother back in his life for the first time in over twenty years and he is deaf to Becky's words of caution.
Luke has asked Becky to marry him and now Mother is taking over the wedding, which she wants to be a big, important society event. Meanwhile, Becky's parents are planning to have the wedding in the garden of their home in England, unaware of the big society wedding that is being put together in New York.
So three weeks before the wedding and Becky has completely failed to tell her parents about the New York wedding. And if she backs out of the NYC wedding, she will have to pay the wedding planner $100,000 penalty, money Becky doesn't have. But if she doesn't cancel the city wedding, she will break her mother's heart, not to mention all the expense and bother her parents are going through for her back-home wedding. Meanwhile Luke is beginning to see Mother with clearer eyes and he is taking it badly. He is sunk in depression and skipping work and talking about the two of them just running away and leaving it all behind.
What's a Shopaholic to do? Is there any way to shop herself of the this new mess?

This was a pretty good story. For one thing, Becky doesn't lie as much in this book as she did in the first novel in the series. Her main lies in this story are ones of omission. She just goes along with everything without leveling with anyone, including her fiancé, Luke.
The ending was kind of odd and not what I was hoping for.  But everything works out, of course, since it seems Becky the Liar lives a charmed life.

The Healer

By Sharon Sala

The amber-eyed toddler was led out of the Alaska woods by a she-wolf and into the village of Snow Valley. No one could figure out where he came from. But the village embraced him and gave him the name of Jonah Gray Wolf. The local doctor adopted him.
Jonah was different. He communicated with animals. He had the healing touch. So when an out-of-state hunter was attacked by a bear and the doctor was out on a call, the villagers sent Jonah to help the man, Bourdain, who was dying of his wounds. Jonah used his healing gift to save the man's life. But Bourdain, instead of being grateful and moving on, decided that if he had Jonah with him all the time,  he could live far beyond his natural life span.
But Jonah wasn't interested. So Bourdain decided to just grab him. It didn't go well. Jonah's adoptive father was murdered and Jonah was forced to flee his home and Alaska. He ended up on the run for many years, with the wealthy Bourdain hiring bounty hunter after  hunter to capture Jonah. But they all failed.
Living life on the run is not fun. Jonah was afraid to set down roots anywhere for fear of Bourdain using anyone Jonah cared about as a bargaining chip against him. But when he met Lucia, it all changed. He fell hard and Lucia felt the same way too.
They met when Lucia's dog got caught in a leg-hold trap. Jonah saved the dog's life and healed him up good as new. Lucia invited him to stay the night at her place, an isolated house in the woods. The chemistry between the two was immediate and intense. Jonah began to wonder if there might possibly be a way that they could be together, safely, without the obsessed Bourdain ruining it all. And Lucia actually needed Jonah's help too. Because she was being stalked by someone who was sending her threatening and obscene messages. Probably the same person who set the trap that injured her dog.
Together Jonah and Lucia will confront the dangers surrounding them and try to find their way to the life of love and togetherness that they have been lacking for most of their adult lives.

This was a good read. Jonah is a kind of angel come down to Earth, with his godlike healing powers and his ability to communicate with animals. It's kind of a silly story in a way, but once you accept Jonah's exceptionalism, it becomes less silly. I liked it, it brought tears to my eyes a couple times.

Here is a review by Publishers Weekly.

Pearls Before Swine : Nighthogs

By Stephen Pastis

Another great cartoonist to add to the pantheon of great American cartoonists. Always funny, even though at times he relies too much on puns. Pastis really loves his puns:

Pastis never passes up an opportunity to make a pun. Who else could make a pun out of the lost body of a dictator?

Cul de Sac : This Exit

By Richard Thompson

This collection features a precocious four-year-old girl and her family and friends.
Alice is very sophisticated for her age, as shown in this cartoon where she lists all the ways Princess Fairyqueen is merchandised:

Despite her apparent sophistication, when she finds some loose change underneath a rack of trousers, she concludes that money comes from pants. And when he father tells her that he staked a small tree because young trees are dangerous, she believes him:

The author's drawings of humans are rather unappealing. But his drawings of animals in the cartoons are very cute and cuddly and really add a huge amount of charm to the series:

It's a very sweet and funny comic strip. I enjoyed reading this book very much. Highly recommended.

