Ghostlight

By Marion Zimmer Bradley

Truth Blackburn was just a toddler when her mother died. They claimed it was an overdose that killed her. But the mother had been participating in a ritual designed to open a gate between this world and the realm of the ancient gods. Something went very wrong, though, and Truth's mother died and her father, Thorne Blackburn, who was conducting the ritual, disappeared.
Now, Truth, grown up, has decided to do a biography of her father and her research takes her to the scene of her mother's last days alive, Shadow's Gate.
Shadow's Gate, a Victorian mansion, is now owned by Julian Pilgrim. Pilgrim is young, handsome and wealthy and he cordially invites Truth to stay for lunch after showing her around the estate. Of course, Truth ends up staying at Shadow's Gate and getting to know all the other people staying there also.
Pilgrim has a extensive collection of Thorne Blackburn memorabilia which he invites Pilgrim to use for her research. Pilgrim is also quite open about his desire to perform the same ritual that Thorne did. All the others in the house are there to help with the ritual and bring about a new era.
All her life, Truth has blamed and hated her father for her mother's death. Staying in Shadow's Gate will open her eyes to the truth of that fateful night, even if she has to almost die in the process.

This was an OK story. I found it a bit choppy, with Truth reaching decisions that didn't make much sense to me. For instance, she hears her father's voice several times and each time he insults her. But she decides he loves her! That didn't make any sense. Also, all throughout the story, she firmly states her belief that magic doesn't exist. Then all of a sudden, she decides not only does it exist but that she has to change her life because of it. She has had some paranormal encounters which she attributes to the house being haunted. But, as far as I am aware, she had no encounters with magic at that point in the story, so why she suddenly decides it is real eludes me.
Anyways, about half way through the book, I got pretty bored with the story. It just seemed to drag on and on without getting anywhere much at all. I found myself wishing the author would just wrap it up.

Ghost Cat

By Beverly Butler
Annabel's mother has a boyfriend and she wants to spend the summer with the boyfriend and so Annabel gets shipped off to Wisconsin to live with her great aunt and uncle and various cousins for the summer. Annabel doesn't approve of her mother's new boyfriend and she resents being sent away.
The three teen cousins staying there too are Donna, Michael and Todd. These three have spent the summer there for several years and that makes Annabel an instant outsider. Especially intolerant is fifteen-year-old Todd, who call Annabel Clarabel the Cow, poking fun of the fact that Annabel is tall for her age (and much taller than Todd).
A few weeks before leaving for Wisconsin, Annabel's cat Muffin died. So not only is Annabel dealing with her mother's new circumstances, she is also grieving the loss of a beloved pet. She wakes up early one morning to the sound of a cat crying. She goes outside, worried about the cat and wanders into the woods where she is found by Old Pa, Aunt Lil's father who lives with his daughter and her husband. He tells her to leave the cat be and adds, "She'll be stirring soon...Always when there's young folks by. That's when she doesn't rest easy."
"She" turns out to be a neighbor, Julia Craig, who mysteriously vanished one day. She had a kerfluffle with Annabel's Uncle Alex long before Annabel was even born. She accused him of poisoning her cat and, ever since her disappearance, suspicion has fallen on Uncle Alex.
Now her spirit walks the night along with her ghost cat. And Julia has set her sights on Annabel because they have a connection about which Annabel knows nothing. The answer to the riddle can only be found in Julia's abandoned and decaying house.

For a kid's book, the was a pretty good read. The Julia Craig mystery was interesting and its solution neat and clever. The baggage caused by the mystery afflicts the whole group, as the Aunt and Uncle refuse to talk about it and Uncle Alex even gets a little hostile. Plus, Annabel has to deal with the constant put downs of evil cousin Toad, oops, I mean Todd.
The mystery was clever and engaging enough for an adult to enjoy yet remain on a level that would not be too scary for younger readers.

The Oregon Trail

By Rinker Buck
When Rinker was a youngster, his father took his kids traveling in a covered wagon. It was an unforgettable experience that stuck with Rinker throughout his life. Now in his later years, Rinker decided he wanted to travel the Oregon Trail in a covered wagon like the original pioneers did.
So he purchased wagons, mules, and other gear and, together with his brother Nick and Nick's dog, Olive Oyl, headed west to start their wagon trip at St. Joseph, Missouri. Both Rinker and Nick are experienced horsemen and Nick is experienced in driving a wagon and team. So they are not neophytes in this enterprise.
Unfortunately, much of the Oregon Trail has been lost to farming, ranching, development and highway construction, so the trip on actual trail only consisted of about 40% of their travel time. The rest was on highways and country roads. But they still had to contend with some of the same problems the original users faced. Storms, flooding, washed out passages, equipment failures, crashes, ornery mules, getting lost, runaway mules, dog bites, bringing too much stuff along, miscalculations and so on. About the only thing they didn't have to deal with was illness, as they tolerated the rough travel surprisingly (to me) rather well.
But this isn't just a book about the trip. It also delves into the history of the trail and of the westward emigration, presented in an easy style that made it all just part of the story.
Rinker also has some interesting opinions about the past and present:

