Isabel Allende, from Chile, (age-79 as I post), is the world’s most widely read Spanish-language author.

Violeta is her 2022 novel.

It’s a fictional autobiographical account of the life of Violeta Del Valle set over 100 years between the Spanish flu epidemic and Covid 19.

From a petulant child to a wise grandmother, the reader watches her develop as the decades pass.

Isabel’s Mom was born about the same time. In the same social class. In the same place.

I wouldn’t call it brilliant writing. But it is an interesting and entertaining story.

I recommend Violeta.

All Joe Pickett novels are good — BUT I can’t say this is one of the best.

A brilliant villain is released from prison. Back to take revenge on Joe Pickett and family.

Good start.

But is his band of outlaws incompetent or what?

This is the first book I’ve read by Linwood Barclay, though he’s a Canadian.

It’s excellent.

The premise of the plot is fantastic. Private Investigator Cal Weaver is hired to help protect an 18-year-old who had run over a friend while blind drunk. Killed her. And had somehow been found not guilty in court because he (supposedly) did not understand the consequences of his actions because he was coddled by an overprotective mother.

Simultaneously, but apparently unrelated, Detective Barry Duckworth is dealing with a case of a young man abducted and tattooed by … aliens?

Both Duckworth and Weaver are fictional characters well worth spending time with.

I’ll be reading more Barclay.

Louise Erdrich (age 68 as I post) is a much respected author.

In 2021, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel The Night Watchman.

She is also the owner of Birchbark Books, a small independent bookstore in Minneapolis that focuses on Native American literature.

In The Sentence, the narrator, Tookie, works in a bookstore in Minneapolis that carries Native American literature. Tookie, like the author, is a Native American.

As a young woman, Tookie was sentenced to 60 years in prison. But later had her crime reduced to some years time served. That part of the book I found fascinating.

She became a serious reader in prison, one reason she ended up working in a bookstore — haunted by the ghost of a former customer — before the pandemic broke in March 2020.

I’d forgotten how confusing it was mid-March when we had no masks or gel yet. And didn’t know how serious it would become.

The story in Minneapolis following the murder of George Floyd was super interesting too. Her step daughter was out protesting. But Tookie was worried about looters burning down the bookstore.

Overall — however — I found the book too long and rambling.

It’s supposed to be mainly a ghost story. But I didn’t really buy the resolution of that.

This book should have been shorter.