Confessions of a Shopaholic

By Sophie Kinsella

Becky is a writer for a financial magazine. She doesn't like her job. She would rather be working in fashion.
Becky loves to shop. So much so that she is overdrawn at her bank and has maxed out her credit cards.  Oddly, even though she is a financial writer, she doesn't really try to manage her own finances. She throws letters from the bank and overdue bills in the garbage. Out of sight, out of mind, eh?
Becky is young and a bit silly. She rationalizes her purchases, telling herself she is saving money by shopping sales for things that she actually doesn't need.  She buys clothes and then never wears them. She buys things just to be buying something. She will spend £25 to get 50 pence on her Club Card, a kind of customer rebate program.
But fortunately for Becky, all her problems will be solved because she is young and attractive and well spoken. And all her lies will be forgiven and money will be thrown at her and the millionaire males will be lining up to wine and dine her.  Which only goes to show that being a liar pays off big time. Just look at Donald Trump.

I was more than a little put off by the endless stream of lies that flow from Becky's mouth. She lies to her coworkers, her boss, her parents, the bankers, her friends, just about every one. Mainly, she lies to herself. I was about 100 pages into the story when I decided to go back and keep track of every lie she told, including lies on paper, lies to herself, and lies she plans to tell if the occasion arises. I counted 124 lies. At 250 pages, that is a lie every other page. The book ought to be called, Confessions of a Habitual Liar.
Becky is supposed to be sympathetic and charming. But to me, she was just another damned liar. I can't really say that I like a story in which the main character is so dishonest and unappealing.
I pass. I will not be reading another story in the saga of Becky the Liar.

A review by Publishers Weekly.

Night Magic

By Karen Robards

Clara Winston writes romance novels. John McClain is a CIA agent in possession of vital national security information. His girl friend left one of Clara Winston's novels at John's place. For some strange reason, KGB agents who are after John find the novel and decide Clara is John's girl friend. (This part of the story didn't make any sense to me) So they come looking for Clara and grab her, thinking they can use her for leverage against John, once they get their hands on him, which they do. Of course, Clara and John are total strangers but the KGB thugs refuse to believe it.
Clara and John manage to escape and are on the run together. The relentless KGB are close behind, along with the police and the CIA who are now convinced John is a rogue agent and a murderer. And that Clara is involved too.
So Clara and John are being chased pretty much by everyone and find themselves escaping from the bad guys and the good guys by turns. Of course they end up naked and having sex in between escaping from their various pursuers. Clara's cat Puff is an important character in the most of the first part of the book, but gets put aside in the second half, which was too bad.

This was an OK book. Typical romance novel with the two strangers falling head over heals in love and who manage to have sex despite being constantly on the run and despite John being shot in the chest and nearly dying.

Unorthodox Practices

By Marissa Piesman

"Well, in  nutshell, this is what's happened to date," Ida said. "I've had a cockroach problem that I've been battling for years. My neighbor Mrs. Gross, on the other hand, never seemed to have any roaches. After she died, my son-in-law wanted to take a look at her apartment. He thought he might want to buy and resell it."        "Did Mrs. Gross own it?" asked Grant?          "No, she was a non-purchasing tenant. A few years after the building converted, the original landlord sold her apartment to a Netherlands Antilles corporation. Anyway, I went with my son-in-law and a real estate agent to look at the apartment and noticed that there was absolutely no evidence of roaches. There was also a white powder spread around the place that was clearly a method of exterminating. That reminded me of the fact that this Netherlands Antilles corporation had always sent a special exterminator to Mrs. Gross's apartment. They never used the regular building exterminator."      "How did you know that?" asked Grant.          "As a member of the board of directors, I am in close contact with the managing agent who had mentioned it to me over the years. Also, I had discussed the matter with Mrs. Gross. We were friendly." ......       "Anyway," Ida continued, "after I saw Mrs. Gross's empty apartment, I was very impressed with how roach-free it was. I decided to call that exterminator to see if he would do my apartment also. But the lawyer who is the contact person for the owner of the apartment refused to give me the name. He was surprisingly hostile and defensive to my innocent request. So Nina and I went back to the apartment with the real-estate agent and stole samples of the white powder. ...... Then we gave the samples to my son-in-law to have them chemically analyzed. He called today to tell me that the samples taken from the kitchen contained digitalis in a fairly high quantity." .....        "The digitalis was only in the kitchen sample....Clearly Mrs. Gross was meant to eat it. I'm sure she was poisoned....I don't know how she ingested it. But I'm convinced we have a murder on our hands."