Few organized religions, however, can prosper without stunning misbehavior by their leaders. Smith's [Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism] new faith soon stumbled over his secret endorsement of plural marriage, or polygamy, a practice he justified with a great deal of theological mumbo jumbo designed to conceal his chronic philandering. Smith was an attractive man and a spellbinding speaker, and women swooned during his sermons. He rarely met a follower's pretty wife or teenage daughter whom he didn't covet, and many of them succumbed to his charms without Smith having to make much of an effort. Under an impressive veil of deceit, Smith eventually "sealed" to forty-five wives, and his successor Brigham Young would go on to build two adjoining mansions in Salt Lake to house his own fifty-one wives and estimated fifty-seven children.

This model of government support for a major development project [the Lander Cutoff of the Oregon Trail] became popular and was accepted as the new norm for western growth. Each new phase of frontier growth -- the railroads, ranching, mining -- was also supported by either outright government subsidies, land giveaways, or federally supported irrigation and bridge-building projects. That was the tradition established by the Oregon Trail and it has always amused me that the myth of "rugged individualism" still plays such a large role in western folklore and American values. In fact, our vaunted rugged individualism was financed by huge government largesse.

The [mean] rancher reminded me of those Emperor Nero state troopers who cannot hand out a routine speeding ticket without pestering a driver with a string of useless and humiliating questions. The cops of America are poster-boys of low self-esteem. Their uniforms, silly hats, and sparkling patent leather girdles freighted down with shiny handcuffs, walkie-talkies, and spray canisters of Mace apparently do not make them feel secure enough, so they always add the hostile interrogation to make sure that the accosted citizens know who is in charge.

I enjoyed this book from beginning to end and I even read most of the lengthy acknowledgements in the back of the book. It's grand adventure, man vs nature and American history all in one.
For another review, see http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/24/books/review-in-the-oregon-trail-two-brothers-take-an-1800s-style-road-trip.html?_r=0.

Growing Up Catholic

By Mary Jane Meara, Jeffrey Stone, Maureen Kelly, and Richard Davis

A mildly amusing look at the Catholic Church. Not at all harsh or critical, it is rather nostalgic look back in time for people who were raised Catholic. Has lots of Catholic trivia, with various lists and lots of illustrations.

I was hoping for something a little more sharply funny but this is not that book. I found it rather boring and  didn't finish reading it for most of the summer. Finally forced myself to finish it. It wasn't a bad book, but it wasn't very funny and it just didn't capture my interest.
Catholics will probably not be offended by anything this book has to say about their church.
For another review, see: http://www.nytimes.com/1986/02/13/books/growing-up-catholic-the-making-of-a-spoof.html.

