An ideal gift book for a teen who likes Harry Potter — and baking. 😀
But I actually enjoyed it.
Fourteen-year-old Mona’s magic only works on bread. She has a comfortable life in her aunt’s bakery making gingerbread men dance.
THEN she’s called on to save the city.
Author T. Kingfisher (Ursula Vernon) has won the Hugo for past books. I’m not surprised.
This is the second book in the Joe Pickett series. He’s a Wyoming game warden.
The plot is intriguing.
Someone hired hit men to kill a number of environmental protection activists across the States.
The lawyer who protected Grizzly Bears was made to look as if he was killed and eaten by those bears. They don’t want martyrs.
I recommend it.
A good insight into the pros and cons of environmentalism in Wyoming.
A Joe Pickett TV series just launched. USA only, so far.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Archer’s most recent book series is based around William Warwick. This is book #2 (2020) in the four published, so far.
Having been promoted to Detective Sergeant, William Warwick and his team have been assigned to the Drug Squad where they are charged with apprehending a notorious South London drug leader named Khalil Rashidi. Along the way, William makes new enemies and encounters several old foes like Miles Faulkner who could finally be put in prison.
Meanwhile, in his personal life, Warwick is planning a wedding with Beth. They are however caught off guard by the unpleasant surprise waiting for them at the altar.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Quite different than the usual Peter May novel, this one is a bit autobiographical.
The decision of five teenage boys to leave their homes in Glasgow in 1965 and head for London is led by Jack Mackay when he is expelled from school. His friends need little incentive to run away from abusive families and dead end jobs to pursue fame and fortune as a band. However, the boys find the reality to be devastatingly different from their dreams, and within less than eight weeks of their departure, just three of them return home, their lives irrevocably damaged.
Fifty years later, in 2015, a brutal murder takes place in London and the three men, who are now in their sixties, are forced to return to the city to confront the demons which have haunted them and blighted their lives for five decades.
PeterMay.com
In fact, when Peter was age 17 he had been expelled. And convinced his buddy Stephen to run away from Glasgow to London. They didn’t last long.
Here are Peter and Stephen reminiscing about their escape 50 years in the past.
Because I HATE advertising, I subscribe to YouTube Premium for about $10 / month.
Included in that bundle is YouTube Music. I downloaded about 100 favourite songs so I can listen offline on the rare occasion I want music rather than podcasts and audio books.
It includes “YouTube Original” TV and movies, a sad collection of things you’d never want to watch. Google has ALL the money so I’m surprised they don’t buy some streaming platforms and compete against Disney, Netflix and the rest.
BUT their only remaining scripted series is Cobra Kai.
However, I tried Impulse, a science fiction drama streaming television series based on the 2013 Steven Gould novel.
Excellent.
It’s part SciFi, part female teen coming-of-age drama.
16-year-old Henrietta “Henry” Coles who discovers she has the ability to teleport but has no control over her destination. …
The main plot gets more complex as it turns out there are others with her superpower. And they come looking for Henry.
Madelaine Hasson plays the strong, unlikable lead character.
The cast is all good, but I particularly like Enuka Okuma as Anna Hulce. A good cop in a very bad situation.
And Daniel Maslany as Townes Linderman, an autistic student.
Click PLAY or watch the trailer on YouTube.
I also watched the second and final season — but don’t recommend it.
One highlight, however, of season two is Callum Keith Rennie as Nikolai, another with Henry’s powers who’s trying to help(?) her.
And Townes gets a girlfriend.
The 4th book in the Atlee Pine series.
Atlee is a badass FBI agent obsessed with finding her twin sister, Mercy, who was abducted at the age of six and never seen again.
… Mercy left at least one dead body behind before fleeing her captors years before.
Atlee has no idea if her sister is still alive, and if so, how she has been surviving all this time. When the truth is finally revealed …
Amazon
This ain’t literature. But it kept me going.
I appreciated Mercy turning out to be an uneducated 6 foot tall MMA fighter.
Connelly‘s latest book is set during the pandemic starting New Year’s Eve 2020 in Los Angeles.
It’s the 4th featuring Renée Ballard, the female badass surfing successor to Harry Bosch who has a secondary role. This is the 23rd Bosch book.
Like Bosch, Renée’s a talented, hard working — undisciplined — investigator.
Also reckless.
The book is Bosch so it’s good. But I haven’t been won over by Renée in the way I’ve always like Harry.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Like everyone, I admired Hawkin’s 2015 blockbuster “The Girl on a Train”.
It was part of the new-to-me at the time sub-genre of murder mysteries where female authors write the story from mostly a female point of view. Gillian Flynn-like books.
Hawkins is smart. Studied at Oxford.
Her 2021 book is smart. And there are some similarities to Girl on a Train:
Daniel Sutherland is murdered on his Narrowboat on a canal. And damned if I could guess which of the many unlikely killers did the deed. It kept me guessing right to the end.
It had something to do with a domestic tragedy long ago where a young boy fell to his death from a balcony. But what?
I recommend this book. But the complexities were a bit much for me. I liked Girl on a Train better.
To see how a good author develops a novel, click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
The first Joe Pickett novel.
Quite good.
Joe Pickett is the new game warden in Twelve Sleep, Wyoming, a town where nearly everyone hunts and the game warden—especially one like Joe who won’t take bribes or look the other way—is far from popular.
When he finds a local hunting outfitter dead, splayed out on the woodpile behind his state-owned home, he takes it personally. …
CJBox.net
There are MANY more in this series.
Rick McCharles 