Sixteen-year-old Frankie Budge—aspiring writer, indifferent student, offbeat loner—is determined to make it through yet another sad summer in Coalfield, Tennessee, when she meets Zeke, a talented artist who has just moved into his grandmother’s unhappy house and who is as lonely and awkward as Frankie.
… when the two jointly make an unsigned poster, shot through with an enigmatic phrase, it becomes unforgettable to anyone who sees it.
The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers. We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us.
The Intruder (2025) by Freida McFadden is another of her stand alone psychological thrillers.
The twists and surprises in this one are pretty good.
Casey’s cabin in the wilderness is not built for a hurricane. Her roof shakes, the lights flicker, and the tree outside her front door sways ominously in the wind. But she’s a lot more worried about the girl she discovers lurking outside her kitchen window.
She’s young. She’s alone. And she’s covered in blood.
The girl won’t explain where she came from, or loosen her grip on the knife in her right hand. And when Casey makes a disturbing discovery in the middle of the night, things take a turn for the worse.
The girl has a dark secret. One she’ll kill to keep. And if Casey gets too close to the truth, she may not live to see the morning.
Historical fiction. Good concept. Dual timelines. But not a great novel.
London, 1953. Louise is still adjusting to her postwar role as a housewife when she discovers a necklace in a box at a secondhand shop. The box is marked with the name of a department store in Paris, and she is certain she has seen the necklace before, when she worked with the Red Cross in Nazi-occupied Europe —and that it holds the key to the mysterious death of her friend Franny during the war.
Flashback to NAZI occupied Paris. Lévitan—a once-glamorous furniture store converted by the Nazis into a forced labor camp, and Helaine, a woman who was imprisoned there, torn apart from her husband when the Germans invaded France.
Vietnam is the 2nd largest producer in the world after Brazil. Second only to rice in value of agricultural products exported from Vietnam.
First introduced by the French in 1857, the Vietnamese coffee industry developed through the plantation system, becoming a major economic force in the country.
It’s a boom and bust crop, needless to say. And there are environmental and sociological concerns.
Starbucks opened its first store in Vietnam in 2013. Highlands Coffee is biggest of the chains.
Almost every little street kiosk makes good coffee, however. I’ve not been to Starbucks nor Highlands.
For me, most of the coffee is too strong.
Here my guide is drinking black tar. I’m having the same tar with sweetened condensed milk.
Me Linh Coffee Garden
The use of sweetened condensed milk rather than fresh milk was first due to its availability and easier storage in a tropical climate.
Egg coffee is super popular, as well. Egg yolks with sugar and condensed milk rather than fresh milk.
During the rainy season, Nha Trang, Vietnam, has 4 star and 5 star hotel rooms available at very low price.
For CAD $18 I stayed in the Summer Hotel. 4 Stars. Excellent breakfast buffet.
Next day I caught the bus up into the highlands ➙ a hill station called Da Lat.
There I stayed in a private room in the most popular hostel ➙ Dalat Family Hostel.
One Canadian has been living at the hostel for the past year. Less expensive than Edmonton, he told me.
I paid CAD $13.30 for a minimal private room. No TV. No window. No breakfast.
Cost-wise, both are about the same relative to my travel budget.
BUT my 4 star hotel room was boring. Like almost every hotel room at every price range.
The front desk was not very helpful. I went to a popular hostel down the street to get information and book my tour.
By comparison, within 10 minutes of arriving at Dalat Family Hostel I had my day tour booked. My onward night sleeper bus reservation made. AND I had signed up for a fun communal hostel dinner.
I left a review:
Unforgettable, fun hostel.
Scored 9.0
Advice on tours and bus. My 3 waterfalls tour on bike was excellent. Hostel is an entertaining maze of unique areas including weight room and pool. Great social dinners.
Most travellers recommend spending as little time as possible in Ho Chi Minh City(Saigon).
Good advice.
Terrible traffic. Sprawling urbanity of 14 million people.
On the upside, a modern metro line was opened late 2024.
BUT Saigon is a great place to shop. It a transportation hub. A place to get things done. AND see some interesting attractions, even if they are somewhat far apart.
It’s something of a sequel to Fool Me Once (2016) which was adapted into an excellent TV series.
Sami Kierce, a young college grad backpacking in Spain with friends, wakes up one morning, covered in blood. There’s a knife in his hand. Beside him, the body of his girlfriend. Anna. Dead. He doesn’t know what happened. His screams drown out his thoughts—and then he runs.
Twenty-two years later, Kierce, now a private investigator, is a new father who’s working off his debts by doing low level surveillance jobs and teaching wannabe sleuths at a night school in New York City.
One evening, he recognizes a familiar face at the back of the classroom. Anna. It’s unmistakably her. As soon as Kierce makes eye contact with her, she bolts. For Kierce there is no choice. He knows he must find this woman and solve the impossible mystery that has haunted his every waking moment since that terrible day.
His investigation will bring him face-to-face with his past—and prove, after all this time, he’s nobody’s fool.
After weeks of heat and humidity, I finally headed UP to Da Lat, or Dalat, at 1,500 m (4,900 ft) above sea level. One of the most popular tourist destinations in Vietnam.
Tourists love any climate that can grow tea or coffee. Hill stations.
I walked the canals and lake both nights I was there. Pretty in the full moon.
No photo editing.
Short on time, I signed up for a VIP tour. A BIG day.
Cost was CAD $31.40 for 8 hours of non-stop entertainment. That’s VIP in Vietnam. 😀
Best was my Easy Rider motorcycle driver / guide, Mr Hieu. 60 years old — but hyper and energetic as a teenager.
We had lunch at one of his personal favourite spots, not a typical tourist only restaurant.
Mr Hieu been guiding this tour since 2002. He was handpicked as my driver by the hostel where I stayed.
Mê Linh Coffee Plantation & Weasel (Civit) Coffee … (NO, I did not drink weasel poop coffee)
Mr Hieu added many extra stops unknown to any other driver. Like this inexplicable giant chicken in one village.
He did his best to get me hooked up, as well, knowing ALL the single Vietnamese women en route. 😀
BEST was the Pongour Waterfall. I flew my drone here as Vietnam is yet to get organized enough to post signs disallowing them.
Pongour waterfall.
NEW was taking something called an “Alpine Rollercoaster“. Over 2,400 meters, the Datanla coaster is longest in Asia.
There was some extra cost for this. Well worth it.
Safe? I dunno. Signs say you can crash one into another. BUT I appreciated having brakes so I could slow down and not fly off at the turns. 😀
With its year-round cool weather, Da Lat supplies huge quantities of temperate agriculture products.
We visited a mushroom farm. VERY interesting.
We saw every stage of silk production. Fascinating, as well.
Almost every tour in Vietnam includes a giant Buddhist statue. Many are female.
The image of Quan Âm as a maternal figure of mercy and compassion evolved through the blending of Mahayana Buddhism with Vietnamese folk traditions, including the veneration of mother goddesses.
Rick McCharles 