Insane City

By Dave Barry

Seth and Tina are getting married in Miami. They are traveling separately from up north to Florida. Tina is traveling with her sister, Meghan. Seth is traveling with his three friends from college, Marty, Kevin and Big Steve.
Tina is beautiful, successful, a perfectionist and the daughter of a man worth billions. Seth still doesn't understand what she sees in him. Tina's parents, Mike and Marcia, don't understand it either and are not thrilled she has picked Seth.
Things start to go wrong from the get go. Seth arrives at the Miami airport to discover Tina in a confrontation with security who want to search her luggage because the drug dog alerted on it. Due to her father's connections, she wiggles out of the search and her sister's weed is not found. Tina and the sister head off to the hotel and Seth and his friends get in a separate cab and end up at the wrong hotel. They go to a bar and Seth passes out under the table. His friends think he has left and they go in pursuit of him. Seth wakes up and finds his friends gone and goes after them, aided by two strangers from the bar, Cyndi and Duane. Duane has a large albino snake draped around his shoulders. Cyndi and Duane agree to take Seth to his hotel but when they get there, a large woman is in Seth's suite. LaDawne is a stripper who was hired by Marty. She won't leave until she is paid and her menacing boyfriend Wesley shows up and he keeps raising the fee the longer LaDawne stays in Seth's suite. Seth leaves the suite in search of an ATM to get some cash to pay LaDawne. He finds Meghan outside smoking her weed and takes a couple puffs. It's strong stuff and combined with all the alcohol he drunk that night, it is too much. He forgets what he was supposed to be doing and falls asleep on the beach.
Seth wakes up on the beach just in time to rescue a Haitian woman and her baby and child. She had hired men to bring her to Florida from Haiti and they abandoned her and her kids in a rickety boat in the ocean. The boat filled up with water and the three were left clinging to it until it washed up near the beach where Seth was sleeping. The woman, Laurette, is leery of the authorities, fearing she will be deported back to Haiti, so she refuses to go to a hospital. A hotel worker helps Seth bring Laurette and her kids up to his suite and agrees to go search for Laurette's sister. LaDawne takes care of the refugees and sends Seth back out for baby formula and diapers. She gives him the keys to Wesley's car.
Using Wesley's car, Seth and Cyndi rescue his three hapless friends, who got rolled by some shady ladies, pick up Seth's parents, Rose and Sid, at the airport, and stop and buy the baby stuff. Cyndi's friend with the snake, Duane, has found Seth's bag that he left at the bar. In the bag is the wedding ring designed by Tina and made from tiny snippets of gold from her family's heirloom jewelry. It's a one of a kind ring and it is vital that Seth get it back. But Duane leaves the bag at a private zoo.
Seth arrives back at the hotel with his whole motley crew in tow just in time to meet friends of Tina's father, Wendell and Greta Corliss. Tina's father, Mike, belongs to an exclusive club, the Group of Eleven. But an even more exclusive club exists, the Group of Six. Mike desperately wants to belong to the Group of Six, of which Wendell is a member. Accordingly, Mike is sucking up to Wendell big time.
At the rehearsal dinner, Seth's mother unintentionally puts a box of pot brownies on the dessert tray. The waiter, thinking they are part of the dinner, serves them to everyone. Mike doesn't partake because he doesn't like chocolate. Seth and Cyndi leave before dessert to go get the Seth bag back. Wendell has three brownies and ends up buying two restaurants, a pizza joint and a Chinese food place because he has the munchies and the two places don't deliver after hours.
Seth is headed to the zoo with Cyndi to pick up his lost bag and, hopefully, the irreplaceable wedding ring.
Trevor, an orangutan, discovers Seth's bag and manages to drag to his cage.  He tears the bag to pieces and finds the red ring box. He finds Tina's scent on the box intriguing and hangs onto it.
Seth arrives at the zoo and finds the remains of his suitcase next to the cage. He spies the ring box but, in the darkness, fails to realize it is in the clutches of a now-sleeping Trevor. Seth goes into the cage to get the box only to be chased by Trevor. In his hurry to get away, Seth doesn't realize he didn't get the cage door shut securely. Trevor follows them to the parking lot, where they are confronted by the security guard who shoots at them and Seth and Cyndi flee in the car. But Trevor has climbed in the back seat.
Meanwhile, back at the hotel, Tina is becoming increasing exasperated at Seth, who seems to be more concerned about the Haitians than about their wedding. She turns to her father for help. But his help is just making things worse and the complications pile up.

This book is like watching a Warner Bros cartoon and suddenly an image of babies starving in Africa with flies walking on their faces appears on the screen.

For another review, see https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/in-insane-city-dave-barry-serves-up-quite-the-buffet-of-leftovers/2013/01/31/ef4442f0-6a36-11e2-95b3-272d604a10a3_story.html.

When You Look Like Your Passport Photo, It's Time To Go Home

By Erma Bombeck

Erma and her husband love to travel and there are few places in the world they didn't visit. So she has a lot to say about the joys and tribulations of vacations. Of course, since this is Erma Bombeck, she keeps her reminiscences on the lighter side, poking fun of not only herself, but also her husband, who is a man who does not believe in traveling light.
Together they went to all the places, the Far East, Africa, Europe, Britain, South America, Alaska, Australia, Russia and floating down the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon of their home state, Arizona, and on and on. About the only place they didn't visit was Antarctica. And they probably visited there after this book was written.
Although she has plenty of opportunities to get maudlin, she mostly avoids doing so and sticks to keeping it light and amusing. Probably a good read for anyone preparing to take a trip to another country!

For another review, see https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/erma-bombeck/when-you-look-like-your-passport-photo-its-time-to/.

Be Sweet

By Roy Blount Jr.

Roy writes about his relationship with his mother, mostly, but also with his father. In the process, he covers parts of his writing career, but not in great depth.
His mother was orphaned and was raised by relatives who really didn't want her, one of which was quite abusive. As a result, she was self-doubting and needy, always questioning her children's love for her. This left Roy, as an adult, trying to understand his mother, trying to understand the difficulties she had to deal with as a child. Perhaps getting a handle on her suffering would explain some of the capricious and pathetic things she did and said when he was growing up.

Blount was a sports writer before he became known as a humorist and it shows up clearly in the book. Not being a sports fan myself, reading page after page about sports people was not enjoyable. There is also a chapter where he goes on and on about juniors, sons who are named after their fathers. Heaps and heaps of juniors until I was quite tired of the junior stories.
I also felt it took him a long time to get anywhere with his story. He meanders and wanders and dallies here and goes back there and does anything but get to the point. And, after all, there really is no point. His mother had problems. Whose doesn't?

For another review, see  https://www.nytimes.com/books/98/07/12/reviews/980712.12humphrt.html.

