David and Elizabeth Beck, both 25 years old and married for less than a year, are celebrating the anniversary of their first kiss at a secluded lake when Elizabeth is abducted and later murdered.
Although the killer is found and prosecuted, David never gets over the tragic incident.
On the eighth anniversary of Elizabeth’s death, two long-dead bodies are unearthed at the same lake where the kidnapping occurred.
In addition, David receives a shocking email from an unidentified source that mentions a phrase only David and Elizabeth should know.
I knew nothing of Karlsruhe before stopping here at a hostel on my Rhine cycling trip.
I’d gotten drenched wild camping the night before — my 4th tropical rain storm since arriving Germany.
When the lightning started, I quickly found this higher spot on the flood plain to set-up my tent. It WAS muddy.
HEY. In 1817, Karlsruhe-born Karl Freiherr Drais von Sauerbronn devised a brilliant invention – he developed the world’s first two-wheeler – called “Draisine” in his honour. The original can still be admired at the City Museum in Prince Max Palace.
The first ran on rails.
It’s considered the precursor to the modern bicycle.
Turns out Karlsruhe will be hosting the World Games in 2029. This is the Olympics for non-Olympic sports like Power Tumbling and Double-mini Trampoline.
The city was planned with the palace tower (Schloss) at the center and 32 streets radiating out from it like the spokes of a wheel, or the ribs of a folding fan, so that one nickname for Karlsruhe in German is the “fan city” (Fächerstadt). Almost all of these streets survive to this day.
By A.Savin
A nice stop. Very green. Plenty of parks to cycle.
The It Girl (2022) would seem to be yet another psychological thriller.
But it’s better than most.
A respectable murder mystery that will keep you guessing.
It is too long. Too slow.
And the protagonist is constantly annoying. I regret spending so many hours with that woman.
April Clarke-Cliveden was the first person Hannah Jones met at Oxford.
Vivacious, bright, occasionally vicious, and the ultimate It girl, she quickly pulled Hannah into her dazzling orbit. Together, they developed a group of devoted and inseparable friends—Will, Hugh, Ryan, and Emily—during their first term.
By the end of the year, April was dead.
Now, a decade later, Hannah and Will are expecting their first child, and the man convicted of killing April, former Oxford porter John Neville, has died in prison.
Relieved to have finally put the past behind her, Hannah’s world is rocked when a young journalist comes knocking and presents new evidence that Neville may have been innocent.
As Hannah reconnects with old friends and delves deeper into the mystery of April’s death, she realizes that the friends she thought she knew all have something to hide…including a murder.
A great 2024 book. Murder mystery / psychological thriller.
Set during Covid, it’s very up-to-date in terms of social media.
In this twisty thriller and “compulsive page-turner” (Harlan Coben) … a woman thinks she’s waking up to a romantic vacation—only to find a body in her rental home and her boyfriend gone.
It was supposed to be a romantic getaway weekend in New York City. Breanna’s new boyfriend, Ty, took care of everything—the train tickets, the dinner reservations, the rented four-story luxury rowhouse in Jersey City with a beautiful view of the Manhattan skyline.
But when Bree comes downstairs their final morning, Ty is nowhere to be found and there’s a stranger dead in the foyer—the missing woman the entire Internet has become obsessed with: Janelle Beckett.
Soon, both the police and an army of Internet sleuths are asking questions Bree doesn’t know how to answer.
Desperate to find Ty and to keep her own secrets buried, Bree realizes there’s only one person she can turn to: her ex-best friend, a lawyer with whom she shares a very complicated past.
Fierce, smart, and thrilling to the end, Missing White Woman not only explores “Missing White Woman” syndrome and traveling while Black, but deftly inverts the hallmarks of the domestic suspense genre to ask: How well can we truly know the people we love? And what happens to these stories when seen through the eyes of a Black woman?
The murder of a dinosaur “treasure hunter” in New Mexico.
It’s a bit confusing with too many threads:
A moon rock missing for thirty years.
A scientist with ambition enough to kill.
A monk who will redeem the world.
A dark agency with a deadly mission.
The greatest scientific discovery of all time.
On the upside, Douglas Preston is an expert in palaeontology, working as a writer at the American Museum of Natural History for many years. A lot of his books are grounded in actual science.
Salvation (2017) is an American thriller TV series.
Not bad, as thrillers go. But only 47% on Rotten Tomatoes.
The cast is compelling.
Santiago Cabrera as Darius Tanz is good. Something like an Elon Musk.
… an asteroid that will impact the Earth in just six months, highlighting the attempts to prevent it and its worldwide ramifications. The show looks at how different individuals and groups of people react to the impending doom. Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
The Rhine Falls (German: Rheinfall) are 150 metres (490 ft) wide and 23 metres (75 ft) high.
There are other highlights nearby, including the Wörth Castle (Swiss German: Schlössli Wörth) — BUT I couldn’t safely leave my bike and gear to visit those.
Rick McCharles 