Insatiable Appetites (2015) is another entertaining read in the series. Number 32. A bit more complicated than most.

Barrington Stone and his friends are at the White House to celebrate the election of pregnant (PARIS MATCH) Katherine Lee as the first female President of the United States …

Stone is stricken when his friend and mentor, Eduardo Bianchi, dies.

He was called to the old man’s bedside for some last-minute instructions on how to handle his awesome estate and to be told that one of the women in his life is really his daughter, Carla.

She is to be given an equal share of the inheritance his other offspring will receive. …

As the novel unfolds, Dolce, one of Eduardo’s daughters, is released from the nunnery she has been in for over three years due to her mental illness.

She is treated by a priest who is also a psychiatrist, and they have a long affair.

Suddenly the priest turns up mutilated. WHO is the killer?

Fast and easy to read. Nonsense entertainment.

I enjoyed this one.

The cast of our favourite characters are in Paris for the opening of the latest Arrington hotel.

… an old enemy is still in hot pursuit, but now he has the aide of a powerful man with his own ax to grind against Stone.

And back in the States, the churning rumor mill threatens to derail a project of vital importance to the entire nation. 

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Stone Barrington is getting increasingly political, advising the President of the United States.

Also, sleeping with future White House Chief of Staff. 😀

Daniel Silva is one of the best writers alive.

His 2025 book — An Inside Job — is as good as any of the rest of the Gabriel Allon series.

Art restorer and legendary spy Gabriel Allon …

But when he discovers the body of a mysterious woman floating in the waters of the Venetian Lagoon, he finds himself in a desperate race to recover a lost masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci.

The painting, a portrait of a beautiful young girl, has been gathering dust in a storeroom at the Vatican Museums for more than a century, misattributed and hidden beneath a worthless picture by an unknown artist.

Because no one knows that the Leonardo is there, no one notices when it disappears one night during a suspicious power outage.

No one but the ruthless mobsters and moneymen behind the theft—and the mysterious woman whom Gabriel found in a watery grave in Venice. A woman without a name. A woman without a face.

The action moves at breakneck speed from the galleries and auction houses of London to an enclave of unimaginable wealth on the French Riveria—and, finally, to a shocking climax in St. Peter’s Square, where the life of a pope hangs in the balance.

Gabriel Allon was in charge of Israeli intelligence. 

But now that he’s retired in Venice, recent books are more centred on Italy, art, and Catholicism.

It could be that the author doesn’t have the heart to comment on what’s happening in Israel in recent years. He had been a great defender.

Poison Flower is 7th in the excellent Jane Whitefield series.

Whitefield, a member of the Seneca nation, self-identifies as a guide, one who leads her clients — innocents, by and large — out of harm’s way. …

The book commences with Whitefield extricating a man named James Shelby from incarceration in the California Institution for Men in Chino, California.

Shelby is serving a prison sentence there for the murder of his wife, a crime he did not commit. Whitefield successfully frees Shelby in a daring and gutsy courthouse sting, but is herself captured by men masquerading as policemen.

Her captors, as it turns out, are in the employ of the man who framed Shelby to begin with. ….

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Some feel this is a weaker book in the series.

It still works for me. The biggest difference is Jane finally turns to FIGHT rather than flight.

Emily Henry is a popular young author of romance novels.

Not normally my genre. She’s more for the Reese’s Book Club crowd. 😀

But the premise of Great Big Beautiful Life (2025) intrigued.

Two writers compete for the chance to tell the larger-than-life lie story of a woman who has stayed out of the public eye for decades. She’s the widow of a singer something like Elvis.

An interesting story. Plenty of romance.

Plenty of sex, as well.

I’d recommend it — even if you don’t normally read romance.

Well worth reading for those looking for hope into the future of developed nations.

Recommended.

Abundance is a nonfiction book by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, published March 2025.

It feels very much up-to-date. They make many recommendations for improvement.

The authors are prominent American liberal pundits. This book evaluates progress in the USA from the left of centre point of view.

It examines the reasons behind the lack of progress on ambitious projects in the United States, including those related to affordable housing, infrastructure, and climate change.

My biggest takeaway is that governments should declare more one time EMERGENCY situations, in responding to things like natural disasters, bridge collapse, and even housing shortages. Rules and regulations make developments safer — but at too much cost. Red tape should be reduced as much as possible.

Klein and Thompson propose an Abundance Agenda that they say better manages the tradeoffs between regulations and social advancement and lament that America is stuck between a progressive movement that is too afraid of growth and a conservative movement that is allergic to government intervention.

Cut and Thrust (2015) is 30th in the long Stone Barrington series.

Similar but different than the rest. A good one.

This one is quite political.

When Stone travels to Los Angeles for the biggest political convention of the year, he finds the scene quite shaken up: a dazzling newcomer—and close friend of Stone’s—has given the delegates an unexpected choice, crucial alliances are made and broken behind closed doors, and it seems that more than one seat may be up for grabs.

And amid the ambitious schemers and hangers-on are a few people who may use the chaotic events as cover for more sinister plans…

The Wycherly Woman (1961) is another complex murder mystery from Ross Macdonald.

This one didn’t really work for me.

Too many family secrets were unearthed to be believable. By the end, I couldn’t care less about any of the characters.

P.I. Lew Archer is summoned to the Meadow Farms mansion of Californian oil millionaire, Homer Wycherly, just returned from an ocean cruise.

Asked to locate Wycherly’s daughter Phoebe, missing since she saw Homer off two months before …

For one Hollywood adaptation of a Ross Macdonald book, they wanted Frank Sinatra. It ended up being Paul Newman playing the role, changing the detective’s name to Harper rather than Archer for marketing reasons.