Brotherly Love

By William D, Blankenship

Ben is a successful designer with a lovely wife and two children. He lives his life secure in the knowledge that his evil twin brother, Harry, is dead, killed in a car crash.
Unfortunately, Harry isn't actually dead. He is very much alive and he has a huge grudge against brother Ben.
Years ago, Harry raped and murdered a woman and was committed to a facility for the criminally insane. He was never supposed to be released but he was, only to die in a crash.  But that wasn't Harry in the crash. Harry has new identity and plenty of money and now he is closing in on brother Ben and family, looking for some kind of twisted revenge.
But Harry makes a mistake when he picks up a female hitchhiker and does to her what he likes to do to women. Only this dead girl is the daughter of an organized crime boss, Tony Scar. Tony Scar wants his daughter's killer dead. But which one is the killer? The police refuse to believe Ben's claims that Harry is back from the grave.
But in the end, it doesn't matter to Tony Scar. His daughter is dead and he doesn't care if Ben, Harry and Ben's wife and kids all have to pay the ultimate price.

I liked this story despite is rough elements of rape and murder. It adds quite a twist when the murdered girl turns out to be a gangster's daughter who will stop at nothing to exact his vengeance. The ending is a little weird and not exactly happy, which was somewhat disappointing. But the story moves along quite rapidly and was pretty gripping. It was a good read.

The Goldcamp Vampire

By Elizabeth Scarborough

Pelagia Harper, aka Valentine Lovelace, aka Pat Harper, aka Corazon has recently lost her father.
Pelagia despises her father's widow, who owes her money that she had failed to pay. Her father's mistress, Sasha Devine, is leaving California to head to the Klondike to work in an opera house there.  She offers Pelagia a job as her traveling companion, with Pelagia to make all the arrangements and the salary to be paid upon arrival at their destination. Traveling along with the two women will be the coffin of one Mr. Lawson, whom Sasha has promised to bring home to Alaska.
Mysterious deaths accompany the two women on their travels north. One of the deaths is that of a Canadian official. One evening the official demanded that Mr. Lawson coffin be opened to check for contraband. Upon refusal, he attacked the coffin with a pry bar. Mist boiled out of the coffin and engulfed the man and he died. Pelagia, fearful she would be blamed for his death, weighed his body down and, with the help of a friend, sunk him in the lake.
But he didn't stay down for long. And the authorities are looking for Pelagia now. Sasha offers her a position with the opera disguised as a flamenco dancer named Corazon. Pelagia, who has still not received her wages from Sasha, feels forced to accept.
But strange doings are going on at the opera house, centered around the owner, Vasily Bledinoff. Soon all the girls in the opera, except Pelagia, are going around with small wounds on their necks.  The nearby woods appear to be full of werewolfs and weremoose. Vasily is attempting to woo Pelagia into becoming another of his blood cows and the authorities are soon going to figure out that Pelagia is the dancer Corazon.
Who will get her first, the police or the seductive vampire?

This was an OK story. It has a lot of different characters and at times I had a bit of trouble keeping them all straight. It seemed to take Pelagia a long time to figure out that Vasily is a vampire. She only begins to understand what is happening when someone brings Bram Stoker's book, Dracula, to the opera house where she is working. Vasily is an interesting character and it would have been nice to read more about him and his ways. Pelagia herself is kind of boring.

The Mask of Memory

By Victor Canning

Margaret is finally facing the fact that her husband, Bernard, no longer loves her. Years ago, he decided he didn't wish to share a bed with her and moved into a different room. He works in London and they live in the country. He has an apartment in London and spends most of his time there. In fact, he has a girlfriend.
Margaret, who has endured her loveless marriage for years, has met a man who seems enamored with her. Dougall is a laborer and part-time artist. He is an orphan and has been poor all his life. In Margaret he sees a chance at a better life. He callously plans to seduce her and gain control of her and her considerable fortune. And when he tires of her, he plans to dump her and walk away with her money, because, as he says, "he was never going to love her or anyone else." Dougall only believes in looking out for himself.
One weekend Bernard brings home an important report to work on. Margaret confronts Bernard and tells him that she has fallen in love with Dougall and she wants a divorce. Bernard sees through Dougall and tries to reason with Margaret, telling her that Dougall is just using her to get to her fortune. But Margaret refuses to listen and they have a fierce argument. Bernard goes out for a walk to cool down and meets his doom. As he lays dying, he leaves a message on his government-issue watch which has a recording function.
After his death, government officials descend on Margaret's house, looking for that report and for the watch. Margaret has run off with Dougall after the funeral and is not to be found. She is finally tracked down and it is revealed to her that her husband hid his marriage from his bosses. Bernard was not only unhappy in his marriage but unhappy in his job too.
Margaret has problems beyond her lonely marriage. She has spells where she goes to stores and shoplifts. She has no memory of these episodes and only knows what has happened by the stolen items she finds in her pockets. She is not a very intelligent person and fails to see through Dougall's machinations, even when it is all laid out for her by Bernard. And now that Bernard is dead, there is no one to save her from herself.

