Peter Grainger is my favourite writer — who doesn’t yet have a Wikipedia page. 😀
He’s so unknown that he had time to reply to me on one of my comments on his books!
Grainger started by independently publishing for Kindle.
Lane is his 2017 short book introducing Willows and Lane.
Emily Willows is middle-aged, widowed, wealthy, and bored.
Summer Lane is a mysterious new neighbour.
An incident throws them together in a hostage situation and car chase.
It’s Grainger, so it’s good.
IF I had Musk money to waste, I’d definitely hang out at the NEW St. Regis Bermuda Resort.
About CAD $860 / night in February. The place is mostly deserted in winter.
There are units for sale, as well.
I love the location in St. Georges, my favourite part of Bermuda.
That’s Fort St. Catherine in front. A coastal artillery installation used by Royal Artillery units from 1612 into the 20th century. Today it houses a museum.
In the distance is my favourite beach in Bermuda — Tobacco Bay.
Five Forts Golf Course is somewhat new. It used to be the government run St. George Golf Course designed by Robert Trent Jones.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
The Sleeping Doll by Jeffery Deaver is an excellent short book.
Special agent Kathryn Dance—a brilliant interrogator and body language expert and her partners at the California Bureau of Investigation hunt down escaped killer Daniel Pell, a self-styled Charles Manson.
Both Dance and Pell are fascinating characters.
Jeffery Deaver creates plots with so many twists and turns they could “hide behind a spiral staircase” (People), and The Sleeping Doll has Deaver’s trademark twists in spades. It is guaranteed to keep readers guessing right up to the breathless end.
Click PLAY or watch an interview on YouTube.
Mr. Beast is a 24-year-old normal guy from Kansas.
A University dropout.
His YouTube channel reached 112 million subscribers on November 17, 2022, making it the fourth-most-subscribed on the platform, and the highest as a non-corporate identity.
Aside from his philanthropy, everyone studies his simple but effective VIDEO storytelling.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
John Grisham has written seven books in total in the Theodore Boone series, which were published between 2010 and 2019.
Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer is the first.
Grisham intended the book for teens, but I completely enjoyed the tale. He’s a terrific story teller.
In fact, I’d hire 13-year-old Theo as my own lawyer. 😀
I’m now following Kid LAROI, an Australian rapper, singer and songwriter. Only age-19.
Great voice. Great video.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube. With Bieber.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube. With Miley Cyrus.
Cormac McCarthy has written 12 novels, mostly Western and post-apocalyptic genres. …
His 2006 novel The Road won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
The Road was hard to read. But excellent.
You probably saw the film.
16 years after The Road, McCarthy published The Passenger (2022).
It’s literature — not easy to follow.
Perhaps I’m not smart enough to appreciate the plotless long sections of dialogue — with no action.
Philosophical. Diversions into the stupidity of the Vietnam war. The potential of science. Physics. War. The assassination of JFK. Formula 2 racing. Smart stuff that doesn’t relate in any way to the story.
The novel follows Bobby Western, a salvage diver, across the Gulf of Mexico and the American South. Western is haunted by his father’s contributions to the development of the atomic bomb. …
Following a salvage dive to recover any survivors from a submerged airplane, Western discovers that the pilot’s flight bag and data box are missing. Within a few days, he returns to his apartment to find two agents of some kind who ask questions …
Bobby goes on the run.
The love of his life was his sister Alicia, a mathematical prodigy and paranoid schizophrenic, who killed herself years before.
Guardian critic Xan Brooks praised the novel, calling it a “glorious sunset song of a novel… It’s rich and it’s strange, mercurial and melancholic.”
I probably won’t read the short sequel, Stella Maris.
In 1798, Thomas Malthus predicted a global overpopulation apocalypse.
I’ve always assumed he was right. That more people meant more pollution and — ultimately — depletion of fixed resources.
But Professor Galloway argues the opposite:
China, Japan, Germany, Italy, Greece, Portugal, and many Eastern European nations are shrinking in 2023. Researchers project the global population will peak in 2064.
Net population growth requires a fertility rate slightly greater than two births per woman. America’s fertility rate is 1.8; the average for high income countries. And dropping.
It’s increasingly difficult for young people to be able to afford to get married, buy a house, and have kids.
The obvious solution is to increase immigration of young people. Galloway feels increased immigration still won’t be enough to solve the problem.
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In the novel published 2022 Bosch is older. Grumpier. Long retired.
LAPD detective Renée Ballard had quit the force, as well, in the face of misogyny, demoralization, and endless red tape.
But Renée’s convinced to return and rebuild the cold case unit at the elite Robbery-Homicide Division.
With no budget, she recruits volunteers. Who’s #1 on her list? … Harry Bosch.
Two cases play out in parallel. As always, Bosch is the worst kind of underling. But certainly keeps momentum to try to solve the cases. Ballard needs him.
One thing I love about Bosch books is how they include their mistakes. And never downplay the challenges of Los Angeles traffic. It makes these meticulous police investigations feel much more real.
Not the best of Connelly’s procedurals, but nobody else does them better than his second-best.
Kirkus Reviews
I quite like the end of the book. Surprising, yet believable.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
My brother’s 2021 book is available in paperback and Kindle formats.
This one is #2 in the Sam Sparrow series.
Sam is a private eye who keeps being whisked away from modern day to fictional historic locations.
The story is a humorous mashup of speculative fiction with a hardboiled detective character.
This time Sam must help rescue Robin Hood and Maid Marian from the evil Sheriff of Nottingham.
And it doesn’t go all that well. The Sheriff anticipates Sam’s every move — and there’s a lot of hobbling on badly blistered feet. Until the climactic final confrontation.
Rick McCharles 