May 2017

    The Party by Robyn Harding

    Hannah Sanders is turning sixteen. She’s a good student, she gets good grades and has nice friends, and so her parents trust her. Rather than a big flashy party, they decide to have a sweet sixteen party at their multimillion-dollar home in a wealthy Bay Area suburb (I’m picturing Lafayette or Orinda). She invites four …

    Astrophysics for People In a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson

    Neil, you don’t know me at ALL, do you? I love you – except for that thing where you did a TV remake of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, which ended up being disappointingly cartoonish…but after reading this new book, maybe that really IS my level! I had such high hopes going in.… The marketing is superb: …

    The Marsh King’s Daughter by Karen Dionne

    I had read so much hype about The Marsh King’s Daughter, I was eager to read the advance copy I received from Penguin Group/Putnam & NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. I was expecting a riveting psychological thriller, filled with suspense. What I got was a bit different… I suppose I have to give …

    Lockdown by Laurie R. King

    I live on the Central Coast of California, where it’s borderline heresy to be anything less than a huge fan of beloved local author Laurie King. True confession time: I admit it, I tried a couple of her books and they just didn’t grab me. But seeing that her latest book, Lockdown, was subtitled “A …

    Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann

    Just over a century ago, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian Nation in Oklahoma. In this amazing book, David Grann presents the results of his exhaustive research into one of the most horrific and shameful eras in U.S. history: the “Reign of Terror” as the Osage began …

    Shadow Man by Alan Drew

    Talk about a grabber: the description for Alan Drew’s book Shadow Man starts out “What Dennis Lehane does for Boston, Alan Drew does for Southern California in this gritty thriller…” I thought “what a trifecta!” I’ve been a Dennis Lehane fan for many years, I grew up in Orange County, CA (I am a huge …