When I first started reading this story, I was really put off by it. Bernard is cold and uncaring, Margaret is a fool, and Dougall is a bounder. How are you supposed to like a story when all the characters are so unsympathetic? I put the book down for weeks before I picked it up again, right at the point where Margaret and Bernard quarrel and Bernard dies. That is when his colleagues become more involved in the story in the desperate search for the hidden report and the lost watch and Margaret runs away with her new lover, Dougall, whose plan is use her then cast her aside, possibly by murdering her, once he can talk her into changing her will in his favor.  The suspense in the second half of the story really drew me in and I finished the book within two days. At the end, I felt very satisfied with this story and quite enjoyed it.

See also,
 http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/wordscape/canning/Mask%20of%20Memory.html.

No Enemy But Time

By Michael Bishop

Ever since he was a little boy, John has experienced vivid dreams about ancient Africa, at the time of homo habilis. His dreams seem to be a direct connection to the past, as attested by his accurate descriptions of the flora and fauna encountered.
John was the son of a Spanish hustler and an American soldier. Abandoned by his mother, he was adopted by the Monegals and taken to the USA to live. As a teen he had a falling out with his mother and left her and his sister and went to Florida to work as a laborer, still haunted by his dreams of the past.
In Florida, he falls in with a scientist who is working with the military to develop a kind of time machine and they want to send John back to the land of his dreams, since his connection to that time will be instrumental in getting him there.

I didn't really understand the mechanism for the time travel in this story. He doesn't actually go into our past but goes to a place similar to our past? I don't know, it was beyond my ability to grasp the idea. Anyway, while there, he falls in love with a hominid girl and becomes a member of her little tribe. I found that part kind of unbelievable. He is attracted to an ape woman. Really? That's messed up.
Anyway, the best part of the book is the time he spends in the past.  The rest of it was okay, but not as interesting.
For more, see: http://cthulhuwrites.blogspot.com/2013/02/book-review-no-enemy-but-time.html.

Brief Encounters

By Dick Cavett

Columns by Cavett from the online NewYork Times, where Dick Cavett looks back at some of the famous, talented people who have crossed his path, people like Arthur Godfrey, Stan Laurel, Groucho Marx and Jonathan Winters.
Most of the people mentioned will be familiar to older folks but these columns are also an intriguing introduction to those who don't know that much about them. Like Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, about whom Cavett recommends reading Furious Love by Kashner and Schoenberger.
Cavett also bids fond farewell to some of the more recently departed: Dick Clark, Nora Ephron, James Gandolfini and others.

A nice trip down memory lane, it was fun reading about the icons of my childhood like Laurel and Hardy. I loved their movies and I loved the Marx Brothers movies and I loved Jonathan Winters too. Reading about them brought back that enjoyment, those good feelings experienced watching their shenanigans.

For more about the book, see The Chicago Tribune at http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/books/ct-prj-dick-cavett-brief-encounters-20141113-story.html.

The Breathtaker

By Alice Blanchard

Charlie Grover is the police chief in a town in Oklahoma. As a boy, Charlie was terribly burned when the house caught on fire. His mother and little sister died in the blaze. Charlie spent months in the hospital and endured many surgeries. As an adult, he still deals with the pain of his scars.
Charlie's pain isn't just physical. His wife died a few years ago and he is raising his teen daughter alone. And he has issues with his abusive, alcoholic father, whom he blames for the fire that killed his mother and sister.
A tornado hits the town and a family is killed in the storm. At first, it appears they died as a result of injuries inflicted by the tornado. But closer examination reveals they were murdered and the murderer used the tornado to disguise it.
It isn't too much longer before Grover uncovers more victims of this sneaky killer. This ruthless and deranged person uses the chaos of the storm to enter houses and murder the inhabitants in horrible, cruel ways.  As the story advances, the murders become even more bizarre and vicious.
Charlie Grover has more than just a disturbed killer to worry about. There's his terrible relationship with his father, the disconnect with his teen daughter, the local drug dealers, the wild boy chasing after his daughter, and one of his officers who has gone missing. Plus an interesting woman has entered his life, the first woman he has been attracted to since his wife died. He has all this to deal with plus a murderous lunatic disguised as an ordinary person.

This was quite a gripping and exciting story. Charlie Grover has lots of baggage that adds so much to the story beyond that of the murder. I actually read this book in one day. I think I found the story of Charlie's relationship with his father to be the most interesting part of it.  Charlie has to deal with several red herrings and doesn't even have a clue as to the real killer until almost the end of the story. His struggle to understand what is happening was the best part of the story for me.

See also Publishers Weekly at http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-446-53139-9.