 And that is the plot, as it says, in a nutshell. Someone is killing off old ladies. It will be up to Nina and Ida to figure out exactly who and why.

This was a good read. I enjoyed it tremendously. It is a murder mystery, but the emphasis is really on Nina and her life in New York City. It is not your typical murder mystery, no blood is shed and no one ever threatens or attempts to kill Nina or her mom, Ida. It is just a really good story.

Dust City

By Robert Paul Weston

Henry is a wolf, an anthropomorphized  wolf. He usually walks upright but can also go on all fours. His front paws are hand-like and he talks.  That is true of all the animalia of his world. Frogs, fox, goats, ravens, cats, hedgehogs, they all are people. They have jobs, live in houses, drive cars and such.
Henry's dad is in prison and Henry has been sent to a reform school for breaking a window. He finds out that his father has been sending him letters, but the letters were never given to Henry to read.
Dust is fairy dust. The fairies used to live in their fairy city above Dust City. Fairy dust is powerful magic and can be used to do virtually anything. But the fairies have disappeared and no one knows why or where they have gone. But in the letters, Henry's dad says that the fairies are being held captive and harvested for their fairy dust by the illegal fairy dust suppliers. And the dad wants his son to find out where the fairies are and expose the  conspiracy. But how can Henry do anything locked up in reform school?

This was an OK story. The fairy tale connection was at times a little overbearing. Cinderella is an administrator. Snow White is a hard-boiled detective. Rumplestiltskin is a gangster. Jack and the beanstalk are there too. It was all a bit much.
Basically it is the story of a teenager who infiltrates a drug operation and discovers that the truth about a big business and its connection to organized crime, dressed up in a fairy tale setting. Also, the ending was a bit weak.

Review by Kirkus Reviews.

An Ice Cold Grave

By Charlaine Harris

Harper Connelly has a talent. She can locate dead bodies and tell how they died. She is helped in this by her stepbrother, Tolliver, with whom she is madly in love but won't tell him because she fears he only sees her as his sister.
They have been asked to investigate the disappearance of several teen boys in a small rural town. Paid by the wealthy grandmother of one of the missing teens, Harper soon locates the burial site of the boys, putting herself and Tolliver under suspicion by the local law enforcement.  Even though they couldn't possibly have had anything to do with the crime, the fact that Harper knows where all the graves are and exactly how they died has to be investigated. So, stuck in the small town by the demands of the police and then by bad winter weather, it isn't long until the killer seeks Harper out and tries to add her to the long list of victims.

This was a pretty good story. However, the subject matter is very gross and disgusting. So much so, that I very much doubt I will be reading another story in this series. This just went too far for my taste.

The Copy Shop

By Evelyn E. Smith

Ted is a weird guy. For one thing, he glows in the dark. For another, his dad is an alien who communicates with him through his computer monitor. The dad is also the one responsible for the disappearances and deaths of several people in the neighborhood. According to the dad, humans were put on this planet to serve as a food supply and a "terraforming" force to prepare the planet for its eventual owners by polluting the air and water and putting radiation into the environment.
His neighbors have their doubts about Ted. The cops have their doubts about Ted. His "girl friend" has her doubts about Ted. His new girl friend has her doubts about Ted. They all suspect Ted is some how related to or involved with the deaths. The reader has their doubts about Ted, as he is a very suspicious character. Even Ted admits he is a suspicious character and he begins to dispose of certain items that might reflect badly on him if they fall into the wrong hands. Like all those checks for old, dead guys. And his mother's clothing and the wigs and makeup.
Yes, Ted is a really squirrelly fellow. But all he really wants to be is just another regular guy.

