A very entertaining book.

The Pack Horse Library Project was a Works Progress Administration (WPA) program that delivered books to remote regions in the Appalachian Mountains between 1935 and 1943.

Women were very involved in the project which eventually had 30 different libraries serving 100,000 people …

Giver of Stars is fiction. The story of 5 lady pack horse librarians.

What happens to them–and to the men they love–becomes an unforgettable drama of loyalty, justice, humanity, and passion.

These heroic women refuse to be cowed by men or by convention. And though they face all kinds of dangers in a landscape that is at times breathtakingly beautiful, at others brutal, they’re committed to their job: bringing books to people who have never had any, arming them with facts that will change their lives. …

Amazon

Click PLAY or see pack horse librarians it on YouTube.

I was blown away by Adrian McKinty‘s 2020 book The Chain.

So — requested more by the same author from the library.

Next up was the first of his Sean Duffy series — Cold Cold Ground (2012).

If you are an Irish writer, the bar is set high. This is literature. And I can’t recall any better insight to The Troubles.

Spring 1981. Northern Ireland. Belfast on the verge of outright civil war.

The Thatcher government has flooded the area with soldiers, but nightly there are riots, bombings, and sectarian attacks.

In the midst of the chaos, Sean Duffy, a young, witty, Catholic detective in the almost entirely Protestant Royal Ulster Constabulary, is trying to track down a serial killer who is targeting gay men.

As a Catholic policeman, Duffy is suspected by both sides and there are layers of complications. …

Fast-paced, evocative, and brutal, this book is a brilliant depiction of Belfast at the height of the Troubles and a cop caught in the cross fire.

Fade Away is the third novel in his series of a crime solver and sports agent named Myron Bolitar.

Best so far, I’d say.

Myron Bolitar is called by Clip Arnstein, the owner of NBA New Jersey Dragons.

Clip’s star player is missing and he wants Myron to find him.

Clip wants Myron to take Greg’s place on the team, feeling that the other players would be more open with him rather than an investigator. Myron is reluctant yet excited at the same time. Having never had the opportunity to play pro-ball, he is anxious to know if he can make it with the Dragons.

Myron had been injured out of the NBA before his career started. Can he make it this time?

These are light weight easy books to read. But I like the humour. The banter.
Don’t spends too much time analyzing the plot.

Myron’s parter Windsor Horne Lockwood III is always entertaining.

Esperanza Diaz, his assistant at MB SportsReps, is a brilliant character, as well.

Michael Koryta keeps getting better.

How It Happened is his 2018 release.

Kimberly Crepeaux is no good, a notorious jailhouse snitch, teen mother, and heroin addict whose petty crimes are well-known to the rural Maine community where she lives.

So when she confesses to her role in the brutal murders of Jackie Pelletier and Ian Kelly, the daughter of a well-known local family and her sweetheart, the locals have little reason to believe her story. …

Yet Rob Barrett, the FBI investigator and interrogator specializing in telling a true confession from a falsehood believes her story. He just can’t prove it.

As always Koryta is superb in putting together a plot. And excellent writing the bad guys.

I highly recommend this book.

I’ve not previously read Anne Tyler, though she’s published 23 super popular novels.  Three times nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Her 2020 book is Redhead by the Side of the Road.

A slow paced, entertaining slice of life.

Micah … runs Tech Hermit and runs around the neighbourhood fixing computer problems for old ladies who – and you’d be right to bet Tyler mines this for full comic potential – don’t know what a modem is or does. …

He lives rent-free, alone, keeps to himself and sticks to a routine “etched in stone”: Friday is vacuuming day, Monday floor-mopping, and so on. Even his relationship with his “restful to look at” teacher girlfriend has, by his own admission, “solidified”. …

Micah’s peaceful life gets blown up.

Guardian Review

Larson’s true-crime historical non-fiction 2006 book is excellent.

I loved learning about technology of the day. This time the early 1900s.

Guglielmo Marconi, the young Italian entrepreneur. Often credited as the inventor of radio. He shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics. He had no training in physics. And was a jerk.

Hawley Harvey Crippen, who murdered his overbearing wife and fled Britain with his mistress, unaware that Scotland Yard was hot on his heels. Nice guy — aside from the murder

The two men never met, yet their interacting stories make up this tale.

The climax occurs during a trans-Atlantic chase which, thanks to the miracle of Marconi’s invention, was followed by millions of people around the world—with Crippen and his mistress completely unaware.