The Girls of Mischief Bay

By Susan Mallery

Three women living the life in sunny California, in a suburb of Los Angeles, Mischief Bay. Nicole owns an exercise studio and is married amd has young son. Shannon is a career woman who has risen to the top of her field. Pam, who has just turned fifty, is married to a loving, successful man and is soon to be a grandmother. Their lives seem pretty good on the surface.
But Nicole is worried about her marriage. Her husband quit his job, without discussing it with her, and is now in the process of writing a screenplay. He is supposed to be taking care of their son, but is frequently gone, attending workshops and taking meetings.
Shannon loves her job and is well-paid for it, something that the men in her past have found intimidating. But she still hopes for a husband and a family even though she is in her forties.
Pam, the oldest at fifty, is bored. Her life has become routine, and with the impending arrival of a grandchild, she is feeling like life is passing her by.
Nicole is getting tired of being the sole support of her household and is doing more and more of the chores her husband promised he would undertake. But it seems his screenplay is more important to him than his family.
Shannon meets a nice man and thinks she is falling in love. But the fact that he has had a vasectomy and has two kids from a previous marriage are unlooked for complications.
Pam books a romantic weekend for herself and her husband and it works to rekindle the spark in their relationship. Until one evening when the worst thing possible happens.
Together and apart, these three friends will come to terms with adversity and find new lives and new hope for the future.

Although a little on the predictable side, still I quite enjoyed this story of these three women dealing with their problems and coming out OK at the end.
This is the first book in the Mischief Bay series and this first book leaves the reader wondering what awaits these interesting women in the future.

For another review, see http://www.star-telegram.com/entertainment/books/article12473666.html.

Was It Something I Said?

By Valerie Block

Justine and Barry are two young professionals living and working in New York City. Justine is a lawyer with a six-figure salary. Barry is an account executive with a food company. One day they are both at the airport, headed to different destinations. Barry sees Justine and is smitten hard, so hard he changes his ticket for one on the flight Justine is taking. He even manages to talk his way into the seat next to hers.
Shortly after the plane takes off, it experiences problems and has to return to the airport and make an emergency landing. Justine is slightly injured in the landing. Sharing a near-crash experience together creates a bond between Justine and Barry and they end up dating, which makes Barry very happy. Justine, not so much.
Justine likes Barry but things about him annoy her. He says and does embarrassing things in public. His philosophy is more liberal than hers (she is a fan of dead president Ronald Reagan).
Barry is pretty enamored with Justine but still finds her annoying at times too. She has a tendency to blow hot then cold which he finds confusing and off-putting. Their relationship is rocky and the final straw for Justine is when Barry screws up at work and gets fired. He becomes too whiny and clingy and seems rather shiftless and so she calls it quits.
But life without Barry just isn't the same and trying to find a replacement for him isn't working. And maybe Barry's failure at work becomes more understandable when Justine finds that her job is becoming a problem too.
Maybe being with Barry is better than going it alone?

This was an OK read. Barry and Justine are both rather annoying. I totally related to how off-putting Barry's jokes and behaviour in public were to Justine. And vice-versa, with Justine all cuddly one minute then bitchy the next.  Barry never knows where he stands with her. This is certainly not a match made in heaven. On the other hand, maybe these two pills deserve each other? Anyway, this was a fairly readable story, although I wasn't really grabbed by it and, by the end, cared for neither character.

The Rebellion of Miss Lucy Ann Lobdell

By William Klaber

A novel based on the life of a real person, the author fills in the gaps left by the documents of the times.
Lucy Ann Lobdell grew up in New York in the 1800s. She fell in love with a scoundrel who abused her and then abandoned her before their child, Helen, was born. Lucy was obliged to move back home, to the ridicule of her mother and siblings.
Life was uncomfortable under the uncharitable scrutiny of her family (except for her loving father and a sister). Her family blamed her for her poor choice in a spouse. Lucy decided her life and her child's life would be better if they had a home of their own. But opportunities for women to earn a living outside the home were very few. She did teach school briefly and discovered she was being paid half of what the male teacher was paid.
She got work as a housekeeper and it wasn't too long before the man she worked for and her family were pressuring her to marry him. But she was completely disinterested in the proposed alliance.
A bit of a tomboy and a good shot, Lucy decided her best chance to earn a decent living was to disguise herself as a man. Well educated and a talented violinist, she planned to open a dancing and music school. So one day she cut her hair, put on her brother's clothes and left her family and her child behind to seek her fortune.
Setting up her dancing school on her savings, things went really well once she became more comfortable in her guise as a man. She made a place for herself in male society and enjoyed its freedoms greatly, within limits to protect herself from discovery. But then it all went bad.
She fell in love with one of her female students, Lydia, and Lydia's boyfriend got jealous. Warned that he and a gang of his friends was planning to waylay her, Lucy fled the town. Her next stop was the wilds of Minnesota. Her dream was to raise horses and bring Lydia and Helen to live there. But then it all went bad again.
An vile man caught Lucy bathing in the river. He proceeded to rape her despite her struggles to prevent it. She did manage to stick a knife in his leg, but he ran to the sheriff with his tale. She was arrested and jailed for impersonating a man.
Her life went from hardship to hardship but she mostly clung to her masquerade. A skilled hunter, she lived in the wild and survived off the land. Eventually she ended up back east in a poorhouse. By this time she was having some mental problems, a weakness that ran in her mother's side of the family.  It was in the poorhouse that Lucy met the woman she would end up marrying, Marie. Of course, the person who performed the marriage ceremony believed he was joining together a man and a woman, not two women.
Their story does not have a happy ending. They were eventually exposed and hounded from place to place. As their hardships continued, Lucy's mental condition worsened. She finally ended up in an institution.