This was an enjoyable read. The mysteries of Ted are amusing and fun and, even though he comes off as rather sinister, he turns out to be not a bad fellow at all.

The Family Plot

By Cherie Priest

Dahlia is in charge of the salvage of an old mansion. It is a make or break situation for her father, who owns the salvage company. If it isn't successful, then the whole business is going under. So it is really important that Dahlia and her team of three men do a really good job of removing anything of value before the mansion is demolished.
Problem is, as they all soon discover, the mansion is haunted. There are four ghosts and one of them is crazy and evil. It fastens its sights on Dahlia because it identifies with her. Dahlia is recently divorced. She and her ex were friends from childhood and the collapse of their marriage came as a surprise to Dahlia who apparently never picked up on her husband's discontent.  The divorce left her feeling angry and it is her anger that has attracted the deadly lunatic ghost.
But Dahlia and the crew soldier on and strip the old mansion of all its most valuable and beautiful features, trying to cope as best they can with the uncanny occurrences plaguing them, mostly at night. But before it is all over, blood will be shed and lives nearly lost.

This was an OK story. Kind of a slow starter and the ghostly occurrences are few and far between until the last quarter of the story. Truly, just a typical ghost story, nothing very special at all and not really all that scary. But it does give one a good look at the salvage business, if that is what floats your boat. It didn't float mine.

Review from Kirkus Reviews.

Morality for Beautiful Girls

By Alexander McCall Smith

Things are changing at the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. The biggest change is that the agency is moving into a room at  J.L.B. Matekoni's garage, Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors. For another, Mma Ramotswe, founder of the agency, has given her assistant Mma Makutsi a raise and a promotion from mere assistant to assistant detective.
Mma Makutsi even ends up managing the garage and the detective agency. Mma Ramotswe has to leave town on a case and J.L.B. has become overwhelmed with guilt about something in his past and has lost interest in the garage and is under the care of a doctor after some persuasion and management by Mma Ramotswe.
Mma Ramotswe is out of town of a case brought to her by an  important government man who is worried about his brother. The brother, recently married, manages the family farm and the government man thinks his new wife wants the farm for herself and is trying to poison her husband.  So he arranges for Mma Ramotswe to pay a visit to the farm to see if his suspicions are correct.
Meanwhile, back in town, Mma Makutsi is managing both the agency and the garage and seems to be doing very well. The two apprentice mechanics seem to enjoy being under her eye and business is booming.  She also has an important to case to investigate all on her own. The owner of a beauty pageant ran into a little disgrace with the previous contest when one of the girls turned out to be an unsavory character. So this time, he wants the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency to do some sniffing around and make sure the five finalists are upstanding and virtuous.

This was a pretty good read, if a little thin on plot. Three of the story lines are left open-ended. Mma Makutsi makes her recommendations about the beauty contest girls but we are not told definitely that her judgments are correct. J.L.B.'s guilty secret is not revealed. And the story of a little lost boy who appears only briefly is only hinted at and made not plain. So those unfinished plot lines were quite annoying.
But despite the obvious cliffhangers designed to lure the reader into opening the next book in the series, this was still an enjoyable read. Reading one of these No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency books is like taking a little mini-vacation to a foreign and different land. They are a breath of fresh air.

