Ambush (Sydney Rose Parnell Book 3) --Barbara Nickless

Fiction / Thriller

356 pages / 2579 KB

5 Stars

I absolutely love the Sydney Rose stories. I've already pre-ordered Book #4. So, maybe my review is some biased? Proceed at will.

Sydney is believable. She doesn't think of everything, though she doesn't miss much, and when she does, it's a whopper. She's a Marine (a veteran of Afghanistan), she's a railroad cop, she has the dog her dead Marine boyfriend had, Clyde, who is also a highly trained K9 Cop. She has PTSD, and she has a (living) boyfriend who is a homicide detective.

She also has something that an unknown someone wants, in the worst way, and that someone is willing to kill for it. Unfortunately, Sydney doesn't have a clue what she has. Or where to look. But she'd better figure it out before her boyfriend who has been kidnapped by the someone is killed. She'd also better figure out where he is.

She's lost too many friends, family actually, for Marines are family. They may not always like each other, but they are family. And Sydney takes it as a personal affront when they are killed.

Ms Nickless has written another fast-paced book. Not so much a railroad story as the earlier ones, but nonetheless, one I couldn't put down until I got to the end. I think one who had not read books 1. Blood on the Tracks or 2. Dead Stop will find enough back story in this one to read as a stand alone, but having read the first two, and being familiar with the characters, I'm not one hundred per cent positive.

My biggest complaint is with Ms Nickless and it's one I've mentioned before: She writes slower than I read.

Air Raid (Book #1 of 2) -- by Eileen Enwright Hodgetts

Fiction

369 pages /887 KB

5 Stars

This was great fun. The author went back and forth between the backstory of World War II England and the present of 1952. I was pretty sure I'd figured out who done it by the end, but not the why. The fun with mysteries is, you don't know for sure until the end. And I was pleasantly surprised.

Toby Whitby is a solicitor (lawyer) who, when one of his bosses is killed, inherits the case he was working on. It is anything but a slam-dunk.

The Earl's daughter was secretly married to an American during the war and had a baby girl, Celeste after the husband was killed. Celeste was kidnapped and taken to America by one of the village girls who also married an American. 

Mom never remarried and is about to become the sole heir to the Earl's estate. She must find her child, or when she dies, the estate goes to someone in Australia who will probably sell it to a land developer. Of course, she can't provide original documents, as those were lost in one of the bombing raids.

Toby goes to the estate and discusses the case with the Earl, and his daughter, and goes into town to talk to others. People involved with the case, no matter how peripherally, start showing up dead. 

Can our near-blind lawyer figure it out in time? Can he get the right family reunited? Will he find the child before he gets offed? Will the red-headed woman in the post office love him as he loves her?

I have just ordered book two, Imposter. 

This Business of Wisdom --Poems by Lauren Camp

Poetry

72 pages

5 Stars

This small book contains huge poems. Read them, one at a time, out loud to not only hear the words but to taste them, to savor them, to feel them on your tongue, in your mouth.

You will cry, you will laugh, some of these poems will strike a resonance within you that vibrates for hours. And if you're a poet, you will mourn that you did not write them.

Omaha to Ogallala --by Terry Korth Fischer

Nonfiction / Memoir

203 pages

5 stars

Disclaimer: I had the opportunity to read the ARC.

I love a good memoir, and I love a good travel story. Ms. Fischer did an excellent job of combining the two. I had the honor of traveling to parts of the country she mentions in her book, but for entirely different reasons and therefore I saw an entirely different landscape. I much prefer hers.

The Korth sisters, of varying ages, decide to take a road trip in the hopes of rekindling their childhood friendship and closeness. The youngest is adopted and wants to find her birth parents. This brings a tension to the group as they never saw her as adopted, and they don't know how to react, threatening the tenuous bond of sisterhood. The older ones never saw the younger one as anything other than 'Sister.'

This is a delightful story of sisters and nieces and cousins and a great definition as to the definition and meaning of Family, with a capital F. 

Wild Country (World of the Others, The #2) –by Anne Bishop

Fiction / Fantasy

496 pages 

5 Stars

I read fiction for one reason, and one reason only – to escape my reality for a few hours. I have one criterion for fiction – I want to be happier/feel better for having read and finished the book than when I picked it up. That said, this book met my criterion.

Rumors are circulating that this is the last book in The Others series that Ms. Bishop will write. I truly hope not. Her world of Namid is great fun to get lost in. Just not too lost, for you want to be inside during the hours of darkness when the Elders are about.

The world of Namid is similar enough to ours to be recognizable, and different enough to at times be downright scary. The Elders/terra indigene rule the world where humans are tolerated as long as they obey the rules, which really aren't that hard. As long as they remember they are NOT the top of the food chain. It does give one pause to think on that.

If you've read the previous books, this one will re-introduce you to many of the earlier people. If you haven't read the earlier books, I recommend you read Written in Red and the others before this one. 

Humans, at least some, survived the Great Predation. Will they survive each other?

Nasty Water, Collected New Orleans Poems --by James Nolan

Poetry

93 pages

4 Stars

Mr. Nolan is a New Orleans native and put together a collection of 50 poems celebrating his 50 years of living there. Some are great fun; some made me cry. Nolan's use of words is wonderful, "Flannel shadows huddle...", "...rouge as thick as licorice/..."

I am not overly familiar with New Orleans, having only been there twice, but I have the idea this collection is a fair description of the town and its people, especially the French quarter—the fun parts and the not fun parts, discordant jazz and cheap booze, new life and old life. 

New Orleans Unleashed --by Rhonda Findley & John DeMers, phots by Vanessa S. Brown

Poetry/Photographs

70 pages

5 Stars n Barks

On a recent trip to the French Quarter, my friend and I stopped in to browse a new/used bookstore. We both like to patronize small, indy stores. Alas, I had my small dog with me (maybe he's medium, at 12 lbs?) so Sammy Brave Dog and I waited outside the store. The proprietor opened the door and began a conversation with Sammy (Chihuahua) and invited him to come in and shop. Oh, and me, the human at the other end of the leash.

As I was paying for the book I bought, she gave me this book. "I've had it for years, just waiting for someone who loves dogs like you do." Of course, the gift, and her treatment of Sammy probably tinted my glasses rose, but I enjoyed the heck out of the book.

The photography is great, the little poems of Indy's travels through New Orleans are fun, but the star of the show is the dog, Indy, who is separated from his humans and searches NOLA until he finds them, giving us quite the tour. I enthusiastically give it 5 stars for pure fun. Sammy Brave Dog gives it 5 barks!