Reading this book was quite a journey into the mostly sad life of a woman who refused to accept the boundaries. She paid the price for it and reading about her life was troubling and depressing.  Many women today are still regarded as the property of men and of lesser status than males.
But even though this is a sad tale, it made for a very good, compelling read.  It really engaged me from beginning to end.

Love & Terror on the Howling Plains of Nowhere

By Poe Ballantine

Chadron is a small college town in northwestern Nebraska, bisected by U.S. Route 20. After he married his wife Cristina, Poe decided to settle in Chadron, a place he had lived in briefly a few years before. He thought the small town atmosphere would agree with his new wife, a native of Mexico who did not speak English at all well.
Poe was a wanderer before he married Cristina. He wanted to be an author but was not able to support himself writing and so worked at a variety of jobs, none of which paid very well. In fact, Cristina had married him thinking he was a rich American and that she was going to partake in the American Dream. He wasn't rich though, just a working man, working as a short-order cook, cleaning floors at night in the supermarket. This led to some stress in their marriage, as Cristina dealt with her disappointment in her new life, her alienation from the foreigners that surrounded her, and the birth of their son who might or might not be autistic. One of the things they argued about was the time Poe spent writing, which, since it didn't earn much money, Cristina regarded as a waste of time.
Chadron, although a small town of about 6000, has a fairly transient population due to it being a college town. One of the new arrivals to town was Steven Haataja, a math professor hired to teach at the college. Steven came with some baggage, having had some problems in the past, including depression and a suicide attempt. But now he seemed to be doing much better. Divorced, he came to Chadron alone, but had family nearby in South Dakota. He seemed to be settling into his new job and making connections in the local community. But then he disappeared one night in December.
Steven's body was found a few month later on a ranch. He has been tied to a tree and his feet bound. His hands and arms were not tied. His body was severely burned, so badly burned it was not even clear if it was the body of a man or a woman.
What happened to him? Was he murdered? Commit suicide? Or was it some kind of strange accident? Apparently he had been drinking. Was he so drunk he fell into his campfire? These are some of the questions Poe tries to answer while also trying to save his own marriage and raise his son.

It's an interesting look at life in a small town that is dealing with a puzzling tragedy. Also of a man coping with his unhappy spouse and his young son whom some have described as autistic. The first part of the book was certainly more interesting than the second part. In the first part we get to know about Poe and his wife and child and their life together in Chadron. But the second part focuses mainly on Steven and the investigation into his death and, though it should have been the most interesting part of the book, it just wasn't as engaging. But overall, I enjoyed reading this book, mainly the parts about Poe and his friends and family.

The PMS Outlaws

By Sharyn McCrumb

The story really begins in the 1950s, when a bootlegger, Jack Dolan, ran a police barricade which resulted in a fiery crash. Dolan's car was loaded with homemade whiskey and went up like a bomb, enveloping not only his car but also a police car. A man was critically burned and spent months in the hospital but Dolan was thrown clear and escaped only to be nabbed later by the police.
Unrelated to this, a couple of students at college decades later decided to enact a little revenge for a cruel joke pulled on a fellow student. This student, a chubby girl, had been invited to a frat party only to find out it was a "pig party" where the frat boys invite unattractive girls and the boy with the homeliest girl wins a prize. Of course, the girls, for the most part, don't know that is what is happening and this particular girl was devastated when she found out. So two of her dorm mates track down her "date" and trick him into getting naked at which point they tie him up outside, take photos, and leave him to be discovered in the morning.
Now we are back to present day, where Elizabeth MacPherson has lost her husband and has taken up residence in a mental hospital to treat her subsequent depression. One of her fellow patients is an old man with terrible burn scars. It's the same man that was burned in the car crash back in the 1950s. He is also being treated for depression.
Elizabeth's lawyer brother Bill and his law partner, A.P. Hill, have decided it is time to upgrade their offices. To that end, Bill has purchased a large, beautiful home in the antebellum style (though built in the 1940s). The house does have a small problem, it comes with a built-in resident, the house's original owner, who is none other than Jack Dolan, ex-bootlegger and now in his 90s. Dolan doesn't take up much room, though, and seems pretty spry for his age and really doesn't bother the new owner beyond his desire for bags and bags of sugar.
A.P. Hill receives a phone call from an old college acquaintance, P.J. Purdue. Like Hill, Purdue went on from college to law school and is now a lawyer. But Purdue, who always had a wild streak, has gone off the rails. She helped her client, Carla Larkin, escape police custody and now the two of them are enticing gullible men into trysts and robbing them, leaving their victims handcuffed and naked, just like the two college girls who punished the pig party frat boy. This is because Purdue was one of those two girls and now she is reliving and revisiting that revenge on more guys, helped this time by the beautiful Carla.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth is languishing in the mental hospital, zonked on drugs and failing to deal with her loss. Though she does share the information that her brother just bought a house with an elderly tenant named Jack Dolan with the scarred fellow patient, Hillman Randolph, who is mightily surprised to hear Jack Dolan survived that terrible car crash. For forty plus years, Hillman had thought Dolan died that night.
This various trails all come together one night at the Jack Dolan house. Hillman, Dolan, both MacPhersons, Hill, Purdue, and Larkin all meet in a climax that is both amusing and non-fatal, the best sort of ending.