How to Murder Your Mother-In-Law

By Dorothy Cannell

Mother-in-law trouble.
Ellie has invited her husband's parents, Magdalene and Elijah, to visit and to celebrate their wedding anniversary. Ben, the husband, warned her that his parents weren't all that keen to celebrate their anniversary, but Ellie perseveres. She even invites a very old friend of Magdalene's, Beatrix, to dinner, only to find out that the Beatrix and Magdalene have not been on speaking terms for forty years. When they were young adults, Beatrix talked Elijah into skinny dipping and Magdalene has never forgiven her for doing so.
Magdalene is the cliché mother-in-law, overly critical and nitpicking at Ellie. Having her in the house is a real burden for Ellie. But it turns out that Ellie is not the only one having mother-in-law troubles. Beatrix lives with her son and his wife. Beatrix is a bit eccentric. At one point she puts hair remover in the shampoo bottle without bothering to tell anyone. She also accidentally cooked her granddaughter's pet goldfish.
Two other friends are dealing with difficult mothers-in-law. Pamela and her husband live with his mother and she calls all the shots. The husband has to turn his paycheck over to his mother and she gives him a small allowance. She also requires that no one speaks during meals, among other overbearing and controlling behaviors.
Ellie's other friend Eudora's mother-in-law is a thorn in her side. Eudora is the vicar of the local church and a nonsmoker. Her mother-in-law is an atheist who constantly pokes fun of the Bible and, despite Eudora's requests not to, continues to smoke her cigarettes in the house, evenutually sparking a small fire in the house.
The friends get together one evening and jokingly plot ways to murder their mothers-in-law, all in good fun. That is until one of the old ladies is pushed off a cliff, one is poisoned and one's brakes on her bike are tampered with. The four friends begin to doubt each other and, to make it worse, Ellie is being blackmailed.

I had a hard time getting into this story but it began to grow on me after awhile.  I guess what I didn't like was Magdalene being such a cliché and Ellie being such a doormat. But I warmed up to the story and by the end I quite enjoyed it.

Review from Publishers Weekly.

A Difficulty with Dwarves

By Craig Shaw Gardner

Ballad of Wuntvor, Book 1

Wuntvor, the apprentice to the wizard Ebenezum, is trying to help the wizard find a cure for his affliction, allergy to magic. Unfortunately, the allergy has spread to the other wizards and the demons of the Netherhells have not given up their assault on the world above. As a last resort, Ebenezum is sending Wuntor to the  realm of the dreaded Mother Duck, who, it is rumored, bakes intruders into bread. Of course Wuntvor will be accompanied by the usual motley crew he has attracted over the course of the previous three stories: A Malady of Magics, A Multitude of Monsters,  and A Night in the Netherhells.

The thing about this book is that it is all talk and no action. Wuntvor, who is portrayed as afflicted with acne, bad breath, poor posture and stupid nonetheless attracts a loyal following, for no apparent reason that I could see. And these followers love standing around and talking, talking, talking. Even the attacking demons spend most of their attacks talking. Even worse, the book ends with no resolution, with Wuntvor captured by Mother Duck. Book tries very hard to be funny, but mostly is just tedious.

Too Fat to Fish

By Artie Lange and Anthony Bozza

The story of Artie's young life. Artie Lange grew up in New Jersey. His childhood was typical of the area until his father, Arthur, was paralyzed in a fall from a ladder. Arthur Lange died a few years later from complications of the paralysis. These years and the loss of his father hit Lange, in his early twenties at the time, really hard. While his mom and sister managed to cope and carry on, Lange began his slide into gambling addiction, alcoholism and drug abuse.
Lange attended college briefly but then got a job as a longshoreman. He was able to save a fair amount of money and start trying to develop a career as a stand up comic, traveling from New Jersey to New York to do his act in the comedy clubs and other venues and driving a taxi to support himself.
Artie Lange landed an audition for a new TV show, Mad TV. He moved to California and became an important member of the cast in a show that went on to last for several years. But the pressure of performing and committing to a schedule was too much and he tried to commit suicide. He ended up in the hospital and rehab and began a pattern of sobriety, then relapse, rehab again, over and over. Still he managed to maintain his career despite all his problems, performing in movies, doing stand up and working on the Howard Stern Show. He even managed to control himself long enough to perform for the troops in Afghanistan via the USO for a couple weeks. He fell off the wagon at an airport on the way home, unfortunately, getting drunk and causing a scene. Towards the end of the book, he describes his switch from cocaine to pain pills to heroine, all washed down by massive amounts of alcohol, and maintaining his huge size with a lifestyle that would turn most people into walking skeletons. He must have outstanding stamina.

