Doing Hard Time (2014) is the 27th book in the Stone Barrington series.
A good one.
Stone Barrington is a rich New York lawyer who, over the years, has become increasingly adept at eating at fancy restaurants and spending huge amounts of money on airplanes, cars and houses. Also sleeping with every beautiful woman who comes along.
Best in this novel is the return of arch criminal (or maybe he’s really a good guy) Teddy Fay.
Teddy is on the run from just about everyone, having killed a number of people he felt deserved an early exit from their time on earth.
Stone’s son and his 2 friends are on their way to Hollywood to make a feature film. Teddy saves them in a typically insanely unlikely way.
The book is mostly set in L.A.
A Russian mafia boss from the past starts sending hitmen after Stone and family.
Severe Clear is #24 in the Stone Barrington fantasy series.
This one includes the Presidents of the United States and Mexico.
Stone Barrington is in Bel-Air, overseeing the grand opening of the ultra-luxe hotel, The Arrington, built on the grounds of the mansion belonging to his late wife, Arrington Carter.
The star-studded gala will be attended by socialites, royalty, and billionaires from overseas…and according to phone conversations intercepted by the NSA, it may also have attracted the attention of international terrorists. To ensure the safety of his guests—and the city of Los Angeles—Stone may have to call in a few favors from his friends at the CIA…
I’m surprised as Baldacci is mainly know for best selling suspense novels and legal thrillers that you immediately forget once getting to the last page.
But his 2025 book is serious literature. This could be nominated for major awards.
… set in London in 1944, about a bereaved bookshop owner and two teenagers scarred by the Second World War, and the healing and hope they find in one another.
Fourteen-year-old Charlie Matters is up to no good, but for a very good reason. Without parents, peerage, or merit, he steals what he needs, living day-to-day until he’s old enough to enlist to fight the Germans. After barely surviving the Blitz, Charlie knows there’s no telling when a falling bomb might end his life.
Fifteen-year-old Molly Wakefield has just returned to a nearly unrecognizable London. One of millions of children to have been evacuated to the countryside Molly has been away from her home for nearly five years. Her return, however, is not the homecoming she’d hoped for as she’s confronted by a devastating reality: neither of her parents are there.
Without guardians and stability, Charlie and Molly find an unexpected ally and protector in Ignatius Oliver, and solace at his bookshop …
A few years after my parents, my brother Rob and his wife Yvonne decided to move to Parksville, as well. They bought a 2nd house. AND got married in that Parksville home.
Randy and Val made long trips from Calgary, especially enjoying the annual Sandcastle Building competition and LIVE music at the Park.
I was born and raised in Calgary, the high prairie. Ocean and rain forest were a big attraction for me.
Most mornings, I’d get up for dawn and take coffee down to Rathtrevor Beach.
Jo Piazza is a novelist, journalist, and podcaster.
I read The Sicilian Inheritance (2024) mainly because I‘ve never been to Sicily. An unforgivable oversight on my part.
It kept me going. Both the modern day story of Sara, there for the first time. AND the story of her great-grandmother Serafina in the bad, old days when women were treated like chattel ➙ kept me going.
I’d almost place this book in the Romance genre.
Sara Marsala barely knows who she is anymore after the failure of her business and marriage.
On top of that, her beloved great-aunt Rosie passes away, leaving Sara bereft with grief.
But Aunt Rosie’s death also opens an escape from her life and a window into the past by way of a plane ticket to Sicily, a deed to a possibly valuable plot of land, and a bombshell family secret.
Rosie believes Sara’s great-grandmother Serafina, the family matriarch who was left behind while her husband worked in America, didn’t die of illness as family lore has it . . . she was murdered.
Thus begins a twist-filled adventure that takes Sara all over the picturesque Italian countryside as she races to solve a mystery and learn the story of Serafina—a feisty and headstrong young woman in the early 1900s thrust into motherhood in her teens, who fought for a better life not just for herself but for all the women of her small village. Unsurprisingly the more she challenges the status quo, the more she finds herself in danger.
Piazza wrote this fictional novel inspired by the real life murder of her great, great grandmother, Lorenza Marsala, more than a 100 years ago.
A careful, methodical young data analyst for a California insurance company, John Walker knows when people will marry, at what age they will most likely have children, and when they will die.
All signs point to a long successful career—until Max Stillman, a gruff security consultant, appears without warning at the office.
It seems a colleague with whom Walker once had an affair has disappeared after paying a very large death benefit to an impostor.
Stillman wants to find and convict her; Walker is convinced the woman is innocent.
Now Walker teams up with Stillman on an urgent north-by-northeast race …
I enjoy learning about how skiptracers work and think.
Rick McCharles 