This was an enjoyable read, with the various character coming together in a grand climax at the end. All the characters had interesting stories, although the title characters, the PMS outlaws, were not the lead characters. The lead characters were Elizabeth and A.P. Hill and a lot of the story is spent with Elizabeth as she is staying in the mental hospital and meeting her fellow patients. I wasn't enamored with that part of the story, which I found a bit tedious. But other than that, I thought it was a pretty good tale and all the plot lines brought together very nicely.

The Four Graces

By D.E. Stevenson

The four graces are Liz, Sal, Tilly and Addie Grace. Of the three, only Addie has moved away from home and lives in World War II London. Sal and Tilly are homebodies but Liz works on a farm and is more outgoing than the other two.
The three young women still live at home with their widowed father, who is the vicar of their small community, Chevis Green. The war hasn't touched their lives much, apart from the rationing. That is until three new people disrupt the placid tenure of their lives.
First to appear is Captain Roderick Herd. At first it seems he is interested in Addie but then he starts spending a lot of time with Liz.
Next to arrive is William Single, archaeologist, who will be staying at the Vicarage while he investigates the nearby Roman ruins. He is a large, calm man and fits in very nicely with the Grace family.
Last to arrive is Aunt Rona, refugee from London. Her house was near a bomb explosion and all the windows were blown out. Given the war, it is unlikely her windows can be repaired, so she needs a place to stay and has found it at the Vicarage.
Problem is that Aunt Rona is a pill. She constantly talks about her "friends" whom the Graces don't know. She tries to manage everyone and that is annoying to the family. Finally, her worse sin is that she is trying to maneuver the Vicar into marrying her! That would ruin life at the Vicarage forever!

This was quite an enjoyable read. It is a mild romantic comedy and the Graces are charming and sympathetic characters. There are no torrid love scenes and no high drama, it is just a sweet story.

One Good Dog

By Susan Wilson

Adam March was on his way to the top when he threw it all away with an outburst of uncontrolled temper. He struck his assistant for imagined disrespect and was fired.
Gone was the lovely home, the lovely wife, the lovely career. He narrowly escaped jail but was instead sentenced to community service for one year, working at a homeless shelter for men.
Chance, a pit bull mix, was born to his mom in a basement and destined to be a fighting dog. His was a life of competition and loneliness. Until the house was raided and Chance was placed for adoption.
One of the men who frequented the shelter had a pit bull mix dog. When the man was suddenly taken ill, his dog was picked up by animal rescue. Adam was tasked with the job of getting the man's dog out of the pound but found out the dog had already been put down. So he figured that one dog is as good as another and brought Chance to the man. Of course, that didn't work out, the man was outraged that Adam would try to pass off a strange dog as his dog, something that would come back to bite Adam in the ass later. Due to a series of coincidences, Adam got stuck with Chance for several days. During that time, Chance brings some joy and comfort to Adam at a time when he is at his lowest.
Adam's teen daughter has been very distant since he fell from grace but she has always wanted a dog and having Chance helps Adam tear down the wall she has built between them. Trying to repair his relationship with his daughter, taking care of Chance and working at the shelter are all helping Adam become a more caring and giving person and realizing that some things are more important than so-called success.

This was a good book. It has some rather predictable plot twists and the beginning seemed a bit unreal. Why would you hit someone just because they were preoccupied and ignoring you? Especially a man who had risen as far as Adam and who had so much to lose? But the dog, Chance, saves the story for me. I enjoyed the parts where Chance tells his story more than the parts about Adam. I didn't like Adam much at all. He deserved his punishment.