I really don't remember why I wanted to read this book. I had it for two years before I got around to reading it. I wonder if I thought that it would be amusing. It has an amusing title and was written by a comedian. If that is the case, I was mistaken.
Artie Lange has had a life I wouldn't wish on anyone. Sure, he has had some great times and made some good money and helped his family out. But I bet they would have been just as happy if he had stayed a longshoreman or taxi driver and was sane and sober and gotten and settled and had raised a family as an ordinary fellow from New Jersey. God knows he has put those who care about him through hell. All that fame and money cannot make up for all that misery and unhappiness. And when I did a Google search, he apparently is still stuck in the drug abuse and rehab cycle, over and over. I hope someday Lange can get the help he needs to stay sober before he dies of abusing himself.
This is not a funny book. It was very frustrating to read as he wrecks his life with booze and drugs. You just want to shake some sense into him. It has such a feeling of hopelessness and I was not surprised to find out he is still in trouble. Sigh.

Review from Publishers Weekly:     https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-385-52656-2.

The White Chip

By Nelson C. Nye

Banker Snude and a young woman, Serafina, believe the map she owns will lead them to a lost gold mine in the Superstition Mountains of Arizona.  The banker is partially funding the expedition and several other men are also funding it and coming along. Chuck was one of the men and he had the advantage of being familiar with the area.
One the way there they encounter bad guys and one man gets stabbed in the night by persons unknown. They find the mine and it is stacked to the ceiling with bags of ore, more ore than their little expedition can handle. They need to find help and they get the bright idea to hire a gang of smugglers, which turns out about as well as one would expect, dealing with criminals.  They get ambushed, the smugglers make off with the ore, but they manage to get it back only to discover when they get to Snude's bank that the smugglers switched the ore with rocks. In the process, more members of the expedition die.
Chuck, who has grown attached to Serafina, talks her into going back to look for the ore. He knows the smugglers must have stashed it until they could get together enough mules to pack it out. Taking the banker's mules, he and Serafina head back out and sure enough, they find the stolen ore. But nothing turns out the way Chuck had hoped, plus one of the peaks of the Superstitions has decided to be a volcano.

I read this story because my father was one of those hopefuls who went looking for gold in the Superstitions. Like everyone else, he found nothing. So the idea of gold hunters in the Superstitions has some nostalgia for me. Too bad the story turned out to be really stupid and boring. Total waste of time.

Green Darkness

By Anya Seton

Celia and Richard are newlyweds and very much in love. But when Richard brings his bride home to his ancestral manor in England, everything falls apart.
Richard turns cold and judgmental and Celia is bewildered and distraught. So much so that she has a kind of seizure and ends up in the hospital near to death. Richard, meanwhile, has locked himself in the manor's nursery room and is playing Gregorian chants on his record player, deaf to the pleas of his friends to come out.
Fortunately a friend of Celia's mother was visiting the newlyweds at the time. This friend, Dr. Akananda, is an Eastern mystic and he has diagnosed the problem as leakage from two young people's past lives in which a murder was committed and unavenged. Together the doctor and Celia travel into her past life to discover the secret that is ruining her's and Richard's marriage.

This was an OK read. Most of the story is about Celia of the past, who lived during the turbulent years after King Henry VIII died and before Queen Elizabeth I reigned. Quite and interesting time in history to read about, as Catholics in England first rejoiced at the ascension of Queen Mary and the grave disappointment at the failures of her reign. How accurate the author's depictions of this time are I don't know, not being a big fan of history myself. But she paints quite a detailed picture. Maybe too detailed, as I got rather tired of it and wanted to get back to Richard and Celia in modern times. But the majority of the book is about the olden days and modern days get short shrift.

Review by All About Romance:    https://allaboutromance.com/book-review